The Day of Preparation

 Today it was all hands on deck!!

Time to get ready for Thanksgiving dinner and Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Luke made the pumpkin bread.

 Laura's first apple pie.

 Gracie made the pumpkin pie. 

 A beautiful centerpiece from our neighbor. (I love this idea for the vase)

 Daddy and Kim used her BabyCakes machine to make cake balls.

 Kimmy made very cute pilgrim hats.....

 all by herself!

 Gracie with her pies and pretzel and M&M dots.

 Laura made us very yummy caramel corn.

We are almost ready for Thanksgiving.

For full disclosure...we told the kids to eat cereal for dinner tonight.

It's Luke's nameday...Pray for Us Saint Luke the Evangelist

 

Today is the Feast of Saint Luke.  My little Luke's nameday.

I found this great printable coloring page over at Color The Bible.

We colored them with our Prismcolor colored pencils and when they hang on the back door they look just like stained glass.

Then Luke got to make his first cake, all by himself.

He made a Betty Crocker Cinnamon Bun cake. (Of course I didn't get the mix from Amazon...I spent $1.28 at Walmart)

Luke cracked all three eggs without allowing one piece of shell to fall.

The best part of baking.

Into the oven.

Frosted and decorated.

\

Saint Luke, pray for us.

Olympic cookie bars

Laura made delicious Olympic cookie bars out of chocolate cookie dough and M&M's.

Painting Thanksgiving Cookies

We started with simple sugar cookie cutout leaves. (I cheated this year and used it premade)
I mix food coloring with egg yolk.

Then the kids get busy.

After painting the cookies, we sprinkle them with a little sugar.

Ready for the oven.

After ten minutes of baking.

I love the cracked look of the final product.

This taste yummy, too. The egg yolk cannot be tasted at all.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

A Cute Little Cupcake

Auntie Kim got Kimmy a baking set for Christmas, complete with apron, a mini cupcake pan, and various utensils. I have been waiting for a special time for her to start baking.

Sunday was pizza day at Grandma and Grandpa's so Kimmy and I made cupcakes for dessert.
First we mixed and stirred and dumped and baked...all before heading out to church.
When we got home from church, Kimmy frosted and decorated the cupcakes.

The baking set also came with the cute stand for a very cute presentation of the cupcakes.

Kimmy arranged them at Grandma's house.

A very proud Kimmy bringing dessert to the table....very, very carefully!

Personally delivering Grandpa the first cupcake.....she was sooooo proud.

What a great baker!!!

Thanks Auntie Kim for the great gift!!

Eggyolk "painted" Thanksgiving Cookies

I love having the kids decorate cookies with this eggyolk and foodcolor "paint".
It is as simple as an eggyolk mixed with foodcoloring.
As a sidenote , the yellow of the yolk makes red turn orange.

The colors are wonderful.....and then all the fun is in the painting...which my kids love to do!!

We have a secret sugar cookie recipe that is so easy to work with and so delicious....I'm not sharing because it is not my "secret"---it is a dear friend's mother's recipe that I begged for it and promised NOT to share. (But it is the absolute best!!)

Gracie hard at work.

A little spinkle of sugar makes for a pretty sparkle.

Kimmy waiting patiently for her turn??
Each child painted their cookies by themselves to cut down on chaos.

The colors are wonderfully bright.

Luke patiently waiting for his turn??

Luke was very surprised to find a train with his leaves....very excitied!!

The final product.

I love the colors!!

Kimmy looks a little suspicious, like she was caught nibbling on a cookie!!

Olympic Rings chocolate chip cookie brownies

I made a double batch of chocolate chip cookie dough this afternoon , and since this is Olympic week, we decorated our giant cookie with the Olympic rings.

Kim and Luke seperated the colors and then got to eat the orange, since there is no orange in the Olympic Rings.

Before baking.

This is my regular Nestle toll house cookie recipe from the back of the chocolate chip package.

I doubled it, used a bag of semi sweet choc. chips and milk choc. chips, baked it in a double sized cake pan at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes.

Make sure you don't push the M&M's into the cookie dough. If you do, they seem to disappear into the dough when it cooks. Just lightly place the M&M's onto the top of the dough.

That's one heavy, giant cookie brownie!!!

Here, Kim and Luke were taking it to show Daddy.

We are loving the Olympics.

Check out some of our other activities:

Silly Kimmy is here
preschool crafts and book are here

Silly fun is here

Our lapbook part 1 is here