Tacky Sweater Christmas Party

Ryan and I hosted a Christmas Party last night... Tacky Sweater Style. Everyone wore "Tacky" Christmas Sweaters -- I use quotes because "Tacky" is an opinion that is not shared by all... my mom and her sisters have been known to wear a sweater or two during the holidays... specifically the one I wore to the party.

The first Christmas we were married, Ryan and I had Christmas with his family. My brother was also not in Mississippi for Christmas so my mom's family rented a condo in Pensacola and had our first Christmas not in Meridian and Grammy and Pop's. During their trip to Pensacola, they went to see the former Pensacola Ice Pilots (hockey team) play... this is what the girls wore:

Ryan and I have always given them a little grief about this picture, but when we decided to have this party, I thought the sweatshirt would fit the theme quite well. Dee and Mom both sent me theirs, but I couldn't convince Ryan to wear one!

Back to the party... I made several appetizers and a couple of holiday beverages. All the food was a hit and there was very little left over.



We had about 20 guests total. We voted on the "favorite" tacky sweater and awarded first, second and third prize. Admiral won first, then Brandon, then Eric.


And here are the rest of the tacky sweaters. As I mentioned, Ryan wouldn't wear the matching sweater with me, so he made his own with Christmas ornaments and an old green cardigan.

Peppermint Oreo Dessert

Once a year, Blue Bell does something that makes my husband turn into a mad man... They deliver their seasonal Peppermint Ice Cream to the local grocery stores.  Blue Bell is could be considered a delicacy since it is only available in certain states.  Their Peppermint ice cream is, by far, a delicacy to even those of us so lucky to have Blue Bell in the freezer section.

Ryan loves the holidays, purely for Peppermint Ice Cream.  When November rolls around, he reminds me to "look for peppermint ice cream" each time I leave for the grocery.  And, I look, and wait, for it to arrive.  It's sometimes hard to spot because the container is almost the exact same color as the Mint Chocolate Chip!

As mentioned in my previous post, one of his family's favorites is Peppermint Oreo Dessert.  So, over Thanksgiving while we were at my parents house, I decided to make him a little something from home.  He insisted that I call his mom to find out how to do it so I didn't mess it up!

Peppermint-Oreo Dessert

1 stick butter

1 package Oreo's

1 half gallon Blue Bell Peppermint Ice Cream

Put ice cream on counter to soften.

Crumble 2 rows of the Oreo's (leaving 1 row for the top layer).

Melt butter.  Mix crumbled Oreo's with butter.

Spread into 9x13 pan.

Spread ice cream on top of oreo crust.  There was probably about 2 (Ryan sized) servings left in the container when I was done... my pan was only 8x12 though.

Crumble remaining Oreo's on top.

Freeze until Ice Cream is hard. 

Unfortunatly, with all the other food and desserts of the holidays, not enough of this dessert was eaten.  We tried to transport it home with ice packs and a thermal bag, but it arrived as soup.  Oh well, I tried, and Ryan had a little taste of home while away from family!

Christmas Baking - Part 2 - Ginger Cookies

Everyone's family has that one thing that IS Christmas.  And most have some sort of baked good that their Mom or Grandma always made.

Growing up, at Christmas time, Mom and I really only baked one thing with consistency--Iced Sugar Cookies.  Mom always made Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I think she would often make her Brown Sugar Cookies.  But the old faithful was the sugar cookies. 

Grandmother (my dad's mom) always made Chocolate Chip Cookies.  They were my dad's favorite and she could make them like noone else... no matter how hard we tried.  She put pecan's in them and they were always so evenly cooked and NEVER flat like mine.  She swore that all she did was follow the Nestle's Tollhouse recipe only changing one thing... she "twice baked" them, flipping them over halfway through.  I've tried, but its just not the same.  I think she had a special ingredient that she never shared with everyone else.   After she moved to Virginia after Granddaddy died I remember she would send them to my dad in the mail.  Always in the same, old, gold cookie tin (Dad always returned it so he would get cookies again).  Most of the time, no matter how well she packaged them, they arrived broken and crumbly.  But Dad would eat every last crumb (and I am sure I helped some too!)

In Ryan's family, his mom would bake all kinds of treats during the holidays.  Ginger Cookies, Pepppermint-Oreo dessert, Choc-o-mellow Logs, Snickerdoodles, Fudge, and more.  Their house at the holidays is heaven for a person with a sweet tooth!!!  The two items that have stood out to me as the ones all the boys fight over and love are the Ginger Cookies and the Peppermint-Oreo dessert (I made this over Thanksgiving and will write about it soon!)

So this year, I asked Ryan what Christmas treats he wanted, knowing I couldn't make them all.  His requests were Ginger Cookies and Fudge... and that is what he shall get.

Diane's Grandma D's Ginger Cookies

(I hope its okay to share this recipe... there were no disclaimers when it was given to me!)

Mix these ingredients:

3/4 c. Crisco

1 c. Sugar

1/4 c. Molasses

1 egg

Sift these ingredients together:

2 c. Flour

2 tsp. Baking Soda

1/4 tsp. Salt

1 tsp. Cinnamon

3/4 tsp. Cloves

3/4 tsp. Ginger

Add dry ingredients to mixed wet ingredients until well blended.

Roll dough into balls and place on greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 8 minutes -- they should be a little soft and chewy

Dip or Sprinkle with powdered sugar (I put a spoonful in the sifter and shook it over the cookies).

A happy husband tonight!

Christmas Baking Part 1 - The Lazy Method

Before I start my baking story, I thought I'd share another piece of the holiday decor.  This is the table behind one of our couches.  I realized I had an extra lighted garland this year so I found it a home!  I bought some $.50 red berry picks from Hobby Lobby (love their big half off sales) to spruce it up a bit.  It turned out nice!  

Now, to the baking.  I really wanted to make some iced sugar cookies.  That always gets me in the holiday spirit.  But, I didn't have the time or patience tonight to make dough, roll it out cut cookies, bake and ice.  So, in the spirit of Sandra Lee, its "Semi-Homemade".  Pillsbury has these nice new baking sheets of their sugar cookie dough, perfect for cut out cookies.  I had Pillsbury coupons this week so I picked these up instead of the pre-shaped sugar cookies.  This made me feel like I was doing a little more of it myself.  

I cut out Candy Canes, Trees and Stockings.  The only downside of this sheet dough is that it doesnt re-roll very well.  I guess if I sprinkled some extra flour, it would but that was too much work for tonight.  I used the package suggestion and rolled the dough into balls, then pressed them out into circles using the bottom of my wine glass.  I turned these into ornaments so that they fit the Christmas theme.

16 minutes later (2 batches of 8 minutes) I had a nice rack of sugar cookies. 

While the cookies baked, I made a batch of the Wilton Butter Cream Icing that I have written about before.  I made this instead of Grammy's Creamy French Icing for two reasons: (1) I didn't want to do the boiled sugar/water thing--one less thing to clean--and (2) I wanted white-white icing.  I have not done sugar cookies with this icing so I was a little nervous.

I used a variation between medium and stiff using 1/2 stick of butter and 3/4 cups shortening. Then, I colored the icing red and green, leaving a little white for my stripes and stocking tops.  And the results turned out great.  Ryan gave them the seal of approval.  Half are going to work with me tomorrow and the other half staying here!


I am sure I will make some "real" sugar cookies this year, but I do really love a Pillsbury "Slice-n-Bake" cookie!

It's Christmas Time in The Woodlands!

The house is finally all decorated for Christmas... inside and out. This will likely be our last Christmas at this house so we made sure to go all out!

Ryan bought our house before we were married but we both really wanted to put up lights outside. We didn't want to spend the money to buy it all at once, so each year we add a little more. The first year was just lights in a few bushes, then the snowman, then the icicles, then the candy canes, etc. This year we have the most lights we have ever put up. It looks pretty good if I say so myself. We think we deserve the award for our neighborhoods Best House but I think we are too classic to win that's what I tell myself because, obvioulsy, our house is the best!!! :)

Last year we bought a BIG artificial tree. My number 1 advice for buying artificial trees is to MEASURE. The reason is that, when buying a tree from a big store like Walmart or Garden Ridge, even the biggest trees look small. My number 2 advice is don't believe your husband when he says your ceilings are 10 feet tall... they are not, they are only 9. So, as you can guess, our tree is big. It is 9ft tall, so it touches the ceiling. It is so large that it won't fit anywhere in our house, other than the breakfast room. So, to the garage goes the table and chairs and into the breakfast room goes the tree.

Our tree already had some white lights on it but it was just not enough for my taste. I like colored lights too so I added several strands. I took care to string the tree in sections so that it could be taken apart with the lights on. This worked well as this year, I only had one small section at the top to string the lights on. By accident, I left the second from bottom layer out of the tree. When it was time to put the third section on, I realized that it just wasn't quite right. But, after inspecting the situation, I decided that I liked it better with just three sections and now it did not touch the ceiling. I probalby should have used sections B, C and D instead of A, C and D but by the time it was all said and done, I did not want to start over.

I got the tree fully decorated today with a new star and all. My tree doesn't have a theme. Almost all of the ornaments come from a trip we took or have some meaning. Like the airstream trailer that looks just like Pop and Grammy's. Or the baking lady or the cute little boat. This is how our tree's were growing up and I like it. Mom would take us to Hallmark and each year we would pick an ornament for the family (or 2) and James and I would pick one for ourselves. We have several Snoopy and Lego ornaments for James and at least one Cheerleader for me. My favorite family ornament is the Water Skiing Santa because this just sums the Davis family up. As we decorated the tree each year, we had wonderful memories of the events that related to the various ornaments.

And this is exactly what happened this year. I thought of our wedding and first Chrismas, the day we brought Admiral home, our first (and not our last) boat, my hours in the kitchen baking away, our love of Texas (yes, it's getting in my blood), our trip to NYC and the one to Philly, the countless hours we spent at the SAE and Chi O houses at Millsaps. For many years to come, we will look back on these ornaments and remember our early years together. And I hope to continue the ornament tradition with my children.

Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving Recap

I am so behind. It's been over a week since Thanksgiving and no post.

Ryan and I drove to Jackson on Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This is the first time we have made this drive together by choice -- the last time was because our flight got cancelled and we had to get home that day. We normally fly but flights were too expensive this year. So, we loaded Admiral in the truck and off we went. Admiral likes the car, but he is very anxious the whole time he is in the car. Because its a 7 hour ride, we give him a little medicine to zonk him out so that he doesn't drive us crazy. He still did a pretty good job of that but he finally fell asleep. He likes to be right next to us and this is as close as he could get.

We arrived late on Tuesday.  Ryan spent some quality time on the couch watching football and putting together puzzles (there is always one waiting when we get to my parents). On Wednesday, Mom and I did the grocery shopping. Mom's sister Becky arrived with Grammy mid afternoon on Wednesday and the cooking started. Golden Bakes, Dressing, Green Bean Casserole, Sweet Potatoes and Pecan Pie were on the Wednesday list. Grammy made the Golden Bakes, Mom made the Sweet Potatoes and the Pecan Pie, I made the Green Beans. The Dressing was a group effort! Becky got the dishes cleaned as quick as we messed them up.

Ryan and I hit the town on Wednesday night for Keifers and Passenger Jones at Hal and Mals.

Thursday finally arrived and brought my brother and his family -- James, Shelley, Helmi and the dogs, Gus and Sam. Admiral was very excited to see his cousins and they went straight to playing in the back yard. Helmi, Grammy and Ryan put together princess puzzles while the Turkey finished cooking. Then, Helmi helped put the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes.

We sat down to a wonderful lunch about 2pm. It was nice to sit around the table as a family, something we do so seldom these days. We missed the rest of our families that were not with us but remembered the Thanksgivings past when we were all together. (Blogspot has decided to rotate some of my pictures and I can't get them straight.)

After lunch, we just hung out... coloring, playing with the dogs, Grammy cracking pecans!


The most well behaved dogs... when you hold a treat above their nose. Sam, the black hound dog, is not the most active of the bunch. But he sure kicked it into gear when James was throwing the rawhide bone. He could care less about the other toys but he wanted that bone.


On Friday, Helmi woke up with a fever but once the Tylenol kicked in was ready for a tea party! James, Shelley and Helmi headed back to Hattiesburg on Friday morning. Ryan and I decided to brave the mall that afternoon to try to find him some winter clothes. We found a few good deals at Belk's. Somehow I was able to keep him away from Best Buy... Thanksgiving Miracle?

Friday night, Ryan and I went to my friend Byron's new coffee house, Sneaky Bean's, in the Fondren area of Jackson. Byron has turned an old house into an awesome little coffee house, with each room having tables, chairs and couches. There was live music that night, we just missed it. They serve coffee and smoothies, breakfast, lunch and desserts and have beer and wine after 5. Ryan is the coffee drinker in our family and had the Hawaiian Hazelnut and said it was great. We bought a bag of vanilla nut to take home and Ryan has enjoyed it for his morning coffee.  

It was great to be home in Jackson. It had been since April and the Tornado that Ryan was there, so it was nice to be there and things be more normal. Saturday we made our trek back to Texas. It was a long drive and we were ready to be home. Admiral didn't zonk out as quick and it was misty rain or rain the whole way home. It took us an hour longer to get home than to get to Jackson. We rushed in and rushed back out to a birthday dinner for Ryan's brother Kevin. It was a long day but worth it for the time at home.

Sunday, we got the Christmas lights up (more on that later) and then Helmi's fever hit me Sunday night and its been a long week of feeling cruddy. The house is decorated for Christmas and I am starting to feel the spirit.

I plan to post all the food recipes over the next few days/weeks... since our Thanksgiving dishes are pretty much our Christmas dishes too.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!