A whole new world!

Well, we made it to Wisconsin.  We've been here a week and I haven't had much time to blog until now.  So let's rewind to last Thursday.  We hired movers and they came to our apartment and had all of our stuff packed in their truck within a few hours.  After that, we headed over to U-Haul to get a tow dolly to tow Ryan's car behind my car the whole way to Wisconsin.  Yes, we drove from Florida to Wisconsin in this contraption...

I really thought that we were going to end up in a ditch somewhere on the side of the road in the middle of Kentucky, but we made it safe and sound.  The roads were all clear except for an icy stretch in Tennessee where we almost collided with a semi, but that's a story for a later date.  The point is, we made it!

Now I am getting myself acclimated to a whole different world.  A world where you see stuff like this while driving...

Yes, that's a truck full of snow.

And this...

A ski and tubing hill with lifts!  So fun, and it's only about 35 minutes away. :)

I think it will be fun living here and getting to do different things than what I was accustomed to in Florida.  Next up in our plans is Ryan's 30th's birthday I'm making a Super Mario Brothers cake to celebrate it.  Then the Packers will play in the Super Bowl the day after his party  Should be a fun couple of weeks!  :)

You Gotta Start Somewhere!

We started packing our apartment this week and I found a few old pics of the first stacked cake I ever made.  Wow is it bad!  I guess it's just proof that practice is a GOOD THING!   Here she is.  Isn't she a beauty (insert sarcastic tone here)?  :P

Hahahaha!  I laugh every time I see it.  Man, I really didn't know what I was doing.  This was made out of two box cake mixes and a few cans of frosting.  No boards in between tiers, no support dowels.  It slid all over the place in the car on the way to take it to my friend Cristina.  I made it for her as a little happy engagement present after her hubby proposed.  I'm just glad I've made other (and much improved) cakes for Cristina since then to redeem myself!

I'm sorry Cristina!  hehehe  :)  

Candied Pecans

I made these yummy crunchy pecans to include in a few Christmas care packages that we sent to friends and family.  They are good on their own or you can throw them on some ice cream or a nice salad.  Best part is, they were soooo easy!

Ingredients
1 egg white
1 or 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (to taste)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 pound pecan halves

Directions
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with foil and lightly butter or spray with a non-stick spray
In a bowl, beat the egg white until foamy. Mix in cinnamon, sugars, salt, and vanilla extract. Mix well. Stir in pecan halves, stirring until well coated. Spread on baking sheet.
Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

To make a pretty gift out of the pecans, fill up any size mason jar, top with a circle of fabric and screw the lid on.  Add a bow to finish it off!

Christmas Round Here

Our house is modestly decorated for Christmas this year because we are moving to Wisconsin NEXT MONTH!  This is our first Christmas together as a married couple, but we didn't go all out and get a big tree just for the fact that we will have to come back from Christmas vacation to tear it all down AND pack the whole place up to move.  Packing is bad enough, and we didn't want to be vacuuming up pine needles on top of that.  So we just went with my trusty old 3 foot tree that I've had since college.  I threw some garland up and carefully placed lots of pretty shiny things to make it feel like Christmas.  Here's what we ended up with...

Remember my autumn candle arrangement?  I switched it up by adding all things red, silver, and glittery to make it all Christmas-like.

Then I added my most favorite red and silver mercury glass trees to my wine bar area.  Up on the top shelf is a simple candle nativity - the reason for the season!

Here's our tiny little tree next to our TV high tech fireplace.  Oh, apartment living!

Some garland on the bar - nothin' too fancy.

And finally some new additions to the ornament collection this year.

1.  The most perfect ornament ever made - a blown glass mixer  :)

2.  A cute polar bear from World Market

3.  Sledding snowman

4.  Our first Married Christmas wedding cake ornament :)

So that's Christmas in our Florida apartment.  Who knows, next Christmas I may be posting about Christmas in our new house!  :)

Snowflake Sugar Cookies

Just made these today...

These guys were actually cut with a flower cookie cutter, then I piped the icing on in a snowflake pattern.  Throw in a few silver dragees and you've got a sparkly snowflake cookie!  The icing is a vanilla glace.  It dries shiny and stays fairly soft (unlike royal icing), but it still able to be stacked without the cookies sticking to each other.  Here is the recipe for the glace icing:

1lb powdered sugar (4 C)
6T whole milk
6T light Corn Syrup
1 t extract (I use vanilla)

With a whisk, combine sugar and milk until smooth. Then stir in corn syrup and extract and desired food coloring.

You can play around with the consistency by adding more milk or powdered sugar.  Adding more powdered sugar will give you a consistency that is better for piping.  Place your icing in an icing squeeze bottle like this.  Outline the shape of the cookie by squeeing a line of icing out of the squeeze bottle around the outside border of your cookie..  Then, fill in the rest of the cookie with more icing and spread out easily to cover the whole cookie.  You can spread the icing with a knife, offset spatula, or the back of a spoon. 

These were fun to make and some friends that we had over tonight didn't want to eat them because they said they looked too good.  I'll count that as success!  :)

Peanut Butter Buckeyes

I first had these little gems a few years ago at a a friend's house.  This friend was from Ohio where this dessert is all the rage.  After all, Ohio is the buckeye state and home of the Ohio State Buckeyes.  You'd think being a Florida Gator I would have nothing to do with anything buckeye related, but these treats are just too hard to pass up!  They are pretty simple to make and the only cooking involved is some button pushing on a microwave.  Here is the recipe!

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons shortening

Directions
Line a baking sheet with waxed paper; set aside.
In a medium bowl, mix peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar with hands to form a smooth stiff dough. Shape into balls using 2 teaspoons of dough for each ball. Place on prepared pan, and refrigerate.
Melt shortening and chocolate together in a metal bowl over a pan of lightly simmering water. Stir occasionally until smooth, and remove from heat.
Remove balls from refrigerator. Insert a wooden toothpick into a ball, and dip into melted chocolate. Return to wax paper, chocolate side down, and remove toothpick. Repeat with remaining balls. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to set.

Photoshop Fun

I recently put this profile pic up on facebook...

Not bad.  It was actually taken from our video camera.  The camera has a cool feature that recognizes smiles in the midst of a video and saves a snapshot of your pearly whites.  On this day I was strolling through Central Park on our honeymoon in NYC.   Now you know why I'm so happy!  I liked the pic except for the guy in the background walking his dog, so I decided to photoshop him out!  After much lassoing, cloning, and blending this is what I got.  Bye-bye skinny guy!

Then I spruced the pic up a bit to give it a more ethereal look and here's my finished product...

Me likey!