Another Christmas creation

~ Liz A ~ 11 Comments

Many of you know how fond I am of Sandra Boynton’s Every Day’s a Fabulous Holiday calendars …

What you may or may not recall from last year was that Parker wasn’t thrilled with her April 27 birthday falling on Lemur Day, so I put a picture of one of her drawings there instead …

Then when Griffin was equally disgruntled about his birthday falling on Pickle Day, I got the idea to modify the 2024 calendar with some of the family photos leftover from the Kings in the Corners project.

Since we don’t have any January birthdays in the family, I came up with some other non-birthday ideas …

January 24 and 25

And no, I didn’t put a full moon picture on every month, but I did add monthly Almost-Full Moon stickers because the day before can be as good or better than Full Moon days depending on the weather.

So the plan for now is to share each month on the blog … hopefully with pictures of each celebration in turn.

Watch this space 😉

Gaming 2023

~ Liz A ~ 13 Comments

Those of you who have been around for a while know that I like to riff on popular games like Monopoly/Travelopoly and Uno/Gnome-O to create family Christmas presents.

This year was no different. While visiting Don’s 82 years young Aunt Marge last month, she taught us how to play Kings in the Corners. It was the perfect set-up for this year’s creation …

I used one of Don’s recent paintings for the card backs and asked my family to send me some of their favorite 2023 pictures. As they have in the past, makeplayingcards.com made the rest of the job easy.

Aces for our granddaughters, Kings for the dads, Queens for the moms, and Jacks for the grandsons, with a couple of Halloween shots for the Jokers …

Followed by 2s for pairs of family members, 3s for trios, 4s for sideways quads, 5s for quints, and 10s for “lots” …

And then random shots to round out the 6s, 7s, 8s, and 9s …

Trust me when I say that I could have made many more decks with the photos that didn’t make the first cut, but these will do to remind us all of the good times in 2023.

Now to start taking pictures for the 2024 game of the year … whatever that may be.

Choo choo (yum yum yum yum)

~ Liz A ~ 15 Comments

The chocolate train is an on-again-off-again tradition begun Christmas 2018 … continued in 2019 … interrupted by Covid for several years and now resurrected …

The recipe is the same as the 2018 version, but made with King Arthur Black Cocoa, which makes the cookies look like Oreos …

And so, prompted by last year’s post which mentioned coconut oil in the icing, I decided to document this year’s version.

8 oz. unrefined coconut oil

2 Tbs vanilla extract

3 lbs confectioner’s sugar

several splooshes of half-and-half

3 egg whites

A stand mixer is highly recommended. Combine coconut oil, 1/2 lb of sugar, vanilla, and a sploosh of half-and half and mix… add another half pound of sugar and mix … add egg whites and another half pound of sugar and mix … add half-and-half and another half pound of sugar … finally, alternate the remaking sugar with as much half-and-half as needed to make a firm, but slightly sticky icing. Portion into ziplock sandwich bags with clipped corners or use a piping bag with decorative tips (depending on how fancy you are).

Assemble cookie pieces with icing “glue” and glue on candy pieces to your heart’s content. Note that holding the icing bag for too long makes the icing melt, so work fast or put the icing bag down periodically.

Leftover cookie pieces can be dipped in leftover icing … because, why not?

And that’s the “recipe” … because, as Parker wisely observed, “ It’s not really a recipe until you share it with the world.”