With Christmas, Comes Cookies!

To start things off, I hope you all are having a very merry holiday season so far! I know this last week before Christmas break is a little bit stressful, at least for me, but still, I hope it's fun.

Every year, when Christmas starts rolling around, my family and I always make our "famous" Christmas gifts- cookies! We started making these when we first moved to Park City, which if I am remembering right, was seven years ago. I guess you could say they have become our little tradition for the holidays. The good things about making these cookies as gifts is 1) They are AMAZING and 2) You can make tons!

The first few years, we didn't make as many, but as we've met more people, more people have been added to our gift list. These cookies are always a hit with everyone we make them for, so we have decided to make them every year. Even my cat likes when we make them, because again, she gets accidental samples! Maybe that's why she is so fat! I guess we should probably shoo her off instead of taking pictures, but hey, we tried!

I started making these for my friends last year and since so many people told me how yummy they were (some asked for the recipe too), I decided to make them again! So, this past weekend, I've been knocking out a ton of cookies. Since my last post, people have been asking me to make headbands too! Good thing they are easy! Hopefully I will be able to get those done before Christmas, but I'm not making any promises.

Now let's get to the good part.

Spicy Molasses Cookies

(Courtesy of Pioneer Woman)

1 cup sugar

3/4 Crisco (or other vegetable shortening)

1/4 cup molasses

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

First, preheat your oven. The original recipe says to set it at 350º, but I set mine on convection at 325º instead, to make sure they would cook evenly. 

Mix your wet ingredients together - otherwise known as sugar, shortening, molasses, and egg - in a large bowl until they are well combined. Once you can't see any more shortening, you should be good. At least that's how it went for me. 

Mix in your dry ingredients- flour, spices, etc. - while stirring slowly to avoid making a HUGE mess. 

Mix the dough until everything is thoroughly combined.

With your hands, roll the dough into "walnut-sized" balls. Honestly, I have no idea what size a whole walnut is because I never really buy them before they are cracked. This lead to dough balls that were about one to two inches in size, which worked completely fine. Pour a bowl or plate of sugar and roll the dough balls in it until they are evenly coated.

Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet and pop those suckers in the oven for eight to twelve minutes. 

HINT: Keep an eye on the cookies. Once they begin to crack, let them cook for another minute or so and then take them out. This will give you nice, soft cookies, which are always more delicious than burnt ones by far!

You can technically be done at this step, but why not make them even better? A fun and easy way to jazz these cookies up is to add some white chocolate. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that chocolate makes everything better. Period.

If you choose to be fun, allow your cookies to cool and while doing so, get ready to melt your white chocolate.

Last year was the first year I decided to try the chocolate route and it did not work...at all. Well, okay, maybe it worked, but it was a huge pain in the butt and I can not tell you that twice. This year, I did some searching and found a pain-free, easy way to melt the white chocolate on a blog called Craftsy.

I found on more than just this blog that using a double broiler is the way to go when melting any kind of chocolate, especially white chocolate because it has a lower burning point. Now, if you're like me, you probably don't have a double broiler, but don't worry! You can make your own with a pot and a bowl that fits over it. There is a picture of this on Craftsy. On there, it says to let the water boil first and then put the chocolate in, but of course, I didn't read carefully enough and had the chocolate in while it was boiling, which worked fine, so I ended up saving time in the end.

Once your white chocolate is completely melted, set your cookies out on pieces of wax paper. Don't make the pieces too long, unless you want to carry the hot bowl around...no thanks. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies with a fork or dip them in the bowl. Be creative! Putting the cookies on smaller pieces of wax paper allows you to drizzle or dip a few without making a mess, then set them aside while the chocolate hardens. I decided to be done with the cookies after that, but I'm sure it would be cute to put some holiday sprinkles on the cookies right after you drizzle them to make sure they stay on! Maybe I'll try that next year.

Because of the fact that we make so many, we usually make them in double-batch intervals, meaning if we were to make eight batches, we would only have to make the recipe four times. Make sense? Anyways, when I made these, it made a little over fifty cookies, give or take a few considering my dough balls were probably bigger than walnuts. I had a little over a hundred in the end, which was perfect for all of my gifts!


Happy Holidays!

Two Old Shirts = Two New Headbands

I'm sure a lot of you have a BUNCH of old t-shirts sitting in the depths of your closet. I know I have a ton from soccer tournaments, summer camps (these are really old), volunteering, and all of that good stuff. Recently, I made a basket of clothes from my closet that have been sitting there for a while and there were a few of these t-shirts in there. I was trying to think of a DIY idea for this post because I haven't had very many ideas lately and had to find something that I could make from things at home. Speaking of which, sorry to those of you who wanted to see the Sharpie mug process. I was did some research and found that sometimes these do not work. I also found some tips that would help them turn out right, but again, I wanted to make this without going to get things and the tips required me to do so.

If you want to try making a Sharpie mug on your own, a blog called Brit + Co. has a very easy tutorial. They have the simple version without the special tips, but it might work. Maybe I will actually end up trying it sometime. If I do, I will be sure to write about it.

Anyways, I remembered seeing ways to make headbands out of old t-shirts on Pinterest and it was the perfect time to make them- I was stuck at home, it was cold and snowy outside (It still is!), and I already had t-shirts to use!

I found an easy no sew headband tutorial online and decided to try it out, along with another one of my own. You need the same things for both- a t-shirt, a hot glue gun, and sharp scissors. Sounds easy, huh? Right! There are a lot of pictures, by the way. Personally, I think they make a tutorial easier to follow.



HEADBAND #1: The Celtic Knot

Take your shirt and cut the hem at the bottom off. Now, cut a loop off from the bottom of the shirt. Mine were about an inch and a half wide, if I remember right.

Pull the loop to stretch it out. This makes it thinner (KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN CUTTING THE LOOP!) and much longer.

If your shirt has a hem along the side, cut that off of each end. You should have two clean strips when you are done.

Take your first string and make a loop.

Take your second string and make a "U" over the looped one. Right now, the "U" should be over both strings of the loop, if that makes sense.

Now take the right strand of the looped string and put it over top of the right side of the "U" string.

Take the left end of your "U" strand and put it behind the loop.

Now, take the right end of your "U" string and put it over the first part of the loop, under the other end of your "U" and over the other side fo the loop.

Tighten the knot you made and turn the good side of each of the strands so they all face the same way. It will look much better when finished.

Put the headband around your head and mark where it fits comfortably with a marker. Cut the strands in half up to your marks.

Tie each of the corresponding strands into knots.

Now, take a square that you cut from the shirt and glue it over the knot to give the headband a clean, finished look. I don't have a picture of this step for this headband, but there is one on the next one if you are stumped.

 And you're all done!

HEADBAND #2: The Four-Strand Braid

Cut two loops from the bottom of your t-shirt this time. I used a new t-shirt to make sure that it would fit around my head, but I ended up cutting a little extra off anyways, so you will probably be fine if your use the same t-shirt as the first headband (if you made it already). Stretch them out, just like the other headband.

Cut the loops into four strands. Glue the ends together with your glue gun.

Now it's time to braid! Separate all four of your strands. If you've never done a four-strand braid before, don't fret! It's super easy once you get the hang of it. Let's say we numbered them 1-4 from left to right.

Take string 1 and 3 and cross them over strings 2 and 4. You should have two separate crosses.

Now, take string 3 and cross it over string 2 (these are the two middle ones).

Repeat the above steps to finish your braid. Make sure you tighten it, or it will look pretty bad. Also, it's much easier to keep the good side facing up while braiding, instead of after. Once you finish the braid, glue the ends together. I put a dot on each strand and did one more step of the braid to finish it off. Also, the very beginning of the braid was super loose, so I cut it off and did the same thing.

Just like on the last headband, measure around your head and mark if you need to. Mine was actually a little bit too short, so I didn't mark it. Now take a square from the t-shirt and glue it on the ends of the braid to finish the headband.

You're done! Now you have two snazzy headbands that are super comfy and cute!

I hope the pictures helped you in the process, even if they are kind of funky because of my phone's camera. I wasn't lying when I said there would be a lot! Sorry about the length of this post. I figured you wouldn't bother to read it all unless you wanted to make the headbands, in which case, you need the instructions. Have fun gettin' crafty!