My boyfriend invited me over to his house on Christmas and I knew I couldn’t show up empty handed, so I decided to make some cookies. My cookies of choice were these “Cowboy Cookies” (a chocolate chip-pecan-oatmeal kind of cookie). I also made a Peanut Butter Nanaimo Bar cookie for my own family to enjoy. The cowboy cookies I wrapped up in a pretty box and are ready to be taken down Christmas afternoon to be snacked on.

The Cowboy Cookies are actually from a “mix in a jar” recipe I used a few years ago that I found online and gave out as Christmas gifts to a few friends. Since mine wasn’t just being dumped in a jar, I took the time to cream the butter and sugars together, then adding in the egg and vanilla before mixing in the rest of the ingredients. I also only put in one cup of oats instead of the 1 and 1/3 cups called for and baked the cookies for about 12 minutes.

My other cookie, the Peanut Butter Nanaimo Bar I spotted on the FoodTV website. It reminded me a bit of one of my grandma’s recipes but I decided to try this one out. Mine didn’t turn out as fancy looking at the photo on their website (probably because I didn’t let my peanut butter layer chill long enough and the chocolate started to swirl a bit into it) but they’re still pretty tasty.

I am still planning on doing some chocolate dipped ritz bits mini peanut butter crackers (and the mini smores kind) but I had enough baking and standing around in the kitchen for one day. We’ll see how dedicated I feel about this other idea later.

i hosted a “mix cd around a predetermined title” swap on swap-bot recently. the title i picked for my own swap was: “vigilantes and their nightly quests for justice”. here’s my cover art and song list:

i gathered the art from a google image search. my take on the title/theme was someone who committed crimes in the name of justice and was seeking revenge on someone for something and then trying to redeem their lives to themselves and the people that they love and in the end giving up their quests (or resolving them) and trying to lead a better, happier life. the end.

i did one other music mix, called “traveling the map mix”. i’m not as excited about the cover art i did for this one, but here you go:

alyssa celebrated another year of life this weekend, thanks to us, and a “pee wee’s big adventure” themed party. i contributed the alamo made out of cardboard and a red bow tie cake. i could have been a little cleaner with my cake and not gotten food coloring and frosting all over the cake board, but oh well. it was a yellow cake with raspberry filling and this year i opted to get a spray can of red food coloring and paint the cake red rather than mix the vanilla frosting with a whole bottle of red. i’ve learned from the past – if you want it to be actually red, you have to use a lot of red food coloring. no joke. otherwise it’s some shade of pink and you wonder where you went wrong. lesson learned.

i have other things to talk about, mostly for our food blog which i really hope to post this week since i have been slacking on it. i’ll be writing a few restaurant reviews and talking about our deep fry party. you should try a deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, i swear. but that’s it. one thing at a time, trust me on this.

i’m hosting a new mixed cd swap. it’s rad. see, i had this idea to have predetermined titles and making mixes around said titles. so i came up with this little swap. you’ll join, won’t you?

i’ve been pondering the idea of making my own sugar scrub for about a week now. last week we had nothing to do at work and so i spent my time looking at tons of random things, including recipes for how to make your own sugar scrubs. i’ve been wanting to try one, but have balked a bit at the price of them. i have a bunch of dried lavender and thought, hey, let’s try making some!

it was pretty simple. i bought some sweet almond oil that i picked up at gnc nutrition center. i got a 16 fl oz. bottle for about $10. i crushed up a few tablespoons of lavender in a mortal & pestle and grinded it down to a fine powder. i used a cup of granulated sugar and tossed that into a plastic container. i added the lavender and shook the mixture together (i stirred at first, but shaking seemed more efficent). then i added a 1/4 cup of almond oil. this didn’t seem like enough so i added a bit more (1/3 cup total) and that seemed to make it a better texture. not totally oily but still scrubby consistence. mixed it all together and viola – my own lavender sugar scrub. i tried it already and it feels really nice – it makes my skin very soft and supple. oh la la.

i also broke out the baker in me and made some mini bundt spice cakes. i totally love this mini bundt pan, i think its so cute and makes excellent cakes. i used a box mix because, really, why not? i made 12 mini cakes total and frosted a couple with cream cheese frosting and colorful sprinkles. i didn’t frost all of them, since some in my family do not like things frosted, so hey. gotta be nice to everyone i suppose.

i joined alyssa’s drinking songs cd swap over on swap-bot. i am slightly late, but i finished designing my cover and burning my cd’s and all that. they will fly off into the mail tomorrow, visiting locations and spreading drinking song love. i made a cool cd cover, using some ideas i read from this neat photoshop tutorial called “creating an old-collage effect poster“. see: