1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
9 cups Chex cereal
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1. In 1-quart microwaveable bowl, mix chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter. Microwave uncovered on High 1 minute, stir. Microwave 30 seconds longer or until mixture can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla.

2. In large bowl, place cereal. Pour chocolate mixture over cereal, stirring until evenly coated. Pour into 2-gallon food-storage plastic bag.

3. Add powdered sugar. Seal bag; shake until well coated. Spread on waxed paper to cool.

1 bag of Oreos (must be Oreo Brand, other brands don’t do as well)

1 block of cream cheese, room temperature

dipping chocolate

Put one bag of oreos in the food processor until well blended (should be almost like dust) Add to cream cheese. Blend with hands until you can no longer see any cream cheese. Wrap in plastic and put in fridge.  Once, cold (about an hour), take out and roll into balls. Put back in fridge until cold. Then melt chocolate and dip balls. Put on wax paper until they set. 

* my hubby likes for me to use Mint oreos and they taste like thin mints

1 bag of butterscotch chips

1/2 bag of chow mein noodles

dry roasted peanuts

Melt chips in a double boiler until smooth (this is the best method to get the butterscotch to smoothly melt without burning it). Add in noodles and peanuts (however much you want to add), mix until completely covered. Spoon out onto wax paper.  Let cool until set.

3 cups sugar
3/4 cup margarine
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 12-oz. (340 g) package flavored chips ( I use peanut butter or chocolate)
1 7-oz. (198 g) jar Kraft Marshmallow creme
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine sugar, margarine and milk in heavy 2-1/2 quart saucepan; bring to full rolling bail, stirring constantly. Continue boiling 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring. Remove from heat, stir in flavored chips till melted. Add marshmallow creme, nuts & vanilla beat till blended. Pour into greased 13 x 9-inch baking pan. Let cool and cut into 1-inch squares.

1 large box of Ritz cracker

1 jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter

dipping chocolate ( this comes in blocks and its actually called candy coating – Eagle Brand is the best)

Make Peanut butter and cracker sandwiches and set aside. Be sure not to put too much peanut butter or it will melt into your chocolate.  Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave until completely melted.  Dip sandwiches into chocolate covering completely. Sit on wax paper until chocolate sets (won’t be glossy anymore)

As my personal friends know, I like to cook/bake. So every Christmas I make different candy to give to my friends and family.  I had a friend come over the other night because she’s never done this before and she wanted me to help her.  We made Martha Washington balls, haystacks and fudge.  We both had a good time but something was brought to my attention. I’m a candy nazi.

You see, I get my love of baking honest. My mother and my grandmother have done this for years. So naturally as I got old enough, I started helping and then I carried on the tradition. I take for granted that I just know how to do these things. To me, they are somewhat easy because I don’t remember not making them. It’s sort of like Josh teaching his grandmother how to use the computer.  He doesn’t remember NOT using a computer, so it was very difficult for him to try to explain to her how to use a mouse. It was a real eye opener for him, as was this for me.

The candy nazi part came in when we were finished dipping the Martha Washington balls and we were talking and having a good time.. next thing I know, she is pouring extra chocolate to the balls.. my natural response was " What are you doing? You are messing up the chocolate to filling ratio!" Yep, I’m a psycho.

At any rate, I thought I would share my recipes with you so you can try them yourselves. So over the next couple of weeks, I’ll post a recipe every couple of days and I’ll add any tricks I’ve learned along the way. Please let me know if you have any questions, or if your family does it a different way. ( I recently learned that there are about 10 different ways to do haystacks.)

Merry Christmas and happy baking!! 

I have been bit by Edward Cullen. ( I wish!) As I’m sure half of those who are reading this have been. My neighbor is the one who converted me to a Twi-hard.  I thought she was insane at first. She told me how she was staying up to all hours of the night reading these books. On top of that, they were about werewolves and vampires. I don’t really like that type of stuff. She kept bugging me until I finally borrowed her book…

I pretty much fell off the Earth for about 2 weeks. I’d stay in at lunch so I could read. I’d come home and read while the oven preheated. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t do laundry. My poor husband told me he would be happy when I finished the series so things could get back to normal.  If I wasn’t reading Twilight, I was talking to my friends about Twilight. Or I was searching the Internet for Twilight related material. In doing this, I accidentally came across some spoilers, but that didn’t hinder my obsession. I trudged on until I read all 2,000+ pages of it’s glorious-ness. If a teacher had made me read that much in that time frame, I would have called it abuse.  But this self inflicted indulgence made me change the way I looked at things.

One of the main characters, Edward, is a vampire. He is VERY observant. I caught myself noticing things I’ve never noticed before.  Usually I’m so self-absorbed that I don’t really notice the people around me. I mean REALLY notice them. How often do you notice the wrinkles on someone’s forehead and wonder how many years of unhappiness and stress caused those wrinkles to form? Or wondered what happened to make that person that called you and was mean for no reason be the way they are?  We get so wrapped up in "He was a jerk." to forget to wonder/care WHY he’s a jerk. I’ve learned that people don’t think of you half as much as you think they do. My natural reaction would be, "What’d I say for him to be mean?" But most of America is so selfish that they don’t think of others feelings/needs. All they care about are themselves. But this is not the case with Edward. He is completely self-less. To the point he is willing to sacrifice his comfort and desires for the love of another. He constantly wonders if what he said came out right, or if he said too much. He has studied the reactions of humans for so long he’s a pro at it. This really opened my eyes. I encourage you to take the time to be more observant of the people you make contact with, you’d be surprised what you’ll find.

Twilight, the movie, has taken a lot of criticism. What people don’t understand is, Tw-hards are VERY critical. If the book says the curtains are white with yellow trim, the curtains in the movie should be white with yellow trim. I must say the first time I saw the movie, I was almost disappointed. My mind was constantly comparing the movie to the book. To the point I couldn’t enjoy the movie. The second time I saw it, I could actually enjoy the movie and was more understanding of why they cut out some of the things they did. (I still don’t know how it would have hurt to have the curtains right.. ) 

I think/hope the Twilight series will help correct some of the current issues teenagers face this day in age.  I hope that Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight Series) has raised the bar for what teenage girls expect out of a relationship. Hopefully they will want a door opening, respectful, lullaby-writing guy that will wait to have sex until they are married. A girl should settle for nothing less.

Due to the current political and economic situation, we decided to go ahead and buy one more piece of protection for our home.   Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea. The local gun shop and a chain store that carries guns were both slammed with customers. It’s interesting, yet scary, to observe the people that are in the market for a new Piece.

There were teenage boys there with their father bonding over which gun would best fit their Bambi killing needs.  Next, you had people like us.. normal people that have been thinking about buying something for a while and decided to do it while we can. Then you had the scary people.  There was an old man that was looking at the most expensive gun they had and was asking very uneducated questions. Thankfully, you must pass a background check in order to purchase any gun in a store.

This brings me to my title. As I was sitting there, waiting for Josh to fill out all the paperwork, get fingerprinted etc., it hit me. This is a good idea! Don’t get me wrong, I trust my husband completely. But it’s not a bad idea to let him get a new toy every once in a while so the state can run a check on him just to make sure he hasn’t been holding up McDonalds without me knowing.

On a side note, I know that guns are a very touchy subject. I think that is because people are scared of them. If you take the time to educate yourself and familiarize yourself with them, you’d be surprised at how empowering they are. I have a friend who’s now ex-husband had a gun, but would never show her how to shoot, despite her interest in wanting to know. She jokes that should’ve been a warning that their marriage was in trouble. I don’t think she’s too far off. Maybe he had a guilty conscience and didn’t want her to shoot him if she caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. As for Josh and me, we like to go shoot together. It’s something we have in common. A family that shoots together, stays together.