Chocolate Cookies.....

I am planning on going easy on the cookies this year. I tend to eat too many of them (don't we all) especially if they are chocolate cookies. I have started to get the e-mails for the "12 Days of Cookies" and one of the first cookies posted was the Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies. These look really easy to make and would be a great recipe to use with kids. So what are your favorite cookie recipes to make with your kids during Christmas time???

Here is also another of my favorite Chocolate cookie recipes......

Caramel-Filled Chocolate Cookies

• 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup chopped pecans, divided
• 6 (2-ounce) packages chocolate-caramel cookie bars, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 (2-ounce) vanilla bark coating squares

Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; gradually add sugars, beating well. Add eggs, 1 at a time, and vanilla, beating until blended after each addition.

Combine flour, cocoa, and soda; add to butter mixture, beating at low speed until blended after each addition. Stir in 1/2 cup pecans. Shape 1 tablespoon dough around each candy piece, covering completely, to form balls.

Combine remaining 1/2 cup pecans and 1 tablespoon sugar. Gently press the top of each ball into pecan mixture. Place balls, pecan sides up, 2 inches apart on baking sheets.

Bake at 375° for 7 to 10 minutes. Cool on baking sheets 2 minutes. Remove from baking sheets; cool completely on wire racks.

Melt coating squares in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth. Drizzle over cookies.

*These chocolate cookies are my absolute favorite. If you don't want to go to as much work this cookie dough is also wonderful if you want to add just some white chocolate or peanut butter chips to the batter. Also you can just roll the balls in some red & green sugars and bake them. There are lots of variations that can be done with this batter. I have also cut up little bites of Snicker bars and wrapped the dough around them. Those are also yummy.

Photo Cards....

I found a link at a blog I enjoy reading about Christmas photo cards. You can go here to find it if your interested in getting some. I am going to try and get some pictures of the kids here in the next day or so. This is the one time of year that I try and get a good photo of the kids.

Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish all my family and friends a Happy Thanksgiving. We all have so much to be thankful for and today is such a wonderful day to think about them and thank the Lord. Last night I was talking to the kids about Thanksgiving and also sang a song with them called, "Give Thanks" here are the lyrics.

GIVE THANKS
WITH A GRATEFUL HEART
GIVE THANKS
TO THE HOLY ONE
GIVE THANKS
FOR HE'S GIVEN
JESUS CHRIST, HIS SON

AND NOW LET THE WEAK SAY
I AM STRONG
LET THE POOR SAY
I AM RICH
BECAUSE OF WHAT
THE LORD HAS DONE
FOR US

GIVE THANKS...

I believe those words sum it all up. Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Chickens and lots of them.....
I know many of you have been waiting for me to post some pictures of our chicken butchering adventures. It was over a week ago that we went to my parents house in Iowa and ended up getting 86 laying hens and butchering 80 of them. It was a 5 day event and the participates were my husband, my self, my mom and my grandma. We not only butchered them but canned all but 6 of them that were left whole for the freezer. So here are the first few steps.....

1. Catch a chicken, chop the head off and let it lay for about 3-5 mins to let some of the blood drain out a bit.
2. Have a big pot of boiling water ready and dunk the whole chicken in for about 30 secs.

3. Now the chicken is ready to have the feathers plucked off.

Here is the hubby working at getting the feathers off. They come off pretty easy and I would have to say this was my favorite part of the process if there is one.

More pictrures to come another day......

Chicken's Part 2
After the chickens have there feathers plucked off....

4. They have to have to be singed because they have small hair all over them. That was my grandma's job.
Anna was so proud that she had the courage to hold a chicken.

5. Then it's time to scrub the chicken up clean, cutting the chicken into parts and taking the guts out.

It was my job to scrub the chicken and clean the parts that were cut up. We had to keep the water changed in the buckets, so it was nice and cold. My mom and grandma did the cutting up part.

Chicken Part 3
Here I am cleaning the chicken up and getting it ready to cut up. We worked out in my parents dog building where we had nice running water and a counter to work on.

Here we are in my mom's kitchen and we are getting ready to put the chicken into the quart jars. We would can 7 quart jars at a time with the pressure cooker and had another pot for chicken up stock.

Here are some of the jars of chichen that we canned. We also made many jars of chicken broth.

Also the few days that we were working on chicken we also collected dozen's of eggs. This is the container of eggs that my mom sent me home with. I boiled up a good dozen eggs this past week and have been enjoying egg salad sandwiches.

So that is the details of our chicken butchering adventure.

Our Wood Piles.......
The kids had a good time helping us unload wood from the truck.

Some people took down a couple of trees down the street and so we picked most of it up. It's going to be a nice pile in our garage after we cut it all up.

This is the pile of wood that my parents brought up to us one day. It's some nice oak wood that will keep the house nice and warm this coming winter.