1st Christmas!

This is the our first Christmas as The Wilson's.

B and I had Christmas together last year, but we weren't married. Last year was really the 1st year to break the ice with the family. My family lives 4ish hours away and they are use to me coming up for 2 weeks. Being a teacher, I get a good amount of time off during the holidays. Last year I went up the weekend before and decided to have Christmas with my love.

We kind of did this backwards. I guess I should have had Christmas with him this year instead.

This year we are heading up to my mom's for Christmas. Partly because we couldn't go up for Thanksgiving. All thanks to Gus, my car.

So, I get to make the 4 hour (I hope) drive tomorrow night. Dear Lord, please let I-95 not be stuffed with traffic tomorrow night!

The poor hubby has to work all day tomorrow and then get stuck in a car with me singing LOUD and proud :)

But it will be nice to have Christmas morning with my mom. I haven't had that in years. Gosh. I really can't remember the last time I woke up with my mom on Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all :)

Decor

Lately I've been spicing up our home a bit.

A week or so ago I sent off our first Christmas card. I was thinking about how I could hold onto the memory of our first card in an interesting way. The other week I made a wall collage off an idea from Pintrest.  Taking that idea and modifying it with cards, I came up with this idea!

I asked for a copy of our wedding announcement from my mother in-law and put that at the top! Since that was really the start of our family, I thought it was fitting :) Next is our Christmas card from this year!

Thinking about future cards (x-mas, birth announcements *I hope in the future*), I think I'll probably order different sized cards. There really isn't a 4x8 picture frame or at least I couldn't find any. I'll probably order 5x7 cards from now on. I got these frames from Walmart.

Hope you can take the idea and make it your own!

Snowflake Mix!

This is NOT a WW recipe. Sorry to disappoint.

My mother in-law is coming over for dinner tonight, and it's the first time I'm cooking for her.

So of course, I've been doing things since the moment I woke up to get ready! I want to make it a good dinner and visit. Who doesn't want to impress their mother in-law?

I seriously got lucky! She is great!

I'm making stuffed shells for dinner, but I needed something for them to munch on before dinner. Hence the snowflake mix!

I got the recipe from Pintrest, but I changed things a bit.

You'll need:
6 (ish) cups of square corn chex
1 (ish) cups of pretzels
1 (ish) cups of honey roasted peanuts
Bag of M&M's (I used Dark Chocolate because I like them better)
16 ounces of white baking chocolate (vanilla flavor)

Now, I'm saying "ish" for the top part because I used a little over what I was supposed to use. The original recipe called for the exact measurements, but I have more baking chocolate than they called for. So I just added a few more dashes of each.

1. Combine the corn chex, pretzels, and peanuts in a pretty large bowl.

2. Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl. I put it in for 1 minute and stirred. Then, one more minute in the microwave did the trick.

3. Combine the white chocolate and the mix in the bowl. Make sure you get all the chocolatey goodness out of the bowl!

4. Spread it out on wax paper or a cookie sheet like I did. Sprinkle the M&M's on top! You'll have to wait an hour or so for it harden and break it apart.

4. Enjoy! And go to the gym the next day...because this will do damage! lol

Linguine Alfredo

I was down for the count this weekend. Not totally, I had a cold. So, I didn't cook Sunday. I did today. What's with my crappy, short sentences?

Moving on.

I have FANTASTIC news! Today, one of my coworkers asked me if I was losing weight!! I immediately said..."Yes! It's paying off!" I've lost about 5lbs...give or take on the day. I haven't been feeling great this past week because I haven't gone to the gym in a week or so. Feeling crappy/things to do has kept me this week. I'll be back to the grove on Wednesday.

Enough of the talk. Onto the cooking.

This weeks WW challenge was Linguine Alfredo.

I modified the recipe a bit because I didn't want all the different veggies they had. And...I didn't have as much parmesan cheese as I thought I had (such is my life).

You'll need:
Fresh Broccoli
1 tbs low fat margarine
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs flour
1 cup fat free milk
1/2 cup nonfat cream cheese (I could only find it in the Philadelphia brand a Walmart and I ended up using more of this because I didn't have enough parmesan cheese)
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
4 cups cooked linguine (almost the whole box and I used whole wheat)

Start off with chopping the fresh broccoli!

I have to confess....up until now I've been afraid of fresh garlic. I've avoided it through my first few years of cooking, but I am now embracing fresh garlic! Start chopping it up!

Mean while, start cooking the linguine!

In all seriousness, this was the first time I ever chopped up fresh garlic. Amazing! 

In another pot, start melting the margarine. Once it's melted, add the garlic and saute for about 30 seconds (or until your whole house smells like garlic)!

Add the flour and whisk away until blended!

Go ahead and add the milk while you're at it! 

Now it's time for the best part....the cheese! And if you're like me and you thought you had more parmesan cheese....add some extra cream cheese. Or don't if you have it together and you have all the ingredients you need :)

When it's all stirred together and warm, you're read to put the linguine, alfredo sauce, and broccoli together! 

Seriously, it smells better than the alfredo from Maggiano's! I haven't tried it yet, but I can't wait! My husband even said it smelled yummy when he walked in the door. And he usually turns his nose up to my WW recipes. 

I make these for my lunches for work and I already divided them up, like this. 

The WW cookbook says it's 5 pts. per serving (old school) and about 276 calories. Makes 4 servings. 

Enjoy! I'm sure I will! 

I can't read directions...

The Holiday's put a glitch into my adventures the last few weeks....or maybe I should say....my failure to read directions carefully delayed me posting on schedule!

Right before Thanksgiving (I think, I have a really bad memory), I attempted to make WW Mac 'n Cheese. This is where the 1st failure to read directions got in the way. I started with all the ingredients (or at least I thought).

I made the pasta, as directed. Boiling pasta is pretty easy, right? At least I didn't mess that up. 

All was going well, until I started to add the cheese and it was all in one big clump of cheese. I went back to the recipe and then say that one of the cheese had to be american cheese in order for them to melt properly. Ooops! When I was in the grocery store I decided not to get the american cheese because I couldn't find any that was shredded (note, it doesn't exists). Soon to find out, I wasted a batch of mac n' cheese because I can't read fine print directions. Lesson learned....read all the directions carefully! 

After I went back and added the american cheese, it was quite delicious. I recommend it! 

That was last weeks cooking adventures...onto this week!

After the fiasco of missing ingredients, I decided to bring my WW cookbook with me to avoid anymore disasters. Disaster was avoided, but mistakes were not! 

I decided to make Pumpkin Soup this week. I had all of the spices, so it wasn't too expensive. Salt, ground cinnamon, white pepper, nutmeg and ginger. 

Here was the rest that I needed: pumpkin, chicken broth, evaporated FF milk and I used butternut squash (not shown), but it was really supposed to be turnips (which was my mistake...but I didn't see turnips in the frozen isle anyway). 

It was pretty easy....you had to head up the butternut squash on the stove. I ended up getting it all over my kitchen because it apparently flings really easy! I don't recommend that lol 

Then I pretty much added all the other ingredients except the milk (the broth and pumpkin was already mixed in at this point). 

I slowly added in the milk and heated it up! 

Pretty easy! But! I have to say...it wasn't to my liking in the taste department. 

If you are someone who doesn't like to break the rules...stop reading now! 

I added a few spoons full of sugar to sweeten it up a bit. I thought it was a little bitter without it and I don't think I could have eaten that for 4 days. 

Onto baking cookies! That aren't WW...you just can't make good cookies without butter! lol 

Big Flop

My cat flops on the floor all the time. Especially when she doesn't want to move when I want her to.

That's exactly what I wanted to do after this weeks WW recipe.

If you have the WW book DON'T make the Noodles in Asian Sesame sauce. It's crap!

It's partly my fault for not looking closely at the recipe. I was in a bit of a rush trying to find something I wanted to make before going grocery shopping. After I got all the ingredients I needed, about $10 wasted, I realized this wasn't really going to be a meal.

Then I thought I could add some stir fry to it to make more of a meal. But I really didn't like how the stir fry  turned out. So that was another $2 wasted.

Lesson learned- read the recipe carefully to make sure it sounds good!

The good thing out of this- I have a bunch of Asian noodles which goes good on top of salads. At least all is not wasted :)

One Sunday Missed

I missed posting last Sunday. But that doesn't mean I gave up on the WW cooking goal!

I made corn chowder this week. Yuuum! I will be making this one again! I think I need to find a few spices to add to it...it's a bit bland. It's still edible though :)

X-mas is in full swing it seems. The hubby and I love Christmas! We got to spend last x-mas together, but we couldn't go all out since we didn't have our own place. This year will be different!

We've already purchased the lights for our tree, thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Light's gift card to Target! We got the big bulbed lights! I've always liked they way they look. The husband is moving the lights on the string as I type...not exactly sure what he's up to. I hope I don't have to change it back.

The real challenge will be the tree. With a new kitty, I'm not sure how he's going to handle it........

I'm ready for Thanksgiving. Ready for the break from work and I can't wait to see the family! This year we are spending turkey day with my family. Next year we switch. That's in the rules for married people, right?