Baking Goodness !

LoL ! Baking goodness ! Yup, because it's the holiday season I believe any baking done for home/friends/family/get togethers/parties is all 'no fat no calories' woohoo ! Hey, I can dream right ? :D

To tell you the truth, my pants suddenly felt tighter 2 days ago, boo-hoo :( Oh well, I'll lose it in the new year ( and yes this time I finally mean it. After losing 20 lbs. early 2008, my dear mom passed & I gained it all back plus a few pounds more. Now after over a year, my body has begun to shout at me & I'm ready to respond ). Blaming it on the cheese cookies and fudge ( my head is disappearing into my shoulders )

So I thought I'd show off a few Christmas goody pics:

In the first two pics. are the beginnings of McLaren cheese cookies and party mints patties. Last pic. shows our son mixing  cream cheese with crumbled cherry chip cake to make chocolate dipped cherry chip cake balls:

Here I am adding the food colourings to the party mint 'dough', what a shade of blue ! And those cake balls were fun to dip too !

A diabetics nightmare ! Not for the faint of heart --the beginnings of chocolate fudge using my two fav. ingredients: sweetened condensed milk & milk choc. chips !

Here are the party mints, just need to sit for a day so the wonderful mint flavoring soaks in

And voila ! A wee plate of very tasty treats ( choc. covered cherry chip cake balls, party mint patties, McLarens cheese cookies and a batch of peanut butter milk choc. chip cookies, with a few wrapped Peppermint Patty candies too. The fudge was firming up in the freezer --didn't last long ! )

Throwing in a shot of the upstairs bathroom decor. The candle centrepiece belonged to my parents, not sure if it's mercury glass but it is vintage kitschy loveliness

Finally a shot from last week when we received a wee dumping of snow. I took this without the flash, looking out our front window. There's just something about holiday lights glowing on the snow, takes me back to when I was a child. How about you ?

A Cake and a Collage...

Yesterday I was feelin kinda blue, a rather horrid feeling which haunted me for several hours. All I wanted to do was shed my flabby skin and sink into a really big hot tub with a glass of wine.
Instead, I ended up making my birthday cake.....4 days early. I figured since my husband, son and I are heading up the island for that day ( Saturday ), then why not just bake it now and enjoy it over the next couple of days. LOL ! LOL ! Next couple of days, ya right LOL !

...the cake is gone....consumed...devoured.

Am i going to whine about it, about the calories and all ? Nope ! It's a birthday cake, and you should know that birthday cakes have no fat or calories whatsoever ;)

I didn't put any candles on it, just wanted to bake it, frost it and eat it. Oh, I was going for the Red Velvet look but did not realise that to obtain a really red looking cake, you need to use more than a few drops of red food coloring. DOH ! Of course, makes common sense ---but since I was feelin kinda blue I guess my brain took some time off.
ANYWAY, it's a choc. cake with cream cheese frosting, left white in the center and a rich bubblegum pink on top. Very YUMMYYY !! Did it make me feel less blue, you bet :)

Today I took a break from Charmbly making and decided to play around on the computer. So I made this collage fondly called Sara in Her Cotton Candy World. The background is from a photo I took a few years ago.
There's a farm out here with dozens of cherry blossom trees and wow does their property look gorgeous around May. I'm going to take more photos this year.
Hope you like my collage, I have plans to use it with my Charmblies. Will post the finished results later.

Chocolate, Cherries, Raspberries and Lilac OH mY !

I don't know what it is but lately I've been buying lots of candy smelling goodies for the body and bath and Etsy has been my sweet treat target :) So here I proudly show off two of the latest delights from Etsy.....

Bubbles Up By Bethie B.

---Oh my !! This is one of my new favorite shops. I could not resist buying her Chocolate Covered Cherry soap and WOW am I impressed ! It reminds me so much of the sweet filling from a Lowneys Cherry Blossom candy and I came so very close to tasting it lol !

The soap lathers very quickly and has a soft feeling. When washing, the smell is mild on the body but the soap retains that wonderful scent.
Here is a small snippet of what Bethie has on her welcome page:

fun, fragrant, and good for your skin - they have no artificial lathering agents like SLS or SLES, and no propylene glycol. Just yummy ingredients like real yogurt, brown sugar, fruit and vegetable seeds and oils, molasses, fruit purees and raw honey.

So please go and check out her shop. If the description doesn't get you then her images definately will, all so YUMMY ! I will be back :)

Country Heart Gifts

--this has been a favored shop for quite sometime. I often purchase the wax tarts ( LOVE them, the smells are deelish and scent a wide space for several hours ) but this time decided to go for one of Pam's lotion bars. Well, what a treat I was in for :) I got her Raspberry Lilac scent and am delighted ! The scent reminds me so much of something from my childhood...I think it might be the bubble gum or jelly bean scent from Lip Smackers back in the 70's. But don't take my word for it because everyone's olfactory sensory neurons can be quite different.
I like to rub the bar on my wrists and then rub my wrists on my neck. Every couple of minutes I'm smelling my wrists, can't stop !
Thanks Pam for creating these lovely treats :)

Prices for these items are happily quite reasonable. The 3.75 oz. soap was on sale at the time but it's originally $4.25 and $1.75 to ship to U.S. and Canada. The 3/4 oz. lotion bar is $4.00 and $1.00 to U.S. and Canada ( and bar is a great size for your purse ).

When I'm delighted by something then I like to show it off. So stay tuned for more sweet Etsy purchases :)