For Those Better Than Me

I am posting this for all you domestic divas out there. Have you ever started cookies or brownies only to realize you don't have enough eggs? AOL homepage headlines offer some hope as it teases about a "great idea" for egg substitutes. I quickly clicked over to be enlightened by this ground breaking information that would change the way I bake forever.

My excitement quickly turned to annoyance as I read, " For each replaced egg, grind a tablespoon of flax seed and dissolve it in 3 tablespoons of water. "

Seriously? Seriously AOL? If I am out of eggs do you honestly think I have a tablespoon of flax seed lying around? And even if I could scrape up some flax seed, do you think I would have the tools to grind it or even know how to grind it?? Whatthecrapever.

I'm putting away my apron and opening up some Oreos. No egg requirement there.

The stockings are stuffed and so are we...must be Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all.

Dear Mrs. Tresher...

Andy brought this note to me this afternoon. "Mom, see what I'm giving Mrs. 'Twesher'," he said. As Kindergarten teachers we ask them to "write what they hear." He did that. It just gets a little complicated when you happen to pronounce all of your "R"s with the "W" sound. Bless his heawt.

Mandy's People Chow

Get out your little index cards girls because you'll want to add this one to the files--Mandy's People Chow. YUM. Maybe it isn't *new* but it was *new* to me. I thought Mandy was talking about the ol Puppy Chow or White Trash recipe but this is way better than that- plus there's no white mess on your sweater when you're done!

Pour a box of Honey Graham cereal in a big bowl. Set aside. Melt a block of white chocolate/vanilla candy bar. (I melted mine in the microwave and it was much less mess than stove top.) Add 2 (or 3) little boxes of raisins to the melted chocolate. Pour over the cereal. Stir. Keep Stirring. Stir some more. It takes quite a bit of stirring to get all the cereal covered. Add in M&Ms. Not too many...just enough to give it some color. Stir a bit more. Pour the mixture out onto a BIG piece of wax paper. Let sit to harden. Break apart, bag it up for your friends, and save some for your family.

Next time I am going to swap Reeses Pieces for the M&Ms to add a little peanut butter flavor. Ya'll know I never can follow a recipe exactly.

Voila. People Chow! Or as we like to call it, Neighbor Chow!

Cue the Christmas Music

As you prepare for the holidays, I hope you are listening to some lovely vintage Christmas music. (of course Buble counts!)To get you started I added a few to my playlist...some vintage remakes (love that Buble) and some real deals. Oh yeah, a dash of the present was sprinkled in for good measure. Turn up the volume and enjoy the season. Every. Single. Day!

Holiday Tour

I'm so excited to particpate in the Nesters Christmas Tour of Homes! Here are some snipets of our holiday decor...

The Picture Tree in the dining room...don't tell but this one stays up year round.

G-mama Roberts's angels...she gave them to me when I was a little girl just because I said I liked them one time when we were at her house.

The kids tree on the landing-a place for all those school/church ornaments to call home.

Maci's Tree

Downstairs bath...

This Santa House was a giveaway- One gal's trash is my treasure- Andy's too!

"Teacher gifts"

Peeking Snowmen

A warm fire...we actually need a warm fire this week.

The first present under the tree....to us from Andy...bless his heart, he really doesn't think we know what it is.

Crunching Numbers

See that food up there? That is a tiny tiny sampling of what we ate at Disney and it didn't cost us a !dime Literally. We got in on the "free dining" promotion which entitled us to 1 counter service, 1 table service, and 1 snack- per person per day. The above tray was from The Land at Epcot.

What we did have to pay for was the gratuity on the table service meals. Brad also purchased some breakfast items and we partially paid for our last meal at Hollywood Studios (day 8) because we were out of credits. We spent a grand total of $261. Not bad for 8 days and 5 people! Especially not bad when you consider that our bill for Teppan Edo at Epcot's Japan totaled $214. The night before at Crystal Palace came to a grand total of $206, and the average counter service bill was $60 for our little family.

After adding all the receipts, we ate $1754 worth of food for $261!

Obviously taking advantage of the free dining is a no brainer.

If we would have had to pay for the dining, it was going to cost us $1200. Taking into account the additions we purchased we still would have been ahead $293. However, while the dining plan is convenient and a great way to splurge, you really won't save money purchasing it vs. not purchasing it. Not unless you plan to have a dessert with EVERY meal- including counter servce, always order drinks- sometimes smoothies, and stuff yourselves with an additional snack per day just for the heck of it.

Moral of the story....free dining...best deal in the World. Plan on it...wait for it...snag it! Every. Time.

In Case You Can't Wait

When Disney's parade comes on Christmas morning and says "Live" at the bottom of the scren, they are fibbing a bit. I wouldn't even say it was recorded live because there are multiple takes on everything. So maybe it means the performers are live rather than the audio-animatronics versions that are so common in the parks. Yeah. That must be what they mean.

Anyway, they did the taping last weekend. There were weather "issues" (downpours) on Friday morning which led to them moving Celine to the Floridian and the parade taping to Sunday. We missed the Jonas Brothers but were fortunate enough to be a part of Celine's taping. Here is a video of some pretaping fun (that went on almost 2 hours!) followed by Nick Cannon and then Celine's performance. If that first guy looks familar, he played Ken on the Barbie videos back in the day. For real. He actually was a really funny guy and did a great job with the improv entertainment!

The Pictures

Better take a seat if you plan to look at them all...

ReEntry

Much like Epcot's Mission Space, the re-entry into the real world from Disney World can be a bit rough. Because the blog is my version of scrapbooking, I have several posts coming on our trip. I want to cover the dining plan breakdown, things to remember for next time, funniest moments, etc. etc. But for now I just wanted to say we are back and in that "I wish I was still at Disney...but I'm not so I'm going to go through the pictures, passporter, and plan the next trip" funk. Right now I am off to work on our Christmas picture...you knew it would be a Disney picture didn't you?? ;)

Thanks Brownies for sharing this magical experience with us!!