Frosted Cranberries

I have been asked for this recipe so many times that I've lost count. So, without further ado, here it is.



Frosted Cranberries

1 Cup Water
1/2 Cup sugar
1 bag FRESH cranberries
2 cups confectioners sugar (or more)

1) Combine water and sugar in a saucepan and heat until all the sugar has melted. Remove from burner and cool completely. (This can be done by putting your saucepan in the freezer for five minutes or so.)

2. Wash and pat dry fresh cranberries. Pull out any that are soft and squishy and discard those.

3. Now you will need one or two dinner plates (last time I made these I needed a fresh one halfway through) and one or two clean, dry cookie sheets. Assemble your line. Cranberries, sugar water, dinner plate and cookie sheet all in a row.

4. On your dinner plate, sprinkle about 1/2 cup of confectioners sugar. (You will do this repeatedly throughout the process.)

5. Place a handful of cranberries in the sugar water. Scoop out the handful of cranberries with one hand (this is your wet hand) and drop them gently in the confectioners sugar. With your dry hand (which will get really gross!), gently roll the wet cranberries in the confectioners sugar, coating them completely. With your DRY hand, scoop them up and put them on a cookie sheet. Repeat this process until all cranberries are frosted.

6. These are better made the day before you plan to serve them. Also, the longer they sit out on the cookies sheets without being covered, the better they are.

These are super easy to make, and I've never actually sat down and typed out the recipe until just now. One year when Dan and I traveled to Minnesota for the holidays his mother was making these. I followed her lead and helped out that year. We've had them in Minnesota every Thanksgiving since! Dan and I brought the "recipe" home to Orlando and have been making them for holidays, parties and even gifts for years. The "recipe" has been given out at countless events. I hope you find them as easy to make and as good to eat as our family does! :-)

Giving Up

As I suspected, November has turned out to be a very busy month! With guests in from out of town twice, a trip to Ft. Lauderdale, three baby showers to attend, Dan traveling, all coupled with being super busy working on GOMOTT stuff and taking on a leadership role at church with our Christmas Eve service, something has had to take a back seat.

Yes, it's been a busy month, and we still have another week of it! This has been a good month though, even with all of its craziness. We've managed to get out to Disney three or four times, spend lots of time with the boys, get some time for just the two of us, and spend a lot of time with family.

On another note, it appears that Matthew has caught the Grace Fellowship Plague of 2008. Something has been going around for weeks at church, and it's finally affected our house. Dan's been sick for a week, Nicholas and I had a couple of days of not feeling well, but Matthew seems to be doing the worst (or at least he sounds the worst!). So we'll take a trip to the doctor tomorrow morning and see what he says.

That's all the news from around the MacDonald home. I'll catch up with you again soon. :-)

Love Thursday - Sharing

Love is sharing a bowl of cereal with your kids.

It's the simple things around here that mean the most, and hit me the hardest. Today I was sitting in the play room with the boys. They were eating a snack of graham crackers and apple juice. I was popping Cheerios Crunch into my mouth by the handful. I'm not a big fan of the "Crunch" part of Cherrios Crunch, so I offered one of the nuggets to Matthew. Not to be left out of the mix, Nicholas came trotting over for his own nugget.

We spent the the rest of snack time digging through my bowl of Cheerios. Me eating the Cheerios, them eating all the crunchy nuggets. Every time they put one in their mouths they signed and said "Thank You". It was a constant dialog of "Thank You" and "You're Welcome" for at least 10 minutes straight.

I love the age that the boys are at now. I keep reminding myself not to blink. If I do, I'll miss it.

Target Revisited

I'd hoped our order from Target for the two car seats was in the clear. I checked on our order before heading out for the day and it was intact. However, when I checked it again at 5pm our order was gone. Canceled without any notice. We figured that would happen, especially given all of the rumors surrounding the debacle.

After realizing that our order was gone, I sent a quick e-mail to Target sharing my displeasure at their decision to cancel my order and not inform me they were doing so. When I got a canned response from them, I started to get angry. Then I started hearing from several friends who had tried to take advantage of the great deal Target was offering. Seems like everyone who ordered a car seat, except those who ordered the one with the cowprint cover, had their order canceled.

This fact had me a little annoyed. So I took about 20 minutes this evening and expressed my annoyance to Target via their website. Then I filed a complaint with the FTC and the BBB. I doubt anything will come of it, but the fact remains that if a pricing error (what Target is claiming happened) had occured in their store they would have had to honor it. Target seems to be hiding behind a generic policy listed in their FAQ about online purchases.

It's too bad. I was looking forward to the idea of Dan having a really safe car seat in his car. It would have given us the chance to split up sometimes and have one-on-one dates with the boys.

Drama on the Internet!

The Internet was all aflutter this evening when the website BabyCheapskate put out the 411 on getting Britax Marathon car seats for $42.99, instead of the regularly price of $279.99. We didn't really need any more carseats, but I made sure to send the link to Anne, whose son will outgrow his baby carrier soon enough. Then Dan and I talked about it and we ordered them as well, so we'd have them on hand for his car and for the occasional plane trips that we hope to take over the next several years.

Not long after I saw the posting, news of this deal spread like wildfire. I received e-mails and Twitter's left and right for a good three hours about the great price on the car seats. I read details of it in blog after blog. It was a Britax invasion!

But just now the invasion has come to a halt. Something happened on the target.com website, and the car seats are no longer available. (Oh, the humanity!) You should read the rumors going around now. There's talk of Target not honoring the purchases that people made. Discussions are happening about how this price was an error! I don't know what happened, but when I clicked the link to see for myself, target.com just said they were sold out.

We'll see what happens with our order. I hope they honor our purchase, and the purchases that all the other people made on their site. But it is Target, so who knows. But for now, the story has made an otherwise mundane Sunday evening quite interesting. I'll let you know the outcome when our order arrives, sometime between 12/16/08-1/6/09, which is what my receipt lists. :-)

Kristin's Adoption Day!

Dan and I were so honored to be invited to Kristin's adoption yesterday, which happened to take place on National Adoption Day. Here's a picture from her big day!


Welcome to your forever home and into your forever family. You don't just have wonderful parents, but you will always be surrounded by friends and family who love you. We are thankful that you shared your day with us.

Friday Five-Vocabulary Time

Five words my children say on a daily basis:

1. Milk
2. Basketball
3. More
4. Book
5. Done

Their language skills are just exploding. It's so neat to watch them learn new words and try so hard to say new things. And to think, in August I was concerned that they had a language delay...

Oh, and they say a lot more than five words on a daily basis. Those are just the first five that came to mind. :-)

Love Thursday - Hug!

Matthew and Nicholas are so fun. They've been giving Dan and me hugs for months now, but lately the hugs have been more intense. Now, instead of coming up and receiving a hug from someone, they will throw their arms wide open and ask (beg!) for a hug. When you pick one of them up for a hug, he will wrap his little arms as far around you as he can get them and give you a bear hug. It's one of the best feelings!

In the picture below, I asked them to give one another a hug. I recognize that it looks like Nicholas might not be participating in this hugfest willingly, but trust me when I tell you that he was very excited to be hugging his brother. They just recently started saying "Cheese" when a camera is pointed in their direction. Nicholas' face is a result of him saying cheese. On my honor, I promise.



Love is witnessing the relationship brothers share. If we could all be so lucky to have a relationship like this...

Wordless Wednesday - Christmastime is Here.

Gingerbread House 2008 - by Anne Murray & Anne Bradford

Cheating again!

Just got back from another great night at Epcot. We're all exhausted. We had so much fun though. The boys love riding Spaceship Earth and asked to ride it over and over again. We also rode the rides in Mexico and Norway. We watched Illuminations, a showed filled with music and fireworks. For the boys I think it's a toss up as to which is their favorite...Spaceship Earth or fireworks.

They are so sweet. When the fireworks ended tonight they both waved and said "Night, night" and then held their arms open wide to give the fireworks big hugs. It's enough to melt your heart...

Happy Birthday Nathaniel, Emma & Samantha. We love you, and miss you.

EPCOT

Sorry about this post.

We spent the evening at EPCOT with the boys and Dan's parents. Pictures forthcoming, as soon as I can find them on my hard drive...

I will say one thing about the night. It was so much fun! :-)

A Recipe - Taco Soup

Yes, I think it's kind of cheating to post a recipe during NaBloPoMo, but it's late and I'm not inspired to post anything else tonight. :-)

Taco Soup

2 pounds browned ground beef (one pound was not enough last night!)
1 onion, chopped and sauteed with the beef
1 beer
1 15 oz can corn
1 15 oz can black beans
1 15 oz can dark red kidney beans
2 cans Rotel (hot or mild)
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 cup water
1 pack ranch dressing mix
1 pack taco seasoning


Directions:

Dump all ingredients in a big ol' crockpot. Cook on low for 8 hours. Serve with shredded cheese, sour cream, fresh chopped onions, broken up tortilla chips and beer bread.

Friday Five - Five Things I Love About Our New House

Five Things I Love About Our New House:

1. The patio
2. Our neighbors
3. Having a living room and a family room
4. The washer/dryer that came with the house
5. The view of the golf course

Love Thursday - United

Love is having the opportunity to take 28 hours out of my life as a mom and drive to Ft. Lauderdale to go to an amazing concert.

Thank you's go out to Dan, for giving the okay for me to spend far too much money on this concert (nevermind the gas money to get to and from Ft. Lauderdale), to my parents for keeping the boys for me because Dan was out of town, and to Katie for giving me a bed to sleep in, dinner to eat, and Wii! Oh, and also for even finding out about the concert and getting the tickets. :-)

The chance to see Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith was nothing short of incredible. I could probably gush about the experience for days. In fact, as I was driving home today, I was listening to the radio and one of MWS's new songs came on the radio. As the DJ was saying that the two men were going to be making two last stops in Florida (and ending the tour), I called the station. The DJ, Melanie, let me gush and gush on the phone with her. Oh, and she even played my rave review on the air!

Seriously though, it was an amazing concert. Worthy of its own post, and most importantly, worthy of a spot in Love Thursday.

Wordless Wednesday

(Michael W. Smith & Steven Curtis Chapman, on tour for the first time. I'll be watching them live tonight in Ft. Lauderdale. Can't wait!) Oh, sorry...that's not very wordless.

No matter who wins...

God is STILL in control. Of this, I am sure.

Voting To-Do List

Tasks completed:
1. Borrow (amazing) double stroller from a friend.
2. Arrange childcare should the line be longer than an hour.
3. Sync and charge iPod.
4. Grab my copy of Twilight to read.
5. Figure out where I'm supposed to vote.
6. Charge camera battery!

To-Do:
1. Pack lots of snacks and drinks to bribe kids with, should the line take a while.
2. Pack toys and books for kids so I can entertain them in line.
3. Don't forget to restock diaper stash.

I know some of you are probably wondering why I didn't just take advantage of early voting. Well, I decided that since I waited over FOUR hours voting in early voting with the 2004 election that I'd just take my chances on election day.

Plus, I really want to wear my "I Voted" sticker on election day. :-) I've heard there are lots of goodies waiting for those people who vote tomorrow. Ben & Jerry's is giving away ice cream, Starbucks is giving away coffee. But you need that darn sticker to get the yummy stuff. (Too bad the only convenient B&J's has closed down, and I don't drink coffee.)

All that to say, get out there and vote!

CAMERA!

Tonight I picked up the second of my two anniversary gifts! Here it is.




It's still in the packaging, but as soon as the kids are safely tucked into bed I'll be learning all the ins and outs of it. We picked this one because it has video/sound capability, and also because it's so small it'll fit in my pocket. Very important feature when captures moments with twin toddlers. We will still heavily rely on Dan's awesome SLR for the really good stuff, but day to day life pictures will be snapped with this.

Yay!

It's that time of year!

For the last week or so, I’ve been gearing up for 2008’s edition of NaBloPoMo. It happens every year in November. Why the powers that be choose the busiest time of the year is beyond me, but I’m making the commitment to write every day for a month. Although the rules of NaBloPoMo don’t say anything other than to write every day for a month, I felt like I needed a little more direction than that, so I’ve decided to take a few different approaches to this month. Lots of bloggers have certain days of the week that they write about something specific. I’ve chosen the three listed below.

1) Wordless Wednesday. I have several blogging friends who do this, and I think it’s pretty cool. I know some of my readers only come to check out the pictures I post, so I want to at least try to get one picture up each week.

2) Love Thursday. I miss taking the time to celebrate something good during the week, so I’m reinstating Love Thursday. In the past, this helped me focus on the little things that are good in each day.

3)Friday Five. I enjoy reading blogs with Friday Five’s in them, and each person has a different approach. Some people answer a series of five questions, while others make a list of five things that have something in common.

There are some other topics in the works, but you'll have to tune in to see what mysteries await in November! I’ve considered for a while taking a little bit more serious tone with the blog, and this may be the perfect time to do that. We’ll see.