Holiday Fun

This is our First Christmas Tree. It truly was a labor of love. We selected it and it took forever to get it to stand up straight. We had to go and get a new tree stand. Once we got it straight than we took a nap and finished the trimming the next day. It was fun to get all our stuff out and put our Christmas cheer together. We tried to listen to Christmas music but it was really bad and decided that Sunday football adds the same element of holiday fun as the Brighthouse music channels.

Oh the baking I have done. I found a great recipe for Pumpkin cheesecake and since I was going to three different celebrations I wanted to be sure to bring something to share. I love Thanksgiving and it is my very favorite of holidays because you get to eat and hangout with people you love. So I made my first cheesecake and took it over to the Rohrs dinner before they headed to NYC to check out the Macy's day parade. I had never used non flavored gelatin and I had some technical difficulties. The gelatin clumped up and after trying it two different ways, I ended using it, assuming it was the correct consistency. Well the pie looked great but the chunks of gelatin were still very much in there. It felt like pieces of glue that were in your mouths. Luckily, they are all super awesome and told me how great the cheesecake was and never mentioned the yuck of finding these pieces in there (ah! family.)

I found a different recipe and avoided the whole gelatin thing altogether. It was great. My family loved it. Eliot's family loved it. It was awesome. Then I decided that I wanted to make a treat for my nonsugar eaters. I found a recipe for cream cheese pound cake. I substituted the sugar for splenda. It was really easy. I threw the ingredients in the mixer for both but somehow they turned out a little differently. One really flourish wonderfully and they other didn't grow much at all. So I cut them both in half and gave two halves to my parents and two halves to Cuca and Dani. The taste was good.