Holiday Treats

This year I was trying to save money and decided to make treats for all my teacher friends. Since I am as non-creative as you can get, I decided to steal an idea from Pinterest and one of the blogs that I follow. Just as a heads up I made entirely way to much. I was trying to make sure I had enough for 16 school friends and ended up with enough extra to give to two friends, my parents, and my in-laws.

First on the list, were the smores treats. I found this idea on Pinterest and it came from this cute little website.

As I said, I am not very creative and most things I end up making/baking don't turn out all that great. These were super easy.

Ingredients:
Box of Golden Grahams
12 oz bag of chocolate chips (if you are a nut like me and bought too many bags you can use two)
1 bag of mini marshmallows
5 tablespoons of butter
1 teaspoon of vanilla. (I used a little more and couldn't tell a difference)

 Morgan came over to help me bake everything and she was a huge help. It was getting pretty late and she helped with all the cleaning. I think Dustin silently thanked her because who knows when I would have gotten to it.

 This is actually step two. I forgot to take a picture of step one. Melt the 5 tablespoons of butter in a pan on the stove. Once it is melted add in the vanilla and 5 cups of the marshmallows. Keep stirring it until almost all of it is melted. Pour all of the melted mix into a large mixing bowl and add in the box of Golden Grahams bag of chocolate chips (or two), and the rest of the marshmallows. Start to mix it all together. I used a spoon because it was super sticky!

 Pour the mix into a 13x9 pan. They are supposed to be pretty thick. For my friends from school I made them pretty thin. I was able to use two pans and a pie plate. For mine and Dustin's parents I made them thicker and I think they stuck together better. They need to sit in the fridge to set together. We were kind of in a hurry and put them in the freezer. I even left my families in their over night and they stuck together perfectly.

This is what they look like when they are done. These were the thinner batch that we made. They taste just like a smore and are delicious. My mom and I kind of went back and forth on if they need to stay in the fridge or not. I thought they tasted soggy if not, but my mom loved them. I will say they don't last more than about 2 days. By the time we got to Abilene to see Dustin's parents, the cereal was sort of stale. These were super delicious though and extremely easy!

The second treat I made I got from a blog I follow called Mr. and Mrs. Smith. If you don't follow Natalie you totally should. I used to work with her husband in college at Bless Your Heart, and I so wish I would have gotten to Natalie more because I think we could have been really good friends. Their two boys are super precious too!

These were the Reindeer Treats that I made that Natalie showed. I have to warn you that this makes a ton of treats! I was worried looking at the ingredients that I didn't have enough so I went out and bought everything again. I ended up with entirely too much! Dustin is loving snacking on all the extras.

 Ingredients:
Half a box of Rice Chex
Half a box of Wheat Chex
Half a box of Pretzels
Half a bag of marshmallows
Half a bag of M&Ms of your choice
12 oz bag of White Chocolate chips

(Just think I did this by 4! Ridiculous!)

 Melt the white chocolate in a pan on the stove. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Since I didn't use half of anything and just used the whole bag or box I ended up with three huge mixing bowls for each batch.

 Once the chocolate is melted, mix it in the bowl. It won't seem like a lot of chocolate, but I promise it goes a long way. You will want to really mix it. I started to notice that I had huge chunks in some places and dry spots on the bottom. Let it sit for about 15-20 minutes and then dish it out. This was a huge hit at school. I had another friend at school that made the same thing, but she used some sort of candy and put icing and sprinkles on them to look like stockings. They were super cute.

Us two at the end of the night. Please don't judge this picture too much. It was very late. Next post coming up... how I am going to lose weight!