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!

Appreciate Your Teachers!

     It is Teacher Appreciation Day, Week whatever you want to say. Personally, I think we should be appreciated every week, but that is just my opinion. Just kidding! Since starting this blog, I have become a 100% blog stalker! I have loved getting decorating and cooking ideas and catching up on peoples lives. One of the blogs I follow is The Crafting Chicks. It is a group of women who come together to pass around their crafting ideas. They had these Mini Oreo Apple Pops on their blog yesterday. I decided that I would appreciate the people that I teach with every day and make them the same thing. Mine of course don't look at professional, and I was going completely off memory when I was at the store today. This was more of a trial run, so I was pleased with the way they turned out for the first time.

Ingredients:
Oreos - The Crafting Chicks used mini oreos. I got normal ones (oops!). If you go this way I would do the double stuff and stick a popsicle stick in them The toothpick wasn't strong enough to hold the entire oreo up.
Pretzel Sticks - I just took normal pretzels and broke them because I completely forgot to buy them.
Green Air Heads - It took me four places to find a place that sold them by the flavor. Everything else was a variety pack.  I finally went to a gas station.
Red Candy - I went to JoAnns in the candy area and they have tons of flavors that you can melt.

This was after breaking the pretzels and cutting the Air Heads. I used a steak knife to cut the candy and it was really hard. I'd recommend heating them up or using scissors like The Crafting Chicks said to do.

The melted candy. The stuff I got was super easy! I just put it in the microwave for 2 minutes and it was ready to go.

So mine don't look near as good as theirs did, but hey I feel like it was a good first try! I learned to not put the pretzels and Air Heads in the oreo because it will break them and use the candy more like glue. Also, having something to dip them into the melted candy would be easier. When the toothpicks didn't work, we tried popsicle sticks, but since they weren't double filled it was hard to not break the cookie. We eventually just glopped it on with a spoon. Oh, the we include my brother Josh. He was a great helper once he realized we could eat as we made them!

If you're one of my teacher friends come find me tomorrow! I made 30 and I'm bringing them to say how much I appreciate you!