Celebrated my husband’s upcoming 40th birthday tonight with tons of family and friends. It was a perfect evening full of fun, laughter, & a little music. Friends traveled from near and far to be here for this big milestone.
A day spent watching our little ladies waking up excited to see what the Easter bunny left for them. Our traditional Easter egg hunt like my granny always did filled with both candy and change. And a nice home cooked meal shared with family and a friend.
A little pre Easter fun dying Easter eggs with the girls’ Maw-Maw, Maw-Maw Susie, and their Nannie Boo. Before leaving some carrots out for Peter Cottontail.
How cute are these eggs my Mother in law crocheted for me?
Forecasters predicted rain for today. Turned out to be a sunny day in the 80’s. I don’t remember Metairie being quite so crowded on Mardi Gras Day. Maybe it was the non stop running for the last four days, but today was just tiresome. Sooooo many people. 18 wheeler floats that the riders couldn’t really even see the kiddos. Even I put Mad & Bitty on my shoulders so they could be seen. Today we left with the least amount of throws. Honestly, we didn’t even care. We enjoyed the last few days so much that today just didn’t matter quite as much. We enjoyed hanging out with friends and family on the parade route. And ducked out just in time to beat most of the traffic. All in all I’d say our girls had a tremendous amount of fun this Mardi Gras season and I’m so thankful we were able to be here!
We decided to attempt to sleep in and start the day slowly. While we didn’t actually sleep in it was nice to take our time getting moving. Paw-Paw went with us to da parish to meet up with Sandy and her family for lunch at Ben’s. Then we took all the kiddos to cafe du monde in Metairie (wasn’t about to attempt Decatur street on Lundi Gras with five munchkins).
After a fun day with the kiddos, we dropped the girls off to Gigi for an evening of crafting. While we hit Bourbon street with Sandy, Chris, and Dad. We even found one of our Texas friends, Nene, on Bourbon!
We hit New Orleans running since Friday night and today was no different. Late nights and early starts with so much fun in between!
Today we spent the day with my best friend in front of her mom’s office on Magazine to catch a few uptown parades.
This was our favorite parade day with the girls. Paw-Paw & Gigi seemed to love watching them enjoy their day too! It was a day of three back to back parades which lead to hours worth of fun once they started rolling past us.
We left with so much loot I started to wonder how we would get it all home! After the parade we took the kids with Mad & Aub’s NOLA besties too (my best friend’s kiddos) to get some ice cream at the famous creole creamery. It was the perfect end to a perfect day!
Checked the little ladies out of school today and traveled 600 miles to enjoy our first parade of the season in Slidell with my dad, gigi, & my best friend’s family. We got there just as the first float was rolling by. Bitty caught her Nannie Boo’s frog that she asked her to get for her. Aubrie lost her tooth on the parade route…it was never found. And Mad had a blast hanging out with her best friend too.
Laissez less bon temps rouler!
The huge gift my husband gave me this morning was turning my alarm off to quietly bringing our girls to school and allowing me the chance to sleep in. Waking up to find beautiful roses, a card that made me cry, my coffee (good God does he love me), and a few other goodies was just a bonus. I’m thankful to have a man that doesn’t just choose one day in February to shower me with love. He shows me daily in so many ways that may sometimes seem unnoticed, but never is. He truly is my partner in all aspects of life. He seldom misses a beat. He shows our children daily what true love between a husband and wife really is and how a man should always treat his other half. That’s the best gift he could possibly give me.
Today I get to go to a preschool class party and two 2nd grade class parties (my friend had to go out of town and her little lady wasn’t happy about that, so I’ll be dropping by to visit my little Lala too!). This evening instead of a date night Daddy will have dinner at home with all of his girls. I’m going to make them chicken hibachi and tofu (for the ones that like it) and for dessert I’ll make them their heart shaped cookie cake and chocolate covered strawberries they look forward to every year. What better way to spend Valentine’s day than with the ones we love most?
Some days you just don’t feel like making everything from scratch or haven’t come across the perfect recipe. This is me when it comes to a sugar cookies recipe. I haven’t found “the one” just yet. So I cheat on this Peppermint sugar cookie recipe a bit.
I opt to use a bag of sugar cookies mix and a can of vanilla frosting. This may shock some of my close friends and family that know how much I like cooking from scratch. Someday I’ll find a recipe I prefer, in the mean time I’m good with this.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Preheat oven according to cookie mix.
Crush peppermints finely.
Mix cookie mix according to recipe on package. Once mixed well add in 1/4 cup of crushed peppermints and mix some more
Bake according to package on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
Once cool Frost each cookie and sprinkle a good coat of peppermints across the top of the frosting
Side notes:
For crushing the peppermints. You can do a few methods. You can cut to the chase and buy a bag of already crushed peppermints from your local grocery store on the baking isle. You can toss them in a zip lock bag and crush then with a rolling pin. My favorite method is to toss then in my food processor and pulse them until they are crushed.
Any brand of cookie dough will do. For the cookies I recently baked for our Christmas cookie exchange I used the Betty Crocker brand. Lowered my oven to 350° and baked for 14 minutes.
Some don’t care to use parchment paper in baking. I don’t always use it. I do however make sure I do with this cookie. Sticky melted Peppermint stuck to a cookie sheet isn’t my idea of fun cleaning.
After I Frost them, before storing I like to put them in the fridge for about an hour before stacking them to kind of set the frosting
If you find you have a lot of extra crushed Peppermint left over store in a zip lock bag or air tight container. Our family loves to throw a tsp of it in a hot cocoa or coffee.
When storing, if stacking I like to put a sheet of wax paper between the layers.
If you like your cookie a little less sweet, skip the frosting and Peppermint on top.
Once again, I completely forgot to take a picture after I made these. So I cropped the best one I could find from our party.
….for the Season. A beautiful day spent in our pjs surrounded by lots of love and family.
