It's a SALE!!!

Well with only a week left until the big day I decided to have a little sale! Now though Dec 31, you may use the code Merry15 at the checkout in my ETSY shop to save 15% on your entire order!!!!


I want to thank everyone for a great year, I hope that you all have a wonderful Holiday Season!!

You can see my shop at the link below~
The little green bean

Thanks for stopping!

Menu Planner & Shopping List

I have been looking for a combination menu planner & shopping list all in one. I could not really find what I was looking for, so I made one! 

First I created a template on my mac, love my mac BTW!!! I added some cute owls, and turned the opacity down to 50%, I was able to fit 2 on a sheet so then I printed 26 copies. Then I cut them in half and trimmed the sides so I have 52 sheets, one for each week of the year!

I used my BIG SHOT to punch holes in the top of all the papers. I went in 1 inch on each side. 

 Next I cut a piece of cardboard from a box, This is for the back and to give it some stability. The piece is 11x4. Punch holes in the top of the cardboard to attach your pages to. Next you need the top. I cut a piece 4x4, scored at 1 inch and 1.5 inches and fold. Place this at the top of your pages.

 Now it's time to put it all together. I used brads that had extra long prongs. Attach 2 strips of magnets to the back of the cardboard, and that is it!!

 Place on your fridge! What a quick and great gift!!

Enjoy!!

Christmas Cookies

 This is the cook book I bought for my Christmas cookies this year. It is from the makers of Cooks Illustrated, they have some of the best recipes I have ever tried. So we decided to make some cookies from it.

 Nicholas ans Zach were very excited! First up, my favorite, snickerdoodles!!

 Nicholas is sorting the m&m's for our "bacon & eggs"

 Bacon & Eggs was something I heard about on a local radio station here. You need yellow M&m's, Almond bark & pretzel sticks. Melt the almond bark in a double boiler, while that is melting line up pretzels 2x2 on a piece of was paper like Nicholas is doing below.

 Once the almond bark has melted, drop by teaspoon full in the center of the pretzels, then add a yellow m&m to the center. Let cool.

 Bacon and Eggs!! Less is more with the almond bark, it is really sweet!!!

 Here we are making the marvelous chocolate mints, and yes they are marvelous!

 Mike's favorite, Peanut butter kisses!! Made with Dark and Milk chocolate.

I have one more to make, but I ran out of steam! 

Cherry Cheese Cake Cookies, the one ingredient that really stood out, 

20 TABLESPOONS of butter! The dough was delicious!!! More to come on those!

A perfectly beautiful tree

Mike and the kids went out to a tree farm yesterday and cut down our 2010 Holiday tree. The boys were so excited about their tree. We went out last night and bought some new lights, I thought (for some odd reason) that the C9 lights would be good on an indoor tree. I now know better for next year. You'll soon see why! 

 We got all the light up and realized that we didn't buy enough, so the kids were very mad that we could not finish decorating their tree. Today, Mike and Zach went and bought 2 more strands and we got them up. Now we could finally do the decorations.

 They worked very hard making sure to put every single ornament on the tree.

 NIcholas got the put the last one on the top!

 We are done!!! Yeah!

 This is positively the most beautiful tree we have ever had, ok I am joking. The lights are a bit much, and the tree is about to fall over from the weight of ALL of the ornaments, but the boys absolutely love it and think it is the best tree ever! So this will be our tree for 2010, and I couldn't be happier!

Happy Holidays! 

Holiday Open House sneak Peak

Hope to see you this weekend!!!