"Merry Christmas you wonderful, old Building and Loan!"

It is less than a week until Christmas... can you even believe it? I know I can't. In 5 days we will be pulling into Mike's grandparent's driveway, ready to start our 1 week vacation in Rhode Island. It is going to be a long 5 days, and probably pretty hard to get any real work done.

I had a few things I wanted to accomplish this past weekend.

• Make Mama Pea's No Bake Snowball Cookies
• Make RecipeGirl's Ride 'Em Cowboy Cookies
• Make my favorite Christmas cookie - How Sweet's Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
• Make Banana Bread - adapted from here and here to make my own version
• Make Edible Ashley's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Almond Butter
• Make Edible Ashley's Cinnamon Crunch - Cashew Butter (instead of almond)
• Grocery Shop
• Clean the entire house
• Finish wrapping all of our Christmas gifts

Ok, so I had a LOT of things I wanted to accomplish this weekend.  But, you know what?

... I got every last bit done!

Mike and I spent the entire weekend at home (except for a grocery store trip) and got so much accomplished. I worked all night on Friday night, so we didn't get started until 2 on Saturday. But, when I woke up, I got moving. We went grocery shopping, came home, and I started baking. I made the Ride 'Em Cowboy and Peppermint Cookies while also making the almond and cashew butters.

If you haven't ever tried to make nut butter before, let me just tell you how amazing it is. The blog referenced above is my go-to nut butter expert. She has step by step instructions and before you know it, you won't even need a recipe. Now, I just throw in whatever sounds good and keep taste testing until I get exactly what I want.

We are going to Rhode Island for the entire week next week and I thought it would be nice to bring some of my homemade nut butter and some banana bread. I know there will be a ton of cookies already there, so I probably won't bring any of those with us. I made most of the cookies for Mike to take with him to work. One of our friends is a huge fan of the Ride 'Em Cowboy cookies and until I made them this past weekend, I had forgotten why they are so good. They just are. We are also having friends over on Tuesday night to do our annual gift exchange with some of my best friends from high school. I figured cookies will be good to have around that evening.

Since we will be gone for an entire week, and the dogs will also not be at our house, I really wanted to do a good cleaning. Coming home from vacation to a disaster of a house is always a drag. I am really excited that we will be coming home to a sparking clean house and we can just relax when we arrive. I spent a good 4 hours on Sunday cleaning every room.

On Sunday, I also made the No Bake Cookies and banana bread. Those No Bake Cookies are amazing. I have always made the traditional No Bake Cookies and love them, but I wanted to see how this "less sugar and healthier" version came out. They are amazing. I don't know if I will ever make the traditional version again.

The banana bread didn't really turn out as I had envisioned it. I found the recipe for the chocolate banana muffins and wanted to try to make it into a loaf of bread. I probably should have just stuck to the muffins, because I ended up having to cook the loaf for an hour and a half. Even though it tastes great, the outer edge of the loaf is a little darker than I would have liked it to turn out. I am sure it will still get eaten. :)

I finished up baking around 4pm on Sunday and spent the next 4 hours wrapping presents. I don't have a lot of time this coming week to do any wrapping, so I really wanted to get everything done yesterday. I am so glad to be finished.

While wrapping, I threw together a comfort meal. A can of tomato soup and some grilled cheese. I used pepper jack, white cheddar, and sharp cheddar as the cheeses and the Campbell's Select Harvest from a can. Although I would prefer to make my own soup, I didn't have the ingredients or the time. It was still pretty good though.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!
From the moment I met Mike, he has been quoting It's a Wonderful Life. He always said it was his favorite movie and he HAD to watch it every year at Christmas time. I had never seen it until I met Mike. When we watched it for the first time, I remember dreading it. A black and white movie? An old movie? A movie that I thought had nothing to do with Christmas? No thanks. I am more of a How the Grinch Stole Christmas kind of girl. But now, it is one of my favorite movies and traditions that we have. We watch it every year, while eating cookies and milk. I really look forward to it and love laughing at all the corny lines and facial expressions. Of course, I cry every time, too. You would think that after watching it 6+ times, I would be over the emotion, but I'm not. And now, I am kinda sad that it will be a whole year until we watch it again. Because watching at any other time of the year would just be odd. 

"I want a BIG one..."

I think I also love this movie because if Mike and I ever have a little girl, she is probably going to look exactly like Zhu Zhu, George Bailey's daughter. If she does, we will probably have to call her that. : )

We also decided to give our pups their Christmas toys. They won't be together on Christmas (sad face) since we are taking Deluca to RI and leaving Franklin at Grandma's house... before you judge - it was a long, thought out decision, but one that we feel is necessary to ensure Mike's elderly grandparents don't get knocked over on account of our nosy, under your feet, rambunctious Franklin. Although it makes me really sad to not have him with us, it just makes more sense. Mike thinks that Deluca should come to RI because it is on his bucket list. Plus, that way my mom only has 1 dog to deal with. Anyway, we gave them some toys and they went kinda wild. I tried for like an hour to get a good picture of them playing, but my crappy iphone and crappy camera just do not photograph fast enough. So here is what we got them. Along with treats of course.

Gym Time!
I made it to the gym this morning and put in an hour and 10 minutes. I did arms, abs and 30 minutes of interval running on the treadmill. I will probably be pretty sore tomorrow, but I am so glad I went. I was certainly dreading waking up at 6:45 am, and probably whined the whole way there, but after I got in the door, I was glad I was there. Let's hope I can get there on Wednesday and Thursday too, so I will accomplish my goal for the week!