Peppermint Bark.

Oh, peppermint bark! I started making this easy recipe with my mom a few years back when we both got addicted to Williams Sonoma's version (you know how they hand out those samples? We used to eat a lot of samples...) So we decided to start making it ourselves and would whip up an enormous batch of this stuff, giving it out to my dad's clients and family and friends. This year, I was really itching to make some more, and even though Christmas is right around the corner, my mom and sister dropped what they were doing for the chance to spend some time making this favorite old recipe. There's nothing like goofing off in the kitchen and making yummy treats with your kinfolk. I hope you get a chance to make this one over the break with your loved ones!

Ingredients:
- 1 bag semi-sweet chocolate (Ghiradhelli melts the best for this recipe)
- 1 bag white chocolate (again, get Ghiradelli if you can)
- 1/2 tsp. peppermint oil, divided
- crushed peppermints
- Optional: a drop of olive oil

Method:
1. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

2. Melt the semi-sweet or dark chocolate in a double boiler over the stove. This is a pretty active method, so you don't want to step away from the stove, even for a minute. Be ready to stir continuously and monitor the chocolate so that it gets perfectly melted and not burned. It's a timely activity, so stay in the moment!

Note: If you don't have a double boiler, you can achieve the same effect by placing a saucepan on the stove with about an inch of water in it, then placing a heat-safe bowl over the top of the saucepan. Place the chocolate in the bowl, not the pot, and allow it to melt slowly in the bowl.

3. Once the chocolate is almost completely melted, add in 1/4 tsp. peppermint oil and stir continuously until thoroughly mixed.

Note: if the chocolate is starting to get chalky, add 1 drop of olive oil and continue to mix.

4. Once fully melted, immediately remove the chocolate from the heat by pouring it into the lined baking sheet. Spread out the chocolate with a spoon, so that it's a very thin layer of chocolate that covers the entire sheet. Place the sheet in the freezer for about an hour and prepare for round two.

5. Quickly rinse out the darker chocolate and prepare the double boiler for the white chocolate. Melt the white chocolate over the stove the same way, adding another 1/4 tsp. once the mixture is almost completely melted.

6. Once melted, remove the chocolate from heat and pour over the top of the darker chocolate (you will have to pull this out of the freezer, but it should be fine at this point for the white chocolate to go on top). Smooth out the white chocolate with a spoon. Add the crushed peppermint by sprinkling a liberal amount over the top.

7. Return the bark to the freezer for at least another hour.

8. Once completely frozen, break into 1-inch piece and enjoy! You could share it. Or not. :)

Have so much fun with this holiday treat! I hope you're having the merriest of all Christmas weeks :)

A Johnnyswim Christmas.

This past weekend was FUN. We stayed in, watched our Christmas lights dance practically off the tree, and enjoyed some indulgent old Christmas movies. We watched Everett haul the wrapped Christmas presents around the room and listened to him say "Ho ho ho." To which we died laughing, every time. He literally says it. I will try to catch it on video. I'll have to show you this picture of him in his little Santa beanie, all the way from the dearest of friends in London. It's so stinkin' CUTE.

Blurry, but whatever. This is real life.

My favorite part about the weekend was going on our annual Christmas date, which is something that I always look forward to and always looks different. One year we went to see the Rockettes. One year we went to the Nutcracker. Last year I don't think we did our fun fancy date, because we had a bitty baby. But this year we joined a ton of friends and went to see Johnnyswim play a Christmas show at the Variety Playhouse. SO RAD. Ever heard of Johnnyswim? You should get their album and keep it on repeat. These two are so talented and cute in "real life" (I say that like I know who they are based on their stage presence - but they really do seem SO REAL). We went back to our friends' house after for toasts and treats and watched more friends GET ENGAGED (woohoo - so excited for you, Jordan & Amanda!!!), so it was pretty much the greatest night that ever could be. So much festivity and love and teasing and joy and coziness. I am really grateful for our community here in this little cove of Atlanta.

What does this holiday week look like for you? We will be baking and cooking some good stuff (though, not too much. This girl is tired), finishing up wrapping and anticipating the fun weekend! Christmas by ourselves, Christmas with my side of the family and Christmas with Stevie's side of the family - and all of them are PRIORITY, so by Sunday we will probably be whipped, just from all the emotion spent :) Happy emotion, though!

What are your Christmas week traditions?! I keep telling Stevie we need to create some new ones, and he says I shouldn't try so hard, just to let things happen. He might be right. But what are some of your favorite things to do this week? So I can steal them :) Ho ho ho! Merry week, friends!

P.S. - My Peppermint Bark recipe will be up tomorrow! I might be hiding it in stashes around my house so it doesn't get eaten all at once...

Christmas Card Photos.

Oh, Christmas card photos. An event that is equally fun and painful. Babies can be unpredictable, and mine seems to have a short fuse when it comes to me coaxing him (pageant mom-style), "Smile, baby! Smile! Can you smile for mama? SMILE HONEY. DO IT."

But I love the idea of getting some really great family shots of us once a year, so its something I am going to try to continue. I take a zillion photos all the time, but it was so much more relaxing to work with a professional (ha, duh) and get to just *be* with my family while Leidy Beltran did her thing. I did my best this year to make it a fun experience for Everett, by packing an arsenal of snacks and toys, but we lucked out so big because my bro-in-law Joshua showed up at his parents house unexpectedly (where we took our photos) and entertained Everett from afar. Made faces, jumped around, sang goofy songs, threw a tennis ball around. He pulled out all the stops. Joshua is officially a magical baby wrangler and Everett adores him to pieces. The talented Leidy snapped away and we got some sweet family photos of the three of us, just being ourselves, which is the part I loved about it most. We had the setting sun working against us, but she managed to get some shots that I absolutely love. In fact, you will probably get sick of seeing some of these before long, because I will definitely be updating my site in the new year with some of these shots.

Thank you, Leidy Beltran! And Joshua! Now I'm off to finish stamping these Christmas cards :) Merry, merry, friends!

In the Garden, Vol. 3

You might think that this is the time of year that the garden is napping. Not producing. That's sort of what I thought might happen. Not so, my friends. Things are really getting fun out in those garden beds! I spent some time winterizing my little patch of earth and I wanted to share the progress with you.

Since we had 70+ degree weather here this weekend (in December!!!), my plants have been getting a little confused. My strawberry plants started flowering, which means they are preparing to bear fruit, but I don't want that to happen yet! It's sure to freeze here before winter is said and done, and I don't want my poor little strawberries to give up all their energy into a lost cause. I called Pike's and they told me to prune back the delicate little ballet-pink flowers. But I thought I would snap a shot for you before I had to end things :)

Aww that strawberry flower is seriously the sweetest.

Unfortunately, both varieties of lettuce (Galactic - the purple above, and Romaine - the green above) bolted from all this hot-cold weather. What is bolting? Well, it's pretty obvious when you look at them. They shoot up tall reeeeeeally fast, and then the unfortunate flower comes up from the top. In most plants, you want to see the flower, but with lettuce, that means, as my master gardener friend Dana puts it, "It's time to throw a wake, because that plant's life is over." Basically, the lettuce turns bitter and stops producing new leaves. See this little flower?

It means it's OVER. Pull it up. Till the ground. Start fresh. Sad day.

But also happy! Because I planted some peas and beets and loooooooook!

Pea babies:

And beet babies:

Just some tender little chutes. So cute. I might have planted the peas a little too close together because they will eventually get vine-y, but see, I have this problem with spatial reasoning. I just want to maximize my earth as much as possible and smash all my plants together so they just hug and love each other. But. I don't think I'm supposed to. I'm hoping that the fact that both of these varieties are supposed to thrive through the winter will sort of cancel out the fact that everything is planted in pretty tight quarters. I'm smiling right about now. Because I just re-read that sentence.

Another thing that's supposed to rock in the winter is kale, and I am growing two types:

Red Russian Kale: (hahah it's mis-marked in my garden. I had to google it to figure out why my blue kale was coming up red - because it's not blue kale!!)

and my Blue Dwarf Kale:

I feel pretty proud of these plants, because I grew all of them from seeds. Some of the others in my garden I bought as little plants, but I grew the kale from scratch all by myself. Heart swell.

I tried to pull up my carrots for Thanksgiving, but they just aren't ready yet! Look at these cutie tops. I can just see Bugs Bunny snapping a long bite with his toothy chompers :)

The Most Improved Player award goes to the cauliflower. Yes, the cauliflower. Remember when the #*%$ caterpillars decimated my cauliflower plants and left nothing to salvage? Well, slowly but surely, ONE of those plants has been resurrected to life. It's trying so hard to live, you guys. This plant is a fighter. Check it out:
 

See that little white cauliflower head tucked inside? I'm super curious to see how this is going to go.

I might have made a rash mistake with my radishes. I'm growing two types. See, a while ago, when I planted the radish seeds, only a few actually grew. And out of those few seedlings nothing actually produced the vegetable. Such a disappointment. So I threw a TON more seed out and tried again. This time, a flabbergasting amount of seedlings emerged, and instead of thinning them out (which is what you're supposed to do), I just wanted to see all of them grow. To make up for the ones that never grew. Welllllll. Now there is an enormous mess of radish tops and I have no idea how to distinguish one radish from the next. Oops. Overcompensation problems over here. Rookie mistake.

It's also very possible that no vegetable will be produced out of this either, because the probably don't have enough room under the earth to grow. I feel like I am learning so much about life from this little garden experiment of mine. Plants need room to grow! People need room to grow! And time! And love and care and nurturing! See. I bet you're pretty dumbfounded by those insights right about now.

Okay, it's fine if you're not. I'm alone in my dumbfoundedness. Typical.

Let's ooh and ahh.

Oh, my Japanese Maple. This shot was taken before Thanksgiving and it has since forfeited all it's lovely leaves. I love you, Maple. I luh you.

I'll leave you with one last plant that was a total surprise. A camellia! These bushes are awesome because they are evergreen throughout the entire year, and they actually produce gorgeous lush flowers in the winter. We all need some flowers in the winter, right?? This bush was a head scratcher for me, because since we moved in I wasn't sure what it actually was. I'm sure glad I didn't rip is up with some of the others! I definitely had some boughts of crazy where I went outside and tore up a ton of bushes to make way for this little garden of mine. Stevie was NOT happy. But this one, this escaped my manic episode.

Camellia!

To winterize the entire garden, I trimmed some unruly weeds, plucked out all the ragged leaves that had fallen into the beds and laid down some fresh black mulch. Mmm I love some black mulch. It's so striking. When it gets to be later in the winter season, it will be time to seriously prune a lot of the plants and bushes for the spring. And probably feed them something organic. I don't really know. My google searches are so dorky, "How to make hydrangeas pretty" and "I didn't thin my radishes and now they are crazy??" It's just one big experiment, friends.

If you have garden advice, can you tell that I need some? Talk to me!

Glamping in the Winter.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to haul my family out to Sweetwater Creek State Park for a night of glamping in the woods. What is "glamping", you ask? GLAMOROUS CAMPING. It's a thing, guys. It's where you stay in a yurt - a wood and canvas structure - that has beds, a heater and usually a table and chairs. Bathrooms are shared with the entire yurt village, so you have to trek outdoors when mother nature calls. But it's a great way to take your family and still have a bit more protection and comfort while "camping".

I'll admit, I'm not a huge camper. I love nature and the great outdoors, but I've never had an excellent camping experience. I wish I had those fond memories that everyone talks about, where they grew up camping with their families and snuggling up by the fire and telling fun stories and playing with flashlights. I asked my dad the other day why we never really went camping and he said, "Kristen, I had three girls." Huh. Good point, Dad.

So I didn't grow up camping. I have, however, camped all over this beautiful country in the past 10 years or so. On this epic cross-country road trip, I had the opportunity to camp everywhere from the Grand Canyon, to Moab to Lake Powell to Tulsa to Jackson Hole. And those experiences were awesome... except for the actual sleeping in a tent part. I just always feel COLD. And yes, we have the right gear for that sort of thing. So this is just me, admitting to you, that although I love hiking and being in the woods, I don't prefer sleeping in them.

Which leads me to glamping. I have been working to expand my writing capacity (if you want to learn about my journey on becoming more intentional and pursuing dreams, check out this series), and I was sent on assignment to cover the new yurt village at Sweetwater Creek. If the tiny little article actually gets published, I will share it with you guys :) And oh, what an experience, camping with a 16-month old.

I'm gonna go ahead and be honest with you. Camping with my son. Was kind of terrible.

I love him. I adore him. I would lay down my life for him. But I literally spent the ENTIRE day saying "No, Everett! No Everett!" to pretty much everything. No, you can't walk head first into the rushing raging river. No, you can't walk by yourself while we hike because there is a cliff that you could fall off of if you wander. No, you can't touch the campfire. Because you can't. You just can't, son.

I spent an entire day having these conversations. And he's in this really fun stage where he throws his body on the ground and screams bloody murder, so we often attract attention for all the unwanted reasons. People are making sure that our son isn't being kidnapped or something. Nope. Just a normal day with Everett in this fun toddler stage. He has a will. He's not afraid of exerting the will.

Am I being too harsh?

I'm just being honest.

Once I put him down to sleep in the yurt that evening, he fell asleep in less than two minutes with the lights still on. So all that will-exertion must have tired him out, too.

Once by the campfire, Stevie made me quesadillas over the open flames and we drank beer and made s'mores and it was so so fun. I've got a good s'more strategy, I wish I could show it to you guys. But it was just us, out in the woods. Talking. Mostly about our son. But also about the direction our lives have gone, the journey we're on, the fears we have and the dreams we hope to achieve. What is it about the campfire that draws out the most deep-seated of feelings?

It was the coldest night of the year, the night we laid our heads down in that yurt. Coldest of the YEAR. It figures that we would try to sleep in the woods on the one night when things got frosty. But going to sleep in an actual bed (with our sleeping bags on top!) really, really was the icing on the cake. I just slept so warmly, and SO WELL. Until Everett woke up screaming at 1am. Am I making you guys want to have babies yet?? We tried everything we could to coax him back to sleep in his little travel crib, but he's not so little anymore and he was aware that we were in the little hut with him. So he wanted to be near us. Thankfully, Stevie had packed a third sleeping bag (it was in case I got that cold feeling I was telling you about earlier, he's such a good one you guys), and we pulled Everett and that sleeping bag into bed with us and we all slept for 7 more hours. All of us! We haven't co-slept with Everett since he was a wee little tot, and I'm surprised we didn't all wake each other up sooner. But in the morning, I was the one with the sunlight on my face, and I opened my eyes and looked at my two boys, facing each other, mouths opened, drinking in the most delicious of sleep, and wow. I felt all the feelings. So happy, content, and kind of in awe and wonder. This little family is just my gold. Even after the previous exhausting day with Everett. These two are my world.

We spent the morning eating oatmeal, enjoying the views from our deck, and drinking our happy concoction of half coffee, half hot chocolate :) This is when Everett was his usual fun self, so we had a good (redeeming!) morning with him. Then we spent our time out in the park exploring. Aside from Everett's shenanigans, everything was absolutely beautiful. There was a ton of hiking, and a beautiful creek that leads down to a historic Civil War-era textile mill (which was used and featured during the filming of The Hunger Games Mockingjay!) The stream turns into some level 4 rapids, which is apparently awesome for whitewater rafting during other seasons of the year. We just traipsed around, until Everett's war cry was enough for both of us, so we packed it up and hit the road. And vowed not to take him camping until he's at least another year older.

The consensus? Glamping is pretty cool. Glamping with a baby under the age of 2? Not so cool. But the park and the facilities and the hikes and views and history were compelling enough that when we got in the car and started driving home, Stevie was making a strategy for how we could make it a better experience next time. So who knows. We might be nuts and attempt this thing again.

If you have advice for camping/glamping/hiking with kids under the age of two, please share in the comments! Not only do I need it, but everyone else reading this would probably be interested in helpful tips!

P.S. - Don't miss out on my Christmas giveaway for him, going on now!