Happy Dia de los Muertos!

     We don't usually celebrate Dia de los Muertos also known as Day of the Dead, but these I decided why not?!  It's a great day to remember all our family and friends that have passed away, plus Liam loves skeletons!   We started the day off with some Sugar Skull inspired Pancakes with Apples cut to look like Bones

I baked up some Dia de los Muertos Bread

While dinner was cooking we munched on some

Tortilla Chips with Salsa & Guacamole.

It was perfect with the Do XX Amber and Willmon Moscato Wine

For dinner we had Tamales, Grilled Mexican Corn on the Cob, 

Mexican Rice, and the Dia de los Muertos Bread.

And for dessert......

We enjoyed some Sugar Skull Sugar Cookies I baked up!

Everything turned out great!

Even Kinley liked it!

A Visit from the Grants

     If you follow Lil' Mrs. Tori, then you know Tori and her family are traveling back to California from Florida.  On their way home, they stopped to stay the night with us here in New Mexico.  It was so nice to see all of them, it has been over a year since the last time we saw them!
Best Buds reunited! Liam and Brendan getting their game on playing Sonic All Stars on the Playstation.

Time for some dinner with friends!

I made some ribs, veggie kabobs, Loaded Baked Potato Salad, and....

Some Batman inspired Chocolate Cream filled Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream.

I tried out the chocolate cupcake recipe from Blissfully Delicious,

the vanilla buttercream from Add a Pinch,

and the cream filling I just whisked up some whipping cream, a Whip It packet, and some sugar.

For the chocolate Batman signal, I melted some Hersey's chocolate, 

put it in a squeeze bottle and drew the symbols on a piece of wax paper, 

then stuck in the freezer to harden. 

Topped it with a #4 candle to celebrate Brendan's birthday!

B was too quick to blow out his candle, we barely got "Happy" 

sung and it was extinguished.

Ryan and Kinley enjoyed playing with each other too.  

I think Kinley liked having someone around her age to play with.

The boys back on their electronics...Liam the Kindle, B on daddy's phone.

The next morning, I made the boys a Turbo Snail Cinnamon Roll 

with some cut apples for breakfast.

I think they liked them!

After breakfast the Grants packed up their van and headed the rest of the way home to Cali.

It was a short visit, but so nice to see them!

Looking forward to reuniting with them again in the future!

Miss you guys!

Italian Peach Cookies

     So for our monthly Crafternoon with the ladies I decided to make something sweet and springy to bring over.  I went searching on Pinterest, one of my favorite sites, and came across this recipe for Italian Peach Cookies from this great site Key Ingredient.  They turned out amazing and looked just like a peach!

Ingredients

Cookies:

3 large eggs

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup whole milk

6 cups all purpose flour

Filling:

Peach Jam

Decorations:

Peach liqueur

Yellow & Red food coloring

Super fine sugar

Mint leaves

Whole cloves

Preparations:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until light, about minutes.  Add the oil and beat until creamy, then mix in the milk and vanilla.  In another bowl sift the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add this to the batter and beat just until it is combined.

Take a small amount of batter in your hands and roll into a ball about 1 1/2 inches for large or 3/4 inch for small sized cookies and place these on the baking sheets.  Continues to roll out all the batter into balls then bake for about 15-20 minutes or until very light brown on the bottoms.  Let cool.

For the filling, use a sharp knife or melon baller and cut/scoop out a circle at the bottom of the cookie, removing the cookie centers and placing these in a bowl for later.  Be careful not to cut/scoop completely through the cookies, but you need to make space for the filling.

Once you have the cut bottom of each cookie, break up the cookie pieces you have cut out into fine crumbs.  Add enough peach jam to the cookie crumbs until you have a sticky filling.  Carefully fill each cookie, then matching cookies or shape and size, place two cookies together, using the peach mixture as glue to hold the cookies together.  Clean any peach that that may ooze from the seams.

To decorate, place about 1/2 cup of peach liqueur into two separate bowls, and color one yellow and the other red.  In a third bowl, place the super fine sugar.  (The cookies work better if the colors are fairly strong)  Carefully dip each cookie pair into the red mixture first 3/4 of the way up the cookie, then dip the other end in the yellow mixture.  (Found if you dipped the yellow end briefly in the red liquid it created a more natural looking color.  Gently blot the cookies with paper towels to remove most of the liquid, then immediately roll the cookie in sugar.  Place the finished cookie on a sheet of waxed paper to dry and continue to color the rest of the cookies the same way.

Once the cookies have dried, you can insert a couple of mint leaves 

and a whole clove to resemble a peach.

Godere!

Our Easter Sunday

     The hubby had to work Easter Sunday, so we really didn't have any big plans.  We were invited over to a friend's house for brunch and the rest of the day we just celebrated at home till daddy got home and enjoyed a wonderful Easter dinner together.

    Saturday night Liam set out a celery stick for the Easter Bunny to enjoy.  Sunday morning Liam was so excited that the Easter Bunny had arrived, the EB even ate some of the celery.  It was definitely an Angry Bird & Foxy Easter this year!

Liam loved all the Angry Bird stuff he got.

And Kinley loved all her Foxy stuff.

The EB hid a bunch of eggs for Liam to hunt for.

He even left a Golden Egg filled with special bunny coins.

Kinley playing with her new toys.

After the egg hunt, I made Liam an Easter Bunny Breakfast

After breakfast we all got dressed and headed over to our 

friend's house for brunch.  I made a Blackberry Marscarpone Tart 

to bring over. It turned out AMAZING!

When we got home the kiddos played with their new toys 

and I took some pictures of my loves.

For lunch I made little sandwiches and snacks then put them 

in some plastic eggs for Liam to enjoy.

When the hubby got home we celebrated the rest of the day together.

Every year I like to try new recipes, here's what we had this year....

Homemade Sourdough bread

Honey Ham

Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes

Pan-Seared Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries & Pecans

(This was our FAVORITE!)

Upside Down Plum Cake

It was another great Easter,

I feel so blessed and thankful to have such a wonderful family.

Hope your Easter just as special.

Our Saint Patrick's Day

     Saint Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays, guess it's the Irish in me coming out, or that I love the color green, or the fun tricks the leprechauns play... This year Liam and I had a lot of fun making leprechaun traps, going on a rainbow shamrock scavenger hunt looking for the leprechaun's special surprises, enjoying rainbow, green shamrock, and Irish food.  Even Kinley and the hubby enjoyed this fun holiday.  

Liam and I read "The Night Before St. Patrick's Day" 

and created our very own Leprechaun traps the night before.

One out of a box with scrapbook paper, stickers, and glitter

the other he created out of his legos,

with gold coins leading up to the trap of course.

When Liam woke up the leprechauns 

left shamrocks on his door...

Turned the chairs on their sides...

He took the gold coins from the traps 

and left the first shamrock of a rainbow scavenger hunt.

The first was a red Shamrock that said "MOM" 

and some chocolate Gold Coins.

Looks like the leprechauns played a trick on mom 

and left chocolate coins in her pocket.

And the second orange shamrock

 was taped to her leg, said "PEE"

Liam headed to the bathroom to discover GREEN pee,

more chocolates, and the third yellow shamrock "CAT".

He then went into the laundry room where the kitty's food is

to find the green shamrock "CUP" and more coins.

He looked in the kitchen for his cups 

and found the blue "TV" shamrock.

The last purple shamrock was on the T.V. sound bar

that said "PILLOW".

Liam found a basket of special treasures the leprechaun left

behind the couches in the pile of pillows.

Kinley and Daddy got special surprises too!

I made Liam a Rainbow Breakfast

A Green Shamrock Lunch

A Festive Green Snack

And an Irish Dinner & Dessert

Corned Beef & Veggies

Guinness Bread with Molasses

Sweet & Salty Guinness Chocolate Pie

Here's some of the fun pictures we took, all dressed in GREEN

No one got pinched this year!

Lucky Daddy Kisses

Kinley tried to get Daddy's Guinness

Our little Irish Lady

Our little Irish Man

Our Little Leprechauns 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day from the Mastersons!