December Daily: Dec 14

Monday was the start of our final week of school for the year.  The classroom I was working in were creating their Christmas tree paintings using fat glue sticks as their 'brushes'... really effective and the results were awesome.

Michael bought Toby a brand new bone and it was ENORMOUS!  Toby spent most of the day gnawing away on his bone and when I came home from school he barely acknowledged me before carrying on with his chomping!

While Mike and I were at Vetro on the weekend we came across a new foodie magazine with recipes in it.  There was a recipe for Mexican chocolate chilli cookies so I decided to give it a go.  The recipe was super simple... especially with the food mixer.

Dougal was ever-watchful while I did my baking.  He watched me tip each ingredient into the bowl and was very excited to see it all come together.  When I was finished mixing he used his 'especially good' manners to ask if he could please lick the egg beaters.  He loves the beater on the kitchen mixer because it's so much bigger than the regular ones.  To be honest, I let Dougal lick the beaters knowing that he probably wouldn't like the chilli... which meant he wouldn't be eating the chocolate either!

I did have a good laugh when I saw this sign... and it would put me in the 'great mum' category!

The cookies turned out extremely well... and best of all they lasted more than just 24 hours!  They're crisp and cracked on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside.  They definitely taste chocolatey but there's a little 'kick' in there too.  They're especially nice warm with vanilla ice cream!

For my creative pieces I used the word 'joy' from Heidi Swapp's pack along with some ribbon I had in my stash, a large jewel brad and the star date.  The other creative piece was made using a piece of patterned paper from Pink Paislee's Christmas collection a few years ago.  I die cut some silver stars to adorn it and it has a lovely sparkle to it.

I hope you're all having a fab day xx