MY CIJ PARTY HAS MOVED....

For those of you who followed my CIJ blog last year, I've moved it over to my Confessions of a Holiday Junkie blog.  I'll be starting out today with gingerbread cupcakes and cream cheese frosting.

Check out my New Blog!

I've started a year around holiday blog and wanted to let all my followers now. You can find it at: 

http://confessionsofaholidayjunkie.blogspot.com/

CIJ Day 31: Christmas in July Crop!

Here are the pics from my party. All my scrapbooking buddies made it and were thankful for the time and effort put into the party. Getting a full day to block off for scrapbooking is a pretty big deal for us. Most of us don't like to pack and unpack our stuff for 3 or 4 hours, so full day crops are the way to go. I think we all enjoyed it so much, we might do it again soon. 

This is the cupcake and Secret Santa table. I had gifts to draw for and then we all brought scrapbooking supplies to do an elephant exchange with.

We also brought Christmas and Winter layouts to share with everyone. We hung them up around the room, where we could find room. Seeing some older photos of everyone was alot of fun. 

This was our cookie exchange table. We had alot of extra cookies left over, so we all went home with a nice size bag to share with the family. 

 We did manage to get some scrapbooking done.Some more then others...But that's how it is in the scrapbooking world. We talk, we eat and occasionally we scrapbook! LOL

Every even managed to show up in our Christmas color theme. Red, Pink and Green. Now Belinda took it one step father and wore her COLORFUL Christmas sweater with all our favorite Christmas colors! Now, let's note it was in the 90's, so it quickly came off!

I made a couple dinner salads for us all to eat later in the day and we all held out till 10pm. That left us with 11 of CIJ fun and it was all worth it.   Thanks everyone for following my blog this month!

CIJ Journal Entry Day 31! So long, farewell, it's time to say goodnight!!

Here's my last journal entry for the month. Yes, it's a day late, but that CIJ party yesterday wiped me out! So let's see....

31. How do you usually spend the day after Christmas? Do you have a tradition for that day? do you spend it -Shopping? at the movies? with family? traveling? We usually try to make it to at least Target, but usually I have to work. I'm not a huge day after Christmas shopper though. I usually wait a few days, then hit the sale racks! 

CIJ Journaling Days 28, 29, 30!

28. When does it really start feeling like Christmas to you each year? Is it the day after Thanksgiving? when your tree is up? When the presents are all wrapped? When the family is all gathered together? Once the outside prep is done, I move indoors and that is when it feels like Christmas. That's usually the first week of December. The last two years I've been lucky enough to take off a few days and get all my decorations done at once. With my business being dictated by snow, it's not always that easy! So on those good years, I get a little excited. On the bad years, I just go with the flow and learn to "let go". A couple years ago, we had blizzard, after blizzard in December and to boot, I think it was a short month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Needless to say, things DID not get done as scheduled.

29. Do you have a ritual for taking the Christmas tree down each year? I usually take the family tree down right after New Years, because that's upstairs for "public" viewing. However, my Disney tree downstairs is so big, I've been know to leave it up through January, while I pack it up, piece by piece. It's such a huge job, I don't stress over it anymore and if someone comes over and my trees still up, so be it!

30. Do you think Santa is sexy? I feel WRONG answering this question!

CIJ Day 30: Eggnog Thumbprint Cookies

Today was spent prepping for my CIJ crop party tomorrow. I had a little hiccup with my help, so I've been in the kitchen for hours now. I'm finally done with my salad prep, my cupcakes and my Christmas Cookies. Now I've just got to get all the small items and details put together, so I don't forget anything. Like a camera to start!! That would be disastrous!

I asked each guest to bring a plate of "Christmas" cookies. I decided to use the Eggnog Thumbprint Cookie recipe my Advent partner sent me last year.  It's a fairly easy recipe, but I didn't realize I was out of rum extract, so I had to make one of those frustrating, last minute runs to the store. Ugggg!!

Here's an actual photo of the recipe and I think it's big enough for everyone to read if you'd like to copy down the recipe.

My husband is a huge eggnog fan, but does not eat nuts. So when he walked in the door and I was making a batch of cookies WITH nuts, he kindly reminded me I could make some WITHOUT nuts for him to try. Being, the nice wife I am...I did! The picture shows the recipe as is, but on my second batch I omitted the part that tells you to roll them dough in egg white and chopped walnuts. I just rolled them into balls and pressed with my thumb. After tasting both, I thin I prefer the cookies without all the nuts. The cookies without nuts, had a stronger eggnog flavor for me. BUT the recipe does call for finely chopped walnuts and I wouldn't say mine were fine...they were more like "small" since I did them by hand. I think making a little extra filling wouldn't hurt either. That way, they each get a nice big filled center! So over all, this recipe was a thumbs up! But at Christmas, I will make them without the nuts!

CIJ Day 29: White Christmas vs Holiday Inn

I finally got to watch Holiday Inn. I'm embarrassed to say, that until a year or so ago, I didn't know that they had put White Christmas with Bing in two separate movies. Of course, they've talked about it on the boards, but my "scroogy" book mentioned earlier talked about the reason in depth.

I enjoyed Holiday Inn, but found it a "Holiday" movie and not a "Christmas" movie really. There's nothing like the White Christmas scene with everyone dressed up in red and white, coming in on a horse drawn sleigh and singing around the Christmas tree. But I found it went a little faster then White Christmas. Of course, Fred Astaire's dancing is amazing to watch by itself.

After reading it was recently remastered in color, I think I'm going to buy that version and watch it again in color.

As usual, I found that IMDB had a lot of information and some comments that educated me even more on the movie. It's really a great source, so if your not familiar with it, check it out. I'm on this site ALL the time now.

Holiday Inn IMDB Info

White Christmas IMDB Info