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Christmas Week = Christmas Cookie Swaps

21 Dec

Sunset Magazine Dec 2011

Christmas time means cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. Every year, a few of my co-workers do a cookie swap. These are the cookies we love, but only make around Christmas, so they’re extra special.

Sunset magazine had these delightfully festive cookies on the cover this month and it was obvious to me that these would be my choice for the swap this year – right? How festive & adorable are they?

The cookie is a meringue, but baked until crisp on the outside, and chewy on the inside. White chocolate chips and crushed candy cane add full flavor and you feel quite satisfied after one of these!

The recipe has you fold the crushed candy canes in with the white chocolate chips. The first batch I made, doing this caused the meringue to “pink” slightly.  I think I crushed the candy cane too finely, causing it to be more of a powder. But I wanted to pipe them into the shape seen on the magazine cover, so they had to be small. The next batch, I decided to use Peppermint Extract and not add the candy canes into the “dough”.  I just sprinkled the candy cane on top before baking. That worked better- the meringue stayed white, but the extract made the flavor too strong. And the white chocolate chips still clogged up the icing tip (I was using a large circle tip and had to insert a skewer frequently to push the chips back up). So my uniform little blobs weren’t so uniform.

The next batch I make, I’ll do the following -

  1. Use a smaller circle tip- maybe 1/2″? What size do you think they used on their cookies?
  2. Chop with a food processor the white chocolate chips before adding (smaller chunks that won’t clog my big circle icing tip).
  3. Process the candy canes less and add big chunks on the cookie after they’re piped on the sheet.
  4. Halve the peppermint extract and double the vanilla extract.
  5. Actually do the dark chocolate bottoms (I skipped this part for all batches, but I think it adds a nice finishing touch – third time will be a charm!).

These are festive and cute little cookies and the most important part- DELICIOUS!

My not so perfect looking White Chocolate Dream Drops!

 Other recipes I found that tickled my fancy:

  • Tannenbaum Cupcakes - with 2″ of frosting piped into a tree! (yea, you need to love frosting for this one!)
 
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Posted by on December 21, 2011 in Recipes

 

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Your “1 hour or less” Christmas Shopping Solution

18 Dec

That’s right. Christmas is a week away and perhaps you’re still trying to figure out what to get a few people on your gift list. The stress is building up and the $5 Starbuck’s cards are becoming more and more attractive, if not completely original.

Not knocking the Starbuck’s cards- they’re practical and useful and your recipient won’t have to rearrange the living room to accommodate it. But perhaps you did that last year?

What if I told you that you could gift an unlimited amount of people for $7 and be done in an hour?

Behold: My 2012 6×4 Photo desk calendar.  I’m selling the full resolution, non-watermarked version for $7- no shipping! I’ll email you the files. You unzip them, submit them to your local 1 hour photo center (or print at home in less time!), as many copies as you like*, find a narrow edged frame while you’re waiting for the pics and BAM! Finished!  If you have a little more time and energy left after this exhausting hour of shopping, you could mouse over to “Splash of Something” and find a cute wrapping idea for the calendar!

To purchase: email me at denise [@] geekgirl415 [dot] com with “Purchase Calendar” in subj line. I accept Paypal only.  Orders accepted until Friday Dec 23, 1pm (pst).  I’ll accept orders again after Christmas starting Monday Dec 26.

*For personal use only- including gift giving. The copyright and creator info is in the digital file and creative license belongs solely to me. While my regular readers understand this, there are people out there in the world who are not clear on copyright laws, thus requiring me to state the obvious: purchasers cannot resell or submit these photos as theirs to any contest or photo gallery (online or actual photo gallery). Thank you!

 
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Posted by on December 18, 2011 in Photoshop & Digital Art

 

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Who wants to join me in a 2012 Photography Challenge?

14 Dec

This would be a December photo!

Every year, as I create my 4×6 desktop photo calendars, I wish I had more “seasonal” photos in my stash to use for each month. The years we go on a vacation are fine, because I usually have a ton of favorite photos from the trip, but the non-vacation years pose a challenge.

As I package up my 2012 calendars (70 of them now, the list is growing yearly!), my thoughts turned to next year and how I could fill my photo stash to make the next batch better. It dawned on me that a photo challenge was in order, but not one that will suck the life out of me.  A daily photo is awesome, but can lead to burnout.

This is what I came up with- any number of photos in the month that reflect the “personality” of the month.  So, January to me is bare trees, rainy days and hot beverages by the fire. Sweaters. Scarves. I wish it meant snow for me, but maybe for you, snow!  July might be BBQ or popsicles, beaches. You get the idea. A minimum of 1 photo, the max only being what you can sanely accomplish.

I thought about making a list defining the personality of each month, but people have different ideas of what each month means. So guess what? No structure and only one rule – at least one photo representing the personality of the month according to you!

You with me?  Yes? Let me know- if there is enough of an interest, a Flickr group may be in order. I can’t wait to start this project!

 
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Posted by on December 14, 2011 in Photography

 

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The 2012 Digi Calendar has arrived!

01 Dec

This was a close one. Almost forgot how to make a brush set! You can download a copy of either the .abr set for photoshop brushes or the .png set for overlays or BOTH!

If you want to recreate the photo calendar with your own photos, the .psd (Photoshop) 6×4 template is included in the .png download. The links are below, or on the sidebar and they take you to 4Shared.com, a free file sharing site.

UPDATE 12/16: The overlays have been corrected – you can get them by clicking the links below:

2012 Calendar Overlays .png – months corrected and cleaned up – looks much better! Clean and modern design.

Basic 6×4 Photo Calendar Template  - the basic – you can use this any year.  Photoshop/Elements .psd file

2012 Calendar Brushes .abr only ** edited 12/9 – there was an error with December – please re-download this – it’s been corrected and tidied up. **

For those of you who want to make your own calendar grid, I’ve found that typing the numbers VERTICALLY keeps them centered better.  So you need to print yourself a yearly calendar to use for visual reference, then type the first row of numbers like this:

1

8

15

22

29

Then you line up the next row and do the same. Use the “grid” view on your template (Menu bar- View – View Grid) to line up the days of the week first, then center your text tool under the first day and type the numbers for that day using the “enter” key to bring you down to the next row. Make sure your alignment is on “center”.

I looked all over for a step by step calendar grid tutorial. There really isn’t one!  I’m going to work on that after the holidays with screen shots so if this interests you, check back in January.

Happy Holidays!

 
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Posted by on December 1, 2011 in Photoshop & Digital Art

 

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This Just In: Rock Star Neighbor Update!

28 Nov

Not quite my Rock Star Neighbor

 In August of last year, a real, live Rock Star bought a house on one of our main streets in town. The house is only three blocks away from us and on our regular drive/walk/run routes. It also happens to be one of the five or six homes in town that are on my “stop and gaze upon every time we walk by” list, long before he moved in. 

In fact, my gawking of said home has been curtailed somewhat because I don’t want to BLATANTLY look at it now, lest he think I’m looking only because of him, when it’s been this lovely house all along.

But even that wouldn’t be completely honest because I do pass by almost daily and of course I also look for signs of Rock Star Activity.

This Thanksgiving, I thought for sure he’d be there with his family because the house is a freaking hallmark card for an American Holiday. But Wednesday the house was dark. Same on Thursday. But FRIDAY was another story altogether.

Every Friday after Thanksgiving, Healdsburg has a Holiday Party in the town square. All the merchants stay open until 9pm and serve hot cider or cookies. It’s a family tradition to walk and snack our way through the plaza. It’s chaos, but fun. This time, we started off at Wurst, a local Beer Garden & Sausage Grill for dinner. [Seriously, the Smashburger is the best burger in town.]

As I walked in, a group in the back corner caught my eye. A tall, lean, dark-eyed, dark-haired and full bearded man in a trucker’s hat, snug fitting long sleeve T and expensive, perfectly fitting jeans (not that I noticed) was standing by a table crowded with small kids and adults.  As I glanced over, we had eye contact. I thought ”what an impossibly cute guy and oh… ohhhh…. I know that face… ”

It finally happened. My first celebrity sighting! With Eye Contact!  I didn’t faint. I didn’t shriek. I’m actually quite relieved that I held it together and other than a few more glances over, left him completely alone. Of course when my sister-in-law arrived, I whispered it to her. She remained cool about it. It was her husband actually that had the school girl reaction but a quick ”shhhh” took care of that. HOTRockStarNeighbor left while we were still waiting for our food. While I was confident it was him, I knew the confirmation would be if the house was lit up on our walk home.

And it was. He was “in residence”. I guess a flag raised would be too much to ask?

How hard is it to be famous and recognized, whether left alone or approached, in a place where you could reasonably expect anonymity but where people “in the know” know where you live? While I may fantasize about crashing a rock star party and meeting my Beloved Billie Joe, I would never do it.

Unless there was a roadie waving chicks passing by in.  ;)

 
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Posted by on November 28, 2011 in Celebrity Sightings, Healdsburg, i love Billie Joe Armstrong, Rock Star Neighbor

 

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