Christmas cooking and crafting

I scaled back on my original plans for Christmas crafts and made sure to start early on the few presents I planned to make, so this was a mostly fun, stress-free Christmas at our house.  Well, except for the marathon evening knitting the last week!  But other than that....easy peasy.  Here are the main projects I tackled:

1. The Southern Living White Cake

I looooove the Southern Living cover cakes and I've made a few in the past, but this one might be my favorite.  I made it for our office Christmas lunch, because my coworkers are pretty willing to try my experiments.  The contest winner this year was a Chocolate Gingerbread Toffee Cake--a gingerbread-chocolate cake layered with toffee bits and chocolate ganache and frosted with ginger-infused whipped cream.  The whipped cream worried me when I tried it by itself (very ginger-y), but it worked well with the finished cake.  John pronounced this his favorite me-made cake ever (I cut a wedge out for him before taking it to work), and it got rave reviews at the office, too.  If you want to give it a try, click HERE for the recipe.  Here's a picture of my version:

2. Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies

I spotted these cute cookies floating around on Pinterest and decided to make them for the Christmas pageant reception at Will's school.  I made them exactly as the recipe stated and I think they turned out very cute and were really delicious--the peanut butter cookie worked really well with the saltiness of the pretzels.  I will definitely be making these again next year.

3. A Honey Cowl

I couldn't visit a crafting blog without seeing a version of the honey cowl, so I took it as a sign I should try knitting one.  I made one for Leah from one skein of madeline tosh pashmina in my very favorite colorway of that yarn (amber trinket).  I didn't get any modeled photos of it, but the pattern is available HERE (with pictures), and here are pics I took right before I wrapped it up:

4. Two Cardigans

While on a quest to get my car headliner fixed back in October, I stopped in a cute yarn shop in Jacksonville and bought two skeins of yarn that I thought would look great on Missy...and then I looked for a pattern.  I decided to try the Breezy Cardigan pattern because I've had success with another pattern by that designer.  I will save the lengthy story on this for other knitters on my Ravelry page, but it took a long time (an entire cardigan in laceweight yarn) and finishing up this sweater was a traumatic experience.  I don't think the drama showed in the finished project--it was really cute on Missy and I hope she likes it, but I will not be repeating this pattern!

I had better luck with the Creature Comforts Cardi I made for Laurie.  It was an easy knit and a really unique pattern--I may have to make one for myself.

5. Drawstring Gift Bags

It's a good thing I didn't see this pattern until a few weeks before Christmas--otherwise, I would have been in a sewing frenzy making gift bags for all our gifts.  The Jeni's Drawstring Bag pattern is great for using up scraps of fabric, and I used fabric I had on hand to make a knitting project bag for Missy, a gift bag for Barb, and two bags to hold some of Anna's new toys.  Here are the two I made for Anna:

6. Lego Play Table

I saw an easy idea for constructing a Lego play and storage table in the Family Fun magazine a few months ago, and, when I realized Will would be getting a lot of Legos for Christmas, I decided to make it.  Of course, I had tossed the magazine by the time I was ready to make it, so I went looking on their website but was unable to find the instructions.  I did find some blog posts from moms who had made the table and, with those and my memory of the article, went about making one for Will.

I purchased two rolling carts from Target and a piece of plywood from Lowe's (along with some electrical tape to decorate the edges).  I used some non-slip adhesive grips to help hold the plywood to the carts.  John purchased some Lego building plates from the toy store, and I attached those to one side of the plywood with adhesive Velcro.  I chose the Velcro because the kids (especially Anna) still enjoy playing with the Duplo blocks, so I thought I could switch out the Lego plates with Duplo plates depending on which blocks they were using.

Here's the finished product (pardon the mess--we haven't completely loaded the new Legos into the table yet):

The entire project came in around $50--not bad, right? :-)