Peppermint-Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Every time there's a church event that involves bringing food, I've noticed that I try extra hard to bake/cook something new and from scratch. It's like I'm tricking people into thinking "Shannon knows how to cook". We're having our Harvest Christmas party tonight and due to my new last name, we fell under the dessert umbrella.

Several months ago, I bought a Martha Stewart Living Groupon subscription which also got me a free subscription to Everyday Food (which sadly they're discontinuing!). I've already grabbed so many great recipes from this little digest! It's full of hints and baking tips that are actually helpful for a basic cooker/baker like me. So when I saw a Christmas cookie section this month, I knew I had to make one for our church party. I settled on the Peppermint-Chocolate Sugar Cookie--mostly because how festive they looked and who doesn't like peppermint? Plus I got to use my trusty mixer!

• Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted (just a note, I didn't sift, I wasn't patient enough and it was fine!)
• 3-5 tablespoons heavy cream
• 12 round peppermint candies, crushed, for decorating (I used more)
• *Makes 2 dozen*

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with racks in upper and lower thirds. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, using a mixer, beat butter, granulated sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract on medium-high until pale and fluffy, 3 minutes. Beat in egg, then flour mixture on low. Stir in chocolate chips.
2. Roll dough into 1 1/2-inch balls and place, 2 inches apart, on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until edges are lightly golden, about 12 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Let cool on sheets on wire racks 5 minutes, then transfer cookies to racks and let cool completely.
3. Stir together confectioners' sugar and enough cream to make a spreadable glaze (if you like a strong mint flavor, stir in up to 1/4 teaspoon extract). Spread a thin layer of glaze on top of each cookie and sprinkle with candies (I used my Martha chopper!). Let dry completely on racks.

And here's what mine looked like:

Not to Brag or Anything...

...But I have the best husband. Even though we've only been married for about 4 months now, he's continued to impress me in new ways.

• He's not afraid to make dinner.
• He'll never turn down a trip to the grocery store with me.
• He'll join me on trips to HomeGoods and World Market...for the 3rd time in a week.
• He cleans the shower, because it literally tires my arms out so quickly that I can't finish.
• He cleans on his days off

BUT there has been one obvious thing that I have noticed that he is the bomb.com at...He loves inviting people to church. Ryan has been intentional with almost everyone we know up here (known for awhile or just a little) and invited them to church on multiple occasions. Some we know are saved, some we know are not saved, but either way Ryan loves seeing people we love and care about come to the church we have grown to love and care about. Usually the woman in the relationship is inviting couples over for lunch, or hangout time; nope that's all Ryan! He's constantly reaching out to multiple people to check-in, stay in touch and invite them into community with us. And I just love that. So, I had to brag, and if you haven't been invited to Harvest yet...it's coming :) Love you boo!

Gratefulness in Livin' Small

We live in a slightly greater than 800 square foot condo. We only have one parking spot, we can only park 2 visitors at a time, we have only one bedroom and one bathroom and we live 4 stories up. Real transparency here, I sometimes get bummed out when I see other people's houses, heck apartments that are 4 times the size as our humble abode AND paying maybe half as much as we are for rent/mortgage. Sometimes these ungrateful words want to jump out of my mouth: it's not fair.

Ryan and I have always shared thoughts and dreams about moving South--you know, just somewhere outside of Virginia and well, anywhere below the Mason Dixon line. We would love to settle down in the Carolinas, or maybe even Georgia. I would love for our children to grow up with an adorable southern accent, live on sweet tea and sunshine, and then skooch them off to a college so that Ryan and I can feed off of their school spirit--Clemson anyone? We'd totally be those parents. But we aren't there yet, we might not ever get there. We've been talking about it more, but who knows the Lord might have something different for us!

Back to our itty bitty condo--for a LONG time, I was not a fan of living in Northern VA. The DC Metro area takes a LOT of getting used to. There is a laundry list of things I still don't like about this area--the price to live up here, the amount of time you lose commuting to and from places, the crowds, the traffic. But in living here, I'm finding that I'm incredibly grateful and blessed to be where I'm at in life, living in NOVA, livin' small. Sure we are living in a condo the size of most people's master bedroom, but we still manage to entertain, to set aside time to intentionally invest in friendships we have grown to love, to attempt to cook decent meals and to decorate our small space exactly how we want it.

For now, I'm grateful that we don't have to fill a huge space, because in all honesty I probably couldn't handle it right now! We are incredibly blessed to have a roof over our head, to be living 30 minutes from our Nation's capitol, to both have secure jobs, to live near a metro and to have the time to spend together in an area where time is so precious. I'm grateful for our small space because really, when you think about it, it's hardly a small blessing.

To DIY or Not to DIY: Favors

For some reason, our idea for favors came relatively early on in the wedding planning process and as soon as we figured it out we couldn't walk away from it! I'm a HUGE proponent of favors that make sense. If we didn't figure out a favor that made sense, and emulated us as a couple then we probably would've scrapped them all together. Here's the thing about favors (and here I go with lists again):

1) They aren't absolutely essential. Honestly, 50% of the time I go to weddings I will completely forget to take a favor, either on purpose or unintentionally. For something you're buying with the expectation that every one of your guests will take a favor, those statistics are not in your favor and that will also eat up cash monies!

2) If you want people to take them, make them useful. And here's where I'm gonna get opinionated...When I'm a wedding guest, I'm not going to take a plastic container of bubbles with curly ribbon on it, or a handful of almonds packed in a tulle, or a tiny picture frame with your faces in it and date. It may be cute and sentimental but it's clutter in my eyes. Your guests want something they can use and not clutter their house.

3) Make it YOU! Favors should say something about the two of you! If you're just having favors because it's "protocol" see number 1.

At first, (again I was super DIY advantageous in the beginning) I wanted to make homemade salsa and can them in cute mason jars. I can't cook super well, but I can make a mean Chili's-taste-alike salsa. Chili's was our go-to restaurant while we were dating so I thought it was perfect! And it would've been, except the logistics, time involved in preparation, transportation, etc started making my idea more complicated. Not to mention, it also didn't really go with my theme or the Italian food we were serving. So we scrapped the salsa and went back to the drawing board.

We went with cotton candy--something we both love, and let's face it everyone loves some cotton candy every once and awhile!

Supplies

150 1.0 oz Cotton Candy in Pink from Flosszone.com

Kraft Brown Stickers from Staples

Umm and that's it!

Now if you go to the FlossZone website, it looks super sketchy. I originally wasn't going to use them just based off of their stuck in the 90's website with flashy background. However, there weren't many others that shipped out cotton candy in bulk in clear packages, so I was limited. You had your standard carnival type, but that was way too big for what we were using them for. I even emailed them some questions, and they got back to me quickly. I had these arrive a few weeks before the wedding. I splurged and bought the Kraft brown stickers instead of the standard white and designed the sticker to match our invitations/theme in Adobe. They were that easy. We ordered 150 (we had 160 guests) because knew not everyone would take one. Grandma would probably not like any cotton candy. And yes, I'm sure there are some other  crazy people who don't like the goodness of cotton candy. We STILL had leftovers-- I would say we had about 25-30 leftover. 

What we came up with was one of the easiest to prep, was SO us, matched our color palette, and it cost about $0.80 per person. Not to mention we ate a LOT of those leftovers :)

To DIY or Not to DIY: Centerpieces

Centerpieces oh the great centerpieces. These guys were one of my favorite parts of our wedding! The thing about centerpieces is that you have to think of everything in multiples. In my case, I had 20 tables not including our sweetheart table. Costs AND your time can really stack up when you're making or buying things in quantities of 20! The centerpieces were the first major decor decision that I knew I had to make 1) because I would need to start gathering items early and 2) because it was my first budgetary priority in decor.

The Inspiration

For months, I combed through Pinterest, Etsy and countless wedding blogs. I knew I wanted flowers, but that's it. I also knew I fell madly and deeply in love with these wooden planters (below). Sadly, I knew I would not spend $20 per box.

Then I remembered my resources. My dad. You see, my dad built my childhood home. Surely that means he can do anything. As it turns out making a square box wasn't so hard after all (who would've thought!). Now the wood, where could I get my hands on some barnwood? My mother, who was also a great resource, is an expert at finding things for free. She asked everyone under the sun if they had any barnwood. Turns out my dentist, who is also a good family friend I might add, had a barn. With wood. That was falling over. And gave us the wood for free! Thanks to my awesome dad, I had a handmade centerpiece on each table. It made it extra special that I had such a unique touch at the hands of my dad.

After I had figured out the main focal point of the tables, I started to think of the table as a whole. My mom made burlap overlay squares to break up the white table clothes, we collected grapevine balls, mercury glass tealights, pinecones, acorns/nuts, etc to fill out the table. I wanted everything to be natural, simple and not too overpowering. I also decided to DIY the table numbers. I kept it super simple and cheap by going all paper. We went with two different variations, here was the end result:

In action!

The table numbers were relatively simple. I used:

Mini easels from Joann's (these were about 99 cents in store)

Stain from Walmart

Kraft brown cardstock from Michaels

Assorted craft paper from Michaels

White photo corners from Michaels

Martha Stewart Glue Pen from Michaels

Martha Stewart Fine Glitter in White Gold from Michaels

Clearly, I kept Michaels in business.

For the flower illiterate (that I still am), our florist used: pink stock, yellow zinnia, white asclepia, yellow black eye susan, and september aster. My favorites were the fluffy light pink stock :) I was not about to DIY flower arranging. The stress of that far exceeded the "cost savings". It would have been far too time consuming to order wholesale from all over the country, pray that they don't die on the way, and then arrange them the day before/day of. No WAY! So glad I had an awesome and creative florist.

Favors are up next!!