Chocolate Trees! (2011)

I just realized that I totally failed to post pictures of our most recent chocolate escapade!  We made chocolate trees this (well, last) year... :-)

Neal and Casee's supplies

 

 

Complete with the Christmas hippo!  :-)

Alissa and Jimmy's supplies

 

The woodland creatures are staring in awe at the tree...

Yep, and that's us eating them later on... animals made out of chocolate are scrumptious!  :-)

Masters of Chocolate?

Today was a good day. 

It was just a fun day full of chocolate building.  For those of you who know I've been trying to cook healthy, please look away.  You won't find anything healthy in this particular blog entry!  Just pure sugar.  I think we may have used the most baked goods and candy that we've ever used.  For anything.  Period.  Though, we had some help this year.  This year my brother, Neal, and a friend, Kerri, joined Jimmy and I for the craziness. 

When I say "craziness", that's what I mean.  We took a ton of pictures and looking back through them is pretty insane.  Insane, yet fantastic.  :-)  Here are some pictures to prove it:

Supples :-)

Yeah... we may have used 4 batches of brownies, 4 tubs of icing, 1 cake mix, 36 3 Musketeers bars, M&Ms, marshmallows, 2 pans of rice krispie treats (made by Kerri, Master of Marshmallow), nutella, marzipan, chocolate graham crackers, 3 kinds of Hershey kisses, chocolate chips, peanut butter, oats, pretzel sticks, dots, and the list goes on and on...

 

Neal and Kerri's CAKE House

Alissa and Jimmy's BROWNIE House

It pretty much took us all day... and it was awesome.  Thanks for joining us this year, Neal and Kerri!  :-) 

I'm exhausted.

Fun with Chocolate!

Feeling kinda blah.  Not sure why exactly... had a good time with some friends last night, a fairly lazy day today, and even got one of my last projects for my grad class finished today.  I should feel happier than this?  Ho hum. 

I know what's wrong... I didn't cook anything today!  Haha.  I have all these recipes I want to try, but lots of leftovers in my fridge.  It seems kind of pointless to bake an Apple Cider Crisp (WW recipe) when I already have a Tastefully Simple apple cake chillin' on my table.  There's a giant pan of Turkey Tetrazzini and leftover Green Bean Casserole from Thanksgiving (...that I didn't even make!).  That's one of my favorites ...and I'm not even hungry. 

Oh well.

So maybe while you're here (if you're here)... you could give us some ideas about what you'd like to see made out of chocolate?  We're having a little chocolate party and there's going to be some chocolate building going on next weekend.  :-) 

What do you get when you cross a kindergarten teacher with an engineer?  This...

Chocolate Castle (2008)

Snowman Village (2009)

I think I need some other hobbies that don't involve food of any kind.  Suggestions welcome!  :-)

Pumpkin Carving

What should I carve into my pumpkin this year? 

I'm looking for cool ideas.  Two years ago, here's what Jim and I carved... Jim's is the goat, mine is the bat.  Not the best picture... but you get the idea.

Last year, I carved a spiderweb and Jim carved an imp.  See below...

Way better picture AND they look awesome.  Yep, I said it.  :-)

So, what should I carve this year?