Christmas Part 3

Yes, I'm loading my pictures backwards.
We enjoyed going to the nieces and nephews games.


Here Erica is getting a trophy for first place in her tournament.


I've made it my goal in life to visit every chocolate factory in the US.


Milton Hershey build a factory and decided to add wheels to tubs to get materials around. They still use them.


JD and I took a chocolate making class. We learned all about the different kinds of coca beans that they use.


Here I am making my candy bar.




Ta-da! I'm a natural!


Who wouldn't want to live on Chocolate Ave?


Here we are at Chocolate World. They simulate the factory and you go on a ride to see how they make their products.




Peanut butter heaven!


This Christmas house was made entirely out of Hershey candy products.






We couldn't leave without our own chocolate bar. Pretty cool huh!?




Next stop was Lancaster, PA- Amish country. We drove through a covered bridge. How cool is that!?


Had to take pictures of the horse and buggies- see above the car mirror.


When we got home we treated Mark with the longest Twizzlers I've ever seen.


Ringing in the new year with sparkling apple cider.


We couldn't leave DC without going to the temple.


What a great day we had together!


For Christmas, JD and Mark got tickets to the Wizards game.






Taylor playing b-ball.


Madison in action.

Someone Hacked into JD's Account

Just wanted to let you know that JD's email account got hacked into and sent out an email asking for money. He's locked out of his account. Please do NOT send any money.

If anyone knows how to resolve this quickly or has advice, can you share? This is a fun thing to deal with the day we are trying to catch our flight to DC......ugh!

Merry Stinkin' Christmas

So as visiting teaching and home teaching gifts, I decided to make hot fudge. I've made it before (last post) and it turned out fabulously. But the sweetened condensed milk is expensive at this time of year. That's when the "brilliant" idea came into play. I thought- why don't I make sweetened condensed milk instead of buying it? It will be much cheaper.

Well, you can stick homemade sweetened condensed milk where the sun don't shine. Not only did the process kill my brand new blender (as in the first time I used it), but I had to strain out the powder milk lumps TWICE per batch.

This experience confirmed two things- 1) I really want a Blendtec blender and 2) I still really hate powdered milk.

Remind me not to have any more good ideas......

All in a Day's Work

It just feels so good to get my food storage in order.

FYI

I have been getting a little more traffic on my cooking blog from people who are interested in posting my site on theirs. I have no idea how many people will actually go to my site, but the potential is there. Up to this point, when I see a recipe that looks good, I slap it in Santini Stew for future reference. But I always try to put the name of person I got the recipe from on the bottom so I can ask questions if necessary and I know where it came from.

With other blogging sites wanting to add me to theirs, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anyone out there who has a problem with their name being posted on my cooking blog. I want to respect everyone's privacy, so if you are concerned with it, please let me know and I'll make sure it's not published anywhere on Santini Stew.

Chair

For some reason this picture didn't make it on the Reno post. This was my favorite chair at our hotel.

Reno

For JD's dad's Appreciation Dinner for NTA, we went to Reno for the weekend and had a fabulous time with the Santini clan.

We went to Virginia City where JD's great uncle is buried. He wrote The Oxbow Incident and lived right in Virginia City. This is outside of the Bucket o Blood Saloon.

And this is inside the Bucket of Blood Saloon!

Here are some of the nieces and nephews with country folk there.

JD had to get a picture in front of the sign since he's officially a James Santini too.

One of the speakers at the dinner.

Dad Santini during his acceptance speech which was so heart felt and straight off the cuff.

The whole clan

At the private reception

Then we headed to Lake Tahoe- a beautiful day!

I couldn't resist getting this picture at the NTA convention floor. Each state was represented trying to attract business to their tour opportunities.

The second coolest part of the convention was the free Skagen watch we got through the Santini connections. I'm totally enjoying it!

Here we are at the hotel- these chairs are HUGE!