I have to say this is the first year ever that I have used a crockpot for my holiday baking and I have to say it was pretty dang handy! I will definitely be trying more crockpot recipes for baking!
For this recipe you will need:
*Chocolate Almond Bark
*Roasted Peanuts
*Cashews
*Peanut Butter and Milk Chocolate Chips
*Holiday Sprinkles
Set your crockpot to low and add in your nuts. Any combination of nuts will work for this.
Next, break up your almond bark and add that in.
I let this melt for about a half hour, stirring frequently and then added in my package of peanut butter/chocolate chips.
I continued stirring for another half hour and then my mixture was fully melted.
To finish off the clusters, simply take a spoon or small measuring cup and drop by spoonful onto parchment paper or tinfoil. Before the clusters begin setting up be sure and add on your sprinkles. These set up rather quickly and are then ready to enjoy! They are sure to be a crowd pleaser!
Happy holidays!!! I am so excited to share with you my Christmas tree for this year! I went away from the traditional red and green theme and decided to go with a navy theme! I absolutely love how it turned out! As soon as I got the deco mesh on, I knew it I loved it!
Typically, we buy a real tree so I am not able to put our tree up as early as I would like…but this year I decided to try something different! I happened to be looking through the Black Friday deals at Wal-mart and found this beautiful tree for ONLY $69. So, I bit the bullet and bought an artificial, flocked tree. It took my family awhile to get used to it as we have always had the real tree and the awesome Christmas smell that goes along with that but they adjusted well!
I knew I wanted to have some navy accents in my holiday decor this year so when I found this mesh at Hobby Lobby I grabbed a couple rolls. I only used one roll on my tree as I only decorated the front side but if you were to decorate the full tree you would need two.
To apply the mesh, I simply folded the mesh in half and used the branches of the tree to secure the mesh as shown. I did this about every 12 inches starting at the top.
Next, I strung some garland on the tree. This also came from Hobby Lobby. It has bells and the faux cotton pods on jute twine. After that I began filling in the tree with ornaments and picks. These all came from Wal-mart and Hobby Lobby.
I found a 4 pack of the navy, oversized, colored ball ornaments at Hobby Lobby and new they would go perfectly with the mesh I used. I simply placed them throughout the tree where there was a bare spot and they finished off the look perfectly!
Now for the tree topper! Is this not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen! I knew I had to have this as soon as I saw it at Wal-mart! It’s not your traditional tree topper and that is exactly why I love it so much!
The first thing I did was paint my truck with my English Navy color and the tires with Jet Black. All of the colors I used on this project were the Apple Barrel brand.
Next I used Christmas Green for the trees and then used some of the Antique White to highlight the trees a bit.
While the paint was still wet I sprinkled on some green glitter.
I then used my POSCA pen to highlight my truck. If you do not have one of these you can just use a small paint brush and your white paint to get the same effect. Once dried I then took my sanding block to it to add a rustic touch to the truck.
Lastly, I glued one of the these rustic snowflakes on the door and went back with my POSCA pen add added a little more highlighting to the truck. You can find these snowflakes at Hobby Lobby.
I forgot to mention the truck lights up! How stinkin’ cute, right?
*3 cups baking chips of choice-I used milk chocolate and peanut butter
*Toppings of choice-I used mini M&Ms and holiday sprinkles
The first thing you will want to do is line your cookie sheet with foil and place your saltine crackers in a single layer on the pan.
Next you will want to combine your butter and brown sugar. You can do this either in the microwave or on the stove top. You will want your mixture to come to a rolling boil for 3-4 minutes before you pour it over the crackers. After you have your mixture evenly spread over the crackers you will then put this into a 350 degree over for 5 minutes.
Immediately after you remove the pan from the oven you will spread your baking chips over your crackers. Let them sit for just a couple minutes and then they will be melted just enough to spread evenly over the crackers. Now it’s time to add your toppings. I chose mini M&Ms and holiday sprinkles for this batch. The possibilities are endless as far as the toppings go but a few of my favorites also include, heath bar baking chips and chopped pecans!
To finish off the Christmas crack you will want to stick it in the refrigerator to chill for 2 hours. Once it is fully set you can peel the foil back and begin cracking pieces off and that’s all there is to it!
Our tree this year is definitely one of of my favorites we have ever had. As many of you know, we get a real tree every year. Now, usually we have our tree up way before now, but we didn’t have fresh trees available to us until this week. So you better bet we were one of the first people to get one when they finally did show up! Haha!
This year our tree looks a little different than usual. Each year I get my kiddos a new ornament for the tree. This year instead of them putting their ornaments on our main tree in our family room we decided they would put their ornaments on their little trees in their bedrooms. So that meant that I got the main tree all to myself and of course I had to write about it! Now, don’t get me wrong, I love seeing all of the kids’ ornaments hanging on our main tree but as you can imagine we are getting quite the collection of ornaments so they decided they are just gonna pick a few of their favorites to add to the trees in their rooms.
So…onto our main tree. I simply started off by using this beautiful deco mesh that I found at Hobby Lobby. I started at the top and worked my way down to the bottom just tucking and twisting the deco mesh until I got it the way I wanted it.
Yes, I know…it doesn’t look like anything special at this point…But, just wait!
Next, I added the lights. I use LED lights that can change from white to multi-colored depending what my theme is each year.
Now, its time to fill in the holes and make the tree look full. I like to use a variety of different picks and ornaments. The ones I used this year I found at Hobby Lobby and Walmart. I also used this Dollar Tree Truck that I made over to fill the big hole in the front of the tree. You can find the blog post with on how I created the truck HERE!
This may just be my favorite part of the tree!
Next, I just continued filling in the tree with my picks.
I also added this “Farmhouse Greetings” ornament that I made on a live. You can find that video HERE.
And to finish the tree off we added our star! I found this at Wal-mart a few years back.
I absolutely LOVE how our tree turned out this year!