Holiday Greetings from American Girl's Samantha

My annual American Girl holiday card is late -- but better late than never! This year's card features the newest member of our AG family, the adorable Samantha, who made a much-welcome comeback to the historical doll line in 2014. Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season!!

Check out my American Girl holiday card for 2013
Check out my American Girl holiday card for 2012

Easy Holiday Stocking Stuffers

Today is Boxing Day, and after all the craziness of Christmas Day, you finally have some time to take a deep breath and do everything you meant to do before December 25, but didn't have the time for!  Here are 3 fun holiday crafts you can do with your kids -- and you can gift the results at your next holiday party!  (where I come from, the holiday parties last all the way till January, so it's totally not too late!).

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to one and all!!

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Past

This is our family photo from ten years ago, in 2004.  How time flies!  Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Perfect macarons on the very first try!

I love macarons, but I've always been too intimidated to try baking them myself.  Every recipe I've found for macarons has a caveat: these delicate little pastries are notoriously temperamental, and it takes a lot of practice.  You'd think that macarons would be easy to make; after all, you only need four ingredients -- almond flour, egg whites, granulated sugar and powdered sugar.  But looking at photo after photo of flat, cracked, raw, misshapen macarons, it's pretty obvious that there's a reason macarons are ridiculously expensive (anywhere from $2.50 - $4.00 per teeny-tiny piece!).

A perfect macaron is small and circular, slightly puffed up, with a firm, smooth, dome on the top of the cookie and crinkly "feet" at the bottom.  It's crunchy on the outside, chewy and moist on the inside.  And it turns out there are a few tips and tricks to help you bake the perfect macaron.  Every recipe seems to have a different set of tips -- but I found the ones that worked for me at Curious.com, and online learning site where you can sign up for video lessons for as little as 99 cents per lesson.  Thanks to the tips and tricks in Curious.com's French Macaron Cookies lesson, The Pea and I were able to create these perfect little beauties on our first try!

Unlike the usual YouTube video tutorial, Curious.com features actual teachers, instructors, or experts on a particular subject matter.  Curious.com's video lessons are segmented into steps, so you can do the lesson right along with the video and easily fast forward to the step you want to view or review. You can ask questions, and the teacher will get back to you. There are assignments you can complete, which the teacher will check and provide feedback on.  Once you purchase a lesson or course (made up of several lessons), you can view it forever.  And that's just about how long I intend to be making these macarons!


Disclosure: I received a credit on Curious.com so I could sign up for some of their courses and try Curious.com for myself

Turkeys, Motorcycles, and Running Shoes: The Mazda Raceway Turkey Trot

The idea of running a race on Thanksgiving has always appealed to me -- do something active and healthy before stuffing your face! -- but I've never actually done it until this year.  Alfie found out that one of his favorite motorcycle racetracks, the Mazda Raceway in Laguna Seca, CA, was hosting their second annual Turkey Trot.  It's the ideal race for us, because it's not actually a race; there's no official start time, no one is timed, and there's no pressure to finish at a certain pace.  All you have to do is show up between 7am and 11am, and you can run, walk, skip, crawl, dance, or hop the 2.238-mile circuit.  Wild horses couldn't drag The Pea to an actual race and force her to run, but since everyone could go at their own pace, she willingly came along.   Alfie was beyond excited at the chance to set foot on the actual track where motorcycle legends like Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner race their bikes.  Even better, the $10 fee (just $10, the cheapest ever!) all went to benefit the Food Bank of Monterey.