Saturday, December 27, 2008

Secret Santa!

I spent the morning with two of my best friends (and a tag-a-long husband) this morning. We were having out Christmas. It's always been rough for us to get together, but since one of them got married this summer and moved, it's even harder than before. One lives two hours south-east of me and the other (and her husband) lives 4 hours south west.

But, this morning we were able to get together for a few hours and have breakfast and celebrate. It made me very happy. I hope we can do this every Christmas, but I know it's only going to get harder as we marry and start families.

Of course, my friend and her husband and I did a little shopping after the other friend had to leave to go to work. We went to store after store. While it was fun, I am totally BEAT! And ready to take a nap.

When they dropped me off at home, all I could think about was getting up my stairs and taking a rest....until I got to my door. Where there was a package waiting on me! From my wonderful Secret Santa!

I am so glad we got to do a Secret Santa this year. It was so much fun picking out stuff and who doesn't like getting extra presents?? Thanks to Allison for getting this thing together.

Turns out my Secret Santa was Kathy, also known as Araby62 over at Trying To Be Human. She completely ROCKS! I got two books, The Cake Mix Doctor and Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor. Two recipe books that let you take cake mixes and make them so much better than any boxed mix could ever be. I am sooo excited.

Yeah, it's kind of a weird gift for a diabetic, but I asked for it. And since my current hobby of choice is cake decorating, it couldn't have been a more perfect gift.

Check out some of these recipe names:

Chocolate Midnight Cake

Pear and Chocolate Terrine

Guatemalan Wedding Cake

Pumpkin Spice German Chocolate Cheesecake

White Chocolate Muffins with Cinnamon Streusel

Marbled Cream Cheese and Kahlua Brownies

Lemon Lovers' White Chocolate Cake

Snickerdoodle Cake

Plum and Cardamom Cake

Easy Tiramisu

Hummingbird Cake

Pumpkin Pie Crumble Cake

Fresh Lime Cheesecake

Orange Almond Angel Food Cake

Tomato Soup Spice Cake

Can you believe some of them?? I can't wait to try some of them out, though there's supposedly 150 in each book, so I don't know how I'll ever try them all.

Thanks so much to Kathy, who ROCKS! If you don't read her blog, check it out. I linked it in this blog post as well as it being on my blog roll on the right side of the page.

4 comments:

Lee Ann Thill said...

I bought the Chocolate Cake Mix Doctor for myself a couple of years ago. I've studied many of the recipes, but have never actually made any of them. Of course, I also subscribed to several cooking magazines for years, and only recently let my subscriptions run out without renewing because I almost never made any of the recipes. I really just liked looking at the pictures. I'm lame I guess, lol! I hope you'll post pictures and reviews of any cakes you bake though. Maybe it'll inspire me to actually use my book :D

I'm glad you're enjoying your holidays!

Jill said...

Ohhhhhh YUMMY! They look like great books :) Maybe I'll have to add those to Kayleigh's "library". I should do a post and show some of the cakes she's made. She got a book called "Hello, Cupcake" (you should check that out!) for Christmas. Its an amazing book that shows you how to turn cupcakes into art (yeah I know...one of those horrible things cake wrecks dispises...LOL!) But she is excited about trying some of them just to broaden her skills.

Cara said...

Lee Ann, I'll be sure and let you know when I do my first one. Now on to the problem of deciding what the first one is..... :P Some of them are so easy, you really should try one.

Jill, you should post some pictures. Or e-mail me some. I'd love to see them. I've looked at Hello, Cupcake many times. It's a great book. And they AREN'T cake wrecks. Only if you are making a cupcake cake. Totally different. If you want to see some of mine, you can look on my MySpace page. I have a bunch listed on there in my photos section. www.myspace.com/countrygirldiabetic

Araby62 (a.k.a. Kathy) said...

I'm flattered and SO glad you liked your gifts :) Happy New Year, too!