A Happier Christmas Post!

I know my last post about Christmas was a little sad, but I promise you that we had a really great Christmas. Low key and simple, but a really great and memorable Christmas! Our holiday was mainly centered around food, especially on Christmas Eve. We made a delicious breakfast for dinner with homemade sausage balls, stuffed cinnamon roll french toast, and Cracker Barrel inspired hashbrown casserole. It was so so good! For Michael's hashbrown casserole recipe, simply google "copycat cracker barrel hashbrown casserole recipe." It was an amazingly perfect dish for any occasion, and it makes a lot and costs next to nothing to make! My dish was the stuffed cinnamon roll french toast, which is very good and very easy as well. It's perfect for everyone and every age, and there's so many combinations for the stuffing! Here is the recipe: Pillsbury Large Cinnamon Rolls Cream Cheese, Softened Stawberry Preserves (or any preserves, jam, or fresh fruit you want) Eggs Milk Place the cinnamon rolls close together in a 9-inch round pan like below.

While the cinnamon rolls cook, mix softened cream cheese and jam. There's no science to this...it's all based on your taste. I used 8 oz cream cheese, which was way too much for 5 cinnamon rolls.

Once the rolls are cooked, let them cool for approximately 20 minutes. Cut the rolls in half leaving a top and bottom. Spread the cream cheese and jam on the bottom and replace top to make a sandwich.

Place butter in a pan and heat to medium, dip your stuffed cinnamon rolls in eggs and milk and pan fry the cinnamon rolls to your liking. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the rolls and cover with hot syrup!

On Christmas Day, we grilled steaks in the snow and ate them with green bean casserole and baked sweet potatoes. We shared my pumpkin roll for dessert. I did not make the pumpkin roll, it was a Whole Foods special!!! After our Christmas Dinner, we opened our only Christmas gift to each other. Well... it wasn't really wrapped, so I guess we didn't open it, but it was a big secret to both of us. Since we didn't buy Christmas gifts, we wanted to do something fun and surprising for Christmas, and this is what we came up with: Our 5th Anniversary is this May, and we could not decide what we wanted to do, but we both knew we wanted to travel somewhere we have never been. Originally we wanted to travel to Europe, but the time and money it takes to go overseas will probably be postponed to our 10th anniversary. So last week, we each picked 5 places in the states we really want to visit in May for our anniversary, and of our picks, we narrowed down our favorite destinations to 5 places. We made a pact to put the 5 places on paper and draw our 5th anniversary destination on Christmas Day! Our 5 destinations were 1. Seattle and Portland - Michael's 1st pick, My 3rd pick 2. Las Vegas - Michael's pick, I prayed that we would not draw Vegas! 3. Key West - Michael and I both picked Key West 4. San Francisco and Napa - Michael wasn't too enthusiastic, My 2nd pick 5.New York and Boston - Michael's 3rd pick, My first pick! Here are the pieces of paper ready to be drawn!!!!

Michael did the honors of drawing our destination. We went through the places he didn't pick first:

And number one.....Las Vegas! Whoo Hoo! Thank You Jesus!

And number two....Key West! Kinda sad but we went to the beach on our honeymoon

And number three.....Seattle/Portland! It would have been cold anyway!

And now we are down to my two favorite places....I can't lose....and the second runner-up was San Francisco/Napa Valley

We are going to New York and Boston!!!!! My first pick! I am so excited! We have never been to either city, and I think we are going to have an awesome time! We are already booking our hotel in New York tonight! It's official and there's no turning back!

Merry Christmas to us and cheers to celebrating a very happy marriage!