To market, to market ...

Yesterday Rick, the boys, and I took a drive down to Safeway to pick up a few things before Christmas. I had my little Olympus camera with me and had fun snapping some pictures while we were driving. Normally, we do most of our shopping in Kalispell, which is about 20 miles north of where we live. This particular time we went south to the town of Polson. We drove along Flathead Lake, which is a little over 30 miles in length.

The sunset was gorgeous over the lake last night, so we stopped at Yellow Bay State Park to take a few pictures. The picture of the crawdad was taken there, but sadly, the poor thing was dead. I had to laugh when I looked at my pictures. It's just not something most people see on their everyday, average trip to the grocery store, especially not where I originally came from.

SF Chocolate Peppermints

It's that time of year -- time for cookies, cakes, pies, candies, and all that good stuff that makes us want to start a diet on New Year's Day. I decided to try something new and came up with these sugar-free chocolate candies. They are only about 55 calories each and have 0.7 net carbs per serving. That's not too bad, considering I eat low-carb.

SUGAR-FREE CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINTS

4 squares unsweetened baking chocolate
3/4 cup Xylitol
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
sugar-free candy cane, crushed

Place sugar-free candy cane (or sugar-free Starlight mints) into a plastic baggie, and crush with a rolling pin or wooden spoon. In a double boiler, melt chocolate over medium heat until smooth. Stir in Xylitol and mix well. Add heavy whipping cream, and stir until chocolate is smooth. Remove from heat. Add peppermint extract to the mixture. Drop by teaspoon into mini baking cups. Top with crushed candy cane. Refrigerate two hours or until set. Keep refrigerated for best results. Makes about 22-24 candies.

Edit, edit, edit ... grrr, grrr, grrr!

If I don't dream about this bear tonight, I will be very surprised. I've been working on editing one of my middle grade novels pretty much non-stop since Friday evening. It's taken up nearly all of my time. I think my eyeballs are going to fall out. Line edits are tough. It's amazing how you can read something over and over and over, and yet, still not see an obvious error. It doesn't even have to be a spelling error. Sometimes it's something as simple as a space, a comma, or have a quotation mark go the wrong way. It makes me want to pull my hair out. I think I'm almost done ... I think, I think!

The reason I posted this picture is because this is my bear story. It's titled ENCROACHED and it is about a bear encounter. I've been playing around with the idea of self-publishing a copy of the book on Lulu. Has anyone used them before? I haven't decided if I'm going to actually self-publish the book yet. Right now I just want to get it to a certain stage and then have one copy printed up. I think seeing it will help me decide. My other two middle grade stories are both under contract, but I'm not sure when they'll be released. ENCROACHED is my newest one. I haven't submitted it much. I've been playing around with the idea of getting a copy for myself to see how it looks. Maybe by seeing it, I can get a better feel if it's a route I want to take. The picture is what I have planned for the cover. Creepy, huh?

While I've been at it, I've also looked at other books that are for sale on Lulu. Some are decent looking, but others are absolutely horrible. I couldn't believe a few of the samples of some picture books I saw. It really made me realize how much I've learned since I started writing. I wrote my first picture book eight years ago, but I've only really been involved in it seriously for about six years. Even so, some of the samples of self-published books I've looked at are horrible. I couldn't believe people had them up for sale. It also made me realize just how hard of a job editors, publishers, and agents have. I can't imagine doing what they do and having to deal with extremely poor work. I'm not saying all the books I saw were bad. There's lots of good stuff up there, too. If anything, it makes me appreciate what they do a whole lot more!

ARRRR you nuts?

In addition to Nativity scenes, I also collect nutcrackers. However, like my Nativities, I don't collect super fancy or expensive ones. Stuff like that wouldn't fit in at my house anyway, so it's just as well. I've been collecting nutcrackers for ten years now, but I only add one new one each year.

The one pictured above is the newest. Rick and the boys gave it to me the other day. They know how much I love pirates. Well, I don't really love pirates in that sense of the word, although Johnny Depp doesn't make it easy. It's more of a fascination, especially the Golden Age of Piracy.

Below is a picture of the nutcrackers we have so far. Every Christmas we put them on top of a shelf that holds CDs and DVDs. It's getting crowded now, so I might have to find a new place next year. As you can see, we now have two pirate nutcrackers. The fourth one from the right is more of a Captain Jack Sparrow one. The one on the right of him is a Hawaiian one. That was the year Nichelle did her missionary work and spent some time in Maui.

Nutcrackers have been around since the 15th century. Originally, they were made strong enough to crack open nuts, unlike the ones we find today that are for decorative purposes only. Of course, the ones I have are the cheap type you find at Target for $10 or so. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to collect a Steinbach nutcracker ... or two ... or three.

Christmas Vacation Begins!

Well, our last day of school was Friday, so we're officially on our Christmas vacation now. I think it really sunk in this morning for the boys, rather than over the weekend. Neil came into my bedroom this morning all smiles and said, "No school today!" Anyway, this picture is of a figure I keep with my Nativities. Santa and the Christ Child is a pretty famous story and figure, but mine is pretty small, not to mention inexpensive. I was mostly playing around with the lights on the tree and trying to see if they'd show up. That was hard because they were blinking.

In other news ... it feels like winter has skipped northwestern Montana for now. We've had some snow here and there, but not nearly as much as we usually have this time of year. I see snow in our yard, but it's all melted off the deck, which is weird. There is snow on the forecast, but it doesn't look like much. And, it looks like a lot of it will come after Christmas. I'm curious if we'll have our first Non-White Christmas this year. That will be really odd.

The past few days I've been editing one of my middle grade novels, so that's taken up most of my time since we let out of school. The story is called ENCROACHED. It's about two young girls who venture out alone to camp in the Montana wilderness. I've read the story so many times that my eyes are acting all funky. It's amazing how you can read something over and over, and still find a typo or error somewhere down the line.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Nutty Little Elves

All this week the boys have been doing Santa & Elf crafts for school. They've made some pretty cute things like a Santa magnet made from a wooden spoon and some elves made from wooden beads. Yesterday their project was called Nutty Little Elves. I saw it on Family Fun and thought they looked cute and pretty easy to make. The directions are on the link.

The idea was to make them like the one up top -- just a simple, little elf made from a peanut with pipecleaner limbs. The elf pictured above is one I made. I sometimes make crafts along with them just to make sure they're going to work or to help them if we come across any problems. Anyway, the project was to make one little elf. As you can see from the bottom picture, things got a little crazy. Nathan made these three elves and then designed a snow scene for them to stand on. The little dude on the left is slipping in the snow.

Neil went nuts -- literally -- and made about four or five different characters, including one dog. I can't post a picture of his because I think he put them in his room. He really enjoyed it and wants me to buy more peanuts so he can make even more characters. He said when he grows up that he's going to make a whole world of peanut people. Well ... at least he has a goal.

Candy Cane Cookies

I finally got some Candy Cane Cookies baked. These are always fun to do. I couldn't believe it though because when I went to get the peppermint extract, I had half of what I needed for the recipe. I added a few drops of water and shook that around in the bottle to make up for the difference. It worked though and they are way pepperminty enough. Seriously -- who runs out of peppermint extract? Sheesh. So, I guess MY batch of sugar-flour-free ones will have to wait until I get more extract. Oh well ... sigh.

The recipe is from Family Fun Magazine, which you can find here.