The Sensible Mom

Recipe: Easy Christmas Cookies

December 10, 2020 by Sandra 2 Comments

This is a sponsored post that I shared years ago. The recipe is still fabulous so I’m sharing it again this year.

Easy Christmas cookies — I’m all about them.

In fact, today, I’m sharing a super simple recipe for Christmas cookies and some ideas for decorating them, either on your own or with your kids. I think you’ll be able to tell from the pictures I share below just which ones I decorated and which ones my kids had fun with. 🙂

This Christmas…

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on where my family was at in life this time last year. I could write a whole blog post about that, but the short version is that this time last year, my 5-year-old son, David, had just received his life-saving bone marrow transplant, and we were living between his hospital room and the Ronald McDonald House near the hospital.

We spent Christmas in the hospital. In fact, when I woke up that morning, along with all the wonderful presents David’s nurses had snuck in for him as he slept, I noticed that my son was getting yet another blood transfusion. Thankfully, it would be his last.

But this year? Oh, this year is SO different! It’s different in the most wonderful and marvelous way, because we’re HOME! David has continued to get better, and his immune system is stronger and able to fight for him in ways it couldn’t before. However, knowing this doesn’t make me want to rush out and do a bunch of things we may have “missed” last year.

No, instead, we’re remembering to celebrate Christmas in simple ways, because believe it or not, while we expected Christmas to be simple last year… friends, family, and people we didn’t even know blessed our socks off with so many gifts! And let me tell you, those gifts helped to encourage David to take yet another dose of one of his many medications or go through yet another painful this or that. 🙁

To everyone who blessed us and prayed for us last Christmas, thank you! I wish I could thank each one of you personally.

Searching for Holiday Inspiration

One of the ways we’re celebrating a simple Christmas is by making holiday treats at home. Because when we do this, we also get the benefit of creating sweet memories together in the kitchen.

I own a couple of cookbooks that I ~~can’t live without~~ like using on a regular basis, but I also enjoy using my Asus Intel Tablet to look for recipe inspiration on Pinterest. In a previous post, I talked about how easy it is to use my tablet to stay organized, but it’s also handy and small enough to keep in the kitchen, either to search for new recipes or to follow a recipe you might be trying for the first time.

I said it in my last post, but I’ll say it again… I love the screen quality of the Asus Intel tablet. It’s amazing. It makes looking for new ideas on Pinterest even more enjoyable. 🙂

Easy Christmas Cookies

As for the treats, besides recently making chocolate pretzel bites for the first time, over the weekend, we also whipped up my favorite Christmas cookies ever.

Trust me. They’re delicious without any additions. But when you “frost” these cookies with melted white chocolate and sprinkle on a little red and green colored sugar, well, that’s when they become my favorite. 🙂

There’s no right or wrong way to decorate a Christmas cookie… at least not in my house. The possibilities are endless, especially when children are involved. 😉

However, here are just a few ideas for toppings when it comes to Christmas cookies:

And here’s the printable version of my favorite Christmas cookie recipe:

Easy Christmas Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened (use softened coconut oil for dairy-free cookies)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour (white whole wheat flour works great as well)
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
sprinkles, colored sugar, frosting, melted chocolate chips, red and green M&M's (optional for decorating)

Instructions

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl and using a mixer on low speed, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes). Then beat in the vanilla extract. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Slowly beat the floured mixture into creamed mixture until the ingredients are all incorporated.
Using a 1 tablespoon measuring spoon (so that the cookies are the same size) and an additional spoon (to help scoop the dough out of the measuring spoon), measure out the cookies and drop them onto an ungreased baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
Roll each cookie into a ball, and then using the back of a spoon or your palm, gently press down on each cookie to slightly flatten it.
Bake cookies for 10 minutes. Then remove them from the oven and allow them to cool completely.
Optional: Decorate cookies using frosting, melted chocolate, sprinkles, M&M's, and colored sugar. This recipe makes approximately 38 cookies.

https://thesensiblemom.com/2020/12/recipe-easy-christmas-cookies/

This Christmas season is one I’m holding near to my heart. It’s a reminder of God’s grace and how far David has come over the past year. I think keeping this entire month simple has been a meaningful reminder of how absolutely blessed we are. 🙂

Do you make Christmas cookies with your kids? What are some of your favorite holiday treats?

10 Goals for the Week

December 8, 2020 by Sandra Leave a Comment

What a weird year it’s been, huh? You hear a lot of people say that this has been the worst year of their lives, and while that’s definitely not the case for me (my worst year was in 2013 when my son was sick with an extremely rare disease), I can understand why people believe that 2020 is the worst year ever.

Let’s hope for much better in 2021, which happens to be right around the corner. While we wait to cross over into a new year, I want to get a few things done and I know setting goals will help make that happen.

So here are my goals for this week:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Shop for the items we need to celebrate David’s 7th “Transplant Birthday”

2. Work on Spanish with the kids

Personal Goals:

3. Lift small handheld weights 4x

4. Walk at least 200 minutes on the treadmill

5. Drink apple cider vinegar 4x

6. Journal 2x

Home Management Goals:

7. Touch up paint on the ceiling — not the whole ceiling, just certain areas

8. Fill a bag with items to donate

Business Goals:

9. Publish at least two blog posts

10. Shoot, edit, & upload at least one new video to my YouTube channel

What are your goals for this week?

10 Goals for the Week

October 27, 2020 by Sandra Leave a Comment

Helllllooooo! It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post and I feel like I want to get back to blogging. I know there probably aren’t many of you that actually visit my blog regularly anymore (why would you?) but maybe I can get something started here again.

I felt the desire to start writing here once more after I made a recent update to my blog’s PHP (a scripting language my blog runs on). You see, these days, I rarely visit my own blog but I did the other day. And while I was updating things on the backend, I saw a message that I needed to update my blog’s PHP if I wanted all of my plugins to work correctly.

No problem, I thought. I had updated a friend’s PHP on her website a few months ago, with no issues at all. I could quickly log into my web host and update my PHP to a newer version and be good to go in minutes. No sweat.

Then I broke my blog. 😮

Yes, I followed a set of quick instructions I’d found online on how to update my PHP in HostGator (my web host) and when I subsequently refreshed my blog, I received the dreaded white screen with an error message. My blog was “gone.”

Okay, it wasn’t really “gone,” but it was no longer displaying because there was now an error created by the PHP update that needed to be dealt with in order to fix my blog.

Also, I decided to make this update around 1:00 AM. Why did I do this??? 😛

Now a year or two ago, if this would have happened in the middle of the night, I might have panicked. This time, I didn’t. I wondered if I should just shut down my blog and forget about it. I actually considered this and thought maybe I would just be done with my blog. Maybe it was over and I felt okay about that…for a moment.

Then I decided that I’d try to fix my blog and see if I could figure out my problem. If I could fix it, great. If not, maybe it was time to end it all. So I got to work. I started trying things and deleting files that I thought might be causing the error.

And after about an hour or so, my blog was back up and running! I’d found the problem files and actually made my blog better in the process because I deleted a bunch of clunky files on my web host that didn’t need to be there.

And guess what? In the process of trying to figure out how to get my blog back up, something happened. I felt a desire to start writing here again. It was an unexpected feeling but welcome. I found out that I miss blogging and I want to get back to it. But this time, I’m going to hold back less.

I’m going to write about whatever I want to write about and not simply what is ‘safe’ in the world of blogging. I’m going to be less politically correct and write about whatever I want. I hope you don’t mind. 🙂

Today, I’m going to start with something simple, my goals.

Here are my goals for this week:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Make a fall treat with the kids

2. Work on Spanish with the kids

Personal Goals:

3. Lift small handheld weights 4x

4. Walk at least 200 minutes on the treadmill

5. Drink apple cider vinegar 4x

6. Journal 2x

Home Management Goals:

7. Wipe small marks on the walls with a Magic Eraser

8. Fill a bag with items to donate

Business Goals:

9. Publish at least two blog posts

10. Shoot, edit, & upload at least one new video to my YouTube channel

What are your goals for this week?

Juicer Recipe: Carrot, Celery, and Apple Juice

July 10, 2020 by Sandra 8 Comments

A few years ago, I watched the film Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.

After watching the documentary and learning about the amazing health benefits associated with juicing, I knew we needed to give it a try. Ruben and I had already started making changes to our family’s diet, and juicing sounded like another great way to improve our overall health.

Plus, juicing helps you lose weight.

Juicer Recipes

Now after we researched juicers and chose the one we thought would be right for us, the next thing to do after it was delivered was to search out juice recipes to try. I found several that I printed out and had on hand during my very first juicing experience.

You know… because I was terrified of throwing ingredients into the juicer and ending up with a crazy-weird-gross concoction that nobody would drink except for me.

Thankfully, I quickly learned that it’s hard to mess up juice, and it’s actually very easy to come up with simple recipes that you can remember as you go.

Today, I’m sharing one such recipe.

It’s for a deliciously healthy carrot, celery, and apple juice.

All you need to make this juice is six carrots, two stalks of celery, and two apples. If you want to give it a little punch in flavor, you could add one-fourth of a lemon or even a small piece of ginger.

I’m personally not a fan of ginger in my juice, but lemon, I love.

Here’s the simple recipe:

Carrot, Celery, and Apple Juice

Ingredients

6 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 apples

Instructions

Wash and trim produce. (I like to peel the carrots. My husband likes to leave the skin on. Either way is fine.)
Turn on juicer and add ingredients one by one. Transfer juice to a glass and enjoy!

https://thesensiblemom.com/2020/07/juicer-recipes-carrot-celery-apple-juice/

Kid-Friendly Juice

Now, my two-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, loves this juice! She actually drinks just about anything that comes out of the juicer, and that makes me a very happy mama.

While she normally drinks her juice straight from a mug or mason jar, sometimes we get a little fancy and use our special tea cups.

Her expression says it all. 🙂

Now, if I could only get my other four kids to adore carrot juice as much as she does!

They prefer juicer lemonade. 😉

What are some of your favorite juice/drink recipes?

Where to purchase a juicer: If you don’t currently own a juicer, I recommend checking out the juicers and reading the reviews on the Williams-Sonoma website. You can compare the different juicers on their site here. And, of course, there’s also Amazon.

With so many great fall fruits and vegetables around, it’s the perfect time to start juicing!

Affiliate links are shared in this post.

This Christmas…

Searching for Holiday Inspiration

Easy Christmas Cookies

And here’s the printable version of my favorite Christmas cookie recipe:

Juicer Recipes

Here’s the simple recipe:

Kid-Friendly Juice

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