Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies

I came across this receipe while playing around on Pinterest and it looked so good. Carl loves anything with peanut butter so I knew these would be a hit and they definitly were.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup (packed) brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter, peanut butter and vanilla in a large bowl until well blended. Beat in both sugars. Scrape down sides of bowl. Stir half of dry ingredients into mixture. Add eggs one at a time, stirring well after each addition. Mix in remaining dry ingredients.

For each cookie, roll one heaping tablespoonful of dough into 1 3/4-inch-diameter ball. Arrange dough balls 2 1/2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Using the back of a fork, flatten dough balls and form crosshatch design on tops. Bake cookies until dry on top and golden brown on bottom, about 14-16 minutes. Cool cookies on baking sheets 5 minutes. Using spatula, transfer cookies to racks and cool completely.

Original recipe from http://achowlife.com/2009/03/peanut-butter-or-die.html

Decorating the Mudroom

After lots and lots of searching, I finally found a bench for the mudroom. I'm glad this little room is complete now, it looked so bare before.

So here it is...our new modern little bench. It fits perfectly in this space which was one of the difficulties I was having when I started the search for the perfect bench.

And we put a shelf above the bench and I did some decorating. I'm on a decorating spree with birds, owls in particular. We have lots of them all over our house. Carl thinks its a little weird but I can't resist buying all these darn birds.



Happy Belated Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day...a day late. oops.

February 14th is a big day at the Rivir Ranch since it's Carl's birthday too. We celebrated all weekend and this week too. Also, 1 year ago on Feb. 14th is when we started building the Rivir Ranch, which also marks just over year of blogging. Wow, lots of anniversaries, birthday, holiday to celebrate.

I did a little Valentines decorating in the entry way this year.

And we sent out Valentines cards to all of our family too.

We had a great Valentines Day; we ate at one of our favorite local restaurants and then we got each other lots of gifts. And Carl sent a dozen beautiful red roses to me a work yesterday!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day! 





Timber....The Christmas Tree Comes Down

The real Christmas tree was starting to dry out and the needles were falling all over the place so we knew it was time to haul that giant out.

We laid down a huge tarp in the living room that covered the stairs and the furniture so that nothing would get scratched up.

Then we just unscrewed the base from the tree and laid it down in the tarp.

And wrapped it up and hauled it out back to the pile of other branches to be burned.

When we were setting up the tree we were a little worried about how were going to get it back out the door but the tarp worked out great - nothing was scratched by the pine needles and there wasn't a trail of pine needles either.



Decorating the Rivir Ranch

We really get into the Christmas spirit here at the Rivir Ranch. I love Christmas and I love to decorate which only means lots of Christmas trees. We had a total of 10 trees set up in the house this year. They varied in size from 2ft to 10ft. Here are few pictures of the main trees.

Here is the most impressive of them all. Our 10ft real Christmas tree decorated with ornaments that we've collected over the years.

In the dining room, we had the mitten and stocking tree.

Then in the library the tree was decorated with all gingerbread men.

In the master bedroom, we had a tree with all reindeer ornaments.

And upstairs on the landing, I decorated the tree with all pink, purple and lime green glittery ornaments.



All of the other trees were just decorated with Christmas bulbs. Christmas was the holiday that I was looking forward to the most when we were building the house because I knew I would have lots of space to decorate. I absolutely loved decorating for Christmas this year and can't wait until next year.







Christmas Day

I must have been good this year because Santa was quite generous. We started off our Christmas celebrations with Carl's family on Christmas Eve. His mom made a big lunch for everyone and we played games and opened gifts. Carl's parents got us a new wheelbarrow, something we definitely needed and some other little gifts. Later that evening we went to church with the whole family and had dinner with Theresa's side of the family.  Then on Christmas day, Carl and I opened the presents we bought for each other. We got a new iPad2 and a computer. We also got each other a bunch of fun stocking stuffers.  Later than morning, we went over to my parents house for brunch and more gift opening. My mom always makes sausage, biscuits and gravy on Christmas and it's something I look forward to every year, it's so good! My family got me a new sewing machine, this is something I'm going to learn how to do in 2012, along with a bunch of sewing accessories, books, Christmas ornaments, cupcake and cake pop things and a Fiestaware tablecloth. Carl got some great things too, he got some new sandals, John Deere t-shirts, flashlights, ladder, a big box of bacon and the highlight gift of this year - Air Soft Gun. My dad got the guys air soft guns and they shot everyone and everything all day.

Here Granny is opening her Christmas gifts and Carl is behind her shooting Harmon who is on the other side of Granny behind the Christmas tree.

Spencer took cover under some boxes but he was still a target.



Then Carl and Spencer began to shoot each other, they were only about 10ft apart. You can see Spencer's feet covered by a box and he his hiding under his new beach towel while Carl hides behind the giant chair. When this shoot out began I was sitting in the chair hiding under the chair cover caught in the crossfire.

Spencer got us this giant lawn chair. It will make for some good laughs this summer when we get it out at the family get-togethers.



Our grandparents, were also really wonderful and bought us gift cards to several restaurants and my Grandma Betty gave us some money to get a new bench for our mudroom. I have already bought the bench and its in the mudroom now. I love it.

Thank you everyone for making our Christmas so wonderful!!!

A Christmas Tradition

Since Carl and I began dating in 2008, we have been taking our parents to our local theater for the Christmas musical each Christmas. We have hosted this dinner at several different places the last four years. In 2008, this dinner was the first time that our parents met each other and we made dinner at Carl's apartment and saw 'The Christmas Carol'. Then in 2009, we were engaged and we went out to dinner since Carl lived at the lake and the house was really small and that year we saw 'The Sound of Music.'  We were married in 2010 and I moved to the lake with Carl, it was a really small house but we managed to host the dinner at the house and everyone just squeezed in. 'Annie' was the musical in 2010.  For our 2011 Christmas dinner, we were moved in to the new house and I could finally put together a proper table setting. I was quite excited about this, I was able to use all my red Fiestaware dishes and I found the idea of using the logs, greenery, candles and roses from Pinterest. For dinner we made a beef roast, corn casserole, twice baked potatoes, candied carrots and mini peanut butter pies. This year we saw 'Miracle on 34th Street', it was a really great show, actually all the shows have been really good.