Our Life in the Yellow Brick House

Since Christmas is almost upon us, I thought I'd share some of the holiday treats I've given this season. I always see cute ideas for packaging online, and I want to try them out. Figuring out what to put in them is always my challenge. I struggle with baking. Not all of us are blessed with baking talents like my cousin, Blair. She even makes her own marshmallows and has a blog to prove it! Take 1: Puppy Chow I decided that for my Student Foundation executive team I would make them a little bag of puppy chow to thank them for all the time they've dedicated this past semester. I like the holiday treat mixes with almond bark, pretzels and Christmas M&Ms, but there's something about puppy chow that makes me feel like a kid again. Probably because I still have vivid memories of eating it at Beth Berkenbile's house during play dates. Unfortunately the store was out of Chex cereal, and I had waited until the night before to make the treats, so I grabbed the off...

    Last week was a lesson in flexibility. I posted way back in March that we had ordered a new front door and it would be in "soon." I had no idea it would be another FOUR months before it arrived. This has been an extremely frustrating experience and, needless to say, if we could do it all over again, we would go with a different company. At first I was excited, then overwhelmed, then frustrated, then angry and finally just over it. By the time our door was being installed last week, I expected things wouldn't go smoothly and unfortunately, I was right. Normally this would have been really upsetting, but when things are somewhat out of your control, you just have to roll with the punches. I came to this realization when baking a cake to celebrate our newly installed door. I had a plan all worked out. I was going to make a orange cake with poppy seed filling, butter cream frosting and a red door on the front. (I was taking it to an OSUF meeting so I thought the orang...