5 Minute Magic Bars

These bars are a must when it comes to Christmas baking. So simple, so easy, so delicious. It has to be one of my favorite recipes because you literally just throw the ingredients in the pan, toss it in the oven and voila....magic. Truly delicious.

MAGIC BARS

1/2 cup butter, melted

1-1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs

1-1/2 cups of sweetened flaked or shredded coconut

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup of chopped pecans

1 can sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and have a 9x9 baking pan ready. I would lightly grease the sides of the pan.

Melt the butter and pour into the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs evenly over the butter. Sprinkle the coconut over the crumbs. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the coconut. Sprinkle the pecans over the chocolate chips. Finally, drizzle the sweetened condensed milk over all ingredients. Do NOT mix the ingredients together, just layer them.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 mins or when the topping is a nice consistent golden brown.

SIMPLY DELICIOUS. If you haven't managed to eat the all, make sure you refrigerate. Also freezes well.

Hope you enjoy!

Fall Is Here

It's getting chilly out here! I think Halloween was our last warm day, we reached 17 degrees that day. It was perfect weather for trick or treating too. We got the porch all decorated and pumpkins carved the night before. Of course Emily didn't get the whole point of this Halloween business at all - maybe next year. All in all she was great amusement for us and the neighborhood.

Of course she got dressed up...we called her our Little Ill-mannered Flower. As soon as the Halloween decorations came down, the Christmas lights went up. Deryck figured we'd better get them on the house before the weather got way too cold...it did snow today!

We look forward to the Christmas holidays. Okay, we look forward to the turkey dinner and stuffing ourselves silly! Can't forget Grandma's Sweet Potatoes and Apples!! The shopping is pretty much done - yaahoo! Let's just see if we can get things mailed off in time to make it out to the coast.

Anyhoo, I started this post this afternoon - it's now 7 pm! Time to get Miss Stinky-pants to bed.

Thinking of you all, VAL

Stamping/Card Making

Deep in the crawl space hides a little oasis of stamping/card making supplies. I have my table and chair, my bins with all of my stamps, inks, embellishments, papers, tools, etc. I hadn't been down to my stamping area in some time but have recently gotten back into it. I forgot how much I enjoyed it. (The crawl space is a quite large and I can almost stand up in it and it is heated as well so that makes it quite comfortable...just in case you were picturing me lost somewhere underground...) The only problem with going down there is the kids know where I am. LOL. Addy LOVES to make cards so quite often we both go down there, but when Presley is old enough to want to do this, we are going to have to find another place. There isn't room for all 3 of us around my table.
I thought I would share a couple of cards I have been working on. Hope you like them.

Halloween at the Cattermole's

Halloween was so wonderful this year. Of course, I always enjoy it. What's not to love....decorating the house, getting all dressed up and at the end of the night coming home with loads of "FREE" candy! My kind of fun. It was especially fun this year because the weather was just perfect and both the kids were sooooo into it. In fact, they didn't want to stop trick or treating, however I couldn't fit one more treat in the huge bag we brought with us.

Presley was quite funny, she reviewed every piece of candy she got while at the person's door and most of the time told me she "needed" to eat it right away.

This year the girls went in their same costumes as last year. I knew Addy would want to be spiderman again but I had this super cute monkey costume for Presley to wear (left over from when Addy was her age) but at last minute she decided she wanted to be Pooh Bear the Bee again. Only thing is she thought she was just a bumblebee and that Pooh Bear wasn't part of the costume, so when we'd go to people's houses they would say....awww look at Pooh Bear dressed up as a bee and Presley would say back....I'm not Pooh Bear you silly billy, I am just a bumblebee and laugh at them. It was quite funny.

A couple of times through the night I ended up losing Addy (well not really losing her but...) she had found a couple of friends trick or treating on the street we were on and told me we needed to catch up to them. I told her we eventually would but let's hit every house we could (*wink *wink). Apparently that wasn't good enough for her because all of a sudden she was off running with her friends and their parents and Presley and I were left to trick or treat alone. :)

We all ended up having a great time and I have REALLY enjoyed eating all the little chocolate bars that came home with us. Good thing the girls are still young enough that they don't mind sharing with their mom and don't really notice when half the bag of treats have been eaten either....lol.

Hope your Halloween was just as fun.

Hello Family,
I just thought I would share with everyone that Jackson scored his first goal in hockey Saturday morning. I wish I had my camera with me because the look on his face when he scored was priceless!! He started hockey in the middle of September and I can't believe how quickly he's improving his game. I signed him up for a rec skate class on Thursdays and I think the extra 45 minutes of skating is really helping him. Ryan wants to start skating too, but I have to go to Nanaimo for the classes and do you think they have a level one and a level 4 at the same time? Of course not!
The boys had a hoot trick or treating this year. Ryan was always at the back of the pack running and yelling, "wait for me guys".
Lots of love,
Michelle

Staying in touch

Hi everyone! Thought I'd let you know what Tom and I are up to in the hopes that we will keep getting more of us participating in the blog. It's so great to hear whats going on with every-one.There's a huge gap in the grapevine. Ken, I hope you read this because this might be your only happy birthday wish from us.Tom and I both have minds like sieves,so remembering on Nov. 3rd is a little iffy.Happy Birthday Ken! I learned a new word from the radio today. Technophobia.It means you can't do anything fancy with a computer (or a remote control or change the clock in your vehicle). I think I could be infected by this disease and that is why I won't be sending you any of our latest pictures. Other than that, we are both well and keeping pretty busy. Lately we've been thinking about what we might do to prepare for retirement. Well, my retirement at least.Tom might not retire until they kick him out. Seriously though, we'd like to move.That means we probably should do a few updates to our house in order to sell it more easily. First thing on the list is the kitchen.but...what to do?So in order to get a few ideas we've been out looking at new homes. There's been this event called The Parade of Dreams going on for the past three weekends where you go look at the show homes from all different developers.And what fun it has been for the past two weekends! The only problem is when you come home and have a look around,you get totally dissatisfied with what you've got! Oh well, maybe if I washed the windows. Yesterday we were out shopping for an updated kitchen and today we were trying to get over the technophobia and mapping it all out.with an on-line program. Still not sure if this is worth doing. Anyway,I think Tom and I might rethink building a whole house to retire in.That's about it for now. Hi Jack and Edna. Hope you're happily resettled at home Ken and Allison. Is everything o.k.at Mark and Kama's? Not suffering too badly from empty-nest syndrome? Hope you're enjoying married life Dave and Gail. Love the pictures Deryck and Val. And everybody else,have a hug from us.

Tom and Linda