"Sweets for the Sweet"

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day. This post wasn't meant to be about how I celebrated but I find I must add a side note or two. Don't you just love it when you have your day pretty much planned out and then life hands you a detour?!

When these things have happened to me recently, the detours have been places I would rather have avoided-like my daughter's lymphoma diagnosis or the emergency surgery on grand daughter #1 last week. But, this week I got steered to a happy place.

I know I have posted how my youngest daughter and her family have recently moved back here to her home town and how I am still learning to wrap my head around it. Imagine my surprise as I was sitting in the hairdresser's chair on Feb. 14 when my daughter and her 2 youngest rounded the corner to tell me that they had just made an offer on a new house and how they would love to have hubby & me join them for dinner that night. We had had our dinner out the night before as we are old and not so much into the crowds that this day usually brings. Come to think about it, we've really never enjoyed eating out on Valentine's Day because of the waits, gouging prices, etc. But, again, I digress.

We delivered our gifts, heard all about school parties and the new house and had the most wonderful, homemade dinner. It was a totally unexpected end to the day but it truly couldn't have been any nicer and we were honored that they shared this special day with us. Thanks Jen!

And now, back to the real reason for the post. I am not much of a cookie person but there are a few times a year I will make cookies to give as gifts. Since I had a hair appointment on Valentine's Day, I figured I would whip up something to take in to share with everyone. I went to my trusty Pinterest board and found 3 things I have never made before.

The first are called Triple Chocolate Cookies although they really have 4 kinds of chocolate: cocoa, semi sweet chocolate chunks, dark chocolate chips and cherry flavored M&Ms. They are a Brownie type cookie and good if you like chocolate-I don't. But, I think the cherry flavored M&Ms taste like cough drops so if I make them again, I will use regular Valentine M&Ms or the raspberry M&Ms that daughter found and left on my night stand at her house for me on this week's trip to G'vlle. They are yummy if raspberry is one of your favorite flavors as it is mine!

The second is a Pink Chocolate Chip. If you think about it, the only way you can keep a chocolate chip cookie pink would be to eliminate the brown sugar and this recipe does just that. It is more a shortbread chocolate chip and you can really taste the butter, so I like this one.

The last things on the plate are the Rolo Pretzels. They were super easy and taste like a Turtle candy. I got over 200 repins on this recipe so I guess lots of people were trying it this holiday!


The other thing I made is an old tried and true. It is Red Hot Popcorn and the hardest part of this recipe has become finding the red hot candies. It really is a fool proof recipe and so good. I usually bag it up in cellophane bags and add a pretty Valentine tag. This is a picture from last year's batch because the popcorn was all out of the house this year before I remembered to take a picture.


I am off to do some cooking and cleaning for Girls' Weekend. I am so excited!!! I can't wait!!!! I hope I will be back soon with lots of pictures but if not, I will definitely have many stories to tell! Stay tuned.