Post-Turkey Coma & Chris-sus

I'm sad the turkey leftovers are gone. Anyone else? Moving on...

We're into full time "Chris-sus" here in our house! (That's how Lucy says it!) Mickey Chris-sus, Puppets Chris-sus (the Muppets), Garfweil Chris-sus (Garfield), California Raisins (she hasn't said this one yet)...you name it! All we need now is to find the Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph classics. Can't believe we don't have those!

 This is her mini tree that I bought her for her room. It's her very own and we're getting some ornaments for it soon. Give her a little ownership in Christmas!

 She loves the ornaments on the big tree! We find her having little conversations and playing pretend with them. It's precious!

 We went for a walk the other day to the nearby fort. Yep. We have 2 very cool forts near us within walking distance. Unfortunately, we haven't figured out the opening hours, yet, so we usually just walk around the outside.

 Found an antique store in the souq/market. She talked to Bibi on the phone.

CAKE!!! Carrot cake, actually! This is my first cooking victory of the Christmas season! My mom has this amazing carrot cake recipe that uses baby food carrots and I remember it being so moist and yummy! So, I shopped for baby food and came to realize that I never bought baby food carrots for Lucy, I just made them, so why not make them for this cake!?!? (I'm super mom. ;) So, this cake is 100% made from scratch! Yay! And it is DELICIOUS... despite the final bite putting you into a sugar overload. FYI, the icing is so good, it got it's own recipe card in our file! I'll be using it for other cakes!

Recipe as follows:

Sheila's Carrot Cake

2 cups self rising flour

2 tsps cinnamon

2 4 ounce jars strained carrot baby food

4 eggs

2 cups sugar (mom told me after the fact that she usually reduces this amount...)

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

Preheat oven to  325

Grease and flour cake pans

Mix all cake ingredients together and blend well with a hand held mixer.

Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake until golden brown.Allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes and then invert on to cake plate

Frosting

1/4 stick butter

1 8 ounce cream cheese, softened

1 16 ounce box of confectioners' sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients with hand held mixer and blend until smooth and creamy. 

Frost layers, top and sides of cooled cake.