Fudge is on Everybody’s List

Okay, I am switching into high gear now, how can it be that  Christmas is around the corner. Next week at this time I will have all the kids back home. I am so excited about that.

In light of that, I decided to get going on this baking that is hanging over my head. Fudge is my husband’s choice of Christmas cookies, so I started with him.

I remembered that the recipe is on the Marshmallow Fluff  jar, so I thought I could save time and forget about the recipe box. I don’t exactly know how long it has been this way, but when I read the recipe on the jar, it called for  1 1/2 pkg (12 squares chopped) Baker’s Semi Sweet Chocolate. It stopped me in my tracks for a minute. I was sure I had always used chocolate chips.

So, I pulled out my trusted recipe box, and sure enough, in the good old days, that recipe called for chocolate chips. What were they thinking? I just can’t fathom why they tell you to use the semi sweet squares and chop them when you can simply use chocolate chips. Hmmm

Maybe they are just looking out for our best interests. At this time of year
lots of us have to taste our creations to make sure we did not forget something. It could be that the added step of chopping the chocolate would burn a few calories.

At any rate, if you are wondering, you can use a 12 oz bag of chocolate chips to substitute for the 12 squares of chocolate. I will take a walk and get my exercise that way, thanks anyway Kraft.

It is Time to Fire Up the Oven and Bake!

I looked at the calendar today and realized that it is almost Christmas. Oh my gosh, where did the time go. I still have shopping to finish, and I have not even started my baking. Every year the time slips away faster, and every year I say I will be better prepared next year.

Well, I pulled out the recipe box, and lined up all the recipes that I only make once a year. Each kid has a favorite cookie that they can choose, so you can see why I get a little panicked about this time each year, but thank goodness that I have a commercial kitchen. ( I baked 300+ cookies this morning for an event at church tonight, and it only took a couple of hours. Well, speaking of events, I have to run and get ready.

Here is the families favorite recipe for Christmas Sugar Cut Out Cookies

Have fun decorating your cookies. I’ll share another recipe soon.

The Seasons’ Message

All the songs echo the same theme at Christmas. It is the Season of Peace. The time to reevaluate our priorities, to think of others before ourselves.

In a perfect world, everyone would be more concerned with the needs of others over their own. If that would happen, the world would be what every Christmas song attempts to help us envision.

Well, whether we knew him or not, in our lifetime, we were blessed with a child whose sole mission in his life was to bring the message of Peace. I just heard an interview with his mother, and he was such an incredible person, as is she.

I immediately got the book after I heard her interview, and I have to tell you that it is probably the most amazing book I have ever read. Have the box of Kleenex ready,  but you will truly enrich your life by reading this book.

It is called “Messenger” by Jeni Stepanik. It is the story of her son’s life, as well as her entire family. This boy truly was a gift from heaven, and when you read it, I know you will agree with me. Put this as a must have on your Christmas list for all your friends and family if you want to give a really meaningful gift. It is my top pick for 2010.

Finally, the details!

So, I am assuming since you are reading this that you have finally decided that you may be willing to try your hand at this blogging stuff I keep talking about. Hooray, jump in, the water’s fine.

I told you I would help you, so here goes. First you have to have the idea for what you will write about, and by now, you probably do. So, now you have to make the decision about what platform you want to use. There are a number of them, but I am going to talk about WordPress.

I started out using a different blogging platform, but I like WordPress better. It is really versatile, so you won’t be limited in what you can do with your blog. It does not require that you know HTML, CSS or other techie stuff you may run into if you build a static website.

There are a ton of places you can get free tutorials on how to set it up and use it as well. I will talk more about that later. If you just want to get the hang of blogging, and don’t want to invest any money, you can use WordPress.com.

It is totally free, you just go to: https://www. wordpress.com and sign up for an account. Then check your email and verify your acocunt by clicking on the link they send you.
The first thing you will have to do is login. That will take you to the Dashboard, which is basically the back end of your blog, the place that you use to create and publish your content. Here is a look at my dashboard, to give you an idea of what you will see.

To give you an idea how easy it is to start, here are some brief steps:

Click on”Add New” under post section in upper left corner

• Give your post a title in the specified box
• 
  

Enter your content in text box

• Click on preview in the upper right hand corner to make sure it looks the way you want, if not click back and make changes
• Click publish in the right hand corner
• Click view post

It is as easy as that to start, when you click publish, your blog is visible to the world. To be sure this is a very simplified explanation. There are a great many videos on how to use WordPress. This is just the explanation for WordPress.com.

I use WordPress.org. It gives you lots more options, but there is a small expense involved for your hosting and domain name. You could be expecting that to cost between $10-$12 for the domain (it is a renewable charge) and $7-$12 per month for hosting.

I am going to stop and give you a chance to go look at https://www.wordpress.com. It is free and you can play with it for awhile. I will talk more next time about WordPress.

I am sitting here listening to Christmas music and it brings back sweet memories of my Mom & Dad. Around this time of year, we would be getting ready to make the trip to Grandmas house and the excitement ran high.

We would pack the kids in the van and drive all night to get there. It was so much easier to drive and let the kids sleep. We would be tired, but those quiet conversations while we crossed all those miles were precious.

When we got to Grandma’s (Mom, to me), her cookie jar would be full of cookies, but in the oven were the favorite cookies, her Magic Meringue Cookies, and the kids loved them, they were truly a Grandma specialty. Here is the recipe, I hope you and yours enjoy them too.

I for one hope that I can answer a resounding yes to that question. In honesty though, I am not consistent enough to make that claim. I have good intentions, I think most of us do. But, in today’s society, distractions abound, and it so easy to simply lose our way.

I was taking a class on building a website. The instructor was warning us about one of the pitfalls that many people make when designing their website. It was having too many choices.

You know, when you go to a buffet to eat, there are so many choices, you end up taking some of many things, and nothing is especially memorable. It becomes a blur, and you although you may have enjoyed the food, nothing stands out.

The same thing happens in real life. We all know that there is a great need in our world. Poverty is a very real thing right outside our own back door. As hard as it is to believe, we have neighbors who have no food, adequate clothing, or place to live.

We know that here and in other parts of the world, people  are homeless. Many have no access to health care, clean water, education and so many of the bare necessities of life. Those of us who are in better shape, have the desire to help, but have no clear direction on how to do that.

Sure, there are more charitable organizations than we can count, but the choices of which one to help are like trying to choose your favorite food from the buffet. It all gets muddled together, and in the confusion, we simply don’t make a commitment to anything.

I think that if we could encourage our families, church groups, friends etc to focus on one thing, we could be more effective in our efforts to extend a helping hand. For instance, when I spoke to the director of Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City, she told me that something they are  in constant need of are toiletries.

The poor have limited access to those items, yet they are basic to health and dignity. What if your group would decide that your entire charitable focus would be to provide toiletries to a certain group.  That would be simple, yet enormously effective. If your group committed to keeping the shelves supplied with soap, shampoo, deodorant, for a certain charitable organization, staying focused would be easy.

Your friends group could choose to supply basic staples, peanut butter, tuna, beans. Again, simple and focused would win the race. It would not have to be any more complicated than that. Your girl/boy scout group could adopt collecting toilet paper. The altar society might knit hats, you get the picture.

What could make the impact even great would be to do what Daniel did. His group took seed money and held a fundraiser. They multiplied their money greatly. Then they were able to much more for the poor they were helping.

I know for a fact the we have made a lot of money with the cinnamon roll fund raisers, and you can get more information by clicking here https://www.doughraisingmom.com/join-us or on the box at the very top of my website.

Of course, you can choose to do any fund raiser that fits your group, the main point is that it is worth it to make the commitment. Remember the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principal, and you are sure to have success in your mission to help others.

photo credit: Webb Zahn

photo credit: Rain Rannu

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could “bottle” Christmas cheer?

I have been writing a lot about being an entrepreneur. I have realized something about myself, I am an idea person. I can’t help it, those ideas just pop into my brain constantly, and they won’t stop. So that idea about bottling Christmas cheer, I am willing to share that with all you budding fellow business men and women.

Just think of the possibilities. Humor me for a minute, while I ponder just what such a product might be able to do. Unlike huge companies that take every possible step to protect their “secret” formula, recipe, product idea, etc., the Christmas cheer company will only gain more market share by giving it sway as much as possible.The “pay it forward” theory would be that I freely give it to you, you love the feeling and want to keep it on hand at all times, so you keep coming back for more.

There would be no need to develop expensive marketing strategies, all you would have to do is let the customers experience the feelings that accompany true Christmas cheer, and it would go viral.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. But, I am not a newbie entrepreneur, and I know the steps. That meant I had to pull out the old notes about making a strategic plan. You know, putting your plan on paper exposes the flaws, I guess that is why so many of us don’t want to actually commit our plan to writing.

When I started listing the strengths I began to experience sort of a euphoria. I could envision a world  a world where the most valued career was that of  “The Secret Santa”. Ambition would be fueled not by selfish desires for wealth and power, but by the passion to help other people.

When the fuel for that ambition was running low, simply taking a sip of that magical Christmas Cheer would fire up that engine again. The would be an endless demand for our product. I was getting excited, I thought I had made a brilliant discovery.

Then I realized that I had neglected to fill in the other side of the strategic plan, the weaknesses. I hate when you get to that part, it often spoils everything. I prefer to be the dreamer, but I am also grounded in reality. That is where the perfect picture began to get a little blurry.When I started to list those weaknesses, the top of the list was the fact that most of us lose focus quickly.

Unfortunately, for most us us, that warm and fuzzy feeling that Christmas cheer gives us, fades as a mere memory when we put away the decorations. It gets boxed up and put on the shelf and becomes a faint memory. The same thing can happen in our business.

It is really hard to have the laser focus to keep making the right decisions to move forward. I now realize, that if we can just keep doing what we do well, and center our attention on that one thing, we can jump start our business, and the continued focus will keep the batteries charged.

photo credit: UK in Italy

photo credit: Fatback[Dale]

Here is a fast cookie that everyone loves.

This recipe brings back great memories. When we were kids, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Mom baking cookies. Of course I loved making the cut out cookies and frosting them, but I also love dipping these cookies in chocolate, (then you had to lick your fingers). I pulled up the video from the archives for you to watch. Enjoy, and remember times a wasting.

A Blog Can Help Establish You as an Expert

I know that you may not want to share your favorite recipes if your dream is to open the latest greatest restaurant. You don’ t have to. All of us have recipes that we can share with others that won’t fit into our business dream.

In the real world, we start building our reputation by networking with others, and giving out samples of our food. All grocery stores have people preparing food in front of you so you can sample whatever product they are promoting. You have to do something similar, you may know that your barbeque is the best, but you have to have other people saying that your product is awesome.

Online, you have to have something to offer people to enable them to get to know you. When you begin to share recipes that get rave reviews, people will trust that the product you want to sell will be even better. Therefore, the more traffic your site gets, the more buzz you will have.

I have talked a lot about foodie websites lately. The reason is that it is a topic lots of people are interested in. Recipes are searched for everyday with millions of searches per month. Why not get in on that action? You know that you have valuable information you can share, so do it.

There is a lesson to be learned from the big retailers. As recently as just a few years ago, many of them did not have an active web presence. Now most of them have very profitable e commerce sites. They have realized the incredible power of the web for their business.

The same thing applies to the small businesses. For many of us, starting online will give us the edge we need to succeed. You have heard me talk about the expense involved in brick and mortar storefronts. That is a reality, and can be avoided.

Have you noticed that many of the big chain stores are closing storefronts? For some it is a sign of the economy and they are simply going away. For others, they have seen that they can accomplish sales online without the high overhead of a walk in store.

You may be impatient with me if you just can’t wait for your product to be available to the public to taste. What I am trying to get you to realize is that there is a ton of competition out there with lots of money to advertise. Sadly, competing with the giants is hard.

I said hard, but I did not say impossible. You just need to have the smarts to figure out how to coexist with them. They are not going away, so carving out a way to get a piece of the action takes making strategic decisions.

One way to do that in the beginning is to check out affiliate programs. You start a blog that appeals to many people. Then you not only offer them good advice and how to information, but monetize it with an affiliate suggestion.

With affiliate programs, they are paying people who like what they do a commission simply for talking about what they like about the product. You only talk about something you authentically could recommend to your mother or grandmother.

It does not cost the customer an additional penny. You see, the product owner avoids paying high advertising costs, and is more than willing to pay a commission to folks who love their product. It is a win-win-win.

Many of the big retailers now offer affiliate programs, you just scroll down to the bottom of the website and click on affiliates. All the information to sign up is there.

Last year I used my friends affiliate link to Amazon. I did all my shopping while still connected to Amazon through that link, and she got a commission on all the purchases I made there. I did not pay more for the products I wanted, Amazon just got a little less profit because they shared some of it with her.

You can find topics related to food to promote, and get a share of the money that is made. It is so easy to promote something you believe in because you want others to get a good product or deal, knowing that promoting it does not mean they will have to pay more to cover your share. I suggest that you go find some affiliate programs to include in your blog.