Travel Friendly Cookie Ideas

While you are traveling to see family and friends this holiday season, it’s always great to bring a little gift to them. I love doing holiday baking, so I really enjoy sharing my baked goods. I cannot possibly eat them all without a horrible stomach ache and gaining lots of weight. It’s always fun to get your kids involved in the kitchen while you bake. You could always pick up a bottle of wine or a cheese platter at the grocery store but homemade gifts are so much more fun. I thought I would share a couple really simple ideas to make some delicious cookies to share.  Honestly, it’s sort of homemade, I know sometimes we don’t have time with holiday shopping or parties to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. It may sound kind of boring because the recipes use packaged cookie mixes but it’s all about how to dress them up to make them extra delicious.

Here’s the recipe for Reese’s Cup Cookies, which are my favorite holiday cookie. I don’t know why I don’t make them the rest of the year, they are so easy and so good.

Boxed peanut butter cookie dough mix

Items that are needed to make the dough, check the back

A bag of Reese’s miniature cups.

Mix up the peanut butter cookie dough following the directions on the box. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Make balls of dough and place them in a muffin pan

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until golden brown.

Immediately place an unwrapped Reese’s cup on the top of the cookie and press gently. 

Letting the kids unwrap the candies is a fun job for them. It’s best to unwrap them ahead of time because you have to do it immediately.

Return the cookies back to the oven for 1 minute and then remove and cool.

You can also do the same thing with Kisses. Just roll the dough in sugar.

Sugar cookies are always fun to decorate and give to others. It can be really easy if you use a good quality sugar cookie mix. 

Just mix it up and roll it out.  Make sure you have holiday themed cookie cutters. Let them cool. 

Have fun with lots of frosting, sprinkles, red hots and candy.  Your kids can make a special cookie for their loved ones.  It’s all about the decorating and decking the halls of the cookie.  You can also crush up some candy canes in the dough or add caramel bits for extra flavor and color.

The good thing about cookie ideas I gave you is that they will travel well in the car. The cookies are very sturdy so you won’t have to worry about arriving with a bunch of crumbs.

5 Gifts for Your Car

As you are purchasing gifts this holiday season, I thought it would be fun to feature some of the newest and coolest gifts for your car. If you can’t put a new car under the tree, you can at least have some of the features the latest car might have. It will really jazz up your used car.

Automatic Adapter can help you monitor your car’s health. If you see an indicator on your dashboard or the check engine light is on, it will help you figure out what is going on. It is the same kind of system mechanics use to see what’s wrong with your car. It’s also an app that will report your driving behavior. It will help you know how many miles you get per gallon, it has a GPS with maps and can help you keep track of travel expenses which is great for a blogger like me when I am traveling to or from an event. It will even alert emergency personal if you are in an accident or need assistance.

Magellan RoadMate is a state of the art GPS system. GPS is still not standard in cars and using your phone can be a pain. Some of the features of the RoadMate are the 7 inch screen for easy reading. Alerts when the speed limit changes, and locations of parking garages. If you have ever traveled somewhere where they offer parking garages, you might not know where they are. I remember when we went to St. Louis and had to park in a parking garage, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where it was among all the big buildings.

A portable DVD player for the car is always a great gift. Noah asked me to buy one yesterday so he can watch Minions when we are on the road. He keeps thinking we have one, but we only have a case from his uncle. I can’t believe I don’t already have one with how much I love movies.

For a fun and geeky stocking stuffer there are Star Trek decals that look like the little stick families. I think that would make any Star Trek fan super excited and happy. I know quite of few guys who would giggle to receive it.

For the adventurer you could even give them a driving experience as a gift. It’s not really a gift for their car but it would be an experience of a lifetime. There’s so many of them to choose from. You could give them the gift of driving a race car around a track or give them the chance to drive their dream car for a few hours. Who wouldn’t love that?  

How to Create an Epic Holiday Playlist

I thought it would be fun to write a post about how to create an epic holiday playlist for your road trip this season. Unless you have satellite radio, you have to become creative when it comes to listening to music on road trips. You can try and listen to the radio. That presents a couple challenges, you can’t really have a theme, the stations will fade, and some of the content is not family friendly. My family loves to sing in our used car on road trips. I love to create playlists and even before that, CD’s that would have a theme for the trip.  I think it would be fun to carol in the car to some of the best holiday songs out there as a family. It really helps time pass by.  Here are some tips to help you create an epic play list.

Pick a theme for your trip. If you are traveling for the holidays, holiday music would be fun. It can really have any travel theme or just your favorite songs. They could be songs you listened to growing up too.

Pick songs that you actually like. Don’t just pick random songs that you have never listened to. You might not like it, and then skip it every time it comes on.

Make sure the song doesn’t drive you crazy if you listen to it more than once. Sometimes when you shuffle your playlist, it will play the same song again. Noah likes to listen to music while he falls asleep, and he recently learned about the repeat button. He likes to listen to the same song over and over again.

Have options for everyone and make sure your music is family friendly. There are some songs I like but I would never let Noah listen to, not that they are horrible but they might have something inappropriate in the lyrics.

You may want to create a couple playlists for variety too. You can make a playlist with soft holiday music to play to help your kids fall asleep.

Here’s what is going on my holiday playlist:

Jingle Bells

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Carol of the Bells

Frosty the Snowman

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Grandma’s Killer Fruit Cake

The Christmas Song

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Let it Snow

Silent Night

O Holy Night

Let There Be Peace on Earth

Where are you Christmas

Mr. Grinch

The Whoville Song

Winter Wonderland

Away in a Manger

Little Town of Bethlehem

O Come all Ye Faithful

The First Noel

Jolly Old Saint Nicolas

Do you Hear What I Hear?

All I want for Christmas is you

Merry Christmas

Silver Bells

What’s on your epic holiday playlist?