Christmas Blocks and Caramel Bars

I finally buckled down and finished my Fresh Modern Bee blocks for September. Janice of sewgirly asked for Christmas themed pictoral blocks, so here's what I came up with...

a tree with a mini-dresden skirt and...

a bundle of Christmas gifts. Hope you like these, Janice! Most of the credit for these blocks needs to be directed to Patrick Lose - I took the pattern for the tree from a 1994 magazine of his titled "Folk Art Christmas", and the gift and bow templates came from his "Merry" wall-hanging pattern. The dresden skirt, however, was my idea. And thanks to Lorrie who provided me with all those lovely Sherry Berry fabric scraps for the skirt :)

And now for the dessert portion of this posting. If the first word of the recipe title is "Oatmeal", then it's got to be healthy, right? Even if it contains an entire stick of butter, a mess of chocolate chips, and 35 caramels in an 8" x 8" pan?

I made these Oatmeal Caramel Bars for my sewing group get-together tonight. The recipe is right on the back of this Betty Crocker bag of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookie mix (or you can find it here.) Pretty easy, the hardest thing about it was unwrapping the 35 caramels :)

Well, "Betty's Tip" from the bag back states that you should line your pan with foil to make cleanup and cutting easier. So I did that, but the result was that the entire block was stuck to the foil... really stuck... better than stuck to the pan, but still...

After they cooled completely, I lifted the whole brick out of the pan and decided to cut all the edges off with a big giant chopping knife to make it nice and pretty. Here's a little known (but pertinent to this story) fact about me - I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE CRUST OF ANY BAKED GOOD. So since this is the first time I've made this recipe, I decided I'd better "poison-check" the crusts I had cut away... well they're definitely not poison, but I did almost make myself sick eating the parts that I could peel away from the foil.

It's a very good thing that these bars are going to a meeting with me tonight.

I don't think it's safe for them to be alone in the house with me...