Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Brownies

My extended family has been having weekly dinners of late, and since we divide up the cooking and potluck it, I have had to come up with some new things we haven't tried. Somewhere along the line it was decided that I made yummy desserts, so I often get to make the best part of dinner. A couple weeks ago I was craving something with peanut butter but just couldn't find what I was looking for. In the end I combined a few brownie and peanut butter bar recipes and the result was a gooey perfect brownie that is incredibly yummy!


Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Brownies

• 9 TBSP butter (if you use unsalted add 1/4 tsp salt)
• 3/4 c chunky peanut butter
• 1 1/2 c sugar
• 1/3 c brown sugar, packed
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 c chocolate chips (semi-sweet)

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9 x 11" pan

Sift flour into a bowl then whisk in baking powder. Set aside.

In another bowl cream together butter and peanut butter until smooth (not counting the chunks from the chunky peanut butter of course). Beat in the sugars until combined. Add eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl after each is mixed. Stir in the vanilla.

Slowly stir in the flour mixture. Add the chocolate chips, stir until combined. Spread batter into the prepared pan. Bake appx. 30-33 minutes at 350, until golden brown. Cool before cutting.

Serve alone, with vanilla ice cream, or with a little whipped cream.

Easy Canvas Prints Review and Giveaway

Easy Canvas Prints offered me the chance to review their product recently. So when my entire extended family got together for Thanksgiving, and took a family photo, I knew that was the picture I had to use. I compiled three photos into one perfect shot (with that many people it was a miracle we were all facing the camera let alone all smiling) and headed over to the Easy Canvas Prints site.

The site is easy to use but offers no editing tools, not even to rotate the image. I messed around with several other photos to get a feel for the page and found that if you want your image in portrait not landscape layout you need to rotate it before you upload. If you aren't able to edit your photos yourself they do offer image retouching for a fee.

There are several different options for canvas size, thickness, edging, and best of all you can upload from your computer or from either Facebook or Instagram. They let you know if the quality of the photo isn't good enough for the size of print you want to get.

Once you have your photo loaded and your options picked, that's it. Check out and it's on its way. Shipping is faster than I expected. My shipment was even delayed by a snow storm a few days and was here in 11 days.

So how do they look? They are wonderful. I ended up giving these to my Mom and Grandma for Christmas and they loved them. Everyone wanted to know where I ordered them. Next time I will get a bigger size. 8 x 10 seems big until it's a tiny canvas hanging on your wall!

Check out the fam, aren't we cute!

Here's the side of the canvas. I choose to have the image wrap around the sides and it looks neat.

My only issue with either canvas was that the tape that held the canvas in place in the box came off and one of the canvases got bounced around a bit and a tiny bit of print was scratched off. You can see the tiny white mark in the photo below at the arrow. Although the packaging is fine, it wouldn't hurt to add an extra layer of bubble wrap on top of the plastic for times like these. Fortunetly, as you can see, the scratch was tiny and not noticable if you aren't looking for it.





Now comes the best part...
One of you is going to get a Free 8x10 Canvas Print with free shipping to the US (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). Enter giveaway below. And if you just can't wait to see who wins or for anyone who doesn't win, you can use this link to get 60% off canvas prints.

I received all products complimentary from Easy Canvas Prints. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.

 

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Review Suave Family Products

We got another Influenster box! This is the VoxBox of Suave Family Products. We received Men's Body Wash, Sauve Naturals Lotion, and Sauve Kids Mousse. I claimed the lotion first thing, handed hubby the body wash and set to using the mousse in ABC's hair.

First up is the body wash. We all liked the scent. In fact the kids used a little of it in their bath a few times to make the water smell good! The smell doesn't stay strong on you after showering, which is nice. Some body washes have a strong lingering smell that you don't always want. Only thing hubby didn't like about it was that it didn't lather up enough, so to work a good lather you have to use quite a bit of wash and with using so much each time the bottle doesn't last very long.
Next is the lotion. The Sweet Pea & Violet scent was soft and very pleasant. Unfortunately as with most scents I can't use a lot or it makes me sneeze. I have trouble with added fragrance unless they are natural additives. Even though this is in the Naturals line there are very few ingredients that aren't chemicals and the couple that are plant extracts are at the bottom of the list. It also doesn't hydrate for very long and needs to be reapplied often. Since that would mean layering more of the scent on I found it was best to use a little of this as the 'water' base for my favorite lotion bar instead.

Finally I used the kids mousse on all the kid's hair. A and B had performances around the holidays so I used it in their hair. This is not like regular mousse as it sets up a lot stiffer, more like a mousse and hair spray combination, which was great! We used a little and combed it through A's hair to slick it back and B's hair we used it to scrunch her natural curl up and give it some hold. C wanted his hair done too, so we gave him a quick side part with a touch of mousse for hold. It held up great for all their hair types and the scent (we got Cherry Vanilla Bop) was wonderful.

I received all products complimentary from Influenster.

The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.