Thanksgiving Week

I made these last weekend. A Close To My Heart Consultant, Caron Barnard, gets credit for coming up with this cute idea. The tall ones are made with Rolo candies and the small ones with Lifesavers. Their darling hats are the cut off fingers from Dollar Store mittens. My mom gave me tiny jingle bells I glued on top and I used a rubber stamp from CTMH for their faces, just coloring in their carrot noses. I tied two pieces of bright red yarn for their scarves, and three black ink dots for their buttons. I just thought they were so cute and easy. I'll be handing these out to the children in my neighborhood,  and the ones in my new calling.

I'm still Compassionate Service Leader but now I'm also working with this guy as Webelos Leaders. We're excited. We've got five boys and have Dec. planned out. MyMike is the leader and I'm his assistant. Perfect!

I may cook the turkey, but he's the chief carver, using that electric knife deftly. Notice the pile on the counter? MyGirl has been filling her top loader Recipe book with lots of recipes. She's becoming a great cook!

I started next year's 2 page/month photo album. January is done.

One of my mother's oft-used phrases when I was growing up was, "Many hands make light work." Well, this year I really appreciated the fact that LittleBuddy, MyGirl and BigBuddy all helped make Thanksgiving dinner. The youngest two were at the cannery with me on Tuesday and after having my big boy bring all the heavy boxes down to the basement I went down and foolishly tried to put them up high on the shelf where I could find room. . . only I dropped one box as I was moving things around and when I went down to pick it up, I did a number on my back.

So, bless their hearts. For the next three days they picked up everything on the floor I dropped and were all my wonderful sous chefs. BigBuddy peeled and cut the sweet potatoes and took care of the green beans and made several runs to the pantry and basement for me. LittleBuddy mashed the sweet potatoes and added all the special ingredients we love then helped with the mashed potatoes. MyGirl made the cranberry sauce, took over the stuffing, after I cut the vegetables and helped with the rolls, setting the table, and dishes at the end with her dad. I could never have done it without them!

Mom and Dad were with my brother's family in Nashville.  I had asked a couple of families to come over but they all had company coming to town, and then I just felt that it was going to be just fine to just be us, and in truth, it was a very special Thanksgiving to have my children pitch in so much and be so loving and helpful to me. Love and appreciate them all!  And now they know they can do all the work it takes to pull off the biggest meal of the year. Can't wait to see Cowgirl in less than a month too. She's a wonderful cook on her own and I love being in the kitchen with her too. Miss her so much! And, I'm feeling much better this weekend. It just took four full days to let things settle back into place - Such is life!

Thankful Today

I have a lot to be grateful for. Today, however, I am out of photo space on the blog, and not enough time right now to make it right, so here's my candy corn list of the three things I'm most grateful for this year.

1. Life - each year is a gift and I'm grateful to still be in it with those I love.

2. My family. They are my heart, my life, my deepest sorrows and my greatest joys. I accept it all. I'm grateful they are mine and I love them always.

3. The Savior. He is why I do what I do. Every day. Imperfectly, albeit, but still grateful to be here trying.

I'm also grateful for all who care enough to read this. We may not cross paths often, but isn't technology wonderful to keep us this connected at all! Happy holiday weekend everyone!

Recent Recipes

We recently made recipe books at Relief Society. I didn't realize how much I would like this, until I realized that whenever I was printing a recipe from the web, it was ending up in a manila folder. This is SOOOO much better! Now I just slide this in top loaders. Easy!

 As MyGirl and I were going through all my recipes not already in books, discarding what I don't want anymore or keeping what we really loved, we came upon this one, sent from our Maryland realtor on a business postcard. She made it and it turned out wonderfully! Pumpkin roll with cream cheese filling! What's not to like?

I've also been doing plenty of cooking this week.  Comfort food to be exact. I do have a lot of healthy recipes, but this week wasn't one of those kind of weeks. I think because its Fall and the weather's getting cooler and I just wanted to make things everyone would like, since I was often cooking for more than just our family. Here are some recipes I want to remember, that I had "scribbled on the back of this or that." What I really need to do is put them in my new recipe book. Printing them out from here . . . that's next.

This first recipe is my own meatball recipe, but the sauce is an adaptation of Pioneer Woman's.

Meatballs
     3 lb. hamburger
      2/3 cup finely diced onion
      2/3 cup finely diced peppers ( I used yellow and orange baby ones - green and red are good too.)
      1 cup Italian bread crumbs
      1/2 cup ketchup
      2 eggs
       1 tsp. salt
       1/4 tsp. pepper
Red Sauce (double for 3 lbs. meatballs, this much is enough for 1 1/2 lbs.)
       1 cup ketchup
        2 T. sugar
        2 T. worcestershire
        2 1/2 T. white vinegar
        1/4 tsp. onion powder
        a few shakes of Tabasco

Mix the meatballs well with your hands and form into balls the size of ping pong balls. (Because I was giving half of them away I made the full 3 lbs. worth. For just my family, I cut the meatball recipe in half.) Put them into 2  9 x 13 baking dishes with edges. Each pan makes close to 30. Next mix up the Red Sauce. Pour this all over the raw meatballs, turning the meatballs to make sure they are covered.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, uncovered. YUM!

LittleBuddy needed a Mixture recipe for Science, so we made one of our favorites! His teacher requested the recipe.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup pumpkin
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup chocolate chips

(I adapted this to high altitude cooking. I decreased both the baking powder and soda to 1/2 tsp. I increased the flour to 2 3/4 cups and increased the baking temperature to 375. I often double this also.)

If you're not at 7000 ft., use the listed ingredients.
Cream butter and sugar together. Beat in egg, vanilla and pumpkin next. Stir all the dry ingredients together and mix with the wet ingredients just until uniform. Add the chocolate chips last. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

Quiche

1 unbaked pie crust
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups half and half
1/4 cup green onions, sliced
1 1/2 cups Mexican cheddar cheese blend
leftover ham or lunchmeat ham (I used six slices - what was on hand)
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Whisk the eggs and half and half and seasoning together. Mix the remaining ingredients in gently and pour into a pie plate lined with pie crust.

Bake at 400 for 40- 45 minutes.

Chicken Parmesan

4 chicken breasts, sliced thin
1 stick butter, melted, in a cereal bowl
Mix the following ingredients in a pie plate together:
2/3 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. dried parsley
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Place each piece of chicken first in a bowl of butter, coating on all sides, then into the bread crumb mixture, and then onto a Silpat on a jelly rolls 10 x 15 pan. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until done.

Chicken Curry - This is an adaptation of several different curry recipes and my children all loved it.

2 chicken breasts, cut into bit size pieces
4 T. butter
1 large garlic clove, crushed
1/2 onion, chopped
1/3 c. flour
2 tsp. yellow curry powder
2 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup green tomatillo salsa
dash of ginger
1/2  sweet apple, peeled and chopped into small pieces
1 tsp. prepared mustard
1/8 tsp. black pepper
salt to taste

3 cups cooked rice

Condiments:
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/3 cup shredded toasted coconut
4 pieces crisply fried bacon, broken up
3 thinly sliced green onions

Brown meat in butter in a large skillet. Remove from pan. Into the same pan, add garlic and onion and cook 5 minutes. Add flour and curry. Cook 3 minutes longer. Add water and cook,  stirring constantly  until mixture thickens. Add remaining ingredients, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring regularly. (At this point I cook the rice.) Salt as needed when finished. We mix the chicken curry with the rice and sprinkle condiments over top on our individual plates. Will definitely make this again.

Christmas Cards

A few weeks ago I was going to start making my Christmas cards. I spent an hour playing with inks and the Cricut and this is what I came up with. We haven't taken a family picture this year, so I thought I'd find some individual photos and create a collage with them, but then I realized they would be printed 4 x 6 and this is a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" card and so I was going to need to make some changes somewhere. That change turned out to be - I'm not making my cards this year. I already ordered this year's cards from Costco. I'm happy with them, and so this will be the only homemade Christmas card I send. I haven't decided who its going to yet.

A week ago I taught the ladies at the quilt guild how to make a simple homemade quilt card. This was the "block" I decided to have them make. They liked it, but I was surprised how many  (most) had never used a tape runner. Its a scrapbooker's best friend. I use mine all the time. Every hobby has its own tools.  I had a few left over cards, so I'm going to stamp an appreciative greeting on the front and now my Thank-you cards  will be done too. These are 1 1/2 inch squares in the center with those same size squares cut at the diagonal to make the corners.  Keeping it simple. It still works for me.

Here's to wishing you a peaceful Christmas. . . Hard to believe its only about six weeks ahead.

Early November

Just a little bit of what's going on this week. . . Missing MyMike. He's on travel again. Glad he made it through LaGuardia today safely. Finally got a current picture of the two of us together. This one was taken at Branson. Fun memory!

 Finally got MyGirl to pose and smile for a picture. This one is going on the Christmas card. She's working part-time now for MyMike's boss. Its boring, but she's getting paid and its good for her to have this opportunity.

 LittleBuddy doing well on the viola. Despite his serious look and obvious teenage attitude, he's a good kid, and still enjoys hanging out with me, so no complaints. I actually love his musical concerts, but don't dare sit in the room while he's practicing. . . wouldn't want to jinx anything, you know? He went fishing with BigBuddy yesterday. Someday they'll catch fish, until then its good for them to enjoy their time together before BigBuddy goes back to school in January.

Since MyMike won't have to look at the mess, I have a lot of projects planned for this week. Messes will be left out. Chaos will reign downstairs in the craft area, and hopefully I'll get a lot of Christmas done as I stay up a little later than I normally do. I'll miss him, but this is a blessing too.

And, going to vote. He sent his in already. I'm excited to take my two middle children to have their first voting experience. Its a privilege and a duty and I'm grateful for the opportunity to vote my conscience.

And Mom and Dad get back tomorrow evening. We're looking forward to hearing all about their cruise and adventures and spending time with then again. My dining room table is covered with things to bring down for Mom. She missed a lot of crafty stuff while she was gone and we've got come catching up to do too.

Halloween Memories

This was BigBuddy's pumpkin - spelling out the word "BAT" while creating a jack-0-lantern. I thought it was very creative and it held up the best of all the pumpkins that were carved last Saturday.

Why did we pick Saturday? Because we were all home, we had time, and the pumpkins had been sitting around for almost a month, begging to be carved. Unfortunately, Minnie started to develop "cancer," and was rotting, and one of the spider's legs was withering and he was starting to mold inside. 

Indoors, things were not decarying, and we felt festive with all the decorations.

Because our street it so crazy busy on this night, we kept it simple. Our ward was having a trunk or treat, but  opted just to stay in our neighborhood. We left candy on the porch with a sign for people to help themselves. We had dinner, then went up to the Pirates Cove to check out what they did this year.

It was much smaller, and we the children are getting too old to want to do much in the way of dressing up. LittleBuddy wore his dad's hat, "Hair today, gone tomorrow." He wore a Camaro shirt and felt like someone from the 60's.

Mygirl wore a bat wing headband, dressed in orange and black and called herself the Spirit of Halloween.

These were new this year- cut outs for pictures.

We thought they were cute.

Next to the lone pirate ship (not two this year) was a house with a pirate to talk to and a graveyard to visit.

Another driveway had a skeleton chained to the wall and a couple of ladies giving treats.

This is the 2nd pirate ship, below. It was all washed up and declared to be "the remains of the flying Dutchman." Kind of a let down.

I accidentally bumped the wrong setting on my camera, but at least you get an idea of how tall the remaining pirate ship stands.