Finally, Some Crafts!

It appears that my crafty blog has turned into a food blog (which is ok!), so I wanted to quickly get the Christmas cards posted, that sadly I am still creating. Without further ado....
















Some I like more than others, some I don't even want to give away because I like them so much! The colors in some of them are brighter and most of them look better in person.

For Mason's teacher I decided to recycle a box and I am going to fill it with her favorite chocolate from a local store here. I recycled my Tofurky box:



into this:





This is not new to me, but I find that creating/crafting is so therapeutic and it has helped me get my mind off some of the stress that we have been going through as well as how stressful this season is. I was out shopping today and it seems that everyone else was, too! Through the long lines at the stores and the very long traffic lights, I decided to just smile today and not get agitated. What's the point in that, right?

Have a nice {snowy} weekend!

PS. For some reason spell check isn't working and I am NOT a good speller, so just laugh to yourself if I spell a word wrong & I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's back to working by my next post!!

So Much Pain, So Little Time

Goodbye, Girl.




Our dog, Jayde has crossed the Rainbow Bridge and I sure hope she is chasing all the cats that she wants! This past year has been tough on her, with her showing signs of aging we knew it wasn't going to be very much longer that we had her. But this past week she couldn't even stand up and her face said that she was in pain. I didn't want to do it, but I knew it had to be done. We decided to put her to sleep last night, all of us were there petting her and telling her that we loved her. She was about 13 years old. Her story, with us, started in 2004. Dogs Deserve Better had their annual Chain-Off in Happy Valley and we went to support the cause. Little did we know we would be coming home with one of the best dogs you could ever ask for. She was lying under a table (it was hot) and we went over to pet her. Jason fell in love almost instantly. She had such a sweet face, who on earth could treat her so bad? She was about 6 or 7 at the time and we knew adopting an older dog meant that we wouldn't have as many years with her, but I also knew that she belonged with us and ever since that HOT July day, she has lived a pretty good life. She was a formally chained dog, apparently her former owners just didn't want her anymore (their loss). She lived in a dog house that had no floor and was rotting away to provide little to no shelter. It didn't take her long to love living inside! In her earlier years with us she would sleep on the couch all day long! She loved to lay outside in the grass in the summer and she loved chewies when she came in from outside. We already miss her and I swear I heard her when I came home from work today. But I didn't. I picked up her ashes today and they are in a beautiful urn. She will always be loved and always be missed.

Next up, even more good news {not really}! I was diagnosed with shingles-OUCH. I wouldn't wish this on anyone! The pain, at times was unbearable. It is slowly going away, but wow, I have never experienced anything like that before. With all of these things going on, we still haven't gotten our Christmas tree! Every year Christmas sneaks up on me and before I even get to breathe, it's the week before the big day. Oh well, what can I do? Christmas will get here whether or not I am prepared so I might as well just slow down and enjoy the season.

Right now it is time to relax with a hot cup of tea.....

}It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like......

Christmas, of course! Mason and I went for a very chilly stroll last night onto the main street to see all the beautiful lights, decorations and ice sculptures. Once we got walking, it was fine, but boy was that wind chilly! I love downtown at Christmas. Even before we lived here and we would visit my mom and dad during Christmas, I always made a comment about how pretty it was at night with all the lights on.

Ice sculptures:





The gazebo:



The store fronts:



>



The old jail (I got a better picture of it, but accidentally erased it!):



I also accidentally erased the pictures of the 12 Days of Christmas. I imagine the snow will be sticking around for awhile, so I'll just get them again some other time.

Well, if you read one of my last posts were I was griping about my ice maker not working, I am wishing that was my only problem right now! The starter on one of our cars went while Jason was at the drug store! So, I had to bundle up and go get him and, of course, it was the 4 wheel drive. So, now my gripe is having 4-5 inches of snow and no 4-wheel drive! And on a side note, after poking and prodding and shaking and hitting the ice maker, it now works!! There's the silver lining in today's blog!

Some LoL's:





In honor of all the yeast recipes I've been trying lately:



And this is, hands down, the funniest picture I've ever seen. I honestly could not stop laughing when I saw this:


Wait for it. Wait for it.....


...




Ha. Someone (I guess who has a lot of time on their hands) photoshopped human teeth onto sharks. Funny, huh??

Brrrrr....

This morning we woke up to very cold temps and even colder snow. I went outside to check the mail, awaiting two netflix, In Living Color season 1! Wow. I remember this show as a kid and wanted to see some of the all-time favorite characters such as Fire Marshall Bill, Homey the Clown and HandiMan. I forgot how funny the show really was, however, I don't think we will be getting all 8 seasons via netflix, unlike 24, I can stop watching this!! So anyway, on my short trip to the mailbox I saw these:

Little birdy tracks:



They were right next to the chippy tracks, but they didn't photograph too well. I would certainly welcome these tracks over bear tracks! My parents have spotted evidence of a bear, mainly the view they got of him the other night, he welcomes himself to the bird feeders and bends the post as if it were a bendy straw! Scary.

My crockpot surprise was WONDERFUL. I am convinced that anything thrown into a slow cooker will, with time, turn out great! I have yet to try a crock pot recipe that I didn't like and this latest "throw together" meal proves that all the flavors just blend together to make a great meal. I made some brown rice and topped it with this recipe that has no name. It was great and it made a ton of leftovers!



I've been on this budget/wholesome/natural food kick lately, mostly from reading this blog and this blog. They both inspire me to eat healthy and cheap and creative. They are great blogs to follow. I found a recipe to make your own granola. I always knew you could make your own granola, but had I known it was so easy, cheap and delicious, I would have never, ever bought a box of the expensive, sugar laden, preservative filled stuff (not all shelf granola is that bad). I bought some of the ingredients, but most I had on hand, here is the recipe:

(6 cups) rolled oats (not quick cooking or instant)
(2 cups) mixed nuts and seeds (sunflower, sesame seeds, walnuts, pecans, almonds, cashews, etc., chopped)
(1 cup) dried unsweetened coconut, shredded
(1 teaspoon) ground cinnamon
dash salt
(1/2 to 1 cup) honey or maple syrup, or to taste
(1 cup) raisins or chopped dried fruit

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl combine oats, nuts and seeds, coconut, cinnamon, salt and sweetener. Place on a sheet pan and put in oven. Bake for 30 minutes or a little longer, until browned evenly. Remove pan from oven and add raisins or dried fruit. Cool on rack, stirring a few times until granola reaches room temp. Store in sealed container in the fridge and granola will keep indefinitely.

This make a TON (and I mean TON) of granola, so cutting the recipe in half would still give you a lot. I loved that I could control all the ingredients that I liked most, some things I didn't have, so I just added a little more of the other things. It is truly fool proof and delicious. Try it today!





This cost about .27 a serving vs. some granola that cost as much as .90 a serving. Great on yogurt, oatmeal, etc. Yummy!

Have a great weekend!

Can you believe it's December already!!

Some things that have been going on:

*(Un)Turkey Day, of course! On the menu was a Tofurky, regular turkey, mashed potatoes, baked corn, stuffing, buns, cranberry sauce (jellied, not whole) and pumpkin pie! I also made a to-die-for chocolate truffle brownie cheesecake. It was soooooo good!

Tofurkey: (it was delish!!)


Ready to dig in:



Thanksgiving morning I wanted to make a special breakfast, but for lack of planning, it wasn't looking good. Perhaps a bowl of 'Smores' cereal was as good as it was going to get for Mason! But no fear, I had bought a baguette at Panera for dinner one night and never used it. Fearing it had gone bad, I quickly decided to try to make french toast with it, after all, everyone was still asleep so if it didn't turn out, no one would ever know! But it did turn out, in fact it was the best french toast I had ever made. It was so good that Mason had three helpings, Jason had two and I snuck a few extra on my plate while dishing out the extra helpings! I can't eat maple syrup ( because I can't stomach it), but it didn't even need it!






*I've had little to no motivation to go grocery shopping because of the crowds/laziness and it's been too cold to get out of the car (well, not really but I needed another excuse to not have any food in the house for my family!) so I just decided to throw a bunch of odds and ends from my cabinets and fridge into the crock pot and am anxiously awaiting to see what comes out. I added a can of Amy's lentil soup, 2 cans of stewed tomatoes, half a bag of potatoes, chopped, 1 can of veggie broth, 1 can refried beans, some spices and carrots that I had chopped in the fridge, on the edge of going bad (note to self: 2 big bags of carrots = more carrots than one family can eat in a short amount of time). So, we'll see what kind of 'stew' it turns out to be, I might add some couscous towards the end of cooking.

*Mason's 9th birthday arrived! We went to the Waffle shop for a wonderful breakfast and then he went shopping with Grandma and Grandpa for the entire afternoon. He had a blast and it was a real joy to just have some family time!


*After a very cold rain the other day I was outside and spotted this leaf:



GigantoLeaf. It must have been 12 inches long! I have no idea where this leaf came from, all the other leaves look like this:



I only saw the leaf once and it's gone now, it was the biggest leaf I have ever seen in our yard!

*Christmas cards are in the making, keeping fingers crossed that they make it to the post office by December 24th.

*Christmas cookies were baking on Saturday. Mason was very excited to help, then he didn't wake up until 12 noon, so I got most of them done, and wouldn't you know that all the snicker doodles are now gone! They were really good (so I was told).

*Our ice maker isn't working, we take for granted all the conveniences of our everyday life that this becomes such a burden. I NEED ICE IN MY DRINKS!!


Have a great day!

Playing Catch Up...

Oh, where do I start? I have been so busy with getting Mason's party planned and getting the Dogs Deserve Better eBay auction going that I've given my blog a lot of neglect! So, first things first: Mason's birthday party. He wanted a GI Joe theme (I think I stated that in earlier posts) and for some reason I decided to put everything into 'last minute' mode. I then stressed out about making the cake (what if I can't get it to look how my mental picture is looking, what if I run out of icing, what if I can't get the icing color right, what if...what if...what if!!). It drives me crazy!! I had this awful nightmare about a week before Mason's party that I couldn't get the cake right and I had to call Walmart and get a cake made for the party (now, no offence to anyone who buys Walmart cakes, however I've seen enough Walmart cakes on Cakewrecks that I would rather not have one show up at my kids party). So, after 4 cakes (2 chocolate, 2 yellow), 4 batches of butter cream icing, this is what the cake turned out to be:



The Pinata:


The cake after:


The kids (who were so good and very well mannered!!)


Overall, it was a great time. I wished more kids would have come, but what can you do? It was nice to have friends and family there as well!

Here I go again on my quest for the perfect crumpet recipe.



I found a woman online who blogged her story of trying to get the right recipe, so I thought I would take advantage of all of her knowledge on what to do and what not to do. I got a lot of great tips and along the way, I think I discovered the secret. I don't want to get ahead of myself, though. My friend found the 'egg rings' that we so desperately needed for this recipe at Bed, Bath & Beyond. The 2 pack cost around $4. Needing around 8 of them, it got pretty costly. So, Jason went and picked them up for me on his way home from work. Not only was it expensive, the size of them were way too small for the size of crumpet I wanted, so I returned them. I instead bought the large cans of tuna fish (barf, barf) and opened them on both ends (let me tell you, was I ever popular with my cats during this tuna expedition) which was not an easy task. I ended up having to cut the bottom part of the can with a knife because the can opener would not work on that end. Luckily I didn't lose any digits. So, back to the actual "making of a crumpet", I used yeast, but really didn't give it time to 'do it's thing' because, well, let's face it, I'm inpatient. I let it sit for awhile in the warmed milk, but it didn't form the 'froth' that the recipe said it would. But, no fear, I still worked with it.

Here is the start, with the tuna cans (that by the way were scrubbed and then put in the dishwasher, I failed to mention that very important step!):



I found that the longer the batter set, the better the crumpets got (I think this is the secret, perhaps I should have let the yeast 'do it's thing'!). So here they really start to develop:




I had to add water every time I put a new batch on, the thinner the batter, the better they cooked. I thought only having 4 tuna cans would have me there all night, but it turned out that after the crumpets 'set', which really only took a few minutes, I could remove them and spray with oil and get another one on the grill.

Ok, this is the part of the crumpet making that I broke out into a song that consisted of the words, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, I made crumpets, and they have holes, yeah, yeah......It went on for a little longer, but you get the idea!! I knew I wasn't totally out of the woods just yet, because the most important part had yet to be done: the tasting.

Look at those fabulous holes!!


I toasted one and smothered it in nutella and I have to say, it was good. Not fabulous like I'd hoped, but pretty good. I have to admit, I have never tried a recipe so many times over and over to try to perfect it, but I feel accomplished in getting this recipe right and I will be making more. I rate it an A-. So, the bottom line is, let the yeast work and thin the batter and enjoy!!

What goes better with crumpets than tea, of course! On a recent trip to Wegman's I took longer than usual in their tea department. They have amazing tea, some of which is so costly I can't imagine who is drinking this (I bet it's good, though!). I saw some there that was $239.00/pound! I know a pound of tea is a lot of tea, but almost $15 an ounce--wow!! On a side note, as I was walking through the produce section I saw truffles (mushrooms) locked in a clear case, selling for $699.99/pound. Double WOW!! They must be delicious!! Anyway, back to the tea, I found these:



I actually liked the packaging and was thinking of how I could reuse it when I decided to buy it. We have yet to try the fruity wreath one, but the other two were ok. Not as good as the earl grey, but not bad.

I went into Pier One yesterday in search of some Christmas gift ideas. Every time I go into this store it reminds me of days past. The smell, the look, the feel of all their products used to adorn my old apartment. I would, on a regular basis, go to Pier One after work or days off and fill my basket with candles, decorations, fragrance beads, etc., most, if not all, were clearance items! Now, it's just not realistic to have candles burning and cat/dog hair would just fill up decorative pillows and throws, so I have opted for a more 'animal friendly' home! So, it always allows me to walk down memory lane when I walk in there. I took my time, looking through all the drapery and furniture, wishing to someday have a Pier One furnished house! Wishful thinking. But, I did find a little tea mug (on clearance, too!) that made me smile.