Crafting for the Holidays

The exciting craft season really starts at the beginning of October with Halloween Costumes. I usually spend the entire month planning, creating, scraping and starting over on frivolous but fun crafts (Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all at once!) that make me feel warm and fuzzy about the holidays! I just couldn't get into the spirit of Halloween this year for the longest time! But my husband more than made up for it! He spent the entire month of October working on a MOVING magical eye to be Allister Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter! (I have a video but have no idea how to post it - I'll have to get Chris to set that up for you to see!)

The kids were easy this year -

A was a cat (black leggings, a leotard that's still too big for her sister, a length of craft marabou, a cheap flexible mask and velvet over-elbow gloves handed down from an older dancer friend),









E was the Greek Goddess, Artemis, from Percy Jackson (It was her vision too - we had the bow, Goodwill for the tunic, Chris made the bracers and leg guards out of foam sheets and I made the cape)





and M was Luke from Percy Jackson (jeans, tee, foam sword painted bronze on one side and "steel" on the other for BackBiter and a foam chest plate also made my Chris).



















I jumped in at the last minute with a "What Does the Fox Say" costume (why do I love that song so much?) - Most of it was already in my closet and I made the mask with glitter and craft feathers the night before the annual party we attend. I actually spent more money on make-up than I did on my costume since I wear so little of it to begin with!

Finally, I got into the mood and made The Pumpkin Hat by Crochet by Jennifer and listed it in my Etsy shop. Turkey clippies and Santa hat are already there so I'm all ready for the next 2 holidays!!

Let's hope that the crafting spirit stays for a while! I have a lot to get done!

Thanksgiving Spread

Thought I'd let you all know that I successfully cooked Thanksgiving Day dinner according the "the plan". We were a 1/2 hour later than I planned to eat but that's exactly how long it takes to burn off a small piece of the plastic turkey bag that hit the top oven burner... That was the only mishap besides the fact that I didn't leave enough time to cook the green beans (they just got served later). I'm very excited that I also got to use my china and crystal for the first time ever!

Remember to use coupon code Black12 through Monday when checking out in my shop!

Gobble-gobble-gobble

Happy Turkey Day from my house to yours!

Sweet Potato Pie - Really?

I don't eat Sweet Potatoes - love the pretty vines, will plant them but, nope, no orange potatoes for me... My in-laws asked for sweet potato casserole - um... I had to start making phone calls. I called my friend who's mother makes everything from scratch. Turns out, it's my friend who makes the sweet potato casserole! Win! That means it's no fail (Sorry, Dudders)! Best part - it's topped with peeps

Wait... exactly HOW MUCH butter? There's almost a whole cup of butter in that between the sweet potatoes and the pecan topping! And sugar? There's less sugar in the 3 pies and pudding than in this "casserole". So here's the recipe:

3 cups of mashed sweet potatoes (but who prints a recipe on how to cook mashed sweet potatoes? Turns out, there's no difference between sweet potatoes and white potatoes in cooking them)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup milk
couple of beaten eggs
splash of vanilla

mix and put in 2 qt casserole dish (um... yeah, so a 1 quart casserole dish ain't cutting it)

top with this mixture:

1/3 cup melted butter
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans

bake for 30ish minutes at 350, add peeps and bake for 5 more minutes

Ready for the oven tomorrow - will add snowman Peeps

Pre-Holiday Baking

I'm the queen of "semi-homemade" - that Sandra Lee's got nothing on me! This morning, I checked me email  to realize that I had signed up to bring pumpkin pie to my son's class tomorrow! AHHH! I love making pies but I had to brave the grocery store the week of Thanksgiving - ALONE! duh-duh-dun... but I'm great at making pies so this shouldn't be a problem!

Note that this is for my son's kindergarten class and it's after lunch during snack time so I think small is probably better. I usually fake a pumpkin pie by using graham cracker crust sprinkled with cinnamon (really, how many people eat a pumpkin pie for the crust?) but the store didn't have the mini graham pie plates or even mini pie plates so I came up with a great, on-the-spot idea - this is for a bunch of kindergartners - Pilsbury refrigerated cookie dough! And I'm dubbing it "pumpkin pie a la cookie" (there would be accent marks in there somewhere if I could figure it out).

Home from the store, I made the filling from the Libby's Pumpkin recipe (sub McCormick's pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon, ginger and cloves) and set it aside to rest. I'll put some cookie dough in a cupcake paper and pressed it to the cupcake pan, topped it off with 1/4 cup of pumpkin pie filling and followed the directions for mini pumpkin pies. I hope they turn out good but I wouldn't know since I don't eat it! update: doing it again, I'd probably bake the cookie dough a little bit so it doesn't bubble up.

PS - do you think speed bake will help?

Holiday Crocheted Baby Bonnet

Update: The Pumpkin Pie a la Cookies were a BIG hit! Several kids asked for seconds!

Handmade Holiday - Let's Start at the Very Begining: Thanksgiving

The first of the BIG THREE holidays: Thanksgiving! I'm hosting it for the first time ever so we'll see if I resort to throwing things into the fire. I'll start out saying that the traditional, American Thanksgiving menu is not top of my list. I don't really like anything on the menu except cornbread stuffing and even then, I prefer it from a box.  Hubby isn't big on the traditional fare either. So we started planning the menu - he's the involved type (yay!). He'd still like a turkey but it doesn't have to be a whole one that we'll end up with a week's worth of leftovers so we put "Turkey Breast" on the list. And he added "Spiral Cut Honey Ham"...

So here's our menu that we're about to go shop for:

Appetizers:
Shrimp & cocktail sauce
Crackers and cheese assortment (chedder, port wine and gouda) with pepperoni

Main Course:
Turkey Breast with gravy
Spiral Cut Honey Ham (easy peasy lemon squeezy)

Sides:
Mashed Potatoes
1 Baked Potato (for me)
Sweet Potato casserole (for his parents - does anyone know how to make this?)
Green Beans and Almonds (still searching for my grandma's recipe - I think she used bacon and garlic and lots of butter)
Pepperidge Farm Corn Bread Stuffing
Stuffed Mushroom Caps
Dinner Rolls with butter we made b/c my kids didn't believe that you could make butter from milk (cream)

Dessert:
Pecan Pie (SIL is sending it since she can't make it this year b/c of work - Hurricane Sandy's handiwork)
Apple Pie with Crumble topping (Yes, I made the sugar cookie topping one recently and it was a hit but this is a fan - ahem, hubby - favorite)
Mini No-Sugar-Added apple cobbler for diabetic FIL
Mini chocolate pudding pies for me and the kids

One thing you should all know is that I do have a Speed Bake setting on my oven so I don't think this menu is too over-reaching and most can be made in advance and just reheated before we serve it (everyone likes it better that way anyway, right). The real $10,000 question is, do I have enough serving dishes and serving ware... You might find me over at Party City buying up the place!

Photos to come in the next installment but enjoy the view of my newest listing: Girl Scout Brownie bows