Donut Wars: New Year’s Eve 2011

3 Jan
Babyckaes Donut Maker

My new toy!

This year for Christmas I received a Babycakes Donut Maker from my mother-in-law in Virginia. I don’t know how she could’ve known that I had looked at this longingly in EVERY store I went to, but it’s not something I’d splurge on myself. I thought it would be a fun gift; fun for playdates and birthday parties, things like that.

My sister-in-law, Jessica in Virginia received one from her as well, and we spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Virginia with them, staying at my sister-in-law’s house. Between us we have five girls ranging in age from 6 to 12, so we look for fun activities, crafts and special things to do when we’re together, but especially on New Year’s Eve when we have a long night ahead of us.

Since we both got the same gift and my sister-in-law has a large kitchen space, we decided to create a Donut Wars event for the kids on New Year’s Eve, to christen our new Babycakes Donut Makers and to make yet another unforgettable New Year’s Eve for our kids, three of whom made it to midnight this year.

The Festivus Christmas Team, I was their team captain.

The Pinkalicious Team, Grandma was their team captain.

To start our Donut Wars, we came up with two teams based on the cake mixes we were going to use for our donuts. You can use the recipes included in the box or cake mixes. For our first time we opted for cake mixes, although I do plan to eventually try out some of the recipes that come with the maker. My sister-in-law had a Funfetti Christmas cake mix and a Strawberry Cake mix, so we named our two teams the Festivus Christmas Team and the Pinkalicious Team. We paired the kids up into two teams of two and each team had one adult captain. (Jessica’s youngest wanted to be a judge, the two daddies were judges and Jess was a floater.) To make it even more fun, the kids dressed up in funky clothes and accessories.

Common Ingredients for all to use

The two teams were each given their cake mix and a vanilla frosting, all the mixing bowls and measuring cups they needed, a Babycakes Donut Maker, and a counter full of Common Ingredients that they could use for their decorating no matter what team they were on. We set one team up on the island and one team up at the kitchen table with the Common Ingredients between them on the end of the island.

Once we got the teams set up with their captains, judges waiting in the wings, the teams got started.

Here’s what followed:

Some egg cracking,

Some egg separating,

Some oil measuring,

They took turns mixing,

had frequent visits from our primary judge, Abbey,

And the Festivus Team had technical difficulties with some faulty ziploc bags.

but overall, things were going well!

The kit came with its own cooling rack and fork for taking the donuts out of the machine, both of which were very important.

Aunty Jessie helped both teams.

While *some* of us took the opportunity to get a nap in before the big ball dropping later on.

Soon the donuts were done for the Festivus Team

and for the Pinkalicious Team, who actually finished first.

and it was time....

...to judge...

...the donuts!

The judges were each given an index card with the team’s name on top. Each team had picked three donuts or sets of donuts to showcase for the judges. The judges had to go to each team and critique the donuts on taste, creativity, presentation and then give and overall score (just like that show we watch, Four Weddings, on TLC!) Jess and I had prizes for both teams as well as for both captains, so no matter what it would all work out. (We love our respective Dollar Tree dollar stores for things like that!)

Christmas Wreath and Snowman face from the Festivus Team- creative!

Presentation: the 3D Festivus Donut on a spackled frosting dish

Hand-chopped candy canes top the Festivus Teams third set of donuts for judging.

Pinkalicious's VERY pink donuts with marshmallow centers for judging.

Hand-shaved chocolate, shaved by team captain Grandma, for the Pinkalicious team's presentation table.

Beautiful pink and white candy cane donuts from the Pinkalicious Team for the judges to eat.

Overall, a grand time was had by all! We found the Babycakes Donut Maker to be easy to use, to include all of the items we needed, and we loved that we had the option to use cake mixes instead of making the donuts from scratch. With that many kids, it was much easier using the mix than working from scratch, especially for the first time.

A few things to note:
1) The donuts are tiny (so you can eat a whole bunch!)

2) The donut maker gets HOT and the directions say so several times in several different places, but even still we had a burn victim no less. Caroline accidentally leaned against one of them to get a common ingredient and burned her stomach. Hello Neosporin. She still finished out the entire competition, with an ice pack on her stomach.

3) Overall it took about an hour to go from start to finish and that’s with captains and floaters. If I were doing this for a playdate I’d make the donuts ahead and let them decorate them. This would help with time, space and less of a chance of anyone getting burned.

4) One cake mix makes about 42 donuts from our count (so we had almost 100 donuts by the end!)

5) The donut maker has a very short cord, perfect for my tiny kitchen corner that has an outlet right there, but depending on your space you might need to plug into an extension cord first.

I’m glad we have the Babycakes Donut Maker and I can’t wait to use it again (neither can the kids) and to try out some of the “from scratch” recipes. There’s also a zillion different cake mix flavors out there, so no matter what our hearts desire, we can have donuts in any flavor we want as time goes on. Alex was already planning on a baking party for her March birthday, which she’s been planning since October, so this just added to her plans. I see aprons and chef’s hats as possible craft ideas!

I definitely recommend this product if you’re considering it, and so do our Donut Wars Team Participants!

All of the Donut Wars contestants and their judge, Abbey

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Resolutions and Recipes: Shepherd’s Pie

2 Jan

Shopping on a budget takes practice!

Yesterday I shared with you a recent goal that we set to pay off all of our debt in a relatively short time and how it affected our grocery shopping, but not our cooking or eating. I promised to share with you some tips and recipes this month that have helped us maintain our goals of eating good, homemade meals while sticking to a lean budget with a large family.

The first thing I’ll share with you today is this: when we were pregnant with our third daughter, my husband was working full time and in school for his masters degree full time, and I was working my home-based business with a toddler and a preschooler at home with me. I had this feeling of panic before the baby came (some might call it nesting, I call it panic, like a tornado was coming,) and I decided that I needed to prepare ahead as much food as I could for those crazy, early weeks after the baby came. That led me to creating a list of everything I could think of that we ate for our dinner meals so that I could also make sure I had the necessary staples on hand that I needed, since I knew I’d have my hands full and Don would still be working days and in school nights. No matter what our situation, I knew we’d still need to eat three meals a day.

I share this with you because even though I’m no longer expecting a baby, that period of panic/nesting actually turned out to be very helpful. When I made my list of all our meals, it lasted me for seven weeks before I had to start back at the beginning of the list again. That didn’t include leftovers, breakfast for dinner, or eating at someone’s house, for example, so really the list lasted us for about eight weeks of meal ideas. But, more importantly, what I noticed when I studied my list was that if I had some very important staples on hand at all times, I could make almost anything for dinner.

For example, I always make sure my pantry has white rice (bought in bulk) and brown rice as well as boxes of rice pilaf, couscous, rice-a-roni (all generic brand) and my potato bin has red potatoes, mashing potatoes and baking potatoes. I keep several boxes of pasta on hand, as well as wide egg noodles. This way, no matter what meal I make, I have a starch to go with it. You can use white or brown rice as a “bed of rice” under a main dish, or on the side. I keep a taco kit on hand as well as soft tacos (which allows us to have tacos, spaghetti tacos and/or quesadillas as meal options.) I also make sure I always have packets of brown gravy mix and boxes of chicken broth as well as both chicken boullion and beef boullion.

When I shop I always buy a large amount of ground beef, a pack of stew meat, a large bag of flash frozen chicken tenders, a bag of frozen shrimp, a bag of frozen white fish like flounder or tilapia, pork chops, pork tenderloins, and ribs for bbq.

I buy a few blocks of cheddar cheese, salsa and food for salads as well as fresh fruits and veggies and frozen bags of veggies (2 each of frozen corn, broccoli, and green beans. One bag of corn or green beans lasts us two meals, the broccoli lasts one meal.)

And yes, all of this and more still only costs $225 every two weeks.

One of my favorite make-ahead meals using several of the above listed items is Shepherd’s Pie. To make a Shepherd’s Pie is kind of a lot of work but it’s a one dish meal and my entire family likes it and I can make two–one to eat and one to freeze.
From the list above I need mashing potatoes, cheddar cheese, approximately 3 pounds of ground beef, and a bag of frozen corn as well as butter and half & half. (Additionally, I want to note that if I’m using our bulk amount of ground beef all up on Shepherd’s Pie this pay period, then the next pay period I might use it to make one and freeze one of meatloaf or a lasagna instead.) I must also note that this meal is NOT incredibly health conscious, but it IS incredibly delicious.

Here’s the cooking process the way that I do it, and I apologize in advance for not having a “recipe” to share.

1) Dice a pot of potatoes for mashing, approximately 10 depending on the size. Usually they’re about the size of my fist. If they’re bigger, use less. My Shepherd’s Pies are made in two 9×13 glass baking dishes. Set them on to boil. Once they come to a boil, simmer for 20 minutes.

2) While cooking the potatoes, put the 3 pounds of ground beef into a large frying pan and cook it all the way through. Drain the meat when it’s done.

3) In a second frying pan, throw in one bag of frozen corn, a half cup of half and half, salt, pepper and about a half stick of butter. Cook that all together until the corn is no longer frozen. Mix it together with the ground beef and pour into the bottom of the two 9×12 baking dishes. If your frying pans are not big enough to hold all of the meat PLUS all of the corn, split it up between the corn frying pan and the meat frying pan so that you have two frying pans of meat with corn.

Kids can be cheese graters

Kids love to be the cheese graters for this recipe!

4) In the meantime employ a child to grate a block of cheddar cheese onto wax paper or into a separate bowl. If your child is too young to grate cheese, you’re on. You’ll need this cheese to go into your potatoes as well as on top of the Shepherd’s Pie that you’re cooking for that night’s meal. When you freeze the second one, do NOT put cheese on top. You’ll need to do so when it bakes in the future instead.

5) Once the potatoes are done, mash them with butter, half and half and some of the cheddar cheese, remembering to save enough for the top of the pie.

6) Layer the potatoes over the tops of both Shepherd’s Pies.

7) Set one pie aside to cool and be frozen. Put the other in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Everything is already cooked through but this baking time sets it all together.

8) Change the oven setting to broil and take the pie out, sprinkle the remaining cheddar on top of the pie and put it back into the oven.

9) Out of your pantry grab a packet of brown gravy. Add one cup of water and mix until it boils. By then your cheddar cheese will be appropriately crisp and your pie will be ready to come out of the oven.

10) You’re ready to eat. If’ you’d like an additional vegetable, add a green one or a salad or both.

Enjoy!

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Happy New Year! Resolutions and Recipes

1 Jan

Time to get a new day planner!

Today is January 1, 2012, the first day of the new year.  On this day each year, so many people make New Year’s Resolutions, do you?

I personally find New Year’s Resolutions to be an odd thing. I think it is because to me, January seems to be the middle of the year, not the start of the year. I have lived an entire lifetime on a school schedule:  I was a student and then I was a teacher, my husband is a school principal and my kids are all in school. Therefore, when I set goals for myself it tends to be in at the beginning of a school year, not at the beginning of a new year and to me a new year really seems to start in September, not January. For example, this year was the first year that my children were all in school all day long after 12 years of having kids at home, so September was a big goal-setting time for me this year. Creating this blog and maintaining it faithfully was just one of my goals.

However, I will share this with you. Several years ago, right before Christmas my husband and I decided that we had used our credit cards for the last time. We decided that we needed to make some real changes in how we managed our money because the economy was changing and not for the better. My home-based business was not bringing in the mortgage-paying money that it used to, and it was essentially like losing my job, even though people don’t often consider home-based businesses to be jobs, this one provided a huge contribution to our family budget and it was now gone. With careful budgeting and frugal living, we were going to pay off all our debt in less than five years instead of taking more than five decades.

I carry a calculator in my purse for when we're shopping.

The commitment to change came at a time when everything in the economy was going downhill and the expenses were all going up between the cost of gas (nearly $5 per gallon at the time,) food and utilities. It meant that we had to (and still have to, we have 18 months left) make a lot of sacrifices such as not eating out EVER unless we had a gift card (or even better, a gift card AND a coupon,) not taking big vacations, and most importantly, not spending what we didn’t have. We pay cash for everything and if we don’t have the cash we don’t buy it, which is very difficult.

One thing we won’t sacrifice however, is our taste for delicious, healthy, home-cooked meals. We both love to cook and (who doesn’t love to eat, right?) but almost immediately we found that we had to change the way we shopped. We used to shop at some of the larger stores, spending several hundred dollars per shopping trip each week (Stop and Shop, Shaws and BJ’s Wholesale store are the ones near us) but at the urging of our cousin and a close friend, that September we decided to try out some of the smaller, bargain stores. We are lucky because not only do we have a Price Rite near us, but we have Aldi’s as well, which I love. Just by making that one change in where we shopped, we saved literally hundreds of dollars per month on food, which is the same food we were purchasing in the larger stores, without sacrificing what we loved to cook and eat. We can shop for our family of five for every meal for about $225 every TWO weeks–the same money were spending once a week at the big stores. We shop as soon as we get paid and other than picking up milk and maybe more fresh fruit at the second week, we don’t do another big shopping again until we get paid again two weeks later. So for five people, three meals a day every day, we spend approximately $500 a month on groceries or less.

In honor of the start of this new year I will be sharing with you some of the tips, and of course recipes, that we have found to help us stick to our grocery budget without sacrificing healthy, delicious meals. I’m sure we’re not the only ones who have “saving money” as our goal each year, no matter what month the year begins, and hopefully you’ll find something that helps you with your goals and resolutions as well.

Additionally, in honor of the New Year’s holiday I am sharing my grandmother’s French Meat Pie recipe today. It’s a recipe she has made for the new year each year since I can remember and last year she was featured in the newspaper for it. At time I shared it with my Facebook friends, and now I am sharing it with you today.

Grandma Grello and the girls

Grandma Grello makes French Meat Pies for everyone, a dozen of them, every new year.

GRAM GRELLO’S FRENCH MEAT PIE

Posted in the Providence Journal – Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Crust for two 9-inch pies (4 sheets of Pillsbury Pie Crust)

1 pound ground beef

1 pound ground pork

1/4 cup butter, unsalted

1 small onion chopped

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon sage

1/4 teaspoon parsley

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon mace

2 cups water

2 teaspoons cornstarch diluted with water

1 stack of unsalted Saltine Crackers, crushed

Milk for brushing crust

Sauté meat in butter and cook until no longer pink. Add onion, seasonings and water and cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Add cornstarch and cook a little longer; then add crackers.

Let cool.

Spoon meat mix into 2 crust-lined 9-inch pie plates. Divide mixture between the two; about three cups each.

Top each with second crust. Press edges together to seal and seal with fork.

Brush top crust with milk. Pierce holes in crust with fork and bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. Lower heat to 375 degrees and bake for 35 minutes or until baked on top.

Makes two pies.

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What’s a Doughboy?

31 Dec

I found this picture of a doughboy soldier on Wikapedia.

This morning we had doughboys for breakfast, one of our extra-special treats. What is a doughboy? Depends what state you’re in and who you ask!

A quick look on Wikapedia shows one meaning:

Doughboy is an informal term for an American soldier, especially members of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. The term dates back to the Mexican–American War of 1846–48.

The term was used sparingly during World War II, gradually replaced by the appellations “G.I.“, “Troop“, or “Dogface“, but was still used in popular songs of the day, as in the 1942 song “Johnny Doughboy found a Rose in Ireland.”[1] It dropped out of popular use soon after World War II.[2]

Then there’s the ever-famous Pillsbury Doughboy too, as seen here on this book that I saw on Amazon.com.

But still no, that’s not the kind of doughboy that we had!!

Our kind of doughboys are sometimes called Funnel Cakes or Malasades if you are Portugese.

Platter of doughboys

Done and ready to eat!

In basic terms, it’s fried dough covered in sugar or cinnamon/sugar or jelly or powdered sugar and it is DELICOUS!! It is *not* healthy, which is why it’s a special treat.

Don makes fantastic doughboys, and this time when he made them, I took photos for you.

The dough for doughboys is sometimes hard to find.

One thing about making doughboys is you need to find dough. Where we live, it’s easy to find and it’s only $1.00 per bag in most places. When we visit my inlaws we bring our dough with us because there’s none to be found in the south.

When Don is making doughboys for a large group he makes 3 or 4 pounds of dough. The dough is stored in the fridge so you need to take it out a little bit ahead of time. It does not need to rise, but it needs to get the chill out before it’s used.

Separate the dough into smaller pieces.

Once it’s at room temperature, you need to separate the dough into smaller pieces which will get bigger once the dough is deep fried.

We use a regular frying pan, as deep as we have, to fry the dough. You fry several pieces at a time in vegetable (or canola) oil until they are a dark, golden brown color.

Once the doughboys are golden brown on both sides, they can be taken out of the frying pan and placed on layers of paper toweling.

Once they’re done on both sides, we recommend taking them out and placing them on a couple layers of paper toweling, to catch the extra oil as it drips off.

We prefer to sprinkle regular sugar on top, but you can sprinkle anything on top that you prefer.

Enjoy!

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New year, new giveaway!

30 Dec
Scrabble Library Classic

I was so excited when Winning Solutions asked me to review their Library Classic version of Scrabble!

My family *loves* Scrabble. We love it so much that there is a running joke in our family that you can’t marry into the family without playing the game first. My husband jokes that he snuck in and married me without anyone knowing that he never played. We have the big deluxe version of the game, which we kept out in our living room all the time in case we wanted to play, but it wasn’t the most attractive looking big box to have in our “formal” living room.

That’s why I was thrilled when Winning Solutions asked me to review their new Library Classic version of Scrabble.

“For game fans who like nostalgia and style, Winning Solutionsʼ Library Classic Collection, made under license from Hasbro, includes special editions of MONOPOLY, SCRABBLE and CLUE board games, packaged within a luxe faux-leather “book” that makes a decorative addition to any bookshelf.”

I loved the look of the game as well as the easy, compact storage that it provides for people who want easy access to their game without having a huge box out in the middle of the living room.

You don't sacrifice quality for convenience.

Although the game is easily stored, the quality of the components is not lost.

“The SCRABBLE Library Classic game features a fabric tile pouch, wooden tile racks and score pad with vintage design. Each game board is designed for easy fold-up storage within the foil stamped
“book” package along with all other game pieces.”

Everything stores easily inside of the "book."

Everything stores easily inside of the "book."

The Library Classic version of Scrabble is recommended for ages 8 and up, and retails for $40. It’s available as of this fall at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Calendar Club and other specialty retailers.

I am excited to announce that Winning Solutions has also allowed me to give away a copy of their Scrabble Library Classic game. I will run this giveaway for two weeks, until January 15.

HOW TO WIN

To enter, “like” The Whole Bag of Chips on Facebook and leave me a comment there telling me why you’d like to win the Scrabble Library Classic game. If you are already a fan, leave me a comment telling me so, and let me know why you’d like to win the game.

For a second entry, leave me a comment on the blog here, telling me what your favorite board game is!

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Sooo…what was for Christmas dinner? Part 1

27 Dec
Roasted pork chops, sauteed green beans, butternut squash, twice baked potatoes, applesauce

Here's my plate, just before I dug in!

Yesterday’s post showed our pretty ordinary Christmas breakfast, which despite the simplicity of it, we love it. I noted however, that our dinner is more elaborate since we do host Christmas.

We tend to be creatures of habit, so we make the same thing more or less, every single year: Pork roast with homemade applesauce, twice baked potatoes, sauteed green beans and this year my cousin Val made butternut squash with apples as well (one of my favorite vegetables ever, by the way.)

This meal is actually relatively easy to prepare because you can do a lot of it ahead of time. You can use this meal for any occasion, not just Christmas, but it’s definitely our go-to meal for Christmas Day.

Homemade applesauce

Six pounds of apples is a lot to peel, and I'm always amazed at how much this reduces once it's done. It looks like less than it is, once the apples are cooked.

The day before, I make the homemade applesauce using six pounds of apples.

You can find the recipe for the applesauce on my Hanukkah post here.

Homemade applesauce, cooked.

Here's how it looks all cooked.

Once the applesauce is cooked, I put it into the serving bowl for the next day, and put it into the fridge, cinnamon stick and all. Just needs to be reheated in the microwave before dinner.

Homemade Applesauce

Ready to serve on Christmas Day.

Another big part of the dinner which can be prepped ahead of time, is the twice baked potatoes. Don does those.

Tomorrow, I will share that recipe and show the steps to get you from a bag of potatoes to the yummy side dish that we love so much. And, as an added bonus, the recipe for Twice Baked Potatoes gives you a ready-made appetizer as well: Potato Skins. You’ll see how that happens when you read tomorrow’s post.

Here we are, ready to eat our Christmas Dinner. Missing from the photo: Don, who's taking the picture so that I can be in it, for once!

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A few not-so-random post-Christmas thoughts

26 Dec

By the time this post is read, Christmas will be over and done! I know it will be wonderful as we will be surrounded by family for the whole week! In pre-typing a post to run after Christmas, I wasn’t sure what to write, since the holiday events, both expected and unexpected happenings, haven’t actually happened yet! Therefore, I thought I’d post a few random thoughts, or not so much so.

kitchen photo

This photo just proves you can do a lot with a small space! A new kitchen is a huge want of mine, but not a need!

First off: My kitchen.

You all know by now I, we, do a ton of cooking and baking out of this here, raised ranch, gazebo style (apparently that’s what it’s called due to its round shape) kitchen. The house was built in 1976 and I’m pretty sure the kitchen is just about original, other than the relatively new appliances that we’ve purchased since we moved in 12 years ago. I just figured I’d show you were I do most of my cooking and baking from, and it’s right here in this little corner of the kitchen between the sink and the stove. You can see that you don’t need a ton of space to do a ton of cooking! I utilize the space right on top of the stove all the time. You can even see the cabinets where I stick all my little recipe cards into the grooves, so I can read while I bake. The one that’s there permanently all winter is the one for the Creamy Hot Chocolate.

dining room baking cookies

When I need to spread out, there's always the dining room table.

If I find that I need more work space than my corner of the kitchen, I move into our dining room and use that table. We do not have an eat-in kitchen or an island in the kitchen, so this is where we eat all of our meals, and do all of our crafts, where I type my articles and blog posts, where the kids do their homework, etc. At our school we have a “multipurpose room” which serves as the gym, the auditorium and the cafeteria. We call it the Cafa-gym-atorium. Well in our house, this is our island-a-kitchen-dining-room- table-atorium. Again, as much as I want more space, this works just fine.

And last but not least, I’m the baking and recipe sharing queen, according to my friends, fans, and loyal readers. In past weeks I’ve had many requests for holiday morning breakfast ideas and I’ve shared many. Therefore, I know you are just dying to know what OUR family has for breakfast on Christmas morning. Probably some huge meal, prepared for hours the day before to be out and piping hot on Christmas morning, right?? Wrong. On Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, we’re off duty so that we can enjoy our time together and just have fun. Here’s what we have for breakfast on Christmas morning, much to my kids’ delight:

Great Value Cinnamon Buns

Our Christmas morning breakfast

Yup! Cinnamon Buns and hard-boiled eggs. I don’t even make the buns from scratch–at least not yet. I buy whatever store brand I’m in during my travels the week of Christmas, either Walmart (as these are) or PriceRite or Aldi’s. We usually throw in some fruit or some Christmas cookies along with it, but that’s it, that’s our breakfast!

We host Christmas dinner so that’s quite a bit more elaborate than our breakfast, but this takes the pressure off of me, of us, for just a little while, so that we too can enjoy Christmas Eve, Christmas morning and all that goes along with it.

And, the cinnamon buns…. are just delicious!!

This week for part of the week I’ll be spending a few days discussing our Christmas dinner meal and how we pull off a lot of it by preparing it ahead. Be sure to check back each day. I promise it’ll leave your mouth watering!

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*The* Christmas card revealed…Liz’s big debut

24 Dec
Warm Winter Wishes 2011 Christmas Card

Liz's idea for this year's card: a snowman

I’ve been getting word that the 100 cards we made and mailed have been arriving at homes around the country, so now I think it’s fair to reveal this year’s Christmas card, designed by Elizabeth. Last year when we were making the cards, she said to me, “Mommy I have an idea for next year’s card: A Snowman. There’s three of us so each of us can be one part of the snowman.” That worked for me! I printed out 100 copies of one photo that had all three of them and our new dog in it, so as not to waste ink and then I started punching out 1″ circles of each of them. I chose some plum paper and some celery ribbon, just to be different than the typical reds and greens, and then we began our assembly line.

We now have a dog, so I did have to amend the card design to be a snowman plus a little snowball off to the side as well.

2011 snowman card

It takes total concentration to tape 100 little circles onto cards.

Each girl was responsible for putting their own photo onto each card so they sat in order and passed from one to the next. They also had to each sign the cards too. Alex really experimented with her signature, and the girls were quite concerned that no one would know what she wrote, but I told them I thought people would be fine.

Alex helped me put the glue dots on the ribbons and Elizabeth stamped all the “Warm Winter Wishes.” Caroline helped me to assemble the card stock layers.

I thought it was funny that I printed out and punched out exactly 100 cards and circles, but at the end, they all ended up with different numbers left. One had only three photos left, one had four and one had six. So, if anyone gets a card with a missing kid or puppy, that would be why.

Merry Christmas everyone!

There were three of them and one of me so I kept getting behind. Caroline helped out by assembling the card fronts with me as well.

card making 2011 snowman card

We all, but especially Elizabeth, hope you enjoy our cards this year!

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Bonus Post: Story time, a cookie recipe and a craft

23 Dec
The Night Before The Night Before Christmas

A very funny story to read tonight!

It’s Friday night!! Even though we’re not doing Family Movie Night tonight, I do have a story for you: “The Night Before The Night Before Christmas,” a funny story by Natasha Wing, illustrated by Mike Lester.

This is a great story to read on Christmas Eve-Eve, different than your typical actual Night Before Christmas stories, which you can read tomorrow night.

In addition to reading, here’s a cookie recipe for you as well:

OATMEAL SCOTCHIES

INGREDIENTS

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp grd. cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cups packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups quick or oldfashioned oats
1 2/3 cup (or one 11 ounce bag) butterscotch chips

Oatmeal Scotchie Cookies

These use butterscotch chips and oatmeal. They're a yummy, crunchy cookie!

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl.

Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla in large mixing bowl.

Gradually beat in flour mixture.

Stir in oats and chips.

Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 7-8 minutes for chewier cookies, 9-10 for crispier cookies.

Cool on cookie sheet 2 minutes, transfer to rack to cool completely.

AND FINALLY……

If you’re looking for some fun, homemade ornament ideas to do during the day on Christmas Eve to help the kids pass the time on what can be a very long day, waiting for the “big event,” here is a collection of photos of some of my favorites from this year and years past. These make great last minute gifts or “tags” to add onto a gift package, or…to add to your tree!

handmade ornament using a container cover

My sister-in-law always makes a handmade ornament each year. This year she collected all kinds of covers, all year long, to create the ornaments.

Popsicle stick ornament

Here is the ornament Elizabeth brought home today, made out of popsicle sticks and paint.

Photo ornament

Caroline's second grade photo ornament using her school photo and a painted frame.

glitter ornament

A fun, easy ornament for young kids to make using glue, glitter and tissue paper.

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*The* Christmas Card…day three

23 Dec

As promised here’s a look at the last few years’ handmade Christmas cards. Up next will be…this year’s card, designed by Liz, revealed!

Double Time stamped card

2006 Double-Time stamped card: super fast and easy!

All in the Family card

2007: All in the Family card, the hardest card I ever made. I had to stamp each head and each body. I ended up stamping it once and photo copying the finished image 100 times because I couldn't get it right more than once! I did let them each color their own outfits on this card that year!

2008: The first year the girls helped with the cards

2008: The first year the girls helped with the cards. This one was colored by Alex.

2009 Ornament Punch card

2009 Ornament Punch card: as soon as I saw that punch in the Stampin' Up! catalog I knew it had to be my card that year.

2010 Snowglobe card

2010 The Snowglobe card that the girls and Don made last year when I was sick.

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