Mmmm....Fudge

Last night ended up being just as productive as I needed it to be, which was unexpected. M took the girls Christmas shopping (gotta love the procrastination) and I got all 3 batches of fudge done while he was out. Here they are:

White Chocolate Peppermint (my new fav, just lovely)

Butterscotch


and Rocky Road

Topped off with a nice sugar cookie, tied with ribbon and a tree ornament. Yep, all set for Christmas festivities tonight!
Hope everyone has a truly blessed Holiday!

Christmasy Goodness

Today has been a wonderfully productive, stay at home and get some crap done kind of day. I have finished two knitting projects (that were practically done, but still on the to-do list), blogged (now twice), baked 5 dozen cookies with L, did laundry and cleaned up my kitchen (which is now and utter disaster). So, since I am in the spirit on getting things done I thought I would go ahead and post these ornaments I made last week.

They are made using khaki pants from the thrift store, vintage buttons, Ecospun felt, ribbon from my stash, and cookie cutters for templates. My original idea was to make them look like sugar cookies, with pastel felt frosting and bead sprinkles, but then I thought these up when I was going to sleep one night and just had to get up the next day and make them.

Here are my sweeties frosting away, P mostly just licking the frosting off of everything she could get her hands on. We usually just use white frosting due to L's red dye sensitivity, but this year we purchase these and these and had a blast.
Left on the agenda tonight is 3 batches of fudge and ack more cleaning.

Wee Little Purses

So as you can probably tell, I haven't been around very much this past couple of weeks. This was only a little to do with Christmas, and a whole lot due to having my wisdom teeth removed. Totally not fun, I was kinda out of it for about a week and a half due to the after pain. I rocked it though with only local anesthetic (gotta keep breastfeeding) and Motrin. Doing much better now, and back in the crafty spirit of things.

This week has been much the crafty catch up, that and my wonderful hubbies birthday. M didn't get anything crafty for his birthday, just a commuter mugs with a picture on it from Snapfish and a new pair of drumsticks. His mom threw him a party (I did just have surgery you know) and we went down there and had a great time.

Anyways, I just finished up these children's purses for my aunt last night, made the pattern myself the night before. I've been pondering an Etsy shop for children's toys and accessories, but so far I just sell to my relatives.
Here's P modeling one (you have no idea how hard it was to get this picture)

And here they all re laid out on my floor. The panels in front are nice pockets. I'm not exactly sure what lead me to pockets in the front it's just what I imagined when I thought these little cuties up. I think the purple one with little lambs is my favorite, it's just so sweet. I think my little girls will be getting one of these in there Easter basket (Oh yes, I did just go there).

I can't wait to show you some of the other things I have been working on!

Tasty and Healthy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

My camera is (again) not working so I thought I would offer up one of our favorite recipes. These cookies are great for kids, something sweet, but at the same time pretty dang healthy.

1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened blackberry applesauce (can use raspberry, but I really wouldn't recommend using plain this is what gives them the extra kick)
2 cups of rolled oats
1 1/2 whole wheat flour (hard white wheat if you have it, if you don't you should really give it a try, it's awesome stuff)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 cups raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter, honey and eggs together. Stir in the applesauce, oats and the baking soda. Then add the flour , spices, and raisin just until moistened. Scoop tablespoon size dough onto grease baking sheet and bake for 1o minutes or until slightly golden. Let cool 5 minutes and enjoy!

I Love Knitting

The other day I was frantically looking for my spare #7 double pointed needle when I realized just how much I love knitting. When there is something I truly enjoy doing, I tend to ration my time with it. Like saying only in the car and on outings and only on certain days, which is what I also have to do with reading. Otherwise it's all I will do, I will devour a novel or knitting project in just a few sittings. So, back to the other day, I was frantically searching thinking "it's just been a really stressful day, I really need to knit a few rows, just few rows and then I will stop". Of course you can guess that I succumbed to the temptation and finished the whole darn thing (hey, at least it was just a small project). This is what I was working on:

Some fingerless gloves that my Mummy requested from Christmas. I made them in her favorite color and I truly hope that she loves them. They are almost done, just about 20 minutes on them tonight and the pair will be complete.

I believe everyone should have a truly loved hobby, something that you could practically get a bumpersticker for. Something that takes your mind off the problems at hand and gives you that simple pleasure of accomplishment. What ever your crafty hobby is, I hope there is much endulgence this holiday season. It is so wonderful to share hand crafts this time of year.

It's Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Christmas

All the holidays seem to spilling into each other this year, not ready for one to end and then boom there's another. Barely enough time to deck the halls and craft it up. Yesterday it hit me, it's time to decorate for Christmas NOW! Not wanting to miss another moment I devoted my entire day to whipping up stockings for the whole family. We plan to do the rest of the decorating tomorrow when M is home to help. These took about 6-7 hours including drafting my own pattern. I tried a pattern the day before, and frankly it sucked and I threw the stocking in the scraps pile. So after a few choice words these cuties were born.

Mine is on the left and M's is to the right.

P's is to the left and of course the one on the right is L's she just loved this fabric. I love the little girl hiding on the toe of L's such a perfect little detail.

They are all fully line with unbleached cotton, no yucky raw seams.

So that the adorable fabrics can be fully appreciated, here are some closeups. M's and L's are my favorites. M's uses my favorite fabrics, so loving those Christmas trees and who doesn't LOVE candy cane stripes?

I love L's because A. It's adorable and B. Because she absolutely squeeled when she saw it. She was so sweet beaming from ear to ear.

The rest of Christmas is on it's way, I'm nearly done with my last Christmas gift, the cards arrived in the mail yesterday, and we will be decorating this weekend. Oh, I'm just so excited!

Nature Walk

Two weekends ago M and I took the girls to the park to snap some shots for our Christmas pictures. We brought a picnic basket and made plans for a nice nature walk. It started out with a lot of this...

Remedied with a bit of this....

...Then having fun, and catching glimpses of this...

and this...

Hope everyone had a turkey-tastic Thanksgiving!!!

Pumpkin Farm Pumpkin Bread

Over the past several (I swear I didn't eat them all myself) times I have made this Pumpkin bread I have changed a few things and now feel quite OK with putting it up here. I changed some ingredients and feel that this recipe is actually a bit improved. So here you go, I hope that some of you will go ahead and make this delicious treat, you taste buds will thank you and your children will be begging for more "mumkin bed" like little P keeps doing.

Pumpkin Farm Pumpkin Bread

3c. sugar
2/3 c. oil
1 c. water
4 eggs
2 c. mashed pumpkin (1 15oz. can)
3 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves (I didn't have these, so I just used 2 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice)
1/2 c. chopped nuts (optional)
1/2c. raisins (optional, but yummy)

Struesel Topping (optional, but I did it and it's really good)
1/4 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 c. finely chopped nuts (if you don't have any double the amount of brown sugar)
2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 Tbsp. butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Grease and flour either 2 9x5" or 3 8x5" loaf pans. Combine sugar, oil, water, eggs, pumpkin: beat 1 min at low speed. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup and level off. Add flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; blend at low speed until moist. Beat 1 minute at medium speed. Stir in nuts and raisins. Pour into pans

Topping: Combine all ingredients until crumbly; sprinkle over batter

Bake for 60-75 minutes (It takes the full 75 for me) or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes and then turn over onto tea towel or wire cooling rack. Allow to cool a few minutes longer (if you can control yourself) because it is so moist it can be hard to cut hot.

Pie Night

A while back I remember reading about someone doing Pie Night for dinner and thinking Wow that is a great idea. I then cataloged it into the "cools things to do someday" closet in my brain (this is also wear underwear out of old t-shirts and making a knitted sleep sack live). So as I was preparing for dinner the other night with Quiche on the menu I decided that it was a great time to give Pie Night a try. I can't tell you how thrilled my husband was. So last night we had our first official Pie Night.

The quiche I made quick and dirty (as in not neat, still sanitary though). The crust is all funky and I should have added an extra egg, but still quite scrumptious.

For dessert pie we had Pumpkin Pie which was absolutely nummers. This was it right out of the oven still a bit puffed up, but as you can see my crust was a bit better here. All in all I have to say that Pie Night was a success.

In non-pie related news, I finally got something finished out of my overwhelming pile of half finished projects. I was starting to get in a bit of a funk about it, not wanting to do anything because it all seemed like to much. Today I was bound and determined to get something done, anything. So of course I tackled the easiest one and finished up the little scarflette I had half finished in my knitting bag.

It's made out of a beautiful variated wool that was gifted to me. It was a very small ball, but I finally found a good use for it. Waste not, want not. I used one of my favorite buttons from my small button stash, I love how quirky it is.

Last Weeks Goodies

This past week did not end up being the craft catch up I needed and had hoped for (sigh). It was a good week, a productive week, but still a lot of my projects lay unfinished yet not forgotten. These are things I completed the week before. This cape, this simple thing proved to be very difficult indeed seeing as I broke 2 machines trying to make it! I'm taking my old Singer to the shop this week, but in the mean time I have the new (very basic) one my mom bought me. The other one that broke was the POC Brother that I had learned to sew on.

With all the mishaps it's not a perfect cape, but at least the girl can fly with it.

These are some emotional beanbags I made for the swap. They were a special request and I had the felt to make them so here they are. Not an original idea or anything, but fun to create. I also made this bag to go with them using the same pattern (with a few modifications of course) as my doll diaper bag.

Now for non-crafty news, check out the gorgeous hand blown glass pumpkin I scored at our church auction yesterday for $20!!!!

I'm so in love with this. We also ended up with a entire home carpet steam cleaning gift certificate for just $40, yippee!!! So all in all, we are ahead financially from this weekend, if not by crafts.

Christmas Craziness

I got a email from a friend today saying that she noticed I hadn't done a blog post all month and wanted to see how we were doing. I shook my head, with confusion, no couldn't be I just posted last.....oh. Apparently in my Christmas frenzy I have forgotten to update in almost 2 whole weeks. Here is why my friends, in the past week and a half I have:

Made M a really cool gift (mum is the word though, so I can't share it)
Made a cool bag for the swap
Done some knitting for me
Made P a superhero cape
Worked on Ls gift (will show more on that this weekend)
Broke my sewing machine
Bought another sewing machine
Spend countless hours surfing the web for gifts
Done quite a bit of baking
and taught L how to write her name

Now not all of that has to do with Christmas, but dang I've been a girl on a mission. My plan every year is to finish my Christmas crafting and buying by Thanksgiving day, therefore freeing myself to enjoy the season. Though this year I have seen the major flaw in this thinking, where the heck is my autumn? So, my new goal is for this year to finish up the last remaining things by this weekend and spend the rest of the month not thinking about Christmas at ALL! I need to soak the last bits of autumn, making autumn crafts with the girls, going on nature walks, baking with cloves and cinnamon, and maybe even apple picking. If anyone knows of any places to go apple picking around here please please let me know....

Sweet, Not Spooky

Last night M and I stayed up late making carmel apples for our church's Halloween Festival. We made these the silly way where you melt carmels and add a couple other ingredients. I feel as though this is cheating, but we didn't have a candy thermometer and the carmels at Winco were super cheap. Who would have thought it takes such a long time for carmel to melt? I imagined it to be like melting chocolate, but in reality it took a LOT longer.

I want to introduce to you the cute little elves that have come to join our home. They are currently hiding out in my bedroom awaiting there grand debut on Christmas morning at the top of my girls' stockings. Oh course I had to show them around the room a bit, so that they could get used to their new digs, they thought M's drum set was a good place for a photo op. They came from a lovely MDC mom in our recent craft swap, thanks El!

When doing the Elf/Apple photo shoot I notice that M took the liberty of having a photo shoot of his own when I was sleeping in this morning. This just shows how awesome of a dad he is. He also gets a wonderful husband points because he has L wearing the hat I finished up this week, so I don't have to take the time to photograph that.

Happy Halloween everybody!!

One Lucky Girl

This weekend I felt like a very lucky girl. I got to do some of my favorite things in abundance. First off I got to do some baking, lots of baking! I made six loafs of this freakin' delicious pumpkin bread. I can't take credit for the recipe though it is out of Bishops Pumpkin Farm Cookbook, man I love that place!


Three of the loaves were supposed to be for pastor appreciation month at church, but alas P was sick so we stayed home and ate one. We took a couple to my moms, and we still have one left. I also made some rocky road fudge for my brother's birthday, but I forgot to take a picture of that before I gave it to him. I am so over giving "stuff" as gifts, I think my new "thing" is going to be bring home baked goodness to people on special occasions.

On Saturday we went to a cute little root beer shop where they sell all sorts of cool bottled sodas. I noticed that they had bottle openers on the wall with a huge Plexiglas bin type thing filled with bottle caps. So of course I had to go ask them if they sell them and they replied that I may have as many as I'd like. So I made M reach in and get me several handfuls, lucky me.

Here are some of my favs. I'm not exactly sure what I'm planning to make from them, although I do have some funky earrings in mind. Anyone have any suggestions?

That evening we took the girls' to a Halloween party. Aren't they cute?

P wasn't feeling to well, because of her cold, but she did at least try to amuse us....

One Down, One On The Way

At the our local yarn store I spotted this nice soft rainbow wool for a very resonable price so I decided I would knit the girls some nice warm hats to welcome fall. They are a super fast knit and I have only been working on them when I'm out and about and have free time. I was thinking I may have the girls wear them for Christmas pictures? I think they would look adorable with some low ponytails.

Finished P's up first and she really loves it. Now I'm working on L's, one down and one on it's way.

My Princess

As promised here is L in her birthday garb. She really loved the cape and crown (mostly the crown though). She also got a little bit of cash and she went to a couple second hand stores and got some treasures too, like the Cinderella dress (which is handmade and AWESOME) that she's wearing in the picture below and a Cinderella doll.


Here she is on her birthday after the pumpkin patch, after her bath, and yummy enchilada dinner eating her chocolate cake (which M and I made the night before).
She got a couple of other things like a fairy in a felted necklace pouch from vermontfairies (look look I did it! I actually made a cool linky thingy) and a cool handmade oilcloth lunch sack. I so loving giving handmade gifts! She also go some "clicky shoes", books and other items fit for a princess. All in all I'm really happy with what she got for her birthday, stuff she will really use, we have room for, and not too much of it. Perfect.

Me Love Swapping!

Some wonderful news, M fixed my camera! It's not the best camera, but it takes MUCH better pictures then my spare. So back to blogging I go, yay! What better way to start off your morning then with yummy homemade biscotti?

Shamefully that was my breakfast, not really great for weight loss, but hey at least it was made with half whole wheat right? This was actually my first time making biscotti and it wasn't that hard at all. The recipe is from my betty crocker cookbook and it is banana chocolate biscotti. No, I'm not obsessed with bananas and chocolate together, I just hate throwing away food, so I'm always trying new ways to use up my brown bananas.

On the swapping front, I shipped out several packages this week including this sweet doll diaper bag set for a mom on MDC.
This is one of the swap packages I got in return
A nice big knittin needle holder.
Here is it all rolled up, I'm so loving the colors!
And my totally cute new diaper bag. I wish I could have shown the print better, it so cute. It's huge and has lots of wonderful pockets. Most of my swaps have been for Christmas, but these two things I got for myself.

As for my wild thing, I think she may be even wilder then before. During this posts production which took about 15 minutes she managed to pull the chair to the counter twice, pull her sisters hair three time, and drag the outside broom inside three time, which would have been more, but I threw it over the fence, I think I should be getting that now, before it's run over huh?

4th Annual Pumpkin Patch Trip

Yesterday was our annual trip to the Bishop's Pumpkin Patch in Wheatland with our home school group. It was also Lydia's 4Th birthday. We had a lot of fun, despite the crazy wind. Everything was such a blur that we didn't get a whole lot of photos and the ones we did get were very rushed. So sorry, not lovely scenic photos of piles of gorgeous pumpkins, squashes, and gourds. Here are the girls having a wonderful time.



It really is a wonderful pumpkin patch with baked good galore, train rides, hay rides, panning for marbles, slides, play places, pony rides so much fun. While in there wonderful gift shop I was reminded of there awesome cookbook which I bought last year and will be cracking it open this week to make some wonderful pumpkin treats. I think I may need to buy a whole case of pumpkin for all I have planned.

Lydia really enjoyed her birthday and all her lovely handmade gifts, I will have to get pictures of her modeling them today.

Lifes Happenings

Hey everybody, I would like you to meet Roxie. She is our one and only furry friend.

Roxie had to go to the vet today, she has another ear infection. Poor thing just keeps getting them. We are going to do our best with 3 different meds and some homeopathic's to make it go away within the next 2 weeks. If it does go away then we will be doing surgery to fix her ears so that they can drain, if not she will have to have her ear canals removed and will be permanently deaf. Her ears are very damaged and nearly closed due to scar tissue from her previous owners leaving her ear infections untreated. We got Roxie 10 months ago and the women mentioned nothing about her health problems and avoided the question when we asked her which vet she took Roxie to. I refuse to be angry with this women, I only feel disappointed you know? Not with Roxie of course, but that people do that sort of thing.

I hate to bring this post down anymore but we also found out on Monday that M did not get drawn for the nursing program lottery this semester. It is so frustrating to M that the program is based on a lottery, shouldn't it count for something that he has almost all A's including an A in frickin' anatomy. I know that there is a reason for all this, that God has a plan for making us wait a little longer. One thing that I do know is that M is doing really well as his job right now and will most likely be getting a promotion in November. He also has a performance related bonus coming in this month.

Sorry for the crafting break and the boring post about what is going on in our lives. Hopefully I will get something wonderful and inspiring up by this weekend.