Winter Break Recipe Roundup

Winter break is around the corner and holidays + family means lots of food. While it's nice to eat out when the family is all together it can get expensive. So here are the links to a few of my favorite belly warming recipes to help get you through. Some of them are super indulgent for special occasions, others are more savory favorites that are perfect for every day. Enjoy!

Breakfast: 

The Pioneer Woman's Best Coffee Cake. Ever.

Mel's Kitchen Cafe Vanilla Pudding Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

Robert Irvine's French Toast Recipe

Paula Deen's Spinach and Bacon Quiche
This one is good for during the week. You can make ahead and then heat up a slice for the kiddos in the morning.  It is fantastic on it's own but we like it with a few modifications.
    -Skip the bacon
    -Add half an onion
    -Substitute crumbled goat cheese for the Swiss.
 Place pie crust in pan and put down the layer of goat cheese. Everything else, combine in a food processor and pour over. This makes it a bit more kid friendly.

Lunch and Dinner:

Homemade Pizza, No full recipe for this one, it's a pick a choose.
 -we use this dough
 -we use this sauce (skipping the honey and anchovy paste)
 -and we top with fresh mozzerella and veggies.  
 
No. 2 Pencil's Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs
To complete the meal, add a salad and some of these fantastic sweet potato fries. Yum!

Food Network's Almost-Famous Barbecue Chicken Pizza

Slender Kitchen's Simple Crock Pot Pinto Beans
Pair with your favorite cornbread and a salad and you're gold.

Meatball Nirvana Recipe
We skip the red pepper flakes and use Pecorino Romano in place of the Parmesan. Delicious! Add them to spaghetti with this marinara and you'll have a hit!

Chicken Pot Pie IX Recipe
Double the sauce or add a can of cream of chicken. It's a winner.

These are just a few of my favorite everybody's-home recipes. Enjoy!

Winter Games

Winter parties at school are this week and I am one of the parents helping out. Each party we do a snack, craft and game. For this party's game my husband thought it would be cool to make a bean bag toss for the kids. While it would be easy and inexpensive to find one on a site like Oriental Trading Company, we already have a lot of the stuff to make this, so why not save the dough? Here's what we came up with.

How To Make A Bean Bag Toss

For the toss-through-board, we used a trifold presentation/display board made of cardboard. My husband made ours with some found cardboard but if you're low on time you can buy it pretty inexpensively.

1. Come up with a picture idea, what do you want your game to look like? Draw it on the center section of your display board with pencil.

2. Decide where you want the holes to be. Draw them on but make sure they are large enough for your bean bags to fit through. 

3. Go ahead and cut the holes out using an exacto knife or whatever you have that works.

4. Paint your picture.

EASY.

Next you will need bean bags. Again, you can easily find these for sale but if you have the stuff at home you can save a little dough.

How To Make The Bean Bags

1. Find some fabric. Cut it into the shape that you want for your bean bags making sure you have two sides to sew together. For our game we wanted them to look like snowballs so we used fuzzy white fabric cut into circles.

2.  Sew MOST of the edge of your shape together using a tight stitch (so no beans escape). Leave a section about 1-2 inches  long to pour your beans in through. 

3. Flip your shape inside our so that the section you sewed is not visible.

4. Pour in those beans. Looking back, I wish I would have used a funnel for this part.


5. Sew up the rest of the bean bag.

DONE.

Congratulations, you have your very own, one-of-a-kind bean bag toss. Happy Crafting!

Mint Chocolate Pizzelles

Since we are smack in the middle of the holiday season I've started making pizzelles. They have officially become our go-to holiday treat for four reasons.
1. They are delicious.
2. They are cheap
3. They easy to make.
4. They cook fast.
If you've never had or made them, pizzelles are a thin, crispy cookie made kind of like a waffle but on a pizzelle iron. Anyway, our family is hooked. The cookies themselves are mildly sweet and perfect for pairing with tea or coffee. We usually go for the plain ones but this year I wanted to make something especially with my husband in mind. He's a mint chocolate chip fan. Ice cream, cake, whatever. He loves it. So I decided to see if I could figure out how to make a mint chocolate pizzelle. Well I did figure it out. And it's really yummy. The taste kind of reminds me of a thin mint. I'm sure that if you dipped one edge of these in chocolate it would be heaven. But for now, here is my Mint Chocolate Pizzelle recipe. Depending on how large you make them it makes around 24 cookies.

Mint Chocolate Pizzelles

Ingredients:

 3 eggs

 1 cup white sugar

 3/4 of a stick (or 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons) melted butter

 1 tablespoon mint extract (If you want it more seasonal, use peppermint extract)

 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

 1/4 cup cocoa powder

 2 teaspoons baking powder

Have iron heating while mixing the pizzelles. Once it is ready, make sure to spray with cooking spray  or brush with oil. You may have to reapply a few times as you cook. In large bowl, beat eggs and sugar together until smooth. Mix in butter and mint extract. In separate bowl whisk or sift together flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. Combine flour and egg mixtures. Beat together until smooth. Use a piping bag and place desired amount onto pizzelle iron. Cook for 20-30 seconds. Let cool and enjoy!!!

Breathing New Life Into Old Chairs

So it's just a fact. When I go see my mom, I always come home with stuff. Sometimes I need it, sometimes I want it, sometimes I'm confused as to when I agreed to take it. But nevertheless much of the things in my home are my mom's cast-offs. One of these was a pair of old, messed up, pea green chairs. They were your Aunt Mat's and Uncle Turner's, she tells me. Aunt Mat and Uncle Turner are the people that raised my grandma. I hear this and I'm sold. The chairs may not be functional and they may be pea green, but they're something special. I promptly loaded up the car, took them home and stuck them in the basement for about a year. Then one day I decided to figure out how to get these puppies useful again. I started looking up different ways up fixing seats online and found this chair weaving tutorial. That was it! It was time get moving.

So first step, clean 'em up.

Second step, sand down rough edges.

Third step, get painting. (My 6 year old picked this awesome color.)

Fourth step, weave those seats.

When I showed pictures of the finished product to my mom she gasped and told me I had brought new life into those chairs. You can't get a better reaction than that. We now use them every day. In fact, I'm sitting on one right now.

The Purple Tree

I love this time of year. I love the holidays, the family and the traditions that pop up unexpectedly. This year we may have stumbled upon a new one by letting go of an old one.
Our first year married my husband and I were trying to save money so we bought a little fake tree. Every year after I happily decorated it. Loving that tree simply because it was our first one together as a married couple. Even when those pre-lit lights started going out, instead of chucking it, I spent HOURS cutting those damn lights off. My fingers were sore, my back ached, but we still had our sweet little tree. After a while the box began disintegrating and the little fake needles were falling out by the handful. It didn't matter. My dedication would not waver. This was our "married tree". And so it went for seven years.
Then, this year, my dedication not only wavered, it shivered and ran for the hills. Because our sweet little, slightly balding, tree had spiders. That was enough. It was time to part ways. Time for a new tree.
Later on, at the giant store that has been pushing Christmas since October, we took a minute to wander through. White trees, green trees, pink and striped trees. My oldest daughter fell in love with a purple one. I should tell you at this point that there are two sides to me in this. There is the side that wants to give my kid everything she asks for. Then there's the part of me that wants to teach her.  I want to teach her that almost anything is possible if you are willing to think outside the box and put some work into it. I want to teach her that we don't always have to buy, buy, buy. Sooo, out of this, I had an idea. It is far from traditional. Maybe a little weird. I proposed we make a tree. The sound of crickets was deafening as my family just stared at me. I said let's craft it out of wood! books! cardboard! paint it! Still, they were unimpressed.  The conversation fizzled.
 A few days later, while everyone was out for the day, I decided to go ahead and give this a shot. I used some craft paper, some tempra paint and my fingers to make my kid a purple tree. I swept dark purple this way and that and then a little light purple on top. While it dried I painted a star on another sheet of paper and wrote "I wish I may, I wish I might..." all around the edge of it. I attached our old tree skirt to the bottom and used Command hooks to hang lights and tinsel. Finished! Clapping my hands together I was sure this was great.
As I picked the kiddo up from school I was all excitement. I couldn't wait to get her home to see what I had done. This was going to be an awesome surprise.
Walking into the room she had a huge grin but after a minute of inspecting things the grin slowly disappeared  into a kind of intense expression. Crap, I thought. This was the worst idea ever. Crap, crap, crap. She doesn't like it. She's disappointed.  What was I thinking?? Where's my purse? I gotta get a tree!
Quietly, almost whispering, I asked her what she thought. She turned to me and said, "This is cool Mom! Next year we should do one that is striped! Blue, purple, blue, purple. And the year after that we should do one that's a rainbow!" Relief.
What do you know? Not only did she like it but it may be a new tradition. One born of trying to show my sweet babe, that I love her. That we don't always need to buy, buy, buy. That anything is possible if you go outside the box. Of course she doesn't see it like this. I'm not delusional. But, hopefully, someday, she might. A mommy can hope.
So here it is. Our one of a kind, free, hopefully a good memory, magical, purple, painted Christmas tree.