Turkey Treat Boxes

Yesterday I spent the day in the basement trying to come up with a cute little treat for Emilee and Sean to take in to school for a special Thanksgiving treat. These are what I finally came up with.

I got the idea off (you guessed it) Pinterest.  http://www.mychicnscratch.com/2010/06/triangle-box-1.html
I cut my cardstock 3x8. I used the life is a beach cricut cartridge for the feathers. I filled the turkeys with hershey kisses. Well I only have 20 of them done so far and I wasn't in the mood to work on them today so I'll have to finish the rest tomorrow.
Today I was in the mood to try a new kinda cookie. I made Chocolate Covered Pretzel Cookies!!! They are really GOOD! I might just make some of these for my cookie exchange this year instead of the Almond Joy Cookies I was planning on making. I followed this recipe excepted I added 2 cups of pretzels insead of 1.
http://alskamom.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/chocolate-covered-pretzel-cookies/

 

What's for dinner?

Tonight for dinner we had one of our favorite slow cooker dishes. Stew Beef with Ravioli Dumplings, Yummy and pretty easy!

It really doesn't look very good, but believe me it is delicious! Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 1/2 pounds(480g) beef stew meat cut into pieces
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1 clove garlic,minced(we like garlic so added a bit extra)
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano.crushed
• 10-ounce(300g) package frozen peas
•  3 15-ounce(450g) cans beef ravioli in sauce 

 Directions

1. In a baggie combine together flour,salt and pepper.
2. Add beef cubes,a couple at a time.Shake to coat.
3. Using large nonstick skillet,cook meat until browned.
4. Add onion,garlic,and oregano.
5. Cook until onion is tender but not brown.
6. Transfer to slow cooker.
7. Add 1 cup water.
8. Cover and cook on low heat for 8-10 hours.
9. Switch slow cooker to high heat.
10. In stainer rinse peas under hot water to separate.
11. Stir into beef mixture with ravioli .
12. Cover and prepare about half an hour longer 

For dessert  I made Almond Joy Cookies!

The recipe:

 Ingredients-

• 1 cup salted butter (softened)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3.4 ounce package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
• 1 1/2 cups slivered almonds

Directions-
In a bowl cream together butter and sugar. Add pudding and vanilla. Beat in one egg at a time. In a separate bowl mix together flour, salt, and baking soda. Combine the dry ingredients with wet ingredients. Once mixed stir in chocolate chips, coconut, and almonds.
Preheat oven to 350. Spoon cookie dough onto baking sheet and cook for 8-10 min. (however I always end up doing mine for 11 min) Allow to cool on wire cooling rack. 

Halloween

I started this week off a bit under the weather, not sure what it was, maybe a touch of the flu. I just lay around the house Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and by Thursday I started to perk up. Pretty lucky too because I had promised Emilee and Sean I would make treat bags and cookies for their Halloween parties on Friday.
Well you all already know I have pinned so many ideas on Pinterest. I also had discussed and showed the kids my ideas and they helped me narrow them down. They even helped me with the cookies, and what to put into the treat bags.
Sean chose a Frankenstein treat bag, and Emilee wanted a ghost treat bag. So I decided to make all the boys Frankenstein bags and all the girls would get ghost bags.  After looking again at all the ideas out there on the Web, I came up with these.

 

Judging by the looks on all the kids faces, they loved them.

This is a picture of the spider cookies we made.

 And here are the bat cookies.

Well Thursday night I kept thinking how on earth can I get all these treat bags and cookies and the teachers gifts into the school in the least amount of trips as possible. I ended up getting all the cookies, treat bags and gifts into 4 boxes,(with lots of help from my husband) then I had a bag with my camera, (of course) and the plates and napkins. So that was going to be probably 5 trips into the building since the boxes couldn't be stacked because of my fear that I would smash them. Ok so I get to the school and carry 1 box in and tell the Secretary I have at least 4 more trips worth of stuff. She said wait a minute and came back out with a cart that I could use to bring them in with. Yeah!!! So I push the cart out to the van and loaded 1 box on and turn around to get another box and the cart started to roll away(it was quite windy),  awww pheeeww I caught it before it got too far. After all that I got everything in in just 1 more trip. Then the Secretary said they would take it from here. I didn't even have to carry them all the way(not that far. lol) to the classrooms. woo-hoo!!! 

Now it was party time. Emilee's class had lots of parent helpers and Sean's only had 1 so I helped out in Sean's class. We had LOTS of cookies, candy, cupcakes and punch. We played a few games. One of the games we played was the mummy wrap, where you take turns wrapping your buddy up. All the kids loved that! 

Mr. Brooks is such and awesome teacher, he agreed to let the kids wrap him up like a mummy! I think that was the best part of the party for the kids!

You can really tell these children love their teacher! That really makes for a great school year!
Thanks to Mr. Brooks for all he is doing for these little sweeties!

Pumpkins

I have been browsing through pinterest looking for ideas for pumpkin carvings. I found a picture of 4 watermelons someone carved into the teenage mutant ninja turtle...they put glow sticks in them to lite them up! I remember back in the day watching the teenage mutant ninja turtles, and now Sean is watching them.
So we decided to paint our pumpkins green and carve them up like the turtles. The kids loved digging all the seeds out and making sure I didn't mess them up as I carved them. They turned out pretty good, but the glow sticks didn't last very long, so my husband suggested cutting a whole in the bottom and sticking a Christmas lite in each one and that seemed to work better!  Emilee really likes Monster High so I decided to surprise her with a pumpkin especially for her. She was very impressed!

 

So what do you think?

Fall

One of my favorite times of the year is the beginning of the Fall season. The leaves, apple picking, hayrides, corn mazes, Fall Festivals and Halloween. I love taking Emilee and Sean to all the farmers markets around the area. We went to Maple Farms for the first time this year, it was lots of fun. I really liked their corn maze. And the kids really enjoyed  the BIG huge yellow bouncing pillow, and the huge slide. They also enjoyed getting their faces painted!

Pies

I have been quite busy the last few weeks. Today I don't have anything planned until this evening so I thought I would catch everybody up on some cool things I have been doing.

This was a week or two ago, my mother-in-law came over for the day and we BAKED. I made some Cookies, White chip orange dream cookies. Here is the link to the recipe: http://www.familybalancesheet.org/2010/12/white-chip-orange-dream-cookies.html  I used orange extract and the spice orange peel since I didn't have any oranges, but they taste better with the actual grated orange peel.  Here is a picture...They are one of my favorite cookies and I just might make these for my cookie exchange this year.

Next my mother-in law made a sour cherry pie. I am not found of cherries but my father-in-law requested this one.  It turned out great and everyone loved it! We served it with vanilla ice cream! Of course there is a picture. LOL

  Next I made an apple crisp pizza! http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2012/09/apple-crisp-pizza.html  I follow this recipe BUT I doubled the topping, added at least one more apple( I piled it high, it shrunk in the oven) and added at least one more tsp of cinnamon because you can never have too much cinnamon! Here it is...

Finally we made a Warm Apple-Buttermilk Custard Pie  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/warm-apple-buttermilk-custard-pie-10000000434581/

This pie looked awesome, but I don't think we will be making it again...for one thing it took a lot longer to make than we expected and it really wasn't that good :-(  It really did look good see...

Well that was our baking day and I had an awesome time with my mother-in-law!

apples

Friday I got to chaperone Sean's 1st grade field trip to the apple orchard. The weather was perfect for the walk to the orchard. The kids got to go through a small corn maze, went on a hay ride through the orchard, pick an apple off a tree and toured the factory. Everyone had great time. This was the first time I met Sean's teacher, and I have to say he is pretty awesome. Here is a picture of Sean and his buddy on the hay ride.

                                                      Cutties

  I finally made something new with all those apples we picked, and our house smelled so good!! I made red hot apples in the crock pot.  YUMMY!!!!  

 peel and cut about 10-12 apples, add 2 boxes of red hots and about 1/3 -1/2 cup unsweetened apple juice

Cook on high for 8 hours or low for 4 hours...more or less depending on how soft you like them. They are so good! I still have lots more apples...what should I make next??? I'm thinking maybe apple butter?

Have a great night everyone.

Apples

Emilee, Sean and I went Apple picking today after school, and there were so many good and BIG apples!!
There were way more apples this year than last year for sure. We picked Yellow Delicious, Red Delicious, Melrose and Jonagold . Tomorrow I'll be making some red hot cinnamon apples in the crock pot. This weekend maybe I'll try making a pie, applesauce and apple butter. YUMMMMY!

I'll share my recipes if they all turn out as yummy as I think the will. WOO our house is going to smell so GOOD!

Stampin' Up Party

 I have to admit I am not a fan of stamping and I don't make very many cards, but I had a lot of fun. We made some really cute Fall things.  My favorite one turned out to be this cute broom made with a pretzel rod.I really have to go out and buy the fringe scissors we used, they are awesome! Here are a few pictures of the cute little things we made.

                          Don't you just love this cute little tag?!

 I'm thinking this little bag would be a great gift bag for a homemade cookie or 2.
                                               

                        Cool little bread tie! I love it...NUM-NUM!!!

                                     Isn't it adorable?!!!

            The bat and ghost were made with an owl punch, can you believe that? I like the googly eyes:-)

 

 Thanks for stopping by! I'll have some more goodies to show you soon!