My first tassel!

Do you like tassels? Do you hang tassels around your house? I don't have any tassels in my home, or at least I didn't have, until I saw this tutorial from the Nester last week! I've seen other free tutorials online on how to make a tassel, and I've seen some lovely ones in bloggers homes, but I still wasn't sure how exactly to put one together. You can buy them on Etsy too, but you know how I like to 'craft', so I purchased the tutorial and within days I was heading out to buy some supplies to make my own..... here's my very first attempt:

What do you think? I'm very critical of my own work and think I should have made the bottom tassel just a bit fuller? While I was making it I thought it was too full but looking at it now I'd like to have added a few more inches of trim.

Here's the supplies I started with, just a simple ornament I got at Hobby Lobby and two pieces of trim from there too.

This is the basic tassel (no ribbons) so I started with that first. I was going to make a Christmas one but I didn't want to pack it away so soon after the holidays so I made one I could keep in my dining room all year.

This is where I've decided to hang it (for now), on my black buffet.

Here's another close up. I think I need to change the ribbon it's hanging from, it's too skinny but I didn't have anything else at the time. I think I'll watch for Christmas ornaments going on sale and will buy some to make some holiday tassels for next year ;-) I don't know why but I'm rather 'smitten' with tassels right now!

It was so simple....

When was the last time you bought a fresh chicken to roast? I asked myself that question the other day after watching an episode of 'Cook Yourself Thin', a new cooking show I'd just discovered on Lifetime TV! My answer was "I can't remember", in fact if I'm honest I don't think I've roasted a chicken in the past 10 years!!! I cook with chicken all the time, but buying a fresh chicken and putting it in the oven to roast is.... well, it's just 'foreign' to me. I often buy a rotisserie chicken because I think they're cheap, or at least they used to be. Now a rotisserie chicken costs me $6.99 at my local grocery store.

Yesterday I decided I would try to roast my own if a fresh chicken was cheaper than that (yes, I had no clue the price of a fresh whole chicken). I bought one at Walmart, 4lb in weight, for $3.79!

And here it is.... doesn't that look delicious - and it was SO easy. I followed the recipe from the tv show and they simply mixed 2 tblsp of olive oil with some fresh rosemary (which I have in my herb garden) 2 cloves of garlic, some thyme and sage, salt and a squeeze of lemon juice (I used dried thyme and sage because I didn't have fresh). The cavity was stuffed with more rosemary and a lemon cut in to quaters. I roasted it for 1 hr 20 minutes and voila.... dinner was ready! Served with fresh green beans and a little mash potatoe.

Here's the FULL recipe from the website

You can bet for sure I'll be making 2 other meals from this guy, chicken salad for lunch, and I'll boil the chicken to make soup ;-)

Linking to:

So much to share.....

I left my camera over at my neighbors on Thursday and just got it back last night! I have lots of pictures to share from the past week including Kristen's birthday, thanksgiving day, a craft I made and of course Christmas decor - all that will come in the next day or so, but today I thought I would show you a few pretty pictures of the 'Paula Deen Pumpkin Cake' I said I'd be making for Thanksgiving. . . . . remember it was on the front cover of her latest mag, here's a picture of how mine looks next to hers :-)

I went one step further and sprinkled a little icing (confectioners) sugar on top before taking it over to my neighbors.

I have to say the cake turned out ok, the one thing that was totally off was the cooking time! The recipe said both 9 inch cakes would bake at 350 for 22-27 minutes!! Surely not? If any of you bake cakes often you'll know for certain that 22 minutes is not going to cook a very dense cake like this. My neighbor said she bakes her recipe for an hour! I didn't know this at the time so I just kept adding 10 mins to the cooking time, and finally after 50 minutes the cakes seemed done. The maple cream cheese frosting was very yummy.

Not sure if I'd make this again, I prefer the 'Libby's Pumpkin Roll recipe to be honest. Speaking of which, here's a picture of the one I made last year...


Well, it's our last day of 'fun' today before we get back to school tomorrow. Then we'll be counting the days til we break for Christmas :-)

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends. I'm thankful for so many things in my life - For my wonderful family near and far, for our health, for my sweet hubby, our precious daughter, great friends, food on the table, a warm house (and a cool one in Summer!), my computer, for without it I would not have met so many wonderful 'buddies'. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, for leaving sweet comments and for your friendship. Most especially, I am thankful that God SO loved us all that He sent His one and only Son to die for us.

Today we will be having Thanksgiving dinner with our wonderful neighbors. My inlaws are in CA. We miss them so much but know they'll be home before Christmas.... then it will be my turn to cook the turkey ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving to you all
xxxxx

Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes

Tuesday + + I know I posted this recipe when it was Monday, but I'm linking to Tasty Tuesday and TMTT so others might be able to use it if they need to at their Thanksgiving Dinner :-)


A few of you have asked me to share the recipe for my make-ahead mashed potatoes. I can't take credit for these, I've seen a few other versions of this online, but this recipe was given to me a few years ago by my dear friend Heather. I love making these at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and even Easter. When I was growing up in England we didn't have sweet potato casserole, so although I enjoy that at our special family gatherings now, I always still love fluffy mashed potatoes too, that's why I make these. And what I love about them is I can make them the day before, pop them in the fridge then just heat them up the next day. It's one less thing to make on the special day:

Ingredients:

5 lbs. potatoes
1 8oz package(block) cream cheese
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup butter(1 stick)
1 tsp onion power
1 tsp seasoned salt
1 tsp regular salt
1/2 tsp Black Pepper

Cook and mash the potatoes with all of the above ingredients. (add the half and half slowly as you may not need the whole cup if you think it's getting 'too soft')

Place in a greased 3 qt dish (I usually use my 13 x9 glass dish), sprinkle with paprika if desired and bake in a 350 oven for 30 minutes. To make ahead simply place the dish in the fridge, then the next day bring to room temperature and pop in the oven for 30 minutes.

I don't have a picture to share right now, but I'll be making these on Thursday this week, so I will take pictures then, and hopefully post this on my cooking blog.

It's the most wonderful time.....

...of the year! Yes, I'm singing Christmas songs and I have 3 Christmas trees up already, although they don't have the toys on them, Kristen and I will be doing that tonight. Wanna see a sneek peek of our 'doggie themed tree'?

I put this tree up yesterday in the game room and added lights to it. When Kristen came home from school she was thrilled to see it and immediately went looking for all her doggy soft toys to place around the tree (and this isn't even half of them!). I know you can't see much of the tree, I told you it was just a peek! Of course I'll be sharing pictures of everything once I'm finished decorating.

It's raining this morning, so I can't take 'outside' pictures for you. So I'll post about the Paula Deen recipe I tried last week....

This is Mexican Veggie Casserole. For a Paula Deen recipe this was surprisingly light in the 'fat' department. There was only 2 tblsp of oil used to saute the onions and zucchini, then you added canned corn, black beans, ranch-style beans, can of toms w/chilis and taco mix. The cheese in between the corn tortillas was neufchatel (1/3 less fat) and light sour cream and 2% cheddar cheese! I didn't take step by step photos and didn't even get a picture of the finished dish, but the full recipe can be found in the Nov/Dec issue of Cooking with Paual Deen. This was really very tasty and we enjoyed it with a crisp green salad, I didn't miss the meat at all.

I couldn't resist changing my blog look over to a Christmasy one ;-) Tonight we are taking Kristen to see A Christmas Carol in 3D, I can't wait.

Have a fun weekend whatever you're doing.

Let's take a walk....

I've mentioned the new 'event' center that just opened up near us, it's where I went with my friend Cheryl last week to the women's health seminar where Lance Armstrong's mom spoke. Well last night a new show opened..... Walking with Dinosaurs!

My friend/neighbor Cheryl said she was going to try and get tickets to the show for us all, if you remember she works at the local hospital who are sponsors to the center, and she did get the use of their company box, but she could only get 4 tickets for her family members. I really wanted to take Kristen to this so I got online yesterday morning and managed to get tickets for last night's first show. Wow! What an amazing event. Those dinosaurs are HUGE. When I first heard of this I thought it was just a movie about the dinosaurs on a big IMAX type screen, but then I saw a commercial on tv for it and saw that they were in fact 'man-operated' dinosaurs. I found a clip on Youtube that shows you part of the show with the huge T-Rex, I was hoping I could show it below but I can't figure out how to do that (someone could tell me if they know) so I'm just gonna add the link here that will take you to the youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAE5aqG8L_U

It's quite a long video so you don't have to watch it all, but it gives you an idea of what the show was like. Kristen loved it :-)

Tomorrow I think we are all (me, K and Jason) going to go see the new Christmas Carol movie in 3D. Kristen saw a preview months ago and thought it was scary because it was a big close up of Scrooge, and I must admit he does look kinda scary, but I explained it's not a scary movie and what the story was about. When I think about it, she's never seen or read the story of 'scrooge' yet, but it is a great lesson for kids I think, so hopefully we'll all enjoy it.

Off to clear up the house and carry on with the Christmas decorating. I have a ton of posts I'd like to cover, perhaps if I mention them here I won't forget? I still want to take photos of the 'garden' for you, tell you about the Paula Deen recipe I tried this week and post the recipe for my make-ahead mashed potatoes, as requested by Laurie ;-) That should keep me busy for the next few posts!

Have a beautifully blessed day.