Recipe Binder

Yesterday I told you about my some of my Christmas traditions. Another one is that I always take the girls shopping when it is time for them to give a gift to their mom. She has done an excellent job raising them to understand the joy of giving to others. She has always included them in the giving and having them select well thought out gifts. Both girls do get a lot of joy giving gifts to their friends and loved ones. Since she can't take them shopping and still be surprised, I take them shopping for Mother's Day, her birthday and Christmas gifts. I have so much fun doing this too. They usually have something in mind before we go out and this year was no exception. Samantha wanted to get her mom a cookbook because she is eating healthier and a more vegetarian diet so she was set on getting her a vegetarian cookbook. Jenna wanted to get her a charm for her bracelet, but she also pointed out that Judy could use a binder to organize all of the recipes that she has been given or printed off the internet. She knew she wanted a binder with dividers and sleeves to protect the recipes. This is the binder that I ended up making to hold all the loose recipes. I used paper from  Jillybean Soup, some buttons from my stash, a Sizzix alphabet and some Nestabilities. I wish I had thought to take the cover out of the binder before taking a photo, but I was in a hurry! I decided that the letters didn't stand out enough, so I took a white gel pen and traced around the letters. It made a huge difference, but I forgot to take another picture. 

 I also will take the girls for most of the day a week or so before Christmas so Judy can finish wrapping and do some last minute stuff. Sometimes that is the day that we do our shopping but we had already done that so we made and decorated cookies. We made sugar cookies, shortbread cookies and gingerbread men. 

 They take cookie decorating very seriously!

Almost every container of sprinkles that I have made it out for decorating.

Here are some of our final designs. The girls did almost all of the decorating, I did the "gingerdead man" ones for my zombie loving hubby. 

Merry Christmas! And here's what I have made over the past 24 hours.

First off, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Hopefully yours is full of family, friends and lots of love. Remember too that family are the people that we chose to surround ourselves with, the people that we love and who love us, support us and encourage us. Not all of those people are related by birth or even marriage. Thanks to all of you for the gift of your friendship over the past year. Some of you I have had the pleasure to meet in person, and the rest I would love to meet in the future. I appreciate all the comments you leave for me. they really do encourage me. It has been a rough year personally and the comments have meant even more than you could possible know. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the gift of friendship and the time that you spend reading my blog.

This is our Christmas tree this year. I love Christmas trees and ornaments and have been collecting them for many years. Most all of my ornaments are angels. The rest are Elvis. That alone says so much about my personality!

I thought I would share with you what I have been making for the past 24 hours in my kitchen. This is a pan of homemade caramels. They are to-die-for delicious, but not quite firm enough to lift out of the pan. But with a spoon they are great!

Chex Mix Muddy Buddies. I sent a bowl of this and some coffee to work with my husband yesterday.

Traditional Chex Mix.

Chocolate Mint fudge.

My almost famous twice baked potatoes.

Sausage balls.

A triple batch of laundry detergent. Not for Christmas or anything, I was just out of detergent! I do make my own and usually make a double batch when I make it.

I have been working on this for the past couple of weeks, I just finished it yesterday. My niece lives about 3 hours away from me and she wanted A stamping kit for Christmas. She specified that she wanted to be able to make cards for lots of occasions, birthdays, get well, friendship, holidays and such. I bought a pack of cards and envelops and decorated them for her. Since she doesn't live nearby she doesn't have access to a lot of craft supplies. 

Now she has a box of 50 pre-decorated cards, ready for her to stamp her image and then add it to the card. There is also a rainbow selection of card stock for her to use.

This is her "stamping kit" that I put together for her. I have a few more stamps to add, but she will have a few for every occasion she wanted to be able to make a card for. I also added some colored ink pads, a black ink pad, some coloring pencils and a pencil sharpener. I think she is set for a little while!

And now let Christmas begin!!! I won't be around online for the next few days, I will be hanging out with family and friends. They are predicting a white Christmas for us which is a very rare thing. I've got my fingers crossed!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

Card Box

One of the things I am really going to try to do in the new year is to gt my cards to people on time! I have gotten better about making the cards and having a "stash" of ready made cards, but they often arrive just a little late. To help with my organization problems, I decided to put together this box. I started with the photo storage boxes from Hobby Lobby, just the plain black boxes. I wanted to decorate them with my own paper since I wasn't crazy about the colors they had to choose from. (Enabler alert: these boxes are on sale half price this week). I just used some paper that I believe is from My Mind's Eye to decorate my box. Since my box is black, I used black construction paper and the Sizzix Twang alphabet to punch out the letters to label the box. I didn't take a picture of the inside, but the boxes come with index cards and I used the Card Categories from Clear Dollar Stamps to make my index labels. That is a really great set, it comes with 33 different categories for you to use. This is also the project that we will be making for craft night at church on Friday night.

Since I mentioned my marathon cooking session, several people have asked me to let them know how it went. I actually had four freezer, cook one day eat for a month type of cookbooks already. I decided to go with the 2 week plan to start since it is normally only the two of us eating dinner, but we still wanted to have leftovers to use for lunches. I decided to use the Frozen Assets Cook for a Day Eat for a Month book by Deborah Taylor-Hough. There were a couple of reasons that I decided to start with this one. The first one being that a friend had given me a couple of recipes to try and I enjoyed them and they tasted good when they were thawed and served. Another was that the recipes seemed to be a little more economical than the other books I have. Here is a picture of my fully stocked freezer:

So we are set for a while! It was a long day of cooking but hopefully I will be able to really notice a difference during the week when our schedules are more than a little crazy. That's pretty much everything I made, except the soup that is in the refrigerator. I do have a couple of suggestions if you want to try this:

1. See if your library has some books for you to look through so you can get an idea of the recipes, but the one I mentioned above is my favorite. There is also a Lite and Easy book with the same name that has different recipes.

2. Start with the two week plan.

3. Buy aluminum foil even if you think you have plenty!

4. Read all the information before attempting to cook. I am a fairly experienced cook and have made Thanksgiving lunches to feed 200+ and dinners to feed 40-50, but cooking like this was a little different and it helps to do everything in the order that it is laid out in the book.

5. If you have a small family separate your meals before you freeze them to keep from eating the same thing for three or four days.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions!

Grandparents Anniversary

One of my goals for the coming year is to make my cards and get them in the mail in time for the occasion that I am making the card for! My grandparents will be celebrating their anniversary on Jan. 6th. I believe that it is their 62 anniversary. So the card is all done and ready to go in the mail. I am so happy with myself, at least I am starting off the year on the right track! The colors on this card match a little better IRL, the stamped part looks much brighter on this picture. I used CTMH With Love stamp set and CTMH inks Hollyhock, Spring Iris and Sweet Leaf. The Happy Anniversary stamp is from Michael's dollar bin and I have had it for a while. The paper is from My Mind's Eye, not sure about the ribbon though.

Several people have asked me to let them know how the cooking went. I will post more tomorrow. I got almost everything done today, except for one recipe. I grabbed tomato sauce instead of tomato paste so I will finish tomorrow afternoon and take a picture of my full freezer.

No Crafts Tonight

I don't have anything to show you tonight. Hopefully, I will get some crafting time in tomorrow. I have decided that I am going to try the cooking once a month way of cooking. Anyone done this before? I have tried a couple of recipes, but haven't done the whole bulk cooking thing. Basically, you spend most of one entire day cooking meals and then freezing them. During the month all you do for dinners is make your sides and then bake or defrost your main dish. I did all of my shopping and prep work today and will do the cooking tomorrow. Right now our schedules are a little crazy and we are eating out way too much. Bad for the wallet and the waistline! Hopefully this will work for us. I am starting with the two week plan since it is normally only the two of us eating dinners. Some things I am planning to freeze the full portion and some I am planning to make individual portions that I can grab and take to work or whatever. I will keep you posted as to how it goes and if you have any great recipes that freeze well, please pass them along. Have a great night!