Thanks Given - Day Seventeen

Today, I am thankful we have another weekend at home with no plans. We've seemed to have a lot of these lately and I'm always glad when they come along. I'm always inclined to plan something like the children's museum, etc. (only because i get grumpy when we all stay home all day) but today we hung around the house. Tessa and I hit up the craft stores for some Christmas decorations and the grocery. Tom took Josie (and Jack) to the church for Upward basketball assessments. When we all got home, I took off for a run and Tom made shredded chicken sandwiches. We then worked outside and decorated the house a bit for Christmas. I feel like we're super early which feels really good. Spent the late afternoon watching the Buckeyes. Nice little Saturday. :)

Here are a few photos of the "tree" the girls decorated. They were devastated when I told them we couldn't leave it up. They came up with all of this on their own, including the "star"fish beach toy for the topper. (I threw in a picture of the house and Tom too.)

Patriotic Cupcakes

I have been pinning ideas for annual Fourth of July celebration for quite some time. When we were invited to a Memorial Day party at the neighbors, I thought it would be the perfect time to try out an idea. I looked again at my Fourth of July Pin Board and didn't find anything that quite struck my fancy. I did draw a lot of inspiration though.

I decided to make an American flag out of mini cupcakes. Plus, it gave me a great chance to try out some of the cupcake icing techniques on my Sweet Treats Board. Now, I'll have you know, I'm officially NOT Martha Stewart. I went with boxed cupcake mix but made my own icing (for the most part - you'll see). I'm not convinced that making your own cupcake mix is worth it, but real buttercream icing is pretty much awesome.

First, I made the cupcakes in a mini muffin tin. I found cute red, white and blue wrappers, but totally could have used plain white or silver.

Then, I went to work making the buttercream icing. I made a batch of this recipe. (Should have made a double batch if I would have needed white. Keep reading.) Yes, you read it right, two sticks of butter per batch. It is rich. And delicious. And pipes onto the cupcakes really well.

Now, it's time to hear the reason behind the non-homemade white icing. When I was at Michael's, picking up my new frosting tip and gel dye, I noticed "white dye." I thought to myself, well, you have to be just plain stupid to buy white dye for icing. Icing is already white! Well, not when you make it with two sticks of YELLOW butter. (Sometimes I wonder how I've gotten so far in life. Who felt stupid now?) So, plain white buttercream icing will not work for this one. Some day, I may try out the white dye, but not this day. This day, I busted out the white canned frosting. I will say, it definitely doesn't pipe as well, but I put it in the fridge for a while and that helped a lot.

For the red and blue, I used Wilton dyes. They come in a concentrated gel and really make the icing bright and true. Although, again, I probably should have used the white dye on the red at least because I had to use a lot to achieve a true red and not orange.

Back to Pinterest, I tried using this technique for getting the icing into the piping bag. Personally, I thought it was more trouble than it was worth. I am never good with plastic wrap and adding in the extra bags, etc. just made more of a mess for me. I did find this great tip (can't remember where now) for getting icing into the bag that I did use and was a great way to do it. Simply put the bag into a glass and fold the edges of the bag over the lip of the glass. Add icing and you're done!

I used the Wilton 1M Open Star tip. And, I used this tutorial, also from Glorious Treats. You really do need the extra large tips (and an extra large coupler if you want to use one) to create the large swirls. For these cupcakes, I started on the outside edge and swirled in to the center.

Here are some photos of the final product. (The white icing was definitely not as good to pipe and wasn't still enough to hold up really. You can see they look as if they're "melting.")

A side shot to show just how much icing is on these suckers. Half cupcake - half icing. Yum. (I read another tutorial that said to do a whole layer on the first round on the edge of the cupcake in and then another layer on top of that to make an even larger swirl.)

Here are two I did in the reverse direction just for fun. I started on the inside and swirled to the outer edge. They look more like a rose.

Final product. Oh how I wished I had a fancier way to display. But, a cookie sheet covered in foil was the best I could do with relatively short planning.

And, enjoying the final product...

Present Has Arrived!

Present, the Elf on the Shelf arrived at our house on Wednesday, December 1st this year. Tom and I were able to sneak home and dig him out of the garage. When he was out there, Tom found all of the Christmas books. So, we came up with the idea that Present went around the house and collected all of the Christmas books for the kids. I love this idea!

I thought it would be fun to chronicle Present's adventures at our house this Christmas season.

November 30th

December 1st 

December 2nd - Tessa thought they were in love

December 3rd

I've made a list of fun ideas for Present. I love this little guys smile. It's so innocent and sweet. I think tonight, he may just be hanging out checking out the tree. We got the tree and stockings up today which is about all we'll do here. I have the Nativity Scene to put out still, but we're keeping it low key. The tree is pretty, but the big lights blew a fuse so we need to get that working tomorrow and I'll grab another photo. I always forget how pretty it is though!

Thanksgiving 2011

Another great Thanksgiving in the books! I know it's over a week late and into the thick of the Christmas season, but I need to record the weekend for posterity's sake.

We arrived in Ohio early in the afternoon on Wednesday. We went over to Joyner's to visit and let the kids burn off some steam while Tom hunted. We worked on some puzzles and just laid low. Jack loved the stairs there and managed to get his head stuck (just for a second) in the banisters. I got this cute picture of him on the steps there.

Afterward we went over to my parent's and put the kids to bed and ate some yummy Turkey and Bison Meatballs. This time she added some shallots and spinach. Yum! This meal was all in preparation for the next day's feat...

Thursday morning, we bundled up and headed out to the Granville Turkey Trot 5K. It was a fun race and I was able to keep up with mom and her running partners so I was happy. We finished in about 29 1/2 minutes. Not bad considering I hadn't run for some time. (I've since registered for the Indy Mini again and that will certainly take some more training.) Here's two photos after the race.

After a quick shower, Josie and I hit CVS for my annual day of Thanksgiving trip to get a bunch of crap I don't need just to get the Extra Bucks. I went twice over the weekend and spent about $10 and got a lot of stuff most of which will just go in the garage sale. But, I now have about $35 in Extra Bucks to spend on other stuff during the year, like diapers. I think Josie had fun with me. She kept asking me to take her picture with random things. I finally said yes while waiting on the checkout.

After our shopping trip, we went over to Joyner's for a short little visit since Grammy and Grandpa were both there. The kids did some coloring and visited a while.

Then, it was time for the big meal. Our Thanksgivings are always a group effort. We really missed Matt this year - he's our potato masher. Here are some prep photos.

Corn pone in the oven.

Tom's gravy - honestly, I've never tasted better. I guess that's what you get for basting the turkey with three sticks of butter and a bottle of white wine.

My favorite dish underway - brown sugared sweet potatoes.

Dad bringing the turkey out of the oven.

Dad prepping the turkey for carving.

Mom working on the sweet potatoes and Tom working on gravy I think.

Corn pone and gravy - we thank Tom's family every year for introducing us to corn pone. :) 

Tom and the fantastic gravy.

Sweet potatoes!!!!!

This is where the magic is happening. Turkey carving! The lucky few get to sneak in a little taste. 

I usually am in charge of kid-wrangling. I think I may have helped set the table or filled water glasses or something. But, this year, I also really wanted to get some good pictures. And, you know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen... :) 

Yes. She's eating coconut M&M's before Thanksgiving Dinner. 

Mom and dad snuck in some Jack time too.

I set up a little makeshift tripod and tried to set the timer on the camera. Not something I've ever done, so it was a little sketchy. I felt like we were back on Christmas Eve and the DeLawder family photos. :) Managed to capture the moment anyway. (It looks like Jack is smiling. He's not. He's mid-scream.)

The finished product. Check out the color of that gravy. Wow!

After dinner and clean up, Barb & Vic came over for a little dessert. The kids continued to run around and have a blast. I think they watched a movie or something. 

We ended the night with a quick walk to show the kids the Christmas lights that Pop put out that day. It was a fun way to end the night and so pretty! 

The girls wanted to read books by the "hot back" or the kitchen fire place. I caught this sweet picture.

We managed to fit a lot more into the weekend. Here are some additional photos I took during the weekend. Fun was had by all!

I have this same nativity set but it looks so much better at mom's house! 

Such a fitting end to a blog post. Love it!