Friday Foto Fun with Leftovers

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun! What are you doing with your Thanksgiving leftovers? I think I am going to do this:

Thanks for the recipe Martha!

For more great leftover recipes, check out Friday Favorites over at Hoosier Homemade.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope your Thanksgiving was as yummy as ours:-)

Thanksgiving Table

It's time for Tackle It Tuesday with 5 Minutes for Mom . This week, I tackled our Thanksgiving table. I started with a great centerpiece from Pick N Save:

$9.99?? Can't beat that!


I chose golds and oranges this year:

Do you recognize these cookies?

And last but not least, candlelight:

Beautiful, right?

Friday Foto Fun with Thanksgiving Decorations

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun! And, it is also time for Thanksgiving decorations. This is how we roll:

Gifts of Good Taste

I am going to take a break from gardening for a few weeks to play along with Simply Sugar and Gluten Free for her Holiday Food Fest.

Her host Cents to Get Debt Free is featuring Gifts of Good Taste and I thought it would be great to show you how I am packing my cookies for gift giving this holiday season. Here is what they look like:

And here is how you do it:

(These instructions are for 3 inch cookies)

Step 1: Get a piece of cellaphane that is 6 inches squared.

Step 2: Fold both sides 1 inch towards the center:



Step 3: Fold the bottom half way up to the center and secure with tape on both sides:


Step 4: Place the cookie face-down in the little baggie you just made for it:

Step 5: Bring the top flap down and secure it with a pretty sticker of some sort:

Step 6: Flip it over and viola! It is ready for gift giving by itself or put it with others in an attractive basket:

Tackling Extreme Chocolate Cupcakes

It's time for Tackle It Tuesday with 5 Minutes for Mom . I had another Iron Cupcake: Milwaukee Challenge. This month we competed for the best Extreme Chocolate cupcake. My entry was Not Your Mama's Sundae Cupcake. Here is what they looked like:

This ia an ode to Bi-Rite Creamery's Sam's Sundae in San Franscio. It hosts a white chocolate "bowl" with chocolate cake "ice cream scoops", chocolate mousse "topping", olive oil "sauce" and coarse salt " jimmies". Yummo!!

Friday Foto Fun with The Nature Center

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun! This week, my daughter's class went to The Nature Center for a field trip. They saw animals, they went on a nature hike and they made name tags out of bark. They had a GREAT time and I had a great time seeing their faces with wonder:-)

Thanksgiving Fall Dishes

I am going to take a break from gardening for a few weeks to play along with Simply Sugar and Gluten Free for her Holiday Food Fest.

Her host Tasty Eats at Home is featuring Thanksgiving and Fall Dishes and I thought it was a perfect way to plan my Thanksgiving menu this year:

Thanksgiving Menu

Herb Roasted Turkey
Apple Cranberry Pecan Dressing
Mashed Potatoes
Cauliflower
Green Bean Casserole
Cranberry sauce
Honey Molasses Dinner Rolls

Servings: 12

Nutrition
Serving size: 1/12 of a menu.
Percent daily values based on the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) for a 2000 calorie diet.
Nutrition information calculated from menu items.

Amount Per Serving
Calories 1890.65
Calories From Fat (33%) 618.44
% Daily Value
Total Fat 69.7g 107%
Saturated Fat 29.39g 147%
Cholesterol 462.48mg 154%
Sodium 1261.76mg 53%
Potassium 4554.82mg 130%
Total Carbohydrates 208.69g 70%
Fiber 14.98g 60%
Sugar 89.22g
Protein 113.56g 227%

Menu Type
Thanksgiving

Source
Author: Susan Ewing

I can't do anything about the the nutrition however, I can do something about the price. Here are the original costs:

Menu Cost: $50.80
Menu Serving Cost: $4.23

Now, take away the price of the turkey and potatoes that I got for free and viola:

Menu Cost: $31.35 (on sale)
Menu Serving Cost: $2.61 (on sale)

You can even get it down to $25 with coupons (which are everywhere this time of year) for the greens beans, soup, stuffing and cranberry sauce. That's right...$25 for Thanksgiving for 12. You can't beat that with a stick!

Fall Leaves

It's time for Tackle It Tuesday with 5 Minutes for Mom . This week, we tackled the massive amount of leaves that have fallen in our yard:-)


If you look really closely, you will see a little mouse in that giant pile...


...a sassy little mouse...


...a cute little mouse:-)

Oilless Turkey Fryer

Has anyone ever heard of an oilless turkey fryer??? (Can you still call it a fryer if the food isn't submerged in oil?)

Apparently, the oilless turkey fryer uses infrared technology to cook without oil?? Now, it still uses propane so, you aren't saving fuel but, I can see where this would save TONS of fat!

Why not just use an oven?? Well, the claim is that you can cook a 12 lb. turkey in an hour and fifty minutes without preheating?? So, you save time and oven space on a busy holiday afternoon? Sign me up:-)

Has anyone had experience with this oilless turkey fryer??? I would love to hear about it.

Friday Foto Fun with Baby Teeth

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun! My daughter lost her very first tooth today!!!

Isn't she the cutest?

Growing Daisies

My gardening today consists of sowing some Daisies...Girl Scout Daisies:-)

We had our most recent meeting on Tuesday. We were working on the Spring Green patch about consideration and caring. As a part of the lesson, we had a tea party. Check out the table:


I even folded the napkins like flowers:

How does this all fold into being considerate and caring? Well, setting a beautiful table is showing your guests that you care. Table manners is considerate and so is saying thank-you. That is why we did daisy thank-you notes for a craft. Each parent received a lovely note created by their child at the end of the meeting.

In addition to the party and the craft, we had the girls dress up in princess costumes. The girls loved it. I even got 129 thumbs up:-) How awesome is that?

Organizing the Gift Closet

It's time for Tackle It Tuesday with 5 Minutes for Mom . With the holidays fast approaching (I heard Christmas music for the first time this year on Sunday!!!), I needed to get a grip on my gift closet. Here is the before:

And the after: Success, yes?