NORTHWOODS SCRAPBOOK: Sharing a love for my faith, family, cooking, gardening, paper crafting, and hospice work from my cozy home on a bay in the Northwoods.
We still have a bit of a world of white and I'm doing final shopping, wrapping of gifts, and my Mom and I did a lot of our baking...so I am full force feeling the Christmas spirit! Hope you are able to enjoy wherever you are with things as well!! I am hoping to be back for Happy Homemaker Monday's the next couple weeks, but other than that I am taking a break from blogging through Christmas and the first part of the New Year to enjoy quality family time while my kiddos will be home on school break. So today I'm sharing some fun and easy holiday recipes and crafts. Since I won't have many posts over the next 2 weeks, I've got lots of pictures so grab some cocoa & get ready to sit a spell...
ONE
Recipe: Sugared Pecans
These are one of my favorite things to make for the holidays! They are so popular with others that I also give a lot of these out as gifts. Just package them up in a pretty and festive tin, and you literally have a sweet gift to share. You can find the recipe for them in this post from the past.
Also, I thought I'd share this fun decorating idea:
I found these old neat metal letters in an antique store several years ago. With the letters I found I knew I wanted to spell out a holiday word - as they were already painted a nice red. So I thought of the word "noel" as I could find most of the letters...however alas there was no "o". So I bought them anyway and thought I'd figure out something. Well, I had this little red berry wreath that was the same size as the letters and voila - there was my "o"! I think neat vintage letters like these can be a neat way to make a fun decorating statement. Be creative!
TWO
Recipe: Reindeer Cookies
These are such a fun and easy way to have decorated sugar cookies. Simply take a log of sugar cookie dough. Squeeze one end - all the way through the tube - to make a kind of triangle shape. Cut out slices and bake. Use the pointier bottom as the reindeer nose an place an m&m candy. Use chocolate chips for eyes and pretzels for antlers.
The other day I was caregiving for my MIL and we often color in adult coloring books. Well I decided to be creative and used my water color pencils to create some of my own "art work".
They are really fun to doodle with - as once you make some "doodle's", you can soften them with water and make more of a water color picture. I had fun creating a winter sunset scene. But there are creative things that can be done with this kind of art work - maybe making homemade ornaments, or something to frame, or even use in some scrapbooking. So fun!
THREE
Recipe: faux turtles
These are so tasty - all the flavors of a turtle candy - but so much easier to make. Simply take mini pretzels and place a rolo candy on top. Bake in a 350* oven for about 3 minutes. When you take them out of the oven place a pecan halve into the chocolate while it's still hot. Let them cool and set. So yummy! Another one to package and give away too.
Here's another fun thing I did while doodling with my water color pencils.
After doodling and playing with color on some white card stock, I used some soft Christmas pins that I had and pinned them to the front to make some festive cards. Such a fun way to decorate a card to send someone - and then they can take off the pin and keep it as a gift!
FOUR
Recipe: Christmas Almond Bark
Another festive - but easy recipe that is great for gift giving. Simply take white chocolate almond bark. Melt it in a microwave safe bowl at 30 second intervals on 50% power, stirring in between each time. Once bark is fully melted stir in about 1/2 cup or so of shelled pistachios and dried cranberry or cherries. Pour into the size pan of your choice on some parchment paper. Red and green and so yummy! Place in fridge for about 30 minutes and then break into pieces and place in pretty cellophane bags for gift giving.
I love this frame my daughter made for me.
This is a great way to recycle old frames that don't have their glass anymore. Take frame and paint in your choice of color. Then glue on embellishments of your choice. I think several of these would be pretty in a grouping on the wall. Or in this case I used this one as a back drop for my snowman decoration.
FIVE
For my final part of this post - I just thought I'd show some fun holiday moments from my past week.
Some woodland "nature" Santa's (fit my northwoods home well)
Temps have dropped - so we're still holding on to our white Christmas so far.
Annie's religious education class put on a pageant concert. My Angel! ;)
Ruby LOVES to do the school runs with me! She gets excited by every squirrel in a yard or dog being walked.
Looking through old scrapbooks and finding some fun treasures! Haha! Love this one from when my kiddos were such wee ones. ::sigh:: How the time does fly - especially at Christmas!!
Have a wonderful weekend and I'm planning to pop in again before Christmas, so I won't give my final Christmas wishes to all yet. I'm linking with Amy of Love Made My Home for Five on Friday.
I know it's late in the day - but I still wanted to say hello to you Friends!
My Mom and I were busy little elves here today - baking all kinds of treats for gifts. It's one of the main ways my Mom gives gifts to her friends and neighbors, but I have the bigger kitchen...so my house becomes the kitchen workshop! Lol A new recipe we made today were these cranberry and orange mini bread loaves. They're delicious, especially once I added a cinnamon orange glaze to the top!
I like that they look festive too -with their flecks of dark red cranberry. We just put them in decorative baggies we had and added them to goodie plates we put together with several other goodies. I'll share more of the other goodies tomorrow. Here's the recipe for these delicious loaves of bread! The recipe makes TWO regular 8x4 bread pans too. I halved the recipe and just made one mini muffin pan full (or the same amount as 1 regular loaf pan).
I started gathering my ingredients and measuring cups, bowls etc.
Mix together dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and soda)
Then pour in melted butter and mix until it becomes crumbly.
Then stir in your cranberries and orange segments. (looks pretty already - like snow covered fruit)
Mix your wet ingredients (milk, sour cream, egg, extracts)
Then combine the wet ingredients into the fruit mixture and mix just until blended.
Put into prepared loaf pan (or in my case mini loaf pan) and bake at 350*.
Then take out and let cool.
I just made up the glaze with standard glaze mixture of powdered sugar and milk. I took about a cup of powdered sugar and added a tablespoon of milk, one at a time, until it was consistency of a glaze (I think it took about 3 Tbsp for me). Then I added in about 1/2 to 1 tsp orange extract and a about 1/4 tsp of cinnamon. Then poured the glaze over each loaf and waited until it fully set on the bread before packaging them up. I think the bread was a recipe I found on allrecipes.com. Just delicious and pretty too! Great holiday flavors of orange and cranberry. Yum!
Hope your holiday season is continuing on merrily and brightly. I woke up to another world of white this morning:
But now it's that crazy mix of rain and snow and kind of slushy. We keep riding that fine line between snow and rain - so it continues to be kind of messy and ugly at times. I hope mother nature chooses just pretty snow for Christmas next week though.
But today I wanted to share this fun little craft my daughter and I did together recently. We picked up some red and green yarn and then decided to do some easy "old school style" pom-pom's to make a garland for her room.
I'm a child of the 1970's - and back then it was popular to make pom-pom's by winding yarn around a card (like an index card) and making them fun and fuzzy. So Annie and I set to work and made some festive red and green pom-pom's and then threaded them onto a strand of yarn and made our own fun garland.
We picked out some red and green yarn. We then took index cards (I think we used 4x6 - but use whichever size card you want) as that is what I had on hand. You can reinforce the card in some way - or use something stronger like card board if you have it too.
We then wound the yarn in a circle around the card about 70 to 80 times to make them more full. Then take the end of the yard after winding and cut it and thread it through the back of the circle (the part between the yarn and the card) and tie it off.
Then slide your yarn circle off of your card.
Then cut the circle in half (opposite of where it's tied off).
Squeeze the yarn together to make a "ball" on the top.
Tie off that ball with more yarn.
Fluff out your bottom and you have a pom-pom!
Make as many pom-pom's as you want for whichever size garland, or other project, you want to complete.
Then thread a strand of yarn through the tops of the pom-pom's and you have a garland!
If you're like Annie - add some red and green owls for added whimsy!
Then hang wherever you'd like some added festive color. Annie chose her head board.
I hope you're enjoying a beautiful holiday season so far. I've been having some very busy days - as I know we all do this time of year. But between caregiving (and some appointments for my MIL), volunteering at my daughter's school, different Christmas concerts and many things I'm even forgetting...I have had to lapse in my blogging world. I just wanted to pop in quick and let you know I'm still around though! I'm off to another concert my daughter sings in soon, but I'm hoping for more time this weekend to go around blogland visiting and see what you've all been up to and say hi. Here's some photos from Annie's concert the other day and a few more shots of Christmas around my northwoods home:
My pretty Girl all dressed up for the show!
Did you catch those Christmas Angels by my tree?
Christmas concert day - Nana (my Mom) hanging out with us too.
Vintage Christmas angels flying among my teacups.
Northwoods Santa on the hearth checking if we've been naughty or nice.
My piano decked out with northwoods critters and Santa snow globe. Lots of Christmas carols have been getting played on here this season.
I know I missed a recipe Thursday and didn't get to my Five on Friday this past week - but next week I should be right back in the swing of things. I have some fun recipes and crafts to share too! So check back with me next week. I'll be starting with Happy Homemaker Monday this Monday. Blessings to All and I will come by to visit soon!
