Tuesday Tutorial: Snowflakes!

 

A few weeks ago my kids were wanting it to snow.  It of course did not here yet, but I did find a good pinterest craft!  We made some borax snowflakes!  The process is simple, mix some borax with hot water, dip in your flake and let it soak for a day or two.  Ours turned out pretty good, but I never got a good picture!  Oops!  So here it is for you step by step!

First step is to make a snowflake shape, we did ours with pipe cleaners cut in half.

Then you suspend it in a bowl, we did ours by hanging it with string from a pencil, it worked quite nice!

  

Finally add the borax mix.  We tinted ours blue, can’t say it worked all that well to add the color, but the kids liked it!

 

Check out the complete instructions here: 

Martha's snowflakes

Tuesday Tutorial: Christmas Cookies!!

In our family, baking and decorating Christmas Cookies is an annual tradition, one that I look forward to every year!  I thought I would share some of the tips that we have found useful over the last several years. 

So tip # 1:  If possible, Do all of this at GRANDMA'S house.  This will eliminate messy clean up for mom later on (ha-ha).

tip # 2: To save time, we bake our cookies the night before, or earlier in the morning, that way the day we plan to meet and decorate, we are able to just decorate all the cookies.  This is a family affair: we try to get to gether with as many sassysisters and sassysister-in-laws as possible, as well as our mom and grandma.  Dads are not invited, as they make too much mess, but all the sassykids come, and if they are able to eat solid foods, they help!

 Here we have the sassy family busy at work.  So some tips from this picture: Have the grown-ups or older kids frost the cookies.  I like to store all my sprinkles in a cute wire basket, that way they are ready to go and easy to find whenever I need them.  We also all bring our own containers to store cookies in, so we can bring them home.  I think we usually make 4-5 batches to accomodate this!

 Grandma (our mom) found that the easiest way to contain the sprinkles is to put cookies needing to be frosted in a pan with sides, that way they don't sprinkle everywhere.  She also conserves sprinkles by using a spoon to pick up excess sprinkles and put on cookies.  These cookies aren't as pretty, but the kids really like them!

As I mentioned before, everyone gets involved, even the little ones!  This is my niece, who's 1 in the picture.  She got 1 cookie and a bottle of sprinkles, which kept her busy the whole morning (we just kept putting more frosting on her cookie, as she licked it off.  Between the high chair tray and the pan on her tray,  not so messy!  However, I do advise giving the little ones an older bottle with fewer sprinkles... this one was pretty new, and she licked it, which made it so that we couldn't use the sprinkles.

Another tip, not pictured, is that every woman brings a batch of cookies to bake while we are there that day, that way we get a ton of cookies to bring home!

Enjoy the holidays and happy baking!

Tuesday Tutorial: Hat soup

My kids love to eat hat soup, and anything that is fun makes it even more delicious.  I love hat soup because to me it is very delicious, and easy to make too!  Plus, adding some left over turkey next week would make it even better, just incase you needed some ideas!

I came across the recipe for Tortellini in Brodo last year at the Tasty Kitchen website.  It’s amazing and I make it every chance I get.  As you can see, I skip the vegetables…I know, evil right?   I’m just too lazy.  Plus, its good without them. 

Give it a try with your leftover turkey next week, you won’t be disappointed!

Tortellini in Brodo

(A classic Italian soup: Tortellini in Broth)

 

Preparation Instructions

1. Into a large Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium-low heat. When melted, add the celery, onion, carrot and garlic. Cover and reduce heat to low and cook for approximately 8-10 minutes until vegetables begin to soften.

2. Add the broth, water and cheese rind and increase heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. When broth boils, add pepper and nutmeg. Stir to combine. Reduce heat to low and add the tortellini. Allow to simmer until tortellini cooks to al dente (follow package instructions for timing).

3. Once cooked, remove the cheese rind. Add the parsley. Stir to combine. Garnish with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano!

Ingredients

• 3 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
• 2 stalks Celery, Chopped
• 1 whole Small Onion Chopped
• 1 whole Carrot - Peeled & Chopped
• 2 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 8 cups Chicken Broth
• 4 cups Water
• 1 piece Small Parmigiano Reggiano Rind
• ½ teaspoons Pepper
• 1 pinch Ground Nutmeg
• 20 ounces, weight Cheese Filled Tortellini
• 2 Tablespoons Flat Leaf Italian Parsley - Chopped
• 2 Tablespoons Parmigiano-Reggiano, Grated

Tuesday Tutorial: Thanksgiving wreath

Sorry for the belated post!  Today I am showing you a simple craft project that you can use to display what you are thankful for!  Because you just stick the cards between twigs, this is a very versitile project... you can use it for Thanksgiving every year, (have guests/family members take turns writing what they are Thankful for, count down the days to the holiday by writing something you are thankful for each day, etc.) or you can change it out to put in memories for someone's birthday or anniversary, well wishes for the holidays, and so much more.  You could even use it to display photos!  (I wish I had though of that earlier, this would probably be an entirely different post!)


Recipe:
1 grapevine wreath
Ribbon to hang your wreath
cardstock cut to size (3.5 x 2) in this case
Marker

Simply use the marker to write down the items you are thanful for onto the cardstock cut to size, and place on wreath, sticking the cards (photos, whatever) between branches of your wreath.  Use the ribbon to hang the wreath and enjoy!  Wouldn't this be a cute way to do a photo display at a graduation or birthday party?

:

Tuesday Tutorial: squids and pinterest

I know, right, squids and pinterest…well since we were so busy catching up on orders and getting ready for our Halloween party, we totally missed, so this week, you  get double. 

So we start off with squids.  My kids loved these, and my 4 year old could definitely help. 

Start off by cutting your hot dogs into 4-5 pieces.  Then poke 4 linguini noodles into each.  I have found the linguini works much better because it’s not so thin it breaks when you spear it into the hotdogs.

Despite being a Hawkeye fan isn’t he cute? :)  Ignore the messy kitchen and naughty daughter on the counter.  Sometimes it is the only way to get her to behave!

Then you boil them.

 

It’s really just that easy.  Once the noodles are done, plate them up and watch your  kids devour  You can go ahead and put some spaghetti sauce on them, or my kid’s favorite “mommy sauce” (a jar of Alfredo sauce). 

 

Now to pinterest.  Have you ever heard?  Well let me tell you, I’m hooked.  And, unlike facebook, I actually have found lots of fun things to do on there!  like this and this and this and many many more. 

How do you start?  Well, email us here and we’ll send you an invite.  Make sure to set up lots of fun boards like cooking and crafting and Christmas and the all important, what I’ve made just to show off to your friends, and then pin away!  It’s kind of a trial and error thing, but I promise you can’t screw up more than not pinning something and never finding it back again (I know, I’ve done that plenty).  Happy pinning!

Tuesday Tutorial: Chocolate Chip Scones

I have been meaning to put this recipe on here for quite awhile, but just haven’t gotten to it yet.  Tonight we are going to have our only booth with all our crafty stuff at the Ladies in Pink evening at the college in Sheldon.  So, in honor of that and breast cancer awareness month, I have sugared my scones pink.  This is a great recipe though and it can be used for more than just chocolate chips.  Imagine your favorite cranberry scone, or blueberry scone, or even an almond flavored one with little almond slivers on top?  The possibilities are endless!  And, it’s so simple to make, that soon you will be like me and have to make these for your family at least once a week!

 

So, to start out, mix your flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in the mixer together like this:

Pretty boring, right?

Add a little fun to it with the chocolate chips (or blueberries or cranberries or whatever you want)

 

Now comes the fun and ease.  The recipe I copied this from says to knead this together.  I, as a busy mom, said “yeah right” and use my trusty KitchenAid and got this done much easier by slowly pouring the cream into the bowl while mixing.  Much easier.   Now, big note hear, you must use the heavy whipping cream.  Half and half and other milks just won’t do it and you’ll end up with more of a bread texture. 

As you can see, it slowly forms  a ball.  There may be a few crumbs of flour left at the bottom you can mix in by hand, or just do like me and ignore it or add more cream to that.

Next divide the dough into two balls, flour your surface, flatten the dough and cut it like a pizza into 8 triangles.  The rolled out dough should be fairly thick, so if it’s about the size of my hand, I figure it’s good enough.

After it’s cut out, place it on your pan and then brush it with the melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.  I like to improvise here a little and make it fun for the kids.  This year for 4th of  July I cut them all into stars with a cookie cutter and sprinkled them with red, white, and blue sugar.  Today I used pink sugar and white sugar, mostly cause if my son and husband had to eat pink, they might have freaked. 

I personally think the pink ones are prettier!

Finally bake them for 15-17 minutes at 375 degrees and they’ll come out looking beautiful!

Now doesn’t that look good?  So go home tonight and grab yourself some heavy cream on the way and make up these scones for your family in the morning!  They’ll love you for it!

 

Chocolate Chip Scones

3-¼ cups All-purpose Flour

½ cups Sugar

1 Tablespoon Plus 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder

¼ teaspoons Salt

2 cups Dark Chocolate Chips

2 cups Cold Whipping Cream

2 Tablespoons Melted Butter

2 Tablespoons Sugar For Sprinkling

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets.

Mix together first five ingredients. Pour in cream and stir with mixer until the flour mixture is moistened and forms a ball.  Divide dough into two to  three equal-sized balls.  Flatten dough into a circle (use your hands to flatten the dough out) and cut each dough circle into eight triangles. Place on cookie sheets about two inches apart. Brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm.

Ladies in Pink!

Be sure to check us out at our booth at the ladies in pink evening at NCC in Sheldon on Tuesday October 18 from 7-9.  This will be our only craft booth, and we've been working hard at lots of examples of our things plus some new crafts we'll only have there!