Year: 2011

Make-Ahead Cranberry Orange Relish

The sauce can be prepared and refrigerated up to 4 days in advance, but do not add the cilantro. Serve chilled or at room temperature. Mix in the cilantro just before serving.

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 cup orange juice
  • 16 ounces cranberries (fresh or frozen)
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup orange marmalade
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro (optional)

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the ginger and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the sugar, orange juice, and cranberries.
  2. Cook until the cranberries burst and the sauce thickens, about 15 minutes. Stir in the marmalade to taste (depending on desired sweetness). Turn off heat. Stir in the pepper and cilantro just before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients

  • 3 bacon strips, diced
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 2 large baked potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • 1 cup half-and-half cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
  • Shredded Cheddar cheese
  • Minced fresh parsley
 

Directions

  1. In a large saucepan, cook bacon until crisp. Drain, reserving 1 tablespoon drippings. Set bacon aside. Saute onion and garlic in the drippings until tender. Stir in flour, salt, basil and pepper; mix well. Gradually add broth. Bring to boil; boil and stir for 2 minutes. Add the potatoes, cream and hot pepper sauce; heat through but do not boil. Garnish with bacon, cheese and parsley.

Teaching Your Kids to be Thankful

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to teach your kids about being thankful. Here are some ideas to teach your children how to appreciate the blessings in their lives.

Giving Thanks Placemats

The goal of this craft is to create a collage filled with drawings and pictures of all the things your children are thankful for. Cut photos from magazines, or print some photos from your computer. Older children can write captions under the photos or draw their own. Be sure to put the child’s name and the year on it.

If you make this collage from two standard letter size pieces of construction paper taped side-by-side, you can take the completed collage to a copy shop when you’re done and have it laminated. It then becomes a placemat that you can use every Thanksgiving for years to come.

Thankful Paper Chain

Another way to remind your children of their blessings is to create a paper chain. This is similar to a regular paper chain – where you cut strips of paper and connect them together as loops, but there’s one difference. You write on the strips of paper before you connect them. Write the things you are thankful for with your children. For instance, “Grandma plays games with me” or “My teacher is nice.” The fun part of this activity is to make the chain as long as possible – showing all your blessings. If you’d like to keep this up during Christmas, just use green and white paper.

Thanksgiving Tree

This is another take on the idea above and works really well if you have several kids in the family. Get each child to trace their hand on yellow, red, or brown construction paper. Cut out the hand shapes and write (or have the child write) what they are thankful for on the hand shape. Cut a tree trunk shape out of brown construction paper. Glue it on a large piece of poster board. Let the kids add their hand shapes as leaves above the tree trunk, turning it into a beautiful fall colored tree.

Thankful Book

This idea is similar to the others, except it’s more of a keepsake. Purchase a photo album or scrapbook kit and make a “blessings” theme. Add photos of loved ones, including stories about why they are special to you. Also, include pages of your favorite foods, favorite stories, favorite movies and all the other things that make you happy. Any time your kids feel down, you can open your blessing book to see all the reasons you have to be happy – and thankful for the blessings in your life.

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Beaded Clothes

Would you like to add some beaded glitz to a garment? Don’t think twice about it. Beading is one of the easiest and most eye-catching ways to upgrade a garment—whether it’s handmade or store bought. Here’s what you need to know to bead a ready-made garment.

A simple running stitch is all that’s required to add a line – or many lines – of beads to a garment. Simply move the needle and thread in and out of the fabric, pick up a bead and then repeat. Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Sharps or regular beading needles
  • Polyester, cotton, or silk thread that matches your fabric
  • Beeswax (to strenthen and stiffen the thread)
  • Beads!
  • Embroidery hoop (optional)
  • Fabric marker

Follow the complete instructions HERE

Socktopus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What You’ll Need:

Cotton thread for sewing
Embroidery needle
Embroidery thread
Four Ladies’ trouser socks of the same size
Polyester fiberfill or cotton alternative (Michaels.com)
Ribbon
Scissors
Sewing needle
Optional: 2-inch diameter circle of felt

First, cut up four socks
Before you cut, wash the socks to make them nice and soft.

1. Turn one sock inside out. Cut it down the middle through both layers, leaving 1⁄3 of the length intact at the toe end. This sock will form the head and two legs.

2. Turn the other three socks inside out, and cut the toes off of them. Then, cut all of them in half lengthwise through both layers to form two strips from each sock.

Next, sew and assemble the head and legs
To sew the legs, you can hand stitch or use a sewing machine. If you choose to hand stitch,
use a backstitch.

1. Sew the legs on the sock that forms the head. Fold each strip in half lengthwise, and sew along the long edge and the short open edge with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Trim the threads, and tuck in any remaining fabric. Leave an opening at the bottom (by the “head”) for stuffing.


2. Turn the sock right-side out, and stuff the legs with polyester fiberfill.Make sure that they are stuffed evenly. Then, stuff the head, and hand-sew the opening at the bottom closed.


3. Sew each of the remaining six legs closed.Leave one end open for stuffing, and sew with a 1⁄4-inch seam allowance. Then trim the threads, and tuck in any remaining fabric.


4. Turn each leg right-side out. Stuff each leg, and hand-sew the ends shut.


5. Attach the rest of the legs.Sew the legs to the base of the head.



Finally, adorn the Socktopus
If your socks have a very busy pattern, you might want to sew a felt oval to the head, as shown top right, before you embroider the face. Here, I embroidered the face directly on the sock.
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