Merry Christmas!

Hello, everyone! I've got nothing to post this week because of the holiday. After I have a chance to wind down, I'll post some new content. Until then, merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Not Now

Today I have an opinion I'd like to share. I don't know that it will be popular, or that me having my say-so will make any difference, but here it goes anyway.

By now, I'm sure there's not a single US citizen that hasn't heard about the recent school shooting in Connecticut. My heart hurts when I think about it. Friday, I avoided Facebook  because all the posts were bringing me to tears. I haven't read too much in the news either, because I just can't take it. I can't even imagine how the families of the victims must feel.

However, on Saturday, I braved Facebook and a few news sites, and my feeds were a deluge of people arguing about guns. From gun rights people, I saw every version of "guns don't kill people, people do" imaginable. From those who oppose guns, I saw everything from "we need stricter gun laws" to "ban all assault weapons now." This is not unexpected; it happens every time there's a gun-related tragedy in the news.

I don't know why, but I just couldn't help it. When I saw these, I got angry. Now is not the time for this crap, people! It's only been four days since the shooting, some families are likely still struggling with accepting that this is real, that this atrocity isn't some nightmare they're going to wake up from any second. The last thing they need is the TV and Internet inundated with politicians, activists, and armchair bureaucrats arguing about gun rights and dragging their murdered children into the fray. There's only a week left until Christmas, I'm sure things are hard enough for them without having to hear a bunch of idiots talking about it like it's just another statistic. What they need is time to mourn and time to bury their dead in peace. The way I see it, using the Newtown victims as fodder for your political agenda is little better than the Westboro Baptist folks protesting at soldiers' funerals.

I know some think that now is the perfect time, while the tragedy is still fresh in people's minds, to have this discussion and work on a solution, but I'm telling you that's not true. This argument has been going on for years, and we're no closer to a viable solution now than we were when the Columbine shootings occurred. And even if we were to miraculously all agree on what must be done, it would take weeks at the very least to get new laws passed through Congress. Trust me, this argument can wait a couple of weeks. Please, let's all take a break and give these families a little bit of respect.

The Christmas Season, Feeling Overwhelmed, and Netflix Woes

This post is a little early because I have a confession to make. As you may know, we don't have TV services at my house. I just don't see paying an exorbitant amount of money for a cable/dish package when I'm only going to watch like three of the channels. We rely on Netflix for most of our TV series viewing, and that works fine, although sometimes it takes Netflix a little while to upload new episodes. Normally, I'm not bothered by this, but you see, I have this crush. I finally talked my husband into sitting down and watching season 2 of AMC's The Walking Dead with me, and I've fallen hard for Rick. And you know how when you were young, and you got a new boyfriend how you wanted to spend every second of every day with them? Well, that's kind of how I feel about Rick now, and I don't know what do with myself. I just can't get enough of the long, lean, gunslingin' Atlas figure. Maybe I should get a six-shooter and a highway patrol hat for my husband... but I don't think you guys want to know that.

Source.

At any rate, my withdrawals haven't helped my feelings of being slightly overwhelmed. It seems no matter what I do, I can't get ahead on housework. I have so much stuff I need to do, so much I want to do, and somebody has stolen a few grains of sand from my hourglass! All this being what it is, I'm still very excited for Christmas this year. We're visiting family, yes, but ultimately because of my husband's work schedule, I've decided to spend Christmas Day at home. It will be the first time we've done that since the little one was a newborn. Now that she's a little older, I think it'll be an exciting day of seeing her open her presents and then playing with those presents. I also plan on making a nice dinner for us all. It should be good. Welp, that's all for now. Maybe I'll have something awesome to share with you all later this week. Until then, enjoy this picture of our beautiful tree we got from our local farmer's market:

Fishy Fun Party

So, my little one just turned four, and I have to say, I'm pretty proud of how her party turned out. One day she was sitting on my lap while I was browsing Pinterest, and together we saw this awesome fish cake from Cupcakes Take the Cake. My little one loved this cake so much that right then and there she decided she wanted a fish-themed party. With the help of Pinterest and Oriental Trading, I was able to come up with some pretty nice stuff.

The cake ended up being super adorable. The mama fish was chocolate cake, the babies were yellow cake, and all of them were frosted with a homemade cream cheese frosting. One of these days, I'll learn how to frost without making a complete mess of the cake board, but eh, I don't think too many people noticed. There was one alteration I made to the original cupcake design, and that was to add a fruit slice for the tail. I was going to include fins by cutting a fruit slice in half, but alas, there really wasn't room on the the cupcakes. A word to the wise, if you end up doing this, you won't need NEARLY as many M&M's as I bought. I got three bags, and in hindsight, I probably could have gotten away with one.


A lot of the food was just a matter of creative labeling. For example: carrot sticks were crab legs, bell pepper sticks were calamari, cheese cut into triangles became shark's teeth, and regular old cucumber slices became sea cucumbers. Potato chips and Goldfish crackers were arranged next to each other with a sign that read, "Fish & Chips." PB and J sandwiches became starfish with the use of a handy, star-shaped cookie cutter. Cheese puffs in Dixie cups (turned into buckets by the addition of a pipe-cleaner handle) became "live bait."

Other foods took a little more effort. There was my little squid, relaxing in a tub of ranch veggie dip. He helped make the bell pepper calamari appear a little more convincing. It was super simple, all I had to do was sink a baby bell into the dip upside down, use some gel frosting to make a face, and slip in eight pepper sticks for the legs.

Next were submarine cakes. My daughter has a video called "The Big Submarine" from Little Mammoth Media (they make wonderful educational videos for kids, please take a minute to check them out). I bought it for her so that she could see what life was like for Daddy when he was at sea in the Navy. Little did I know that she would love that video so much. When she saw these, she nearly deafened me as she pointed at the screen and shouted, "MOMMY, CAN WE HAVE THOSE AT MY FISH PARTY?!!" These were made with chocolate filled Twinkies. Yes, we ate collector's items, and they were delicious.  All I did was use frosting to "glue" on the M&M windows, and insert trimmed-down bendy straws at one end. If you absolutely love this idea, but fear paying $500 a box for Twinkies, DO NOT FRET. Little Debbie makes Cloud Cakes. I've noticed they're a little harder to find in stores, but you won't spend your child's entire college fund to get them.

I also made oyster cookies. The hardest part of this was finding something to use as pearls. Luckily, my local Hobby Lobby had shiny, white Sixlets in the wedding section. After that, it was a matter of coloring some frosting, frosting the bottom of a Nilla Wafer, adding the Sixlet, and then topping it all with another Nilla Wafer. I don't even like Nilla Wafers or Sixlets, but these cookies were tasty. Something about the flavor combo made them really, really good.

Last, but not least, is the Rice Crispy treat sushi. This was as simple as making Rice Crispy treats, making them into patties, wrapping them with Fruit by the Foot, and topping them with a fish-shaped candy. I did have to use frosting to make the fish candy stick, but I consider this a success, because a lot of my family told me this would be the only sushi they'd ever eat. (My family isn't terribly adventurous when it comes to cuisine.)

Now, you may have noticed the cute little labels I made for the food. That wouldn't have been possible without my mom's Cricut machine. Well, it would have, but it would have taken ten times as long and been a lot more work. Actually, I made quite a few decorations with Mom's machine. I made seashells and starfish to scatter on the tables, as well as fish and seaweed to hang from the ceiling. Speaking of decorations, I thought the room looked fabulous:



Thank heavens for my parents, my MIL and SIL. I would never have gotten all this set up in time without them.

We also played several games the kids thoroughly enjoyed. For the first game, the kids got to go fishing for fish-shaped goody bags filled with bubbles, stickers, and necklaces. In the next game, the kids became the fish and had to catch gummy worms hanging from strings with their mouths. As is expected with young children, chaos and hilarity ensued.

When the party was all over, we sent everyone home with favors that I got from Oriental Trading. These little water-filled games were so cute, and my little one loved hers almost as much as she liked her presents.

All in all, I felt it was a big success. It was a lot of work and a little bit stressful, but my philosophy is that eventually, there will come a time when my baby will no longer think my ideas are all that great, and so I might as well go all out while I can. The little one has already informed me that she wants a kitty party next year, and so I will be keeping my eyes open for more good ideas. If you'd like to check out my Pinterest party board, you can do so here: http://pinterest.com/am_crittenden/party-ideas/. Happy party planning!

Lazy Blogging Monday

Well, guys, I don't have a lot to report today. I've been pretty busy making preparations for my little one's upcoming birthday party, but I don't have any pictures ready or anything to tell you about that. I kinda wanted to do an political opinion piece now that the elections are over, but gosh, if you're like me, you need a little break from the onslaught, so I'll hold off on that. So today is lazy blogging day. Yep! I am going to use the work of others as material for my blog today. A friend of mine on Facebook shared this link, and now I'm going to share it with you:

Baked Fundamentalist Macaroni and Cheese

There's a couple of reasons I shared this. One, it's pretty funny, no lie. Be warned, he drops the F-bomb once, if you're sensitive to that kind of language. On the whole though, the article is pretty tame. Secondly, I shared this because it sounds like an OMG tasty recipe, even if you're constipated for a week because of all the cheese. Finally, I shared this because he and I have the exact same opinion on macaroni and cheese. I see all these recipes (Pinterest, I'm looking at you) that call for mustard, or bread crumbs, or ham, or some other such nonsense in your macaroni and cheese, and I hate it. That's not macaroni and cheese, dang it! Now I admit, I fix it differently than he does. I have two versions, depending on who I'm fixing it for. One is a baked variety for my Southern friends and family, the other is a creamy stovetop variety for my husband and little girl. The main ingredients in both of these varieties are macaroni and cheese; they comprise roughly 85% of the dish. There are no meats, no crazy spices, no vegetables. Simple. Pure. And that's how it should be.

Frosted Luminaries

There was one decoration that I did for my Pumpkin Party that I didn't talk about in my previous blog. They're frosted glass luminaries, and they can be used for any occasion where you need a little ambient lighting:

Like so.

 All I did was save up some glass jars, wash them, put on some foil star stickers (the kind you get in the office section of your local big box store), and spray on some glass frosting spray. I've seen ideas similar to this floating around on Pinterest, but most of them call for spray paint, and I personally didn't want to use anything so opaque. For my project, I used Krylon Frosted Glass Finish, mainly because it was the only kind my craft store had at the time. Just make sure your jars are good and clean, make sure all that sticky junk that holds the labels on is gone, and follow the instructions on the spray can. These would be great for Christmas, or even a wedding. You can customize your stickers to any shape, or just leave them off entirely. It's a great little upcycling project that takes only minutes to do.

Now, in case you're wondering, the sticky stuff on the jars I used was pretty stubborn. What I did to get it off was remove the label and rub some petroleum jelly on the adhesive. I let it sit for a day or two, then I scraped as much off as I could with a razor. After that, I washed the jar with HOT water and soap. If it didn't all come off after that, I spritzed it with some Pine-Sol and re-washed the jar with hot water and soap. I've also heard you can used peanut butter, rubbing alcohol, or nail-polish remover. Basically, these things are supposed to weaken the adhesive so that it isn't quite so sticky. I tried them all, and the petroleum jelly worked best for me; I only had to use the Pine-Sol a couple of times as a last resort.

I'm proud of how these turned out. I'm going to keep them handy for my next evening porch get-together. Anyway, that's it for now. Stay tuned for more crafty stuff!

Recipes as Promised

Here are the recipes that I promised from my Pumpkin Party post a couple of weeks ago! This week, I'm doing a couple of different blogs because I've been slack in the blogging department, but not in the life department! I have several things I'd like to share with you. So lets get to those recipes, shall we?

Caramel Cheesecake Fruit Dip

• Two 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, softened
• One 8-ounce tub of whipped topping
• One 16-ounce container of caramel dip

Beat cream cheese in a medium bowl until fluffy. Add whipped topping and caramel dip and beat until smooth. Chill until ready to use.

This can also be poured into a ready-made pie crust and served as a no-bake cheesecake. You can top it with chocolate sauce, nuts, toffee chips, whatever strikes your fancy!

Stuffed Jack-o-Lantern Peppers
This is a large recipe. Feel free to scale it down to fit your family!

• 18 bell peppers
• 1 large onion
• 1 Tbs. oil
• 3 chicken bouillon cubes
• 3 cups white rice
• 6 cups water
• seasoning salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large pot, add rice, water, and bouillon cubes. Bring rice to a boil on high heat, stir, and cover. Turn heat to low and forget about it for 20 minutes. (I mean it! Don't you lift the lid or stir it at all!) Meanwhile, wash peppers and cut tops off. Clean out the seeds and pith, then carefully cut out a simple jack-o-lantern face. Chop up the usable part of the pepper tops. Finely chop the onion. Add the onion, pepper bits, and oil to a skillet and simmer on medium heat until tender. After the rice is finished cooking, add the peppers and onion, then season with seasoning salt to taste. Loosely pack the rice evenly into each pepper. Place the stuffed peppers on a greased baking sheet so that they lean on one another. Bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour.

Eggnog
This recipe comes from The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. Keep in mind, this recipe uses raw eggs. Consume at your own risk.

• 12 eggs, separated
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups bourbon
• 1/2 cup brandy (for a non-alcoholic version, we omitted the booze and substituted 2 tsp. rum extract)
• 6 cups milk
• ground nutmeg
• 1 cup heavy or whipping cream

1. In large bowl with mixer at low speed, beat egg yolks with sugar. At high speed, beat until thick and lemon-colored, about 15 minutes, frequently scraping the bowl.
2. Carefully beat in bourbon and brandy (or rum extract), once Tbs. at a time to prevent curdling the mixture. Cover and chill.
3. About 20 minutes before serving: In chilled 5-6 qt. punch bowl, stir yolk mixture, milk, and 1 1/4 tsp. nutmeg.
4. In large bowl with mixer at high speed, beat egg whites until soft peaks form.
5. In small bowl, using same beaters, with mixer at medium speed, beat cream until stiff peaks form.
6. With wire whisk, gently fold egg whites and cream into yolk mixture until just blended.
7. To serve, sprinkle some nutmeg over top of eggnog; ladle into 6-oz punch cups.

Apple Pie with Crumb Topping
This recipe came from the 12th edition Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I actually found a link to the recipe on the BHG website here. The only difference is on the website, it calls for a premade pie crust bottom, whereas in the book, they tell you how to make a single pie crust. I will now give you the single pie crust recipe from the book, so you can choose whether you want to save some time or make a 100% from scratch dish.

Pastry for Single-Crust Pie

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 4 to 5 Tbs cold water

1. In a medium bowl stir together flour and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in shortening until pieces are pea-size.
2. Sprinkle 1 Tbs of the water over part of the flour mixture; gently toss with a fork. Push moistened dough to the side of the bowl. Repeat moistening flour mixture, using 1 Tbs of the water at a time, until all the flour mixture is moistened. Form dough into a ball.
3. On a lightly floured surface, use your hands to slightly flatten dough. Roll dough from center to edges into a circle about 12 inches in diameter.
4. To transfer pastry, wrap it around the rolling pin. Unroll pastry into a 9-inch pie plate. Ease pastry into pie plate without stretching it.
5. Trim pastry to 1/2 inch beyond edge of pie plate. Fold under extra pastry. Crimp as desired. Do not prick pastry. Bake as directed in individual recipes.

Well that's that, folks! That's how we made all the yummy stuff we served at our Pumpkin Bash. Because I'm a little obsessed with Halloween, I've already started making plans for next year's get-together. Our theme is going to be Lousiana Voodoo House, and the food is going to be Cajun/Creole faire. Our dessert is going to be beignets, and I've got some cute plans for snacks such as frog leg cookies and voodoo-doll breadsticks. See you next time!