Happy New Years!! 2011

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great time last night, if you celebrated. We stayed home as I have a bad cold! I wish for all of you a new year filled with love, peace, health and wealth. I will be making our traditional food of black-eyed peas with bacon in it or what is called Hoppin' John, some kind of greens and cornbread, YUMMY!

Hopefully I can get back into posting on the blog, but will have to wait and see, I have to report for jury duty on Monday, I hope when I call the night before to see if it is still being held, that the recording will say that they don't need for us to show up!

Hope to see more of you next year! Until than, have a crafty day....Mary

Merry Christmas To All

Hi to all of my blogging friends! Sorry that I haven't posted anything for the past week, life has been very busy around here and we had a friend and neighbor pass away, both were in their 80's. We will miss them very much. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families.

I want to share with you a cute video that I found on YouTube, hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUL0KCIc48

Hope your day is filled with love, laughter and happiness with whomever you are sharing your day with.

Merry Christmas !!!!

Oh and if your day allows, have a crafty one! Mary

Sugar Coated Pecans

HI to all my blog friends!! Hope you all have your Christmas shopping done, all your packages mailed and all your cards sent too.

Today I'm going to share yet another recipe with you that I found on Allrecipes.com back in 2006. These pecans are so good! My oldest said that they are like eating crack, once you get started you can't stop! In fact one year I had to hide them from her so she wouldn't eat them before I could take them to a party we were going too! One of her co-workers ask her a couple days ago at their office Christmas luncheon "where are your Mom's pecans?"

Sugar Coated Pecans

1 egg white
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pound pecan halves, buy the best ones you can afford, it does make a difference
1 cup white sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Grease one cookie sheet with sides. In a mixing bowl, whip together the egg white, vanilla and water until frothy. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, salt and cinnamon. Add pecans to egg white, stir to coat the nuts evenly. Remove the nuts and toss them in the sugar mixture until all coated. Spread the nuts out on the prepared baking sheet. Bake at 250 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool before serving.

Now it is important to let the pecans cool completely before serving or eating. If you try to eat them before they are cool, they will not taste good.

You can use 1 cup Splenda instead of the sugar.
You can use 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar, in place of the 1 cup white sugar.
You can use almonds, walnuts in place of pecans.

Enjoy!! Mary

Sweet Party Mix

Well, in keeping with the Chex Mix that I shared with you a couple of days ago, I thought I would share a sweet mix with you today. This is so good and it is hard to stop eating once you get started! I found this recipe 5 years ago on Allrecipes.com, they have so many good recipes and I like to read the reviews first before I decided if it is a recipe I want to try out.

Sorry about posting only recipes lately, we've been super busy here and recipes are easy for me to share with all of you and besides everyone is always looking for recipes around Christmas and for New Year's too! I will share the original recipe first and than at the end share with you how I do/make it.

Sweet Party Mix

1 (12 oz) package crispy corn and rice cereal
5 ounces slivered almonds**
6 ounces toasted, chopped pecans**
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup dark Karo syrup
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Lightly grease large roasting pan. In a large bowl, mix cereal, almonds and pecans. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and mix with dark Karo syrup and light brown sugar (I let the mixture come to a boil and boil for one minute). Pour the mixture over the cereal/nut mixture. Stir and shake to coat all. Pour the coated cereal mixture into the prepared roasting pan. Place in oven; stirring every 15 minutes. Cook for 1 hour. After baking, pour out onto waxed paper and store in airtight containers.

** I use my favorite nuts, peanuts or cashews or both and I use a total of 4 cups when I make this. I also bake mine on two large cookie sheets that have sides to them, I spray them with PAM. I also stir the mix, after it is done baking, while it is cooling on the cookie sheets. **

Traditional Chex Party Mix

Good day to everyone! I hope your day is off to a Great start!

I would like to share with all of you today my family's version of this popular snack mix. This particular recipe that I have is from the 1970's and I do believe that is was the first version of this recipe. Nowadays you can find many different ones, but this is the one that my family will eat, if I try a newer, updated one, they don't like it. I will be making some of this soon to give to one of my husband's co-workers, she always requests a sack of this every year!

Traditional Chex Party Mix

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
2 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt
6 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 2/3 cups Rice Chex cereal (I use Cheerios)
2 2/3 cups Wheat Chex cereal
2 2/3 cups Corn Chex cereal
2 2/3 cups Pretzel sticks (my family addition)
1 cup salted mixed nuts (I use two cups) **see note at end**

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Heat butter in large shallow roasting pan (about 15 x 10 x 2-inches) in oven until melted. Remove. Stir in seasoned salt and Worcestershire sauce. Add cereal, pretzel sticks and nuts. Mix until all pieces are coated. Heat in oven 1 hour, stir every 15 minutes. Spread on absorbent paper to cool (I skip this part and just let it cool in the pan, less mess this way). Makes approximately 9 cups of mix.

** I use a 16 oz container of Planter's cocktail peanuts when I make this OR a container of cashews. They seem to be the most favorite two nuts, so that is what I use when I make this.**

Helpful Measurements:

one 14 oz. box of Cheerios makes 5 single batches
one 14 oz. box of Corn Chex makes 5 single batches
one 12.8 oz. box of Rice Chex makes 5 single batches

Thanks for stopping by and I LOVE to hear your comments!! Have a crafty day.....Mary

Merry Christmas Dog Card

Hey everyone, how are you all doing? We are all doing well and I've had some time to play in my room, so I thought I would share with all of you.

Here is a card that I made to send to my daughter who lives in Columbia, MO. As you know, we are all big dog lovers in our family. When I was on Splitcoaststampers awhile back I saw this card and just knew I had to CASE it (copy and share everything). It's such a happy card. Oh, here is the one I saw:http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/1839341
I didn't have any ribbon that small with Christmas colors in it, so I went to Michael's to hunt some down and was going thru the sticker section and just happened to see these Santa hat stickers, of course they jump right into my hands, has that ever happened to you??! I added some glitter to the tree and snow, click on the picture to see better.

Here is what I used;
Stampin' Up; D is for Dog, Short and Sweet stamp sets; word window and oval punch; markers
Northwoods; tree stamp
Martha Stewart glitter
glue pen
sponge dabber
Versamark ink (blue)
Recollections stickers; Santa hat
Bazzill cardstock

Almond Roca Cookies

Now this is not the best picture of these AMAZING cookies!! I found this recipe on Splitcoaststampers and the recipe submitter, Shaela, said that every single cookie cookoff she enters with this cookie, she wins and I can taste why. I will be adding these to my cookie platters that I give to my neighbors every year. This was my second baked good that I took to the church bake sale.

Almond Roca Cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 package toffee bits
1 cup coarsely ground almonds
4 ounces milk chocolate
1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, blend sugars together on medium speed. Add butter and mix to form a grainy paste. Add eggs and vanilla and mix at medium speed until light and fluffy. At low speed, slowly add the flour mixture and then the toffee bits. Mix until just blended; do not over-mix.

Place ground nuts in a small bowl. Using hands or small scoop, roll balls of dough into 1 to 1 1/2 inch balls, then roll in the gound nuts. Place on cookie sheets several inches apart. There is no need to flatten them. Bake approximately 20 minutes and than transfer cookies to a cooling rack.

Melt the chocolate with the vegetalbe oil in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Drizzle melted chocolate over cooled cookies. Place cookies on a cookie sheet and place in freezer or refrigerator until chocolate is firmly set. Store in tightly covered container.

Yields: 5 dozen (when I made them, I only got 4 dozen, must have maded them to big).

I used my Silpats when I make cookies, I think I would grease the cookie sheets just to be on the safe side when making these because of the toffee bits.

Cherry Pound Cake

Today I want to share with you one of the recipes that I made for our church bake sale. This bread comes from robinhood.ca and boy is it delicious!! Now it says to bake it in a bundt pan but I have made it using two loaf pans and also the mini loaf pans too. I have found the baking time to be about 55 minutes when making it in a loaf/mini loaf pan. My daughter is always asking me to make this for her.

Cherry Pound Cake

1 1/4 cups butter, softened
2 3/4 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups Robin Hood All-Purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup EVAPORATED milk, undiluted
2 cups quartered maraschino cherries, well drained (I use 3 - 10 oz jars)

Beat butter, sugar, eggs and extract in large bowl on low speed of electric mixer until blended, then on high speed 5 minutes until light and fluffy.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt.

Add dry ingredients alternately with evaporated milk to creamed mixture, mixing lightly after each addition.

Fold in cherries.

Turn batter into greased and floured 12-cup bundt or tube pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes.

Cover loosely with foil, shiny side out; continue baking 15-20 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Let cool in pan for 5 minutes; invert cake onto rack and let cool completely.

Dust with powdered sugar just before serving (I skip this part).

VARIATION:

Chocolate Chip Pound Cake: Omit almond extract and use regular or miniature chocolate chips instead of cherries.

Make: about 16 servings

Stylist Blog Award

Oh my look what I found in my comments section one day! A wonderful award from someone who just found my blog, her name is Marg and here is a link to her blog:http://auntiemargsblog.blogspot.com/

Now I have to send this on to eight new blogs that I've found and tell you eight things about myself too, than I have to contact the eight bloggers to let them know so that they can send it on to eight more bloggers. They need to tell from whom they received it from and add a link of that persons blog. So here we go,

1).http://www.stampingwithbev.blogspot.com/

2).http://stampinwithsuzee.blogspot.com/

3).http://craftsbybeth.blogspot.com/
4).http://meandmypinkmixer.blogspot.com/

5 ).http://totallytutorials.blogspot.com/

6).http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/

7).http://www.salad-in-a-jar.com/

8).http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

Now for the eight things about myself.

1). At one time had a job at the dental school in the computer room

2). At one time I worked for the United States Marine Corps in the computer room

3). I love all kinds of music, whatever sounds good at the time, I like

4). Dogs and horses are my two favorite animals, I lived on a farm as a little girl for about 5 years

5). My favorite color is BLUE!!!

6). I really love to do anything crafty, really I do, it's very exciting, relaxing and fun

7). I'm good at doing home improvement projects, I've had alot of experience the last 32 years

8). I like finding answers to questions or facts about things I don't know, great way to find information is to "google", LOVE IT!

There's some of the things about me in a nutshell. Oh and I love nature too, go for a walk daily with hubby!

Hope you have a crafty day.......Mary