Our Thanksgiving Feast

It's the last day of November 2014.

Our Thanksgiving is over!

We had a nice celebration and hope you did too.

  I cooked a turkey for the first time in years.  

Actually I've only cooked two oven turkeys in 40 years of marriage.  

We always traveled to be with family every Thanksgiving (and most holidays) so there weren't many times when we were home.  

After my father-in-law passed away over ten years ago we decided to finally stay at home for Thanksgiving.  

Since then I have fixed nice meals for my Hubby... just not a turkey.

  

But I missed having the turkey dinners with all the fixings.  

I love turkey!

Then I saw on Pinterest a pin about cooking a turkey breast in a crock pot.  

I thought I could do that and that would be perfect for us. 

 I bought a frozen three pound Butterball turkey breast.

I never even knew they came that small.

I cut up some carrots, celery and onion and rubbed the turkey with olive oil, seasoned it and dumped the gravy pack that came with the turkey over the meat along with 1/2 cup of water and turned my crock pot on "high" for an hour then turned it down to "low".

I have this neat thermometer that I used to track the interior temperature of the turkey.

It had to reach 140 degrees within four hours (it did) and once it reached at least 165 degrees it was considered cooked properly.

Around 5 pm it reached over 165 degrees and the instructions said it wouldn't hurt to cook it longer so I did.

In the meantime I fixed mashed potatoes, Stove Top Stuffing, frozen white corn (which I forgot to fix even with my list), gravy and cranberry sauce.  

I cooked three Yukon baking potatoes and mashed them.  

I learned for just the two of us, three potatoes was two too many.

Oh, and the turkey was so moist and delicious! 

We can't eat as much now so we had enough left-overs for three more meals.

If you don't want to heat up your house with a turkey in the oven all day, and you only need a small turkey, this is a wonderful way to prepare your turkey.

I swear it tasted better than any of the ones I roasted in the oven. 

  

Later in the evening we had homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream.   

Our Thanksgiving meal was a great success!

 Hubby was so pleased - although to give him credit he said I didn't have to do a turkey.   

I was tired but very happy!

And now the Christmas Season begins tomorrow!

It's going to be tough on me because most of our Christmas decorations are in storage so I won't be decorating our home as usual.

You know how much I love Christmas!

But we have so much going on with our home being built in Ohio and preparing our home here in PA for sale.

I decided to skip making my Christmas Sugar Cookies this year too.

And now my neighbors have started putting their Christmas lights and decorations out.

It looks so pretty and I want to decorate too.

I'm tempted to have Hubby buy two strands of colored lights to put on each side of the front slab.

This will be the first time in our married life we won't have a Christmas tree up (sob!).

But I've realized I have to pace myself as I get older.

I do have a few Christmas things I can put out from my Christmas cabinet.

Next year I can go crazy decorating in our new Ohio home!

Missy...my Girl "Elf on a Shelf"

Here I go again.  

I had to try crocheting a little girl "Elf on a Shelf"!

Stitching her head and elf ears.

Practice helps.  

I did much better this time on the narrow legs and arms.  

Using the stitch marker and counting carefully made the difference. 

All the pieces ready to be stitched together.

As usual the face features are the hardest for me.  

It's not easy hand-embroidering her eyes and mouth.

Still have to add her long brown locks!

I added some long hair by crocheting chain loops around the head. 

The happy couple!

And I crocheted up a cute little apron for Missy. 

So what do you think?

Don't they make a cute couple?

For additional information and free pattern click (here). 

My Birthday Elf & Cake!

I'm so glad I made it to 68!  

So is my crocheted Birthday "Elf on a Shelf"!

My sweet Hubby made my Brithday so wonderful.  

He bought me some Pandora charms (a Fairy, a Castle and a Christmas Teddy Bear).  

And now he is on his way to pick up our take out dinner for tonight.  

No cooking for me tonight.  

We're going to put a DVD on and sit back and enjoy our evening.  

He choose well considering I hinted at the new Disney charms for my birthday.  

Unfortunately the Disney charms aren't available until January 2015 at our local store.  

But the fairy is Tink, the castle is Cinderella's as far as I'm concerned.  

I finished my Elf on a Shelf last night.

I started him last January and set him aside and picked him up again two nights ago.  

It's the first time EVER I hand-embroidered a face.  

Now I want to crochet a girl elf!

Take a look at the progression of my birthday cake.  

After sitting awhile it started to split apart down the middle of both layers.  

We were laughing so hard as we tried to catch the layers as they were sliding off. 

Regardless of how awful it looks it tasted delicious. 

Thanks for visiting me on my birthday!

I won't be doing much decorating this Christmas because most of our decorations are in storage for our move next year.  

I have a few Christmas & Disney things in my Christmas China Cabinet that I can put out though.

It wouldn't be Christmas without some decorations.

Ghostly Greetings…I Know I'm Late!

Yes, I know Halloween is over.  

But I'm a little bit behind finishing my "Party with Patrick" project for October. 

It's this adorable wall hanging called, "Ghostly Greetings".

  

It's appliquéd without stitching down the edges of the appliqués.  

I did blanket stitch just the moon appliqué and I tacked down the bats, ghosts eyes and the towers so I didn't have to worry about the spray adhesive coming loose.  

And those are the tiniest windows on the tower.

I had adhesive all over my fingers trying to tack them down.

I finally stitched them down with yellow thread.    

The top layer of the wall hanging has black netting fabric placed over the appliquéd body to give a misty, murky feeling to the dark night. 

I used black felt for the rock/castle, bats and ghosts' eyes and mouth.  

I tried to give the ghosts a more 3D effect by layering batting and white fabric together.

The back is a cute Halloween flannel fabric I received as a gift from my sewing store.  

And I love the fabric I used for the binding.  

It just pulls the colors together and makes the wall hanging POP.

  

It's hanging on my refrigerator as I type this...too cute to set aside for next year just yet. 

   

Thanks for visiting me!

Christmas Cupcake Garland

I like to keep my hands busy at night while watching TV.  

Crocheting is perfect for that.

  

I saw a crocheted cupcake garland on Pinerest but the link was only back to a photo on Flickr.

I thought maybe I could figure out how to duplicate the photo of the first cupcake photo I liked (Exhibit 1 below) but my result didn't look right.

  

So I surfed Ravelry for a similar pattern.  

Luckily there were many free cupcake patterns listed. 

I liked this one and decided to try it in Christmas colors. 

Out came my cotton yarns in greens, reds and white. 

I attached the cupcakes to a red ribbon.

  

I loved it.  

So much in fact I'm making a second one.  

These are cute, easy and quick to whip up.  

And will make adorable gifts for any occasion...birthday, wedding, graduation and/or baby shower. 

Link to the free pattern (here) and link to my Ravelry project for details (here).   

First Cakecup Inspiration
Source:  Pinterest

This was the cupcake I tried first to duplicate without a pattern.  

My poor version (not shown) was crocheted from the bottom to the top.  

But I think it should have been croched from the top to the bottom.   

I may try this one again.  

I love the yarns!
Source:  Pinterest

This is another cute cupcake photo from Pinerest!  

This one looks like a cupcake scarf.  

Give it a try crocheting your own cupcake - you will love it!

Update:  I did crochet a second one and added beads to it.  

I'm getting better at decreasing on the cake portion...I think. 

I plan to add beads to the first garland too.  

I worked up the second one in two nights.  

Long day today and very typical November...chilly, windy, rainy, dark and dreary.

  

We packed our car and travel van today with moving boxes for our storage unit in Ohio.

Stuff that we don't want the movers to move.  

Our travel van is going to Ohio on our next trip and into storage there.  

Which means I drive the car and Hubby drives the travel van on our next trip.  

No sleeping for me.

I'm not use to "driving" especially long "drives".

We set aside two days to get to Ohio in case I get tired driving.   

We want to get the travel van to Ohio before winter comes.  

Can't believe it's November already!