Breakfast Puff Pancake

We made this for breakfast...

Apple Oven Pancake

2 T. butter
2 large eggs
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. milk
1/4 t. salt
2 T. packed brown sugar
1/4 t. ground cinnamon
1 c. thinly sliced peeled apples
Powdered Sugar to sprinkle on top

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter in 9-inch pie plate, brush butter up sides of pie plate. Beat eggs slightly in medium bowl with wire whisk. Beat in flour, milk, and salt just until mixed. Do Not Overbeat. Sprinkle brown sugar and ground cinnamon evenly over the melted butter in the pie plate. Arrange apples over sugar. Pour batter over apples. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. Immediately loosen edge of pancake and put onto a heat-proof serving plate. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with cut up fruit.

Homemade Apple Pie

We like to watch this show called "Pushing Daisies". It is a good show on ABC. We like this show because it is one that we can watch with the kids, and they love it now too. It is a simple, feel-good show. There is so little that we can watch with the kids and it is fun to sit down and watch something once in a while.

This relates to an Apple Pie, because the main character on the show owns a diner called "The Pie Hole" where they serve many scrumptious pies... (at least I assume they are scrumptious). This all leads up to the project of the day... my yummy apple pie!

It only took me about 30 minutes to make it because I started with a Pillsbury Pre-made pie crust (next time I will make my own crust).

Here is the recipe that I used for the filling:

6 cups thinly sliced, peeled apples (approx 6 medium, I used a variety of apples, Golden Delicious, Gala, and Granny Smith)
3/4 c. sugar
2 T. all purpose flour
3/4 t. ground cinnamon
1/4 t. salt
1/8 t. ground nutmeg
Dash of ground cloves
1 T. lemon juice

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Mix ingredients together and spoon into a crust-lined 9" glass pie pan. Top with the second crust. Wrap excess edges under bottom crust edge, pressing edges together and seal; flute. Cut slits or shapes in several places on the top crust. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until apples are tender and crust is golden brown. Place a cookie sheet on the rack under the pie to catch any spill over from the pie. Cover edge of crust with 2 to 3 inch wide strips of foil after the first 15 to 20 minutes of baking to prevent excessive browning. Cool on cooling rack at least 2 hours before serving.

Here is the pie with the apples and filling.

Here is the pie sealed, fluted and design cut on top. Just simple lines.

I think it could have used a few more apples since they cook down. But this is how it looked when I cut out a piece.... It was still warm and gooey.

And this is how it looked on our plates before we ate it....

Mmmmm.... Mmmmmmmm.... Good!

Watch...

I made this watch using safety pins, seed beads and then the watch face. Simple, easy and done in only a few hours. The hardest part is getting all of the beads on the safety pins without dropping the bowl holding all of those teeny tiny beads. (Let me tell you it is not fun to try to pick them all up in a parking lot... but that is another story.)


It is a very fat and chunky watch. You can't really tell that it is made of safety pins until you inspect it a bit closer.

I do need some opinions on the watch face... do you think it looks good, or would look better with a bigger watch face that is more comparable in size?

Tom Turkey

Here is my new Mr. Tom Turkey.

I have been trying to collect more Thanksgiving decorations since it is sometimes an under appreciated holiday. I love Thanksgiving. It is a great time to get together as friends and family, there is always FABULOUS food around, and so much fun. Sometimes it can be overlooked with the anticipation and excitement of Christmas approaching. (Kinda hard not to when they start putting up Christmas in September!!!)

When I saw this turkey as part of a RS Craft day, I decided to take advantage. However, the night of the event, I had family coming to visit so I wasn't able to go make it there. I received the pieces a few weeks after the event and I finally painted him the other day and then put him together. I changed some of the original color choices for several reasons.... One simply being I didn't have the exact same colors. Another disadvantage of not making him on the event night is that I didn't get some of the peripheral things that were there. Wire to attach the pumpkin (not shown), and straw to tie around him, plus I think there is a piece missing for his hat like a buckle... looks fine without it, but still. I will still be modifying him a bit, and will post a finsihed product when I am fully done.

Another small gift...

Here is a cute little bottle that I made to give out as a gift.

The little bottle came from Ikea. Then I used a Stampin' Up Rub on Flower to decorate the outside. I wanted to make sure that the flower wouldn't come off so I used a little bit of modge podge to keep it in place. Then I added some ribbon around the lid with Sticky Strip from Stampin' Up. The yellow grosgrain ribbon (non SU!) that I was using was a bit too bright for the other fall colors, so I ran the yellow ribbon on top of my brown stamp pad to give it a more subtle color. It is kinda hard to see the flower because of the yummy Reeses PB cups inside the jar (probably the best part of the entire gift!)

Then I cut out a flower from one of my Big Shot punches. I used some of my other Stampin Up Punches to layer it and then poked a jeweled brad through the whole thing to give it a little BLING! Used more of the Sticky Strip to attach it to the top of the jar. Then it was ready to go.

This was a card that I made to go with the gift. It is using a retired stamp set. The white flower is embossed on the black paper, then matted with white paper. The design on the brown paper was put on there with a roller. Tied the flower on the card with brown linen thread. Used the paper piercing tool to put the holes in the card and then used a needle with the linen thread to put it on. Tied a knot and cut the strings short. Used a pre-made tag from a box set, rolled it, stamped For You and tied it on with more linen thread.

Gift bag and Card

This project is a matching gift bag and card. So stinkin' cute, if I do say so myself! The best part is it only uses one 12x12 piece of double sided designer series Stampin' Up paper! I made some of these at a Stamp Camp back in June, but gave all of the ones that I had away, so when I had a gift to give, I needed a new one. They are pretty quick and easy.

To start off, a strip is cut to cover the top third of the bag and then the second peice is folded over to create the pocket. Sticky strip tape is the best for this project because it keeps everything together. I distressed the edges of the paper with a stamp pad, then added the 4 silver brads and brown grosgrain ribbon.

(I added these embellishments to the paper before attaching it to the bag so that the brads aren't going through the bag, but you could do that and it would probably be stronger. Just make sure to use the piercing tool to punch a hole through all of the layers so the brad will slide in easily!)

Then there was one small square of the designer paper left over so I cut it in half and put them in each corner of the card with distressed edges from the ink. I used the Rock 'N' Roll technique on the butterfly to create the double color on the butterfly. First stamp the butterfly in a light color and then roll the edges of the stamp on a darker color ink pad. (FYI, you don't want to do it the other way because you will ruin the lighter color ink pad and it won't really show up very well.)

See it creates a cute little pocket on the outside of the bag that can hold the matching card.

Let me know if there are any questions.

Cookies

Here are some cute sugar cookies we made for our neighbors for Halloween... Fun stuff!