Crazy Thanksgiving

What a crazy Thanksgiving week I've had. My week started off pretty good on Monday. Started baking on Tuesday and got Banana, Banana Bread made, Homemade Chocolate Cake with homemade icing, and sugar cookie lollipop cookies all done. Bubba and Pumpkin helped with the cookies since they were for Bubba's Kindergarten class for his Birthday. Got up Wednesday and headed off to my Mother-In-Laws for a morning of making Apple Pies with my Mother-In-Law and Pumpkin. On the way home Pumpkin and I stopped at the store to pick up a couple things. While in the store Pumpkin slept in the cart the whole time that was the easiest trip I had ever made to the store. When Bubba got home from school we started baking again at this point everything started to go wrong for me. I was using my hand chopper to chop up pretzels for a Jello Dessert I was making. At this point my hand chopper decides to break on the second time I ever use it. :-( So I get my electric chopper out while doing so cute my finger open on the blade. Thinking things couldn't get any worse while using the electric chopper I put to much pressure on my cracked glass stove top and busted it all the way through. Luckily I did not get hurt from the broken glass. Well I should have known to stop at that point, but didn't I kept on preparing the Jello Dessert which ended up being a huge disaster that ended up in the trash. So I moved on with my baking by making an Almond Pound Cake which turned out good. :-) Thanksgiving morning I get up and make a Coffee Cake to take to breakfast with my In-Laws well the batter baked up and over all of the topping on my Coffee Cake and the center of the cake collapsed even though I baked it for a little longer then it called for. At least it tasted good, tasted like a cinnamon roll lol. While at my In-Laws my brother in-law discovered that his parents were not having a Thanksgiving dinner and was bummed that he was gonna miss out on Turkey and all the fixings. So we invited him to go with us to my parents house. When my mom cooks it could feed an army. She is the youngest girl of 12 children so she is used to making and having a lot of food. We had a great time at my parents with family. My Uncle D was up from Florida and Bubba loves when Uncle D is in town because he is named after him. My brother spent most of the evening playing with Bubba and Pumpkin and bugging me; but that's what little brothers do best I guess bug their sisters. But overall I'd have to say though it was crazy in the beginning that it was the best Thanksgiving I've had in years. Now for more fun this weekend with a Thanksgiving and Cookie Baking Party with friends from church and Bubba's 6th birthday party. Looking forward to spending more time with my great family and friends this weekend. Feel free to post your crazy Thanksgiving stories as well. :-)

Cookie Baking with Bubba

The other evening Bubba and I decided to make his dads favorite cookie Snickerdoodles as a surprise for him. Didn't take dad long to figure out we were up to something and came to see what we were doing in the kitchen. So all the pictures of the cookie making are thanks to dad for being curious.
I wanted to make a cookie with Bubba that would be easy enough for him to help with and gave him his own job as well; other then putting ingredients in the mixer.

So we got started on our cookies and having fun with just talking and being silly in the kitchen. I have to admit one of my favorite times with my family is in the kitchen. So after a little being silly and working on getting the cookie dough together we got to Bubbas job.

 Rolling the balls of dough in the cinnamon and sugar mixture; which ended up being harder then what I thought it'd be because he wanted to lick the cinnamon and sugar off his fingers so needless to say he made many trips to wash his hands.

As you can tell Bubba was loving the taste of the cinnamon and sugar. So after a final hand washing and getting all the cookies ready to go in the oven we had the hard part of waiting for them to get done. Bubba sat in front of the oven for awhile watching the cookies bake and keep asking "are they done yet, I wanna eat one". So when they finally came out of the oven and cooled just enough to be eaten there were hands everywhere going after the warm cookies. If you'd like this finger licking cookie recipe it is located under my Recipes tab.



Hand & Footprint Turkey Craft

The other day Pumpkin and I were bored and looking for something to do whie his brother was at school. Pumpkin didn't want to bake cookies so I was trying to figure something else out to do. I ended up deciding to do a fun Thanksgiving craft with him that I use to do with the kids when I worked at a daycare. Pumpkin loved getting his hands and feets traced. He keep giggling say "it tickle Mommy".

It is a fun craft to do with all ages the older the children are the more they can help with it though. You can take the finished product and add a little piece of Magnet on the back to make it a Magnet for your Fridge. I would suggest putting contact paper on the turkey if you want to use it as a magnet though so it will stay nice for years to come. Also if you wanted you could frame the turkey by giving your child a piece of paper to decorate and then glue the turkey to the paper put a date on it and frame it. I would love to see the turkeys you do with your children, send me a picture of them and i'll post them on my blog under the Crafty You Page. andersonsangels2010@gmail.com
The directions and supply list for this craft are under my Family Crafts Section.

Tom The Turkey

So Bubba comes home with a family project to do for his Kindergarten class. Our family is to disguise Tom the turkey so he wont get eaten for Thanksgiving. I ask Bubba what he wants to disguse Tom as and he says "a cowboy mommy lets disguse him as a cowboy". So I made up cowboy clothes for Tom along with some feathers, because without the feathers Tom looked like a chicken. So after Bubba got his homework done and I got all Toms clothes cut out we started to assemble him. Once we got Tom done he was very cute and ended up being a big hit in Bubbas Kindergarten class.

Trip to the apple orchard

We decided this year to take a family trip to the apple orchard for their family fun day to do some apple picking. So we loaded up my in-laws van and all headed off to Monroes Apple Orchard in Hiram, Oh. We ended up being blessed with a beautiful fall day even though we could see rain clouds in the distance we never felt a drop while we were there.

So we all loaded up on the hay wagon to take a ride out into the apple orchard to start picking our apples. We enjoyed the secnary of the orchard while on the hayride. The boys were having fun playing with the lose hay. Once we got out into the orchard we all felt like kids in a candy store looking for that perfect piece, but instead of being the perfect piece of candy it was the perfect apple. My boys were wanting to eat all the apples right off the trees instead of putting them in our bag to take home.

So we finally got our bag full of apples to take home. But before leaving the orchard we had to take part in some of the family fun day events. Like making sure we got our Free apple cider, apple, apple bread and apple fritter samples yummy. The boys also got their faces painted, some yummy treats from the amish ladies that were there selling baked goods and of course we had to watch the making of the apple cider and buy a few jugs to bring home. They make the best apple cider there. When we got home we ended up using the apples to make four apple pies and homemade apple juice. All I can say is it was a trip to the apple orchard that I will never forget because it was with my wonderful family.