Thanksgiving Placemat Craft: Indian Corn

Every year our teachers make place mats for our school wide Thanksgiving Feast! Last year took a lot of work as I had the toddlers make a TON of yellow, red and brown dots to make Indian Corn. I was determined to find an easier place mat for young toddlers this year. I accomplished my task!! Check out what I found:

 

 

This is one of the place mats we made this year. The outside are simple pattern sponge rollers you can find at most teacher or craft stores. I did 2 or 3 each of the different patterns. One was polka dots, one was a plain stripe and so on. Some I did all four sides and some just the outsides. It's up to you!

 

The main part of it is the kids hand print. You can trace their hand and cut it out or you can capture the actual hand print as I did by painting their hands yellow and making a hand print on a plain white piece of paper. Then cut out around their hand print. Next take a hole punch to some dark and light brown paper and glue sporadically onto their cutout hand. I free handed the simple corn stalk out of green paper and the banner out of yellow. I even outlined the yellow banner myself with a sharpie marker. Then I personalized with their name and the year.

 

SO SIMPLE yet so pretty and a great keepsake for years to come! Make sure and laminate or the food will ruin them!

T.T.A.R. Day 2

Do you see that delicious chunky sweet yummy-ness to the right in the picture above?? That would be the feature of today's recipe and one that I will be making in T-minus 1 hour. It is a Chunky Pear-Apple Sauce and I found it from a random cookbook from the library a couple years ago. Here is the description straight from the cookbook:

"During autumn holidays, the aromas of slow-cooking fruit and sugar evoke a real feeling of nostalgia. At Thanksgiving I make a point of serving a crisp-tasting apple compote, and with the addition of succulent, fragrant pears, I find that the smooth flavor combination marries well with the savory herbs and spices used in the stuffing, gravy, and-of course-the turkey."

CHUNKY PEAR APPLE SAUCE

6 Anjou or Comice pears, slightly under ripe

4 apples (preferably a mixture of Granny Smith, McIntosh, and Golden Delicious)

2 TBLS Fresh Lemon Juice, or more to taste

1 C. Apple Juice

1/2 C. Sugar, or more to taste

1 tsp. Finely Grated Lemon Zest

1. Core, peel, and cut the pears and apples into large chunks. Toss them with the 2 TBLS lemon juice in a large heavy pot.

2. Add the apple juice, 1/2 C. sugar, and the lemon zest. Stir and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, until the fruit is tender but not mushy, about 15 minutes.

3. Uncover the pot, stir, and continue cooking to thicken the juices, 5 minutes more. Taste and add more sugar or lemon juice if desired, stirring carefully so as not to break up the fruit too much. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Then transfer to a container, cover, and refrigerate for as long as 4 days. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Makes 8 cups

Thankful Thought:

Last night at dinner I asked my daughter what was something she was thankful for? My comedian of a husband pipes in before she answers, "I'm thankful I'm not a turkey!" Of course my daughter amused by this (although she probably has no idea why it's funny), then answers, "I'm thankful I'm not a dog!" Of course I follow up with why? And after a moment of thought she says, "No, actually I've always wanted to be a dog."

Oh my children, my children. (Smile)

Until tomorrow...

be thankful and make sure your turkey is defrosted!

T.T.A.R.

Do you like my acronym? It stands for a Thankful Thought And a Recipe! I am actually home all week and have been enjoying my time off like no body's business!! In other words I am loving this break! In my new found free time (short lived as it may be) I have been inspired for some blog posts. My first is to share a few of my tried and true Thanksgiving recipes and to also insert a thankful thought. However these aren't the mushy gushy thanks that you may be used to seeing on blogs and Facebook this time of year. Hopefully they will all come from my kids. And you all know that no one ever knows what will come out of their mouth!

So to start off I have an alternative dessert recipe, aside from the traditional Pumpkin Pie (which even when I make this recipe I STILL must make a pumpkin pie too!), and most have heard of it: Pumpkin Roll. It's goodness is incomparable! It's sugary, cream cheesy goodness! And it really is quite simple, it's just time consuming. But the great part is that you can easily make it a day ahead because it has to chill in the fridge before serving anyways.

PUMPKIN ROLL

2/3 C. Pumpkin (100% pumpkin)

3 eggs

1 C. Sugar

3/4 C. Flour

1 tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

FILLING:

8 oz Cream Cheese

1 tsp. Vanilla

1 Tbsp. Butter

1 C. Sugar

Mix all ingredients. Cover a 9 x 13 pan with wax paper (covering entire bottom and sides of pan) and spray paper w/ Pam cooking spray until covered. Pour dough onto wax paper. Bake for 17 minutes @ 375 degrees. Take it out and with a damp tea towel flip it over. Let cool for about 10 minutes then remove wax paper and roll the bread up with the towel. Cool for 4 hours. Once cool mix up first 3 ingredients of filling. Once thoroughly mixed, add sugar. Unroll the bread and remove the towel. Spread the filling on top (leave about an inch from the end because as you roll, it will push the icing). Roll it back up with the icing now. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. When ready to serve, cut into slices about an inch thick.

TOTAL TIME: 6 hours SERVES: About 12

I would have had a picture because I just made one this past week when we had some friends over for a game night, however we devoured it quite quickly and my photo thought was a little late, sorry :(

Now for the thankful thought: This morning my son was digging through his backpack and found his pen pal letter. They do pen pals within the school and he recently received a new letter. We were reading it to him and at the end of the letter his pen pal told what he was thankful for and then asked my son what HE was thankful for. My son, without missing a beat, replied, "I'm thankful for hunting for prairie dogs." And after a response of laughter we calmed down and asked him why to which his reply was, "Cause it's fun! And I get to collect bullets." Don't worry he means the bullet shells. I just found that hilarious and thought I would share. Until tomorrow...

Stay calm and ENJOY the holidays!

Thanksgiving Placemat Craft

It is a tradition at our Day School for every class to make place mats for the school wide Thanksgiving Feast! I've seen tons of versions of turkeys and even the Mayflower and I just HAD to come up with something different. Leave it to me to rock the boat huh? What started out with an idea to paint USING Indian Corn (place in paint, then roll on paper to make a border) changed into thumbprint Indian Corn in itself. All because my local grocery store threw out all the Indian corn the night before I went to buy some for our art project. Of course right?!

But I'm happy with how they turned out! We used paint craft rollers to instead make the borders with and then made lots and lots of thumbprints using yellow, red and brown paint to fill in a light pencil shape of corn I had made beforehand. I added the dark brown outline and the husks coming off the bottom of them and just printed out a poem I had my husband help me with:

With my cute little hands,

this corn I have made.

Like the Indians prepared,

on Thanksgiving Day!

It is super easy and would be a fun craft project for you and your little one to do next week when they're home from school! Not to mention it will save some cleaning up after your Thanksgiving meal!

A sewage pipe, a turkey, and 6 kids...

I have been SO wanting to get on here just about every night since my last post and I'm so sorry ya'll that I have been absent during the holidays! But to say my house became a zoo would be an understatement! My holiday week started Sunday as my parents arrived that afternoon. That very night as my mom took a shower she heard some funny bubbling noises coming from the drain of the tub. A few minutes after she was through with her lovely warm shower our sewage backed up.

Yep. The FIRST of my company arrived and I have 6 more coming in two days and I have sewage backup. Isn't that a great start??! Thankfully my daddy was there and from his wisdom found the pipe and dug it up so the sewage never leaked out into our house. Again - thank you dad!! We had finally (after talking to 3 separate Roto, Rooter, Plumbing, Whatever companies) we found a place that we came over that we called because they had the christian fish logo and a verse on their advertisement! They lived up to their advertising too. It was a FABULOUS company and the guy got started right away, worked with us, was so clean and orderly about everything he did and stayed until it was done!

Now I made that seem simple but this wasn't just fixing a broken pipe...this was fixing a pipe that was a foot into the foundation of our house. Yes. He had to chip away our foundation just to remove the old pipe. All the while I'm supposed to be trying to focus on buying all the food that is supposed to stuff my kitchen to the brim with carbs and sugar for our Thanksgiving feast!

However life continued and the company arrived! It was 6 kids and 6 adults in our little house but I did have a couple tricks up my sleeve and I want to list them here for ideas for ya next year:

1. If you have little kids buy some butcher paper at a teacher's store (or something similar) and cover their table with it! It keeps them busy and quiet and AT the table while you set the food out! I even took it a step further and put black butcher paper on my wall for them to do chalk art also! It was a HUGE hit and it's SUPER CHEAP!

2. If you can see in this picture I also picked up some cheap leather crafts from Hobby Lobby for the kids to do that morning while we were busy in the kitchen. I got Indian necklaces for the boys (with real arrowheads!) and a tom thumb purses for the girls. They were all about 2 to 3 dollars a piece.

3. Plan make-ahead recipes! I try to get half of my meal done the day before so I'm not so exhausted on Thanksgiving Day that I don't enjoy it. I have made Cranberry Salsa with Pita Bread, Pear-Applesauce, and Cranberry Salad as make-ahead recipes before.

4. Keep it simple. Don't stress about having or doing everything perfect or above and beyond. the focus is on thankfulness and family - focus on spending time with those around you instead of the things around you. Here was my simplistic table this year:

To round up our holidays most of the family went for a walk while my dad and I stayed behind to clear the kitchen of dishes...only to get drenched by the rain!

And we battled my dad's wits with his favorite Trivial Pursuit! Lastly we celebrated his 60th with dinner at Papadeaux (cuz seriously NO ONE wants to cook the day after Thanksgiving!)

It was good times and fond memories made. Hope you had a special, even if chaotic, holiday as I did. See you guys soon with a VERY COOL project I'm planning for next year - all to be displayed on my blog the whole year through! Can't wait to share...

"Hello Cupcakes" strikes again with Larry the Turkey

Okay so I already made Tyler's preschool class some pumpkin cupcakes for Halloween but I just happened to sign myself up to make desserts for their Thanksgiving Feast as well! It totally wasn't my fault - you see I resisted the sign in sheet for days thinking the blanks will fill in eventually with willing mommies. But it was one week away and the ONLY blank left was desserts and I would feel horrible if poor lil 4 year old's didn't have a ton of sugar to finish off their meal so they could torture poor Ms. Lisa for the nest 3 hours!! So I just ASKED if the desserts was for the kids or adults (because there was a sign-up to bring side dishes for the teachers too) and of course it just so happened to be for the kids.....so I may have...written my name down and mentioned there was yet another cupcake adventure that looked like it may be fun (sheepish grin).

And I must say for anyone who looks at these creations and thinks "I could SO not do that" I highly recommend the book, "Hello Cupcake". It takes what looks like extremely difficult creations of cupcakes and breaks it down in easy steps so even I can understand how to do it! And they are the CUTEST things ever!

So back to the turkeys...I did my own rendition of "Larry the Turkey" although I had to change a couple ingredients or should I say COLOR of ingredient because I just could not find caramel everything! lol...non-the-less here were my results:

My first one:

Just ONE mess that covered my kitchen AND spilled over into my living room believe it or not!

A close-up

Here are all 12 of my turkeys awaiting annihilation the next day by Ms. Lisa's preschool class!