Emma's Garden

Last night at church, we had a dinner to celebrate the birthday of the Relief Society.  The Relief Society is the women's organization in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  In fact it is the oldest and largest women's organization in the world!  If you would like to learn more about it you can go here.

The theme for the night was Emma's garden.  Emma was the wife of Joseph Smith and the first president of the Relief Society.  The ladies of our ward put on amazing program.  We had a yummy light dinner of quiche, cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, various salads and fruit.

The decorations were really cute.  At each individual place setting there was a little potted flower for each lady to take home.  The stage was set up to look like Emma was having a garden party.  A small play was presented where each one of the presidents of the Relief Society visited Emma and told a little bit about herself.  In between a narrator spoke a little about what was going on in the world or about that era while the Young Women acted it out.  They even had a barbershop quartet which I think was everyone's favorite!

A couple of weeks ago, one of the ladies asked me if I would be willing to to dessert.  I was a little stressed out about the theme at first.  I wasn't sure what to do for a garden theme.  I ended up doing cupcakes and may have taken the garden/flower theme slightly overboard.

 I entertained the idea of baking cupcakes directly in flowerpots.  But I worried about how people would eat it and also the cost of buying 6o little flowerpots was just not in the budget!  So, I hand cut these wrappers.  I used a cardstock that I though looked like Terracotta and hot glued some flowers on to them.  If I had more time I probably would have added some cute leaf's.

This cupcake was a chocolate cupcake filled with chocolate mousse and topped with a chocolate ganache.  The flower on top I molded using candy melts.

These cupcakes were strawberry.  I made them using a homemade strawberry jam that my visiting teacher brought me one day.  I topped them with plain buttercream frosting and another molded chocolate flower.

These cupcakes were vanilla with vanilla buttercream that I tinted yellow.  I made the flowers with some marshmallow fondant and dusted them with some pink edible glitter.  I bought these cute cupcake liners - they are made by Wilton.

The main thing I learned while making 6o cupcakes?  I need more counter space and more cupcake pans! 

A special thank you to all the wonderful ladies who contributed to this night - it really was a lovely evening.

Cherry Cake Pudding

When I logged on the The Pioneer Woman's website early one morning and saw a picture of this Cherry Cake Pudding, I immediately wanted to whip some up because licking my monitor wasn't working out so well for me.

This recipe is really easy to make, and of course you can see the wonderful step by step pictures on The Pioneer Woman's website.  I broke my cardinal rule and served a new recipe to guests, but she has never lead my wrong.  It was pretty delicious.  Ciara begged me to make another batch as soon as the last serving was gone.

I used a different brand of Cherries that I just love from Trader Joe's.  Maybe the syrup that came with these cherries was sweeter, but I thought the sauce was a little sweet.  I would definitely cut down on the sugar next time.  Oh, and I left out the nuts.  I love them personally, but since we had guests, I thought it best to leave them out.  I'm sure you could probably make this would whatever fruit happens to be your favorite.


Pioneer Woman's Cherry Cake Pudding

• 1 cup Sugar
• 2 Tablespoons Butter, Softened
• 1 whole Egg
• 1 cup All-purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• ⅛ teaspoons Salt
• ½ cups Whole Milk
• 1 can (15 Ounces) Cherries In Syrup (NOT Cherry Pie Filling) Drained, Juice Reserved
• ½ cups Pecans, Finely Chopped

• 1 cup Juice From Cherries (add Water To Make 1 Cup If Necessary)
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 Tablespoon All-purpose Flour
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• ½ teaspoons Vanilla Extract
• Unsweetened Freshly Whipped Cream

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Generously butter a square 9 x 9-inch baking dish.

Cream sugar and butter. Add egg and mix well. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt then add to mixing bowl alternatively with milk. Add cherries and chopped nuts and mix gently. Pour batter into buttered pan and smooth out the surface. Bake for 40 minutes, or until golden brown on the surface and no longer jiggly.

While cake is baking, make the sauce by combining cherry juice, sugar, and flour in a small saucepan. Boil for 8 to 10 minutes, or until thick. Turn off heat and stir in 1 tablespoon butter and vanilla extract.

Drizzle 1/3 of the sauce on the cake as soon as you remove it from the oven. Spread to distribute over the surface and wait ten minutes before serving so the sauce will seep into the top of the cake a bit.

Spoon out pieces of warm, sticky cake and top with unsweetened whipped cream.

Brine for Turkey or Chicken

1/2 gallon water (8 cups)

1/2 cup apple juice

1/2 cup salt

1 clove garlic chopped

1/2 cup brown sugar

1-2 bay leafs

3/4 tablespoons black pepper

orange peel from one orange

You will probably need to double this recipe for a turkey.

I have often heard TV chefs talking about brining turkeys and about how wonderful and juicy it makes the turkey.  Brining basically means soaking in a salt water solution.  I've never brined a turkey before.  My hubby is not a turkey lover, my kids only like the white meat, we rarely host thanksgiving or Christmas day, so I usually just cook a large turkey breast on the rare occasion that turkey is cooked in our house.

But on a trip to Trader Joe's we found some really nice fresh organic turkey breast and since I love Turkey I decided to get some.  I thought I would try brining it and used this recipe that I adapted from a recipe that The Pioneer Woman uses.  Since it was just a breast, I prepared mine mid morning and only left it in the fridge till evening when we cooked dinner - not overnight as you would if you cooked a large turkey.

Basically, I just took all the above ingredients, combined them in a large pot, and brought them to a boil.  (Make sure to give it a stir once in a while to dissolve the salt and sugar)  I allowed it to boil for a few minutes.  Turn off the heat and let it cool.  Once cooled I put the turkey breast into a large ziplock and poured in the brine and just let it sit in the fridge till I was ready to cook it.

When ready to cook, remove from the brine and rinse under cold water, pat dry and then prepare as your normally would.  When I served the finished dinner, the first words out of Chris's mouth were "Wow, this turkey is really juicy!"

I will definitely try this again, maybe even when roasting a chicken.

Itty Bitty Clothes

Once again this is not my creation.  I am not this talented and do not have enough time to tackle a project like this.

You are not going to believe these clothes.  Seriously, I had seen a set of them before and was still shocked.  If you are not sitting down, sit.

My mother in law, Mari, gave this doll to my four your old Ella.

 By itself not that big of a deal right?  You'll recognize it as a Cabbage Patch Doll.

But along with it, came these:

 Hand made outfits.  I've seen children who don't have clothes this nice.  Seriously, clothes that you buy in the store are not finished this well.  

The edges are finished, the insides are lined.

Check out this one, this was everyone's favorite:

 

Yes, she actually made that.  By hand.  Even the boots.  Can you believe those boots.  The grownups in the room took the doll away from Ella to play with it and dress it up.

We couldn't get enough of those boots.  

I'm wondering if she can make them in a women's size 8?

By the way, Ella has as an imaginary friend named Maisa Daisa, so that's what is printed on the dolls Birth Certificate.  Here is Maisa Daisa dressed up for bed.

 She even has matching slippers to keep her feeties warm!

Here are a few other outfits:

Check out the guess logo on the back of the pants!

Number One Room Mom!

This actually isn't one of my creations, but is such a cute idea, I definitely plan on stealing borrowing the concept.   

I love being able to help out in my kids classes at school.  Especially since each one of my kids has an awesome teacher.

Riley's teacher Mrs O. is incredible!  We just love her.   She also happened to be his 5th grade teacher and she and the entire class moved up to 6th grade together.  Did I mention she was teacher of the year in our district last year?  She is such a fun teacher but firm at the same time. 

About two weeks before Christmas, I stuck my head into her classroom for some reason, and she said she had a gift for me, but just couldn't hold on to it until Christmas.  And she gave me this cute little thing:

Is this not the cutest little gift ever?  The red thing is a actually a pot holder/oven mitt.  Inside the pastry bag is sugar cookie mix and of course there is the spatula and some sprinkles.  Tied into the ribbon is a cookie cutter.  Mrs. O. knows that I love to make cookies and I love how personalized this gift is to my taste.   And I feel like I won an award: "#1 Room Mom!" 

I actually did steal, I mean utilize, this idea for my sister for Christmas.  She loves Lemon Bars and asked if I would make her some since she is in town for the holidays this year.  I made her some of course, but I also found a cute yellow mixing bowl, a yellow oven mitt, yellow spatula, yellow measuring cups and a whisk.  I put all the dry ingredients into two disposable pastry bags and included the recipe on a laminated card.  I arranged everything in the bowl and filled the empty space with fresh lemons.  The possibilities really are endless if you would like to make a custom little kitchen gift.

So thanks Mrs O.  We love you!

Our Family Christmas Card

Last year I bought some really cute Christmas cards, stuck photos in them and addressed them all.  All that was needed was a trip to the post office.  

Those cards are still in my office in the basement!

This year, I was really struggling with the whole Christmas Card issue.  My camera broke in November and I didn't have a really cute family picture to use for our cards.  I kept pushing the cards to the bottom of my to do list.  Then one day when blog hopping, I stumbled upon this blog and her cute card that she did last year.   So, I quickly started taking pictures, but had a few little problems.  First of all Chris was out of town on business.  Next I was just using a Nikon Coolpix point and click and was having some issues with color.  (As you can see in Ella's picture)

My final issue, was when Chris got home, we quickly took a picture and I started editing the pictures together.  Only he wasn't holding the white board we all used as a prop very flat, which made adding the picture onto his board a little tricky.  So then I had to take his picture into Illustrator and try and fix it. 

So this was my final product. Marissa's version at Threaded Together is much cleaner but  all in all, I'm pretty happy with it, considering the time frame I had to put it all together and the different circumstances.  I used Adobe CS3 for the editing and just had the cards printed at Walgreens.

The Best Visiting Teacher Ever!!!

In our church we have a program called Visiting Teaching.  Ladies are assigned a Visiting Teacher who checks in on them once a month and share a short spiritual message.  My Visiting Teacher is amazing.  She also happens to be my neighbor.

She is the mom to 13 kids.  She and her husband just celebrated 50 years of marriage.  She bakes the most amazing bread.  We have an auction at our church every year and people outbid each other like crazy to get her bread.  But I get the bread delivered straight to my door, right out of the oven.  And let me tell you...I brag about this a lot!!

Last month, for my birthday, she brought over some beautiful pink carnations for me.   I still needed to return her vase but I didn't want to return it empty.  On a little trip to Michaels I found these branch thingies that were 40% off.  (I have no idea what the proper name for them is)  I also found some ornaments in the clearance bin.  After I cut the branches to the right size, my 4 year old literally put this together!

 

My bad photography doesn't capture this, but the branches have really pretty sparkles on them.  We added a colorful bow and Voila!  A quick and easy little something to add to your Holiday decor. I would advise if making one for yourself, that you maybe add some glass beads to the bottom of the vase to weigh it down a little to counterbalance the height of the branches.  Unfortunately I had to quickly get this out of our house because our Kitty thought this was made especially just for her.  

Sorry kitty, my friend loved and wants to keep it!