Pin It Weekly #290

Welcome back to Pin It Weekly! You're going to think I'm on a food obsession with this post, so I'm going to introduce one follower and post something other than food. (But the others are all about fun food, so get ready to get hungry.) 

Cary Wagy is one of the new followers whose give her boards fun, titles, like "cute food for entertaining." 

Sara Jolley has many quilt boards, nicely organized. Here are quilts from just wherever on her site.

Finally, Lori Hope is my newest follower. In fact, she became a follower while I was writing this post. Now that's serendipity. Really, did I have a choice of whether to check out her boards? As luck would have it, she has a "desserts" board with over 600 pins. A girl I could get along with, no doubt. 

What's your favorite dessert? I'd have to go with pecan pie, hands down, but pralines, peach cobbler, and Dove chocolate are close behind. Daddy used to say his favorite was whatever was available at the time. Geez, I miss him.

A Camper for a Camper and other Christmas Stories

What family, temporarily living in campers, would give the one permanent camp child a camper? This. One. of course.

Poor child. Her own personal Barbie/baby doll camper as small as Grandmay and Poppa's. She's living in a camper the size of her new (in process of being built) house. And her dolls will have to share the smallest camper available to dolls. Wait, it's the size of the camper I'm sleeping in tonight. 

It's been a while since we've had a baby to open gifts. What fun! Doesn't the look on her face tell the story?

At some point we were finished opening all the gifts and moved on to supper. One of the advantages of having Will and crew living in the house is that they did the cooking. And it was delicious!

Earlier in the day Richard and I attended mass and spent some quiet time before the chaos began. When the kids arrived in the afternoon, we took photos in a sleigh that Will made just for this purpose. It started out a two-dimensional drawing, but he kept adding to the idea until it became a three-dimensional sleigh with a bench for sitting and two crazy log reindeer. 

Rich's parents were with us for gift-giving and supper, but it began "getting late" as soon as we served dessert. We love to play family games, so I made a few plans for after they left. Unfortunately they can't handle the noise and chaos of family games. Two of the games we played are below. The first was a hoot! Everyone wanted in on this game!

Treasure Chase
Necessary items: plastic wrap (Saran or Cling); small tokens, such as pony tail holders, candies, gum, lip balm, and so on. I also gathered a few odd things from around the house: safety pins, bobby pins, paper clips, zip ties, coins, ribbon. Anything small will work but avoid sharp, pointed objects.  

Start with a medium-size prize and wrap it in a wad of plastic wrap to form a ball. Then add more "sheets" of wrap around that to add to the ball. Cutting the wrap into sheets means the players will have to pick at the wrap to find the beginning of each. With each piece of wrap, add tokens enclosing them and pressing down to make the wrap stick to itself. It takes hours to use up a 300' roll of wrap. Several hours. Eventually I had a ball of tokens and wrap about the size of a volley ball. 


To play one person races to unwrap the items while the next player throws a die. We had already decided that the number to switch on would be three. When the player rolled a three, he took the ball and began trying to get items out while the next player tried to roll a three. It was such fun to see how the kids played. Some of us, it turns out, cheat. I loved trying to keep Lane from getting the ball from me. He's 6' tall, so reaching over me was not a concern. 

For the most part our games have no rules, and everyone just plays for fun. Some of our prizes were useless. For example, I included a sewing machine foot from an old machine. The idea is that no one knew what to expect, but it was fun to find out. I hate to admit but had any of the prizes been expensive, someone may have been hurt.


Candy Cane Catch
To play this game, you'll need candy canes, ribbon and prizes. Divide into teams of two players. One player (standing on a chair) drops the candy cane to the second player (sitting on the chair with back to player one). The player holds the ribbon out-stretched and tries to catch the candy cane on the ribbon. They may communicate but may not touch each other. The first team to catch the candy cane wins the prize.

You can find directions to both of these games on the internet. I found the first one here.  And though I don't remember where I found the Candy Cane Catch (my title), there are many holiday family games at Happy Home Fairy.

Pin it Weekly #87

Family Fun Night

Editing note: For some reason, this post didn’t go out, so I’m resending.   Dinner was last night. 

Whew!  What a great time!  When someone calls and says please make a gumbo for us, it’s hard to resist.  When two sisters gang together, it’s impossible (not that I really wanted to say no to them).  Guess what?

photo from Google images 

A few of my sisters came by for gumbo with rice, sweet potatoes, and cornbread.  Yes we like our starches.  Actually, we like just about anything, but the more fattening it happens to be, the more we tend to like it. 

That means we had both pecan cake and bread pudding for dessert.  Oh, and one sister brought along real butter from the Amish store to slather on the sweet potatoes.  Can you say rich?  I can definitely attest to the fact that there is absolutely no more space in my system.  I am full , stuffed,  and moaning.  I should say we enjoyed the company as much as the food.

straight from the farm

Since I’ve shared my recipe for Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, I’ll share how we bake sweet potatoes.  It’s easy.  First choose your sweet potatoes.  They should, of course, be fresh and firm. Wash the potatoes in cool water and remove any small roots that may still be attached and cut off the tips on each end.   Set the potatoes on paper toweling to dry.  I like to pat the potatoes dry; then cover the outside with margarine or oil.  I simply use my hands to spread the margarine and try not to put too much on each one.  This helps to release the skin when the potatoes are completely done.

right to the table

Bake at 350 degrees for two hours.  I test the potatoes by sticking a fork into the largest ones.  The center should be soft and squishy.  The skin should be easy to remove.  I enjoy the potatoes without any condiments, but Rich always adds butter, sugar and cinnamon to his.   Any potatoes that are left over can be wrapped in foil or placed in freezer bags and frozen, so I always bake a large pan and freeze the extras individually.  They are easy to warm in the microwave.  And are just as good.  

Happy Thanksgiving,

Mary

I admitted that I'm a little obsessed with Pinterest a few weeks ago, remember?  I thought I'd try to get a handle on that.  It's not so difficult, getting a handle on something.  I figured it was just a matter of not going to the Pinterest site.  Of course, the real problem is that I can't avoid the computer altogether.  That would make it much easier.



I've done fairly well, it turns out.  I'm down to pinning only once or twice a week.... visiting the site less often than I visit my Facebook page.  Of course, I admit that I keep up with family on FB, so there's a really good reason to check it at least daily.  

Then there's Etsy, I do have to check on my shop, which I reopened only a few days ago.  I also need to add a few more items in the shop.  I won't even mention all the things I need to get onto the computer for just to keep up with schoolwork.  In fact, I have a couple of new programs to learn just to keep up.

So apparently I can't live without a computer.  I need it for several good reasons and I like playing on it--not games, that's for the kids as far as I'm concerned.  No I play on Electric Quilt and Pinterest.  Ah well, there's fun to be had in all manner of places and things.  

I may not let my fun control me, but I do enjoy find photos of beautiful antique linens and laces, ancient gold-trimmed costumes, the china that I love, the newest fabrics, quilt inspiration, yummy-looking foods (especially desserts) and various other collections.  

Happy pinning....uhm, I mean quilting,
Mary