Food and More Catching Up

Cooking has not been spectacular for me lately.  I can hardly remember what I made the week before Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving itself was awesome with about 10 side dishes.  I made a corn spoon bread which was great and a green bean casserole with homemade mushroom sauce.  Homemade mushroom sauce is my new favorite.

This week food is a bit all over the place.  I spent about $40 more than normal on groceries just to stock back up so at least I feel prepared and have options.

Ground Beef Quesadillas with Corn
  It's genius to stuff quesadillas with taco meat mixed with refried beans then bake them.  They were so good.

Baked Cod in foil packets with Baked Sweet Potatoes and Roasted Cauliflower
   Roasted cauliflower is a new family favorite.  We devour a whole head easily.  Perhaps time to double that recipe.

Arroz con Pollo
   finally make it after watching Martha cook it a few weeks back. Can't wait!

Spaghetti and Garlic Bread

Bun brats and red potatoes

Veggie burgers and corn

This weekend I'm baking all of the cookies for the cookie walk so I can just freeze them and forget about them.  I'm making a batch of red and white pinwheels rolled in festive sprinkles, decorated gingerbread, peppermint bark, and sugar cookies frosted red and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.  Should be fun!

Even though I just wrote about the past few weeks  I had a few random photos that didn't fit in but I still want to document so here they are.

Felix and sisters shoving their faces with pink fruit dip (essentially cream cheese and raspberries).  I let each of the girls pick a meal to cook while Ian was away and this is what Ainsley made.  It was delicious and incredibly messy.

Ainsley cut her own bangs, again.  They were JUST getting long enough to tuck behind her ears.  I am so incredibly annoyed.

Louise and her art.  This girl paints every single day at school and beams smiles as she shows me her masterpieces.  Her big smiley people fill our house with her joy.  I love it so much.

I'm delving into Christmas making.  A sweater vest for Felix (now complete except for buttons)

All my goodies ready to go.

My little morning maker helper.

I'm most excited about the girls' Santa gifts.  All that Louise wants is a minnie mouse doll that she can dress up and change, bows and all.  It doesn't exist in the retail world, at least not in plush form.  So I'm making it happen.  I bought a 19" minnie doll from the Disney store and carefully detached her bow and dress, bought ribbon and fabric and am making interchangeable outfits and bows that will attach with velcro.  Those dang ginornmous white hands of Minnie's are making it tricky but I'm optimistic I can do it!

For Ainsley we were just going to give her Merida's bow and arrow set from Brave but she's been talking off and on about really wanting magic Elsa gloves and is SO into performing Frozen I'm revamping a bit.  I found a nice set of coronation gloves on Etsy for much less than anticipated and jumped.  Just yesterday I went to the fabric store with Felix and bought two yards of lush stretch velvet and fancy clasps to make her a flowing cape.  I plan to have her letter from Santa explain that the gloves and cape are the ones Elsa discards on her trek up the mountain and if she believes enough there may just be a little bit of magic still caught in them.  

Christmas magic is the best.

I bought new curtains!  It's remarkable how much simple curtains can completely change the feeling of our house.  If you're on the fence about investing in nice curtains just do it.  It's pretty much changed my life.

clearly didn't tidy up for these shots

I bought a new nativity set.  Merry early Christmas to me!  My reasons were three fold.

1. The kids were slowly ruining my old nativity set.  I love it but it's not meant for children.  Those figures break so easily that I had to constantly take them away from them.  It was breaking my heart and so frustrating for both them and me.

2. I really wanted a beautiful set that the kids could actually play with.  My mom gave us the Little People set back when Ainsley was little and they love it but mother Mary is nowhere to be found and I wanted something more aesthetically pleasing for me.  Plus two kid friendly nativity sets in one house is not a problem with me at all. I LOVE the nativity scene.

3. Umm, I'm a big adult and am realizing that if there's something that I truly want that we'll use over and over again for years and years it's worth the investment, sooner rather than later.   Now my children and I have many years to love this set. Plus I got a wicked good deal on it.

And if I had a fourth reason it'd be that Felix is as into it as his sisters (Ainsley almost succeeded in smuggling Mary and Jesus into bed with her last night).  He carries around the animals saying "wha dis?" I tell him and he promptly makes the corresponding animal noise as loudly and triumphantly as he can.  It's going to be a great Christmas season.

So there, I think we're finally mostly all caught up.  Happy Wednesday all!