Quick Cheap Holiday Decor

Here is another quick cheap way to spruce up your space for the holidays. Use festive wrapping paper to cover art already hanging on the wall. Add one additional touch like a graphic card or large bow as I've done here. You can see a candy cane wreath on the peppermint background in a previous post.

Homemade Holidays

This year I've been dedicated to making the holiday decor for our home. Rather than buying new things, I have taken a more homemade approach.


 I found two holiday cards that I had kept from last year. I loved them so much I wanted to make them more permanent and useable from year to year.


I used a hole punch around the edge of each card, and crocheted a frame and hanging chain. I love the final product.

Pattern for the larger frame: in the first hole 1sc, 1hdc, 2dc, 1hdc, 1sc, ch1. Repeat in each hole. For corners, 1sc, 1hdc, 1dc, ch1, 1dc, 1hdc, 1sc, ch1. 

 

When you have gone all the way around, slip stitch to join at the end.



Slip stitch into back of top corners and chain however many until you reach desired length. Sl st to fasten off.

 

 

Pattern for the smaller frame: in each hole, 1sc, 1dc, 1sc, ch 4, repeat in each hole.


For corners, 1sc, 1dc, 1sc, ch 1, 1sc, 1dc, 1sc, ch 1.


For chain: Slip stitch back into desired location and chain however many stitches until you reach the desired length.

Happy Holidays and Happy Crafting!

Ham Bone Soup

This Hanukkah, to my great delight, I received the gift of a Honey Baked Ham. Yum. (Pork is no stranger to my kitchen.) As a bonus, this also marked my first opportunity to cook with a ham bone. With no dinner planned, I stopped at the market on the way home from work and picked up some beans for what would be my ham and bean soup.

Since I'm terrible at making decisions, I chose the very non-committal 15 bean variety blend. I had finely chopped onion in my refrigerator, and I didn't feel like buying more veggies. Therefore I was keeping it simple. Into the pot went 3/4 cup finely chopped onion, about 3 cups of water, 1.5 cups of mixed dried beans, and liberal unmeasured amounts of dried garlic, black pepper, thyme, onion powder, about 1tbsp Cholula hot sauce, the ham bone, some additional ham. This cooked on medium.

After twentyish minutes I took a taste, and there was nothing good about it. To add to its "appeal," it was looking pretty grey. I added more ham, carrots and a frozen brick of chopped spinach.

Another twentyish minutes of simmering and I took another taste. This time it was yum, and it looked much better too. The carrots were very soft so I turned the burner off and let the pot sit on the hot spot for a little further melding of the flavors.


Everyone liked it and the house smelled great. Here's lunch and dinner for the next few days. Enjoy!

Healthy No Bake Breakfast Bites

After days of prepping and cooking for Thanksgiving and a few more hours of preparing extra healthy lunches for the week, what's the first thing I wanted to do when it was time to relax on Sunday night? Get involved in another recipe of course! These no-bake breakfast bites were on the top of my list. (http://fooddoodles.com/2011/06/28/one-bowl-all-natural-no-bake-energy-bites/ picture from this website)

I used the following ingredients: 1/2c peanut butter, 1/3c honey, 3/4c unsweetened shredded coconut, 1/4c ground flax, 1/4c chia seeds, 1/4c raisins, 1c uncooked oatmeal, 4tbsp hemp protein powder, pinch salt, 1tsp vanilla extract.

Typically I would steer clear of a recipe that calls for 1/2 cup nut butter and 1/3 cup honey because I hate to use so much of those precious ingredients all at once, but I caved in and went for it anyway. After all, if i'm ever going to get to work on time, I need to figure out a quick-grab breakfast option that's not full of processed junk, sugar, and empty calories.

This recipe was incredibly easy to put together - in a bowl mix the wet ingredients, add in the dry ingredients, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. The hard part was turning the bowl of ingredients into neat tightly packed balls. This took me quite a while.

The other bummer was, the recipe, as written on the above website, does not have all that much protein, so I added 4 tbsp of hemp protein powder. Thankfully, the powder did not overpower the other yummy flavors, in fact, I could not even taste it (and when you can taste the hemp powder, it ususally tastes pretty bad).

I laboriously formed 21 balls (mine shown on red). The recipe was supposed to yield 24, but my sizes got a little irregular. Because the plan is to eat these on the way to work, I had to dust them with something dry so that I wouldn't ruin my clothes or steering wheel with oily fingers. I chose to grind some almonds in my Blendtec blender (the wonder machine), and give the balls a roll in that. Then I packed single servings (see nutrition information below) in wax paper bags, sealed the whole stash in a big ziploc bag, and put it in the freezer.

This morning I grabbed a small bag on my way out the door. I'd say it was out of the freezer about 10 minutes before I started eating it and it was delicious. I actually ended up eating only one instead of both. Maybe I will have the second for an after-lunch dessert.

NUTRITION INFORMATION  Serving Size: One Breakfast Bite
Calories: 104.2, Total Fat: 6.2g, Saturated: 2.1g, Polyunsaturated: 1.3g, Monounsaturated: 1.7g, Trans Fat: 0, Cholesterol: 0, Sodium: 2.1mg, Potassium 48.1mg, Total Carbs: 10.5g, Dietary Fiber: 2.5g, Sugars: 6.2g, Protein: 3.1g, Vitamin A: 0%, Vitamin C: .4%, Calcium 2.1%, Iron: 4.6%.

Classic Colors

I recently purchased a box of crayons. I indulged and went for the 48 count box. I say "indulged" and not "splurged" because the 48 count ran me only .049¢ a crayon, plus tax. That's right, a deal I could not pass up at only $2.37 for the whole box.

The need for crayons came about because I have a penchant for creative gift wrapping, and with a particularly important brown-paper-wrapped gift in my hands, I found myself with no coloring implements. My neighbor loaned me her 'like new' Crayola 16 pack, and I used them beyond the point of acceptable return. I had to replace the Crayolas. So I was in the crayon aisle looking for a 16 pack, but of course, there was no 16 pack. After some deliberation, I went for the next best thing: the big but compact 48 pack, a triple decker not much wider than the 16. And of course, at $2.37 a pack, i got one for myself too. 

After the requisite few days sitting in the bag on the table in my living room, and a few more days sitting unpacked on the same table, I decided to use the crayons. I googled "adult coloring page" (impressive search query, right?), hit print, and I was ready to do this thing. I made a quick color decision and started in on the biggest portion of the Work. Clearly its not terribly hard to color in a pattern printed on a piece of copy paper, but still, I didn't want to overthink it. I just wanted to enjoy it and have some fun.

I won't say it was all that exciting, but it was a nice change from surfing the internet or playing games on a smartphone or tablet. Maybe i'll do a jigsaw puzzle next.