Twas the night before Thanksgiving.....

And normally by now I have at least baked the pumpkin pie. We're a little delayed this year. So tomorrow will be full of some last minute baking and cooking, and wonderful, mouth watering smells. I cannot wait to get into that turkey! We hit a sale for our 22 pounder at Winco. Buy $50 worth of groceries and get the turkey for $0.57 a pound. I think that is the best deal we have gotten to date. I could be forgetting something though.

The plan for this year's desserts is a peanut butter pie (not something I usually eat). That was something I sort of made up my own recipe for after we went to Moonlight, and they had some pie like that there. It is very simple, and everyone loves it. It's basically just one package of cream cheese, 1/2 cup peanut butter, vanilla, sugar and a container of whip cream. (I once even used vanilla coffee creamer as I found we didn't have vanilla after I started putting it together. No one seemed to notice a difference!) It is good - I just don't really want to eat it. I am also going to make a stevia sweetened, egg free (replaced with flax seed) pumpkin pie with a spelt flour pie crust. It is SO good. I made that for myself one year, and ended up eating about half of it in one day. Total guilt free eating, and SO GOOD. The pumpkin has a sort of a heavy denseness to it that is very pleasing. To me at least. I don't normally bother to make something that I will eat for dessert. I sort of consider my probably too tart stevia sweetened made fresh at home cranberry sauce as dessert. (I don't like sweet cranberry. Nooooo way.) Another yummy holiday dish.

And to finish the turkey, gravy and desserts will be our yummy cornbread/biscuit dressing and green bean casserole. Next to the turkey and gravy my favorite holiday dish! I try not to hog it out of the goodness of my heart. (Though I might hog it, just a little.)

I hope tomorrow is a wonderful day for my house and everyone out there too!

Accomplished a lot this weekend

Today has been a pretty good day. I basically have 3 of my swaps finished up as of today. For 2 packages, I only need to buy one thing for each. For my third, I basically just need to put some finishing touches on things. Which leaves me with one more swap to make a few more things for. And since I joined the Santa Coconuts, I have part of my treats partially made. Tomorrow I will know how many I need to send out. Yeah, I think I really got into the swaps. This will probably be my only swap craze I will get involved with. I just really hope people enjoy what I have made for them.

Tomorrow is another Monday. I will get some commission work finished, some more swap work put in, and then I REALLY need to make some new stuff for my store. When will I stop playing catch up? I should have been getting new stuff made for the Christmas season long before now. Eventually, I suppose I will be ahead of the season instead of rushing to make it in time.

In a few minutes the Pats/Colts game starts. I will watch this one instead of half watching it while working on something. I was enjoying the Packers game until it was deemed "not competitive" and switched over to the oh so exciting Lions/Cards game, which thankfully the Lions lost. That ties them now in first place with the Packers. I must admit that a game of pure dominance by the Packers made the game uninteresting for non Packers fans, but I sure was enjoying watching Mark Sanchez be the good ol' Mark Sanchez of Jets games gone by. *evil grin*

Inspiration for Christmas food turned into changing up my blog

I started looking for some more inspiration for clay Christmas food, and pinning things that sparked my interests on my shared Pinterest page, when I decided I needed to update my blog. I got so tired of the black and purple, but figured I would wait until after Halloween to change it. Then I forgot about it. :P So, I finally got around to doing it. I wanted to go with something festive, but not too terribly Christmas yet. And I wanted something warm and comfy. Here's the result!

Now, I need to get back to sculpting brownies....

Swap time!

I think I might have a gotten a wee bit carried away with my Swap excitement. I have committed to 3 in total, but one includes sending stuff to 2 people. (Which I didn't realize was a possibility? Maybe I missed that in the sign up....) I know I have all month, but seriously, time literally FLIES when there is a deadline in site. I don't have my swap partner for one, but I have the other three. I'm pretty solidly booked with commissions right now as well, so I need to get a move on! I have a pretty good idea what I am going to be making for at least 3 of my people. Still need to figure out the fourth one. I have gotten started at least, so that's good. 

I'm hoping to have time as well to get some new stuff in my shop for the Christmas season. Christmas food, and some new AG dresses. Maybe a couple of Blythe items as well. I am making one outfit that will probably end up in my store for Pipos. I am working out a pattern for a commission, and while I love how the outfit is shaping up, it doesn't really fit the style of any of my dolls. Been quite awhile since I listed anything Pipos in my Etsy store. 

I do expect to be hectic this time of year, as it is always that way. I think it just started a little earlier this year? The water is boiling on the stove for the noodles. I am HUNGRY!

Halloween was great this year

I had a pretty darn good Halloween this year. We had errands to run after lunch, so I wanted to be sure to get into my Halloween costume before leaving. My costume this year was a mish mash of what I had, in an attempt to create something cool out of it.

Last year I had bought one of those half masks, you know the Venetian carnival kind. It was in black and silver. Then I got a cloak from Wal-Mart to go with it. I am not sure what I had in mind when I bought them at the time. I can't wear masks - I feel too smothered. So I was struggling to find something that appealed to me, and settled on those.

As I have probably said on here before, we spent last Halloween moving. This day in particular was the 3rd day of the trip, and was spent battling horrific winds in WY which slowed us down. We didn't make it to Rock Springs - our stopping place for the night - until 8 or so. Hours after what we had planned on, and what would have been had those awful 50 mph winds not forced us to go around Elk mountain at slower speeds than normal. So, that was fun, as you can imagine.

One year later, settled in our new place, it was time to think about dressing up again! I was a little disappointed with what I had bought, and wasn't going to spend any more money on anything new. So, there was my 2 costume pieces, my clothes which didn't match, and a make up set that wasn't as advertised. The white wasn't white white, and so I had to sponge grey over it to make it look like I was dressing up for Halloween! In the end, I was pretty happy with it. After putting a sponge under the mask to make it more comfortable to wear, of course.

We had some errands to run, so off we went. It was much too warm for the long sleeves I was wearing. We had a few stops to make, and the final one was picking up the ingredients for pizza. I baked the pumpkin cupcakes after coming in. They turned out alright. I didn't end up making the chocolate frosting, but they didn't really need them any ways. (I only ate half of one, though.)

After dinner I got all my anthros out on the porch for their pictures. I am really pleased with what I managed to make, although I wish I hadn't run out of time to make Honeysuckle something nice. Here's how they looked, all together:

We did have some trick or treaters come down the street. That was pretty fun. Having lived out in the country for so long before moving here, it was one thing I was looking forward to. Of course, it started out really well with one of the first little girls falling off the porch. Moment of pure horror. She luckily landed on her feet, and our porch isn't all that high. But my heart literally stopped. There weren't any more disasters after that. I had planned to watch a movie, but ended up just making Christmas paper plates for my store. The biggest 'wow' moment of the night is when some neighbors a few houses down lit some fireworks that had to have been the loudest I have ever heard. Very unusual to see fireworks on Halloween, but a fun treat!

I never thought I would say this, but I am for once, glad Halloween is over. Not that the Halloween decorations will be coming down any time soon. Probably not until the Christmas ones go up. And now, here's the question. Is it still to early to listen to Christmas music? And when to set up the tree? :D