Halloween Cards

Who in this crafty blog sphere doesn't like fun paper, or cards or hanging out with your girly friends? I have a group of my friends that get together for "Club". We have a stampin up demonstrator who comes along and we make fun cards and things. There's always yummy food too and we laugh lots and have a great time. Last month we made Halloween stuff. Isn't this a cute card with the owl peeking out.Coconuts loved this next one. I think I'll give it to her for Halloween cause there's no point in hanging onto it, it won't last for ever....

This one is my favourite one we did because there is a fun surprise inside. I might make this one for Coconuts to give her school friends for a fun treat.
See isn't it fun. Although if she's going to take it to school I think I'll change out the gum for some other more kid/school friendly treat. I think Mrs. G would want to strangle me if I sent all 23 kids 6 pieces of gum each. That may just be a recipe for disaster.
Oh and can you believe I've already started my Christmas baking. I'll post about that next....

Guest Post - Orange Rolls

I have tons of awesome friends that I love. But I also have my BFF who fortunately for her has a wonderful Military hubby who has a fab job that allows her to be a stay at home mom. Unfortunately for me this means that said hubby's particular employment will ensure that BFF and I will be skyping if we wanna hang out and see each other. But that's OK cause I'm hoping for a Christmas visit from BFF and her family this year. Her name is Lucy, well not really it's Tanya but we call each other Lucy. I may share that at later date so feel free to call her what you like. Here is a guest post from her.....

I stay tuned to Nancy's blog as I have always admired her creative talents. Being a BFF and all, I decided I would try to aspire to her level on the cooking front. Truth be told, I got a lot of help from my friend Rae Ann. Here is a guest post of one of my new favourite treats, Orange Rolls. Similar to cinnamon rolls but WAY better in my opinion.

Milk Bread for Cinnamon Buns or Orange Rolls:

4 Cups Flour + 3-4 Cups more

2 TBSP Instant Yeast

2 Cups Milk, Warmed to 105-115 Degrees F

10 TBSP Butter Melted

6 TBSP Sugar

2 Eggs (Optional - It will make it fluffier)

1 Tsp Salt

Add enough flour for moist but not sticky dough. Kneed 10 min. Cover, let rise until doubled (1 to 1 1/2 hours), punch down.

For Orange Rolls - 2 dozen

Divide dough in half. Roll each into a 12" x 16" rectangle. Spread with Orange Paste. Roll up the dough. Slice into Rolls. Place each roll in a lightl greased muffin tin. Let rise 45-60 min. Bake 15-20 min at 350f.

Orange Paste:

1 Cup Sugar

6TBSP Butter

1 Orange Rind Grated

Start by making the dough...as you can see the Bosch was fully capable to making dough for 6 dozen rolls.

We separated the dough into 6 even amounts and then you roll each amount of dough out flat in a rectangle about 12" x 16 "

Next you spread the orange "Paste" over the whole thing.

Then you carefully roll up the dough into a log shape.

You proceed to cut the log into about 12 pieces and place them in a muffin tin or on a baking sheet, cover and let rise for at least half an hour, bake and enjoy.

Signing off from Winnipeg, MB....Lucy (aka Tanya Kinner)

Don't they look delish! Alright Lucy here's the deal you make it out for Christmas and you show me personally how to make these bad boys! Not sure that we need to make 6 dozen thought 1 dozen should be enough.

Welcome Baby "Peanut"

This is the third fondant cake I've made. They are so much fun to do and look so much smoother than a frosted cake. Well at least I haven't been able to perfect frosting a normal cake.

I have the pleasure of knowing this fabulously talented cake maker at Frosted Happy. She is the one that inspired me to try it on my own. Go check her blog out she's crazy super talented.

This baby shower is for a friend of mine Jessica. Her mother in law Monica, also one of my peeps is throwing her a peanut themed baby shower (they've been calling the baby peanut since she found out she was pregnant) and I offered to make the cake for it. They since have found out that they are having a baby boy. The colours for the shower were chocolate brown and baby blue and I somehow had to combine these three elements into the cake.

I actually tried to make some peanuts out of fondant and well let's just say it looked like something you would find in a diaper and did not belong on or anywhere near a cake. But elephants I had tried making out of play dough first and did an alright job so elephants it is. This is what I came up with. What do you think?

Sneak Peak

I made a fondant cake for a friends baby shower tonight. Here's a sneak peak of it. I'll post the rest of it tomorrow. Can''t wait for you to see the rest of it and let me know what you think.

Thanksgiving

I love the harvest time of year here in Nova Scotia. The leaves are changing, the air has a chill in it and the summer is coming to a close. I love that Canadian Thanksgiving is always at harvest time of year. I'm grateful for my family, great friends, and this great country that affords me peace.
I'm grateful to have the freedom to follow my passions and dreams in life. I'm grateful to have a home to host a beautiful dinner in with Family. I'm grateful for this little boy who was sent out to catch us our Thanksgiving Turkey.....thank goodness the freezer had a back up cause well....he came back empty handed.
We finished off the evening with more family around a bonfire roasting wieners. I don't think life gets much better than this. Let me know what you did for thanksgiving or what your thankful for this wonderful time of year!

Toy Room Revamp

I feel like I'm airing my dirty laundry here but know you know my kids play room is a DISASTER! I think that the word disaster doesn't even come close to really letting you know how I feel about this space. I'm still not sure if the English language has the appropriate word to describe this space. I dread coming home from work to see what kind of work the kids have done to this room. Well Coconuts is in school so really it's Buddy Boys that does the real damage. Can you blame him though. There's no seating to watch movies, there are two large toy bins that everything gets dumped into so I guess in order to find what he's looking for there has to be a large extrication of the toys hence.....DISASTER.

I have big plans for this space. Much of which is already underway. I have seating plans from Dana Made, storage plans from anna white, plans for wall art to make it more inviting. Keep checking back as I turn this room around and make it an inviting place for my kids to play.

Apple Harvest Social

We had an Apple Harvest Social at church last week. So I made this yummy Autumn Cheesecake recipe that I love. I don't make it very often but it's delicious. If you want the recipe click on the link and give it a try, you'll LOVE it.

Smocked Sundress

I wasn't going to post anything until early next week. However "Earl", the hurricane that is heading to the maritimes in the AM has modified my plans. I have a ton of filing to do for the business, (oh you say filing on a Friday night) yup I'm just that cool. I can do that if the power goes out tomorrow, so here I am.

This is a Martha project that is sooo super easy to make. If you can sew straight lines you can do this one. If you want to give it a whirl you can find it here at Martha Stewart. I've made several of these sun dresses. I also modified the pattern to make a smocked shirt instead to wear with jeans. All you have to do is measure the distance from under your child's arm pit to where you want it to hang on her waist. Then be sure to add your seam allowance and your done. I'll try to dig out some other pictures to show you if your interested.

And who is my sweet model for this picture. She's my "Duck". She's going to kill me some day when she reads this. She's my brothers oldest daughter and I got to spend tons of time with her before my own kids came along so she has a special place in my heart. We worked on this project together for her and she loved it.

Peach Cobbler

It's totally Harvest time here in the Valley of Nova Scotia. I wish that I could say I actually went out to pick these peaches myself. This would mean that we got out of the city, went on a road trip and spent time in the lovely orchards of NS (which I love to do) with my kiddies in tow. But no I got these at the grocery store, don't they still look delicious anyways.

So after peeling, pitting and whipping ingredients together here's the final product. Can you believe I have never made a Peach Cobbler before. It really is a tasty treat. I think this recipe is going to be added to my recipe box of stuff I love. Here I put whip cream on top of it. We also had some french vanilla ice cream and I think I liked that better on it. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Here's the recipe if you want to try it yourself. If you do come back and let me know what you though of it. We'll definitely be making it again.

Peach Cobbler

BASE
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon almond extract
4 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter

Topping
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter
1 egg slightly beaten
1/4 milk

Whip topping or ice cream ( optional )

For the base, in a saucepan combine brown sugar, cornstarch and water. Cook and stir until it thickens and bubbles. Add the almond extract. Stir in the lemon juice, butter and peaches. Keep these warm while you get the topping ready.

For the topping, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in the 1/4 cup butter until it resembles crumbs. In a separate bowl combine egg and milk and whisk it. Add to the flour mixture until it is just moisten do not over mix.

Pour the peaches into a 9x13 baking pan then spoon on the topping in 6 mounds over the peaches. Bake at 400 F for about 20 min. Makes 6 servings.

Oh and "Buddy Boy" wanted to help with the whipped topping so I put him to work. No no this isn't child labour he got paid double for his work. He got to lick both beaters when he was done. Isn't that the best part of any recipe!!

Blueberry Goodness

Summer is my most favourite time of year to get creative. I love being outside, I love gardening, I love picking stuff. This is the stuff I happened to pick this time. We picked for several hours at a country farm local to my in laws place in the south shore of Nova Scotia. I also got stung by something funky and my hand swelled like crazy, (you should ask me what the benadryl did to me) but really that's a story for another time and place. Back to the blueberries. I've picked lots of stuff throughout my life but never blueberries. I'd do it again, only if what ever stung me promises to not do it again, oh and the old lady who own the place needs to not get so upset with me when I don't quite clean the bush off to her standards. It was my first time you know.

As my hand and index finger continued to swell and start to tingle I began cleaning the berries and getting them ready for the freezer. That's when I realized that I still had some Liquid Certo left from the strawberry jam I made earlier this summer. So that's when I though I'm going to try to make blueberry jam. The recipe I used is the one found inside the certo box. Doesn't it look so yummy!! Well let me tell you it was.

My finger didn't have much feeling in it by the end of the night but I wasn't going to let what ever bit me take me down. If any of you come for a visit I might give you a taste. I also tried a new Maritime Blueberry Buckle recipe. It was pretty darn good too.