Monday, November 29, 2010

No Sweets Week

I declare next week, Decemeber 5-11 no sweets week. It's going to be hard. It's gonna get messy but no sweets for a week for me! No cake, cookies, candy bars, lollipops, or chocolate bars. I'll, of course, stock up on fruits to keep my sweet tooth happy. But no processed sweets. Zip. Nada. Ziltch. Null.
Who's with me?

Blog Renovation

Please excuse the appearance of my blog. I'm currently renovating and just lost most of my widgets on the left hand side.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Life is a Piece of Pie

Yesterday was prep for the feast today. The stuffing has been made already before my mom and I even had breakfast. And the pies are made. Pies are one of the things that I like making because they are so simple yet very delicious. Here's my favorite pie crust recipe from Jenna Wogenrich's Made from Scratch.
1 1/2 sticks butter, chilled
2 tbs vegetable shortening
1 tbs sugar
2 cups flour
3 tbs ice water

Cut butter into cubes and place into bowl. Add shortening and sugar.
 Add flour and cut into butter mixture with a pastry blender or food processor until it looks like coarse cornmeal.
 Add ice water until it looks like this.
 Place half of the dough onto plastic wrap. Take two edges and press then to the center and repeat until you form disks like.....
 ...This. Chill for at least one hour.

 Roll out and place into pie plate. The easiest way to do this is to place the pie plate upside down onto the pie crust. Grip two edges of the pie crust and hold the pie plate and flip it.
Now I made pumpkin but do whatever filling you want.
The finished product. Yum!

Monday, November 22, 2010

A Handmade Holiday


Last year I ran a short little group of posts about how to make your holiday gifts handmade with a personal touch. After some thought of the topic I've decided to run it again. Expect a few reruns but also a few new things including a really cool way to make greeting cards. Hopefully you'll be inspired! If you have any ideas yourself feel free to e-mail me at elfscuz@/yahoo.com. If you'd like I'll also feature you as a guest blogger.
I'll try to run it every Sunday until Christmas. I hope you enjoy!

Country Girl In the Big Apple

It's been a few days since I went to New York and have delayed writing about it because I was busy.
Early on Wednesday morning we departed the bus station groggy and tired. I did make a coffee run before we left but it hadn't kicked in yet. As we approached the city I perked up excited to actually be around a lot of people.I wouldn't give up living the the country to live in the city but it's refreshing to go once in a while. When we got off the bus we headed to out lunch destination, Carnegie Deli. The portions are huge and the prices expensive but for some reason my grandparents had it in their head that everyone would be going there for lunch even though we past a few nicer, cheaper restaurants on our way. My sandwich alone cost almost $25. We didn't do anything after that because they thought they were going to be late for the show that started in 3 hours. We did visit St. Patrick's Cathedral which is a must see. Unfortunately, since I was rushed around I didn't have time to take any pictures.
The show was great but probably would not see it again anytime soon.
Next time I go to NYC it'll just be too walk around and shop. But hey, I got the New Yorker walk down.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Good bye new york i'll miss you
It's about nine in the morning now and have been on the bus for a hour. At the moment we are in clinton new jersey

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Country Girl In the Big Apple: Anticipating

I got very little notice about my bus trip to New York City tomorrow. I can't believe it myself. I'll be going to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. For those who think it's a little too early to even think about Christmas, tickets only cost $69. After Thanksgiving they go up to $100. I've only been to New York a handful of times. I can count the number of times on one hand and it's an unimpressive three.
Based on that number, you can tell I'm not really use to big cities. They scare me. All the cars. All the people...
I leave my house at 6:30 tomorrow morning to go to the bus station. I'm so excited! I'm also hoping to take plenty of pictures and I've even set up my phone so I can text updates to the blog. I'm such the tourist!

Friday, November 5, 2010

Daylight Savings Time


I can't wait! It's almost like Christmas to me but with out the presents and all of the commotion of all of the major holidays. Daylight savings time has many meanings to other people. An extra day to sleep, an extra day to write for the Nanoers, or maybe and extra hour with that significant  other. Okay, I do like the extra hour of sleep but what I really love is reclaiming my sleep pattern.
Most of the time, I start getting lazy and tired when the sun starts to set and my body pretty much goes into slug mode. Normally I go to bed around 11 and wake up around 7 or when the sun comes out. Waking up is really hard without the sun.
Yesterday, I needed to be in at work by 8:30. When I woke up and looked outside it was rainy and dark. 'It's not time yet', my body said, so I rolled over and snoozed for a bit more. Finally, I thought it was a bit strange and looked at my alarm clock. 7:30 it read. Jumping out of bed, I hurried to ready myself for work.
So you see I can't wait for Daylight Savings. I swear it should be celebrated with more enthusiastic like other holidays. Heck, here in America we have sales on Columbus day.
And who ever thought about making Daylight Savings a week later? I mean come on! It was dark at 8 when I left home and dark when I came home! Even my dogs wouldn't get up.