Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner

I won this adorable apron on The Distracted Domestic. The uber talented Regena made this apron just for me. I won it for participating in her Tie One On Apron giveaway. I made aprons for two of my co-workers for the official Tie One On Day. I greatly enjoyed doing this and I won this fabulous apron in the process! See it was a win - win situation! THANK YOU Regena, I LOVE it!

Regena sent me an e-mail entitled Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner to let me know I won. Of course I was super excited to win and every time I hear Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner it makes me think of a recipe I got a few years ago during a Wilson Reading workshop. Another workshop participant gave it to me. In honor of this occasion I thought I'd share the recipe.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

Ingredients:

! small roasted chicken or 3 cooked chicken breasts (shredded)

1 box stuffing mix

2 jars of chicken gravy

1 pie crust(pre-made or homemade)

Frozen veggie mix

Fresh veggies(mushrooms, celery, onion- or whatever you like)

1/4/to 1/2 cup merlot or red wine

3 tablespoons of butter

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350.

Prepare stuffing and set aside.

Saute the fresh veggies in butter. Add fresh rosemary or thyme if desired.

Stir together all ingredients in a casserole dish (I use a 2.5 quart dish)

Top with a pie crust. Cover with with foil and bake for 10 minutes. Remove foil and bake until golden and bubbly(approx. 35 minutes.)

Serve and enjoy!

And that's Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Announcing the . . . . . Crafty Bits Swap Spot

Give a Hoot - Owl Swap

We are swapping Owls this time. Sign ups close January 30th and the ship date is March 1st. For swap details or to sign up, visit Crafty Bits Swap Spot.

Happy Owl Swapping!

Catching Up

December was a blur with school and the holidays. Now in January we're playing catch up. I have tons of pictures of Christmas goodies to post but to start our blog catch up, I'll leave you with this picture. This is Nature Girl - toothless, well as least having one less tooth than usual. She turns eight soon but this is just the third tooth she has lost. She was very excited!

More pictures and goodies to follow in January.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our family to yours! May 2012 be a year filled with happiness and good health for all!

This was the picture Nature Girl drew for our Christmas card this year. Even naughty little Chunk made it on the card. I'm happy to report that despite his naughtiness Santa was very good to him. Chunk got lots of presents!

We're enjoying our time off together. I was busy crafting right up to until Christmas. I'll post my crafted Christmas goodies soon, so you can see what I've been up to. Happy Holidays!

Tie One On Day

I've missed making aprons! I hadn't made any aprons in quite awhile so I was suffering from apron withdrawals. Not to worry, November is time to celebrate National Tie One On Day. It's a holiday right before Thanksgiving where you give back to others by crafting an apron and some goodies just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Not only does it take care of apron withdrawals it makes someone else's day! I call that a win -win situation!

I made and delivered two aprons for National Tie One On Day. Both aprons went to co-worker/friends at school.

The first Tie One On apron is this wild psychedelic number. It is made with vintage silk screened acrylic fabric. It's wild but I really love the fabric. Of course it's reversible and has a flamingo print on the back.

The second apron is this pink polka dot apron. I made this one for one of the speech therapists last year but held onto it because it needed some adjustments. She was trying to lose weight so we decided to wait on adjusting it. She's lost 33 pounds and looks great. We had to tear apart the top of the apron to get it to fit but we finished just time time for Tie One On Day. Look how cute her apron looks on her! This one is also reversible with a brown paisley fabric on the back. It was fun to share my love of aprons with my coworkers/friends!

I also finished this apron which is my first crafted Christmas gift this year. I finished a second apron for a Christmas gift and have a third one that is partially completed. Three Jillymade Christmas gifts done. Let's hope I can get a few more made in time for Christmas!

Woosh . . . And November is Gone

The title says it all. Time is flying by and I'm running along like a crazy woman trying to catch up. I took tons of pictures in November but hardly posted anything. Christmas is just around the corner and I haven't shared anything from November, so here are a few highlights.

My wonderful husband celebrated his birthday this month. Happy birthday Honey, we love you! You are the best dad and husband ever! We have a couple of birthday traditions. The first tradition is that you get choose a homemade birthday dessert. He chose Tuxedo Brownies. Yummy! Our second tradition is that you get to go to dinner at the restaurant of your choice. The restaurant he choose had a super long wait so he chose a second restaurant instead. We brought him back to his first choice few days later, so he got to have two birthday dinners out.

Nature Girl participated in a Veteran's Day assembly at school. She learned to sign the words to "God Bless the USA" and performed it in front of the school with her class. She did a wonderful job and of course I cried! That song always gets me and I was so proud of her. She worked so hard to learn the signs and was very nervous about performing. She's an amazing little girl!

Nature Girl also got her report card this month. She did a great job! We took her out to dinner to celebrate.

Chunk had surgery this month. He was micro-chipped and neutered. After a few days of not feeling like his usually naughty self, he's back to normal and seems to have forgiven me. He also had his first stay in a kennel over Thanksgiving. He was a bit scared. He didn't like the other dogs barking and had to be hand fed in order to get him to eat. Needless to say he was happy to see us. Now he's back to his normal self, which means he's back to eating anything within his reach. This weeks chewing choices include socks, paperclips and a mini bottle of bubbles.

That leaves me. I've been trying to fit a few crafts into the chaos of everyday life. I've had owls on the brain so I've been making little owls from wool. I've also missed making aprons so I've made a couple of those too(I'll show those in another post.)

I crafted an owl ornament for my friend Barb.

I hosted a pincushion swap in October that spilled over into November. I couldn't stop myself from creating this little wool tree stump pincushion complete with owls. I sent this one along to Barb too. I have another tree stump that just needs an owl attached. Of course Chunk ate the wings off that owl so I need to make a new one now.

There you have it, a few highlights from November. And woosh . . . November is gone! Bring on the holidays!

A Girl, A Puppy and Snow

When I looked skyward last week, this was the view. It's fall in the East. The days are cooler, the trees are changing color, leaves are falling. It's a very pretty time.

There should be plenty of time to enjoy fall, or so I thought. We don't usually have snow in October. Winter made an early appearance on Saturday night, we got 24 inches of snow. It quickly went from fall to winter in just a few hours. Nature Girl loved putting on her winter jacket to catch big fluffy snowflakes in the backyard.

Chunk came outside for some snowy fun. At first he didn't know quite what to think. The snow was as tall as he is. He jumped off the porch up to his head in snow and quickly wondered, "What the heck is this stuff?"

Soon he began to romp through the snow with Nature Girl! Watching them play in the snow reminded me of how exciting and magical the first snow is. Don't you remember the excitement the first real snow brought when you were a kid? A girl and a puppy playing in the snow can make you remember.