Little chocolate pizzas ~ a fun gift from the kitchen

(Photo by Taste of Home -- full size pizza is pictured.)

I hadn't thought of these for a long time, but the other day, they came to mind.  Years ago, these were a popular item I included in college care packages.  I thought it would be helpful to put the link here on my Christmas blog, so I can make them again this Christmas.  Maybe some of you would like to try making these treats as well.  Here's the link for the basic recipe: Chocolate Pizza.

If you happen to have, as I do, some miniature round pans, you can use these to make individual pizzas.  If not, you can use muffin cups. 

I have never made these using the maraschino cherries, although I am sure that would be delicious.  Instead, I use red and green M&M candies.  To me, they make the pizza look a little bit more realistic -- plus, the red and green are fun for Christmas.

This would be a very fun recipe to make with kids -- just make sure that an adult or an older child handles the chocolate melting part of the recipe.

Enjoy!

Fantabulous Felt Food!

Kids love felt food!

 For many weeks and months (maybe years)  now, I have been wanting to put all of my links to various felt food projects in one place.  Here on my Christmas blog, I'm posting today with all of the links I can find.  These are all felt foods I have made over the past three or four years or so.  I have other links and projects saved, but only want to share links for the items I have actually made.

If you think you might like to make some felt food for children in your life for Christmas, birthdays, or just for fun, now is a great time to get started.  Felt food is easy, small, and portable, making it an ideal craft to work on during a road trip, at the beach, etc. 

So let the linkage begin!

I think that these Felt Cheez-It® Crackers were the first felt food I attempted.  Very, very easy.

You can see the cheese crackers toward the right back of the table.  We recycled a cracker box to present them in.

Unfortunately, I can no longer access the blog where I got the pattern for bacon and eggs; it has become a private blog.  This  pattern looks like a good one: Felt Fried Eggs and Bacon.  The bacon I made has a wavy, realistic look because one stitches along the edges using a wired floss in a tan color.

Bacon and Eggs

 These Felt Cinnamon Rolls are probably the easiest felt food I've ever made, but they sure do look delicious!

Cinnamon Rolls

These Felt popsicles are also very easy to make.

Grape, lime, and orange popsicles

Orange, cherry and lime popsicles

Felt Toaster Pastries might be a great starter project.  They are so quick and easy!  If your grandchildren are very little or if there are babies in the house, you might prefer to make colorful french knot "sprinkles" rather than attaching beads. 

Pop-tarts®

Pop-tarts® in packaging

 I think I failed to take pictures of the Felt Coffee & Mini Donut set I made for these two.  (Maybe because I was somewhat disappointed in how the coffee cups came out.)  Their uncle owns a coffee shop, which is why I made these.  They are drinking from the coffee cups, which have sleeves from their uncle's shop.  The large donuts in the picture are the crocheted ones.  I think the pink and chocolate frosted mini donuts from this tutorial are in between the valentine cookies and the cheese crackers, in front of Emily.  (You can actually see these mini donuts better in the very top photo, where they are in the foreground.)

This pattern for Felt sandwiches and bags of chips has directions for potato chips, bags, and two kinds of sandwiches.

Sandwiches -- ham, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes on burger buns

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Bags of chips

Another look at the potato chips

I tried several tutorials for felt strawberries, but one came out as big as tomatoes!  I salvaged them by putting them in a tomato box and calling them tomatoes, but they weren't all that easy to make, so I've scrapped that pattern.  These Felt strawberries are the best pattern I've found.  I like to package them in plastic berry boxes.

A basket of strawberries

This Felt pumpkin pie with whipped cream is truly amazing.  I've made lemon, chocolate, and cheesecake pie slices as well.  A good bit of the sewing on this is done by machine, so it's not as complicated as it looks.

Pumpkin pie

Lemon pie

Chocolate cream pie

Strawberry cheesecake

Pumpkin, lemon and chocolate pie

And here is the link for pancakes:Felt Pancakes.  Again, very easy.  Partly sewed by machine.

Pancakes with butter pat

And here is one for Christmas cookies -- these are also very easy!  Christmas Cookies.  Obviously, you can make these into plain sugar cookies or into Valentine cookies -- or just cut-out cookies for any occasion!

Christmas cookies

Christmas cookies in their packaging

Frosted sugar cookies with sprinkles

Valentine cookies

More Valentine cookies

This Fabric Bow-Tie Pasta is not made of felt, but is still very easy.

Fabric bow tie pasta

A package of pasta

Not all play food is made of fabric.  Here are a couple of links for foods I've crocheted:  Crochet Sandwich Cookies

Crocheted chocolate sandwich cookies

and Crocheted Donut, which I've made in varying "flavors".  Again, if you suspect these or the felt cookies (really, any play food with "sprinkles") will go into a tiny child's mouth, then please use french knots rather than beads.

A pink-frosted doughnut

Chocolate frosted donut

A packaged chocolate donut

So there are all my links! 

My grandkids are always happy to get more felt food!

Have fun cooking up some felt food!  A word of warning, though -- it's addictive!

Lego® Sacks -- a fun and practical gift for kids

I'm posting these here on my Christmas blog for a couple of reasons:
1) They are a great and very easy handmade gift for  kids;
2) I plan on making these for my Nevada grandkids for Christmas and they will be much less likely to see them here than on my regular blog, which they occasionally look at.

So -- I had seen this Lego Sack tutorial some time ago and put it on my list to make for the kids.  I have several Lego-loving grandchildren, and this would make a useful gift for them. 

Very simply, it's a large lined fabric circle which the kids can use as a playing surface for Legos or, actually, any toy with a multitude of small pieces.

Opened up as playing surface

Then, when they are done playing for the day, they simply gather up the drawstrings and voila! the pieces are all contained within one neat sack, which can then be hung from a peg or hook, a doorknob or even a bedpost.

Closed up for storage

I made this orange one for one of my grandsons, and his brother admired it so much that he wanted one for his birthday, too.  So I made his in the same print, only a teal color.  I failed to get pictures of that one.

I thought this sort of geometric print would look nice for Legos.  I found it at a Walmart that still carries fabric.  It was on clearance -- between $1 and $2 a yard, I forget which.  I bought it in orange, teal, and yellow.  I can't remember if there were other colors or not, but there may have been.  I will find out, though, as I need to go back and get more fabric for making more sacks for Christmas gifts.

For the lining, I lined the first one with part of an old sheet, and that worked fine.  For the second one, I lined it with a sturdier fabric -- think it may have been osnaburg -- which I had originally bought for lining tote bags.  I'll plan to use that for the remaining 3 or 4 Lego sacks, since I have plenty of it.

These go together almost unbelievably fast.  The hardest part, literally, is measuring and cutting the circle.  I used a 1-yard square to cut the circle from, and panicked at first because I thought it was going to be too small.  But it was just fine.  Actually, if you are using just regular fabric, you won't be able to cut anything larger than a 45-inch square anyway.  And you would have to purchase more than a yard to do that.  So for me, I think I'll continue using the 36-inch square.

For the drawstrings, I used wide ribbon.  Wide bias tape would work well too, and so would rope or a thick cord.  The instructions call for making one's own bias tape but I didn't have time or interest in doing that.

Hope this info is helpful to someone.  These certainly have been a hit with my grandkids so far!

A nice possibility for Christmas Eve supper

(Photo by Taste of Home)

I realize that many families already have their own traditions for Christmas Eve supper.  Some like to have a meatless meal; others favor seafood, and so on.  At our house, it's Christmas Eve Soup, served very simply with corn muffins, biscuits or rolls (or sometimes with cheese pizza), with either ambrosia or ice cream and Christmas cookies for dessert.  This year, it was so special when my 11-year-old granddaughter arrived for the Christmas Eve meal bearing a foil-covered plate of holiday rice crispy treats she had made herself, to share for dessert.  I love seeing traditions carried on!

When I was a child, our family's traditional meal for Christmas Eve was macaroni and cheese.  My mother made hers with a rich cheese sauce, loaded with sharp or maybe extra-sharp cheddar.  She always topped her macaroni and cheese with crushed saltines sauteed briefly in butter (a much-coveted treat for us children) and then topped the whole with paprika before heating it through in the oven.  It was delicious.  We often had grilled hot dogs alongside the macaroni and cheese and usually a green salad of some sort. 

My mother always made an extra casserole dish full of macaroni and cheese, and took it to a neighbor couple we dearly loved, for their Christmas Eve supper.  On New Year's Day, Mrs. F always made a gelatin dessert called pumpkin snow, and sent it back to us in the clean casserole dish, along with a jar of custard sauce to serve with the dessert.  It was a sweet tradition between neighbors.

Recently, I tried this recipe for Saturday night supper with baked beans and salad: Ham and Broccoli Mac'n'Cheese.  It was very good; the only thing I changed (other than to use, in my case, gluten-free pasta and flour) was to add a little salt.  There were some lively flavors in the sauce, but the flavor seemed to fall a little flat so I added a bit of salt and that solved the problem. 

It occurred to me as I prepared the dish that it might be a very nice one for Christmas Eve, as it includes the lively colors of red (sweet peppers) and green (broccoli florets).  If your family prefers a meatless meal, the ham could easily be omitted. What are your family's Christmas Eve food traditions?

Inspiration for your handmade gifts

Graphic by Little Birdie Blessings

I don't know about you, but I simply love giving (as well as receiving) handmade gifts.  Two bloggers have inspired me even further to make handcrafted gifts for this coming Christmas -- and for as many birthdays as possible between now and then.

When I read Myra's post, The Legacy of Handmade, my heart was touched, because her words about handmade gifts she had received just summed up how I feel about handmade gifts for family, especially grandchildren.  Sure, not everything I make for them is heirloom quality -- felt food is a case in point -- but some of the things I've made, like the birthday banners, are already heirlooms. 
 
And sometimes I want to make things, like the felt food and superhero capes, that they can just plain have fun with!  I just want them all to know they have a Grammy who loves them enough to make them special things with her own hands.  (And I do recognize that not all grandmothers can do that.  There are many other special ways to show love to grandchildren -- probably as many ways as there are grandmothers.  This just happens to be something I can do and that I love doing.)

Abby's post, A Handmade Christmas, was even more of a blessing because Abby shares a list of wonderful, "think-outside-the box" ideas for handmade gifts. 

Abby's post reminded me of a neighbor lady when I was growing up.  She made many small, handmade gifts with an old treadle sewing machine -- little felt stockings with a child's name on them, into which she tucked a dollar bill; little sachets made from interesting fabric scraps and filled with balsam needles to give off a lovely fragrance of the forest; and many more things.  I had a great-aunt who pieced pot holders from scraps of flannel in crazy-quilt fashion.  Sets of her flannel pot holders were a hoped-for gift on many occasions.  My grandmother made many doll blankets and baby blankets for gifts.  Making handmade gifts is a dear old tradition I will continue for as long as I possibly can!

Rudolph Day for February just did not happen!

This is a photo of the village of Whitefield, NH in 1948 (or I suppose realistically the photo was taken in 1947). but the snowy scene is what it looks like here in New Hampshire today, after all of the snow we had yesterday.

Well, of course February 25 was in its usual spot on the calendar, but the observation of Rudolph Day just did not take place.  I had a dental appointment early that morning, so the rest of the day was pretty much spent on catching up with the laundry and other household tasks I usually do on Mondays. 

Oh, I had plans -- albeit very simple ones -- to do some Christmasy things; sip Candy Cane Lane tea (which I have seriously stocked up on, recently searching an entire holiday tea display at Wal*Mart to be sure I got every last box they had!); listen to Christmas music; make a few gift card holders and go over my Christmas list.  None of that happened.

Since then, I have taken a look at my Christmas list.  I have ideas for our elderly parents -- my mother-in-law loves what we do for her each year which is a bucket of bran muffin batter (the type that keeps for weeks in the fridge), a jar of homemade hot cocoa mix and a bag of clementines.  I give my dad just the baked muffins and the cocoa mix and a few clementines.  He tends to forget about them so I don't waste an entire bag on him.  We also give him a subscription to Readers' Digest.  If you keep an eye on their sales you can get a subscription for $5 or so.

And I have a few ideas for grandkids, mostly felt food so far.  But that is about it, so I need to do some serious brainstorming for Christmas gift ideas.  Maybe next Rudolph Day?

Making a Christmas shadow box

 
For the longest time now, I've been wanting to make a Christmas shadow box using vintage odds and ends.  I had seen the idea in Gooseberry Patch Christmas Book 7, and loved the one they showed.  The directions were by necessity not super specific, because of course everyone's shadow box frame and bits of memorabilia will be different.

I wanted to use an old red wooden silverware tray as a shadow box frame.  This was my mother's and was used by me as a teenager when I had a little home baking business.  In recent years, nearly every time I opened the silverware drawer in my kitchen, I would be reminded of this project and how much I wanted to create one of these shadow boxes.  So recently, I got my materials together and set out to make one.  It took me a week or more, working on it in available snippets of time here and there.  I began by thoroughly cleaning and washing the tray.

Then I lined the compartments with scrapbook paper.  I had some I had bought years ago specifically for this project.  I thought the red plaid had a vintage look -- but oh, aren't those red and green prints amazing?  They look like scans of actual vintage fabric.  There are stains, worn places, etc.  Just the look I was going for!

Another look with the tray flat, just as I glued the paper in.  I used a glue gun for the entire project.

After lining the bottom of each compartment, I remembered something important.  One side of each compartment was going to become the shelf for the memorabilia.  So I needed to line those as well.

I started with the vertical side compartment.

The top shelf holds lots of memories.  When I was a child my grandmother had Santa mugs that the grandchildren were allowed to use at Christmas dinner.  The one here is a cheap plastic imitation, but looks much the same.  The folded cupcake paper (which I may or may not leave there) is from a stash of my grandmother's Christmas things.  The tag is from my daughter as a teen, and the ribbon roses are a reminder of her as well since she often called herself the "little rose girl".  (She loves roses!)  The red ribbon, plastic greenery, the bell, and the little red bird are vintage.  The cookie cutter shapes are new but I thought they went well with the other things.

The second shelf holds a box of vintage light bulbs, a vintage sticker tag and a vintage plastic Santa and sleigh. I stuck a little metal embellishment that says "Cherish" on the tag.  The little metal pieces don't show up well in the photo, but they look cute in the shadow box in person.

I was a bit at a loss trying to decide how to fill the longer vertical space at the side.  Finally decided to make a tag and hang it from a red thumbtack.  Picture is of me and my brother and a cousin in the snow.  The flocked Santa sticker, the plastic holly and the striped bias tape are all vintage.

The letter stickers and the word on the tag are newer items.  You can't really see the word but it says "family" and is a shiny silver color.  In retrospect I should have put the "memories" letters lower on the back wall.  It will be fine when the shadow box is hung on a wall, but is a bit hard to see in the photo.

Vintage plastic deer, light bulb and tinsel from one of our early Christmases together.

A closer look at the tag; Santa sticker, holly, berries and bias tape are vintage.

The lower end of the tall side compartment.  Vintage plastic greens, holly, and berries.  This was old stuff from my great aunt.  Tiny vintage glass Christmas balls, too.

Finished shadow box!

Hope you have enjoyed this look at the making of a Christmas shadow box!  Maybe you've been inspired to make one of your own!