Candy Bows by Brooke

Hey guys! Today I made a super easy bow for Christmas presents! It’s made out of candy bags! This works with big or small candy bags. All I did was tie a ribbon around the middle and tighten it then knot it. Curl the remaining ribbon tails! I taped it to the top of a present but you could wrap ribbon around your gift and attach it that way too. It was so easy and it looks so cute!! 

Cork Gingerbread Man Ornament by Brooke

Hey guys! I made this super cute gingerbread ornament out of wine corks!! First I glued 5 corks together in the shape of a body! Then I cut a piece off of a cork for the head making it as wide as the other corks! I drew a face on him using paint markers and gave him buttons and a bow tie and little decorations on his arms and legs. Then I glued a piece of ribbon on the back of him and let it dry and now he’s all done and hanging on the tree! I think he is super cute!

Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies by Brooke

Hey guys! Today I made peanut butter kiss cookies! They were so delicious! Here’s how I made them. 

The ingredients you need are: 

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

4 ounces (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

½ cup smooth peanut butter (or other creamy nut butter)

½ cup granulated sugar, plus more for rolling

½ cup light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon milk, half-and-half, oat milk or nut milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Nonstick spray or vegetable oil for cookie sheet 

Hershey’s kisses 

First mix flour baking soda and salt in a bowl and set it aside. Using an electric mixer mix the butter, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Add egg, milk and vanilla ; Beat until well blended. Then slowly mix in flour mixture

Next preheat over to 375 degrees. Spray a cookie sheet or lay out parchment paper. Roll dough into 1 inch balls. 

Then after making a ball roll it through sugar and place on cookie sheet. Bake until very light brown and cracked and puffy. 6-8 minutes. 

After done cooking remove sheet from oven and lightly press a candy kiss in the top and let them cool.

Tip-sy Tuesday: holiday phone case by Brooke

Hey guys! Today I made this Christmas phone case! I measured my clear phone case on a sheet of wrapping paper, cut it out and stuck it in the back! 

Jill here - isn't this a fun easy thing to get into the spirit? Love it! 

Plant Pot Bells by Brooke

Hey guys! Today I made bells! Well kinda lol. I used little terracotta planting pots and small bells to make my own hanging bell!! I’m using them as ornaments but you can do whatever. The first thing I did was paint my pots. I let the paint dry and then drew on them with paint pens. One with snowflakes and one with Christmas lights. Then I used ribbon and put both ends of it through the hole in the top of the pot. But don’t pull to hard on both ends or you’ll have to do it again! So I put a paint brush in the ribbon loop/hanger so it couldn’t fall through. Then I tied the bell on at about the end of the little pot because I thought it would leave me a long enough string for my bell and it did! After I tied the bell on I cut the excess ribbon and pulled the bell to the bottom of the pot! And there you have it! Super cute bells! 

🔥Around the Campfire (week 50)

 Dear Campers ~

Guys! It's mid-December already. What the heck. I'm sure you are just sitting at your computer waiting to see what fascinating things I post each day and not slammed with last month Holidays hahahah. But just in case you missed anything at camp last week, here's a recap!

Posts ~

12/6: 🔥week 49

12/7: decoupage glass plates

12/8: tip-sy tuesday: prosciutto 

12/9: scalloped potatoes

12/10: MSIH: scalloped potatoes

12/11: gingerbread cookie hugs

12/12: how to make a multi-looped bow

What's Cooking ~

• unstuffed chicken cordon bleu, roasted broccoli
• spiral ham, scalloped potatoes, roasted green beans, southern biscuits
• marinated pork chops, butternut squash, chopped kale salad
• crock pot london broil stroganoff, asparagus
• steak, sautéed mushrooms, caeser salad 
• grilled chicken, acorn squash

Miscellaneous stuff keeping me busy ~

• oh it's crunch time for shopping and finishing my homemade gifts! who has time for anything else right now?!!!
• I did read a couple books but nothing of note and not great so not even going to bother telling you not to read 'And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer' by Fredrik Backman or 'Brighter than the Sun' by Darynda Jones!

That's it for now - my sis and b-i-l are coming over to watch MSU basketball (Go Green!) and I've got beer cheese pub soup in the crockpot for lunch. Gotta go! Have a great week people!

Sincerely ~

Jill

camp counselor

Make a Multi-Looped Bow

 Last week we made tiny bows using a fork, this time it's how to make a big bow. The nice, full, multi-loop bows that you'd hang on a wreath, the front door, a banister, or a gift. Do you know how to do this already? In that case good for you and never mind the rest of this post hahaha. I knew how to do it in theory but this morning I took one apart to really learn the correct way to put one together. 

This one is made using 2" wired ribbon - it's 3 loops for the bow, 1 small loop for the center, and one long piece for the tail. You'll also need wire (or some other material like yarn, twine, etc.) and a stapler to attach it all together. 

To make a bow about 8" wide and 12" long cut 1 piece 24" long for the tail, 3 pieces approx. 18-20" long, and 1 piece about 5" long for the center. Shape the 5" piece into a circle and staple to hold it. Shape the 3 pieces into loops, overlapping the ends in the middle. If using wired ribbon it will hold it's shape, if not wired then staple the loop closed to hold it. 

Now take one of the loops and fold the middle in half, then fold the sides back on itself - you're sort of pleating the center of the loop. You could also just pinch the middle, you want to get it as flat as possible and then staple to hold. Repeat with the other 2 loops. 

Run a long piece of wire thru the middle of the small center circle. Stack the 3 loops together with the stapled edges touching. Pinch the middle of the long tail and stack that up against the loops. Lay them on top of the center circle, bring the wire over and twist to hold everything in place. Turn over and fluff all the pieces until you have a nice full bow. 

You can adjust the size of the bow by making the loops bigger or smaller, using different widths of ribbon, and add more loops if you want it even fuller. There, now we can all make professional looking bows!

Gingerbread Cookie Hugs...by Brooke

Hey guys! Today at my aunts I made these white chocolate gingerbread cookies! I thought they were so good! Here’s how I made them:

• 3 cups flour
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1 tsp baking soda 
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt 
• 1 1/2 (3/4 cup) sticks butter, softened
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses 
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 60 White and milk chocolate swirled Hershey hugs. 

First mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

Beat butter and brown sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Add molasses, egg, and vanilla; mix well. Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until well mixed. Press dough into a thick flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350°F

Shape dough into 1" balls. Roll in  1/4 cup granulated sugar to coat. Place 2 inches apart on uncreased baking sheets. 

Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges of cookies just begin to brown. 

Right after the cookies get out of the oven push a Hershey’s hug into the middle. Remove to wire racks; cool completely.

Hope you guys enjoyed these cookies as much as I did!

Jill Here - couple funny things while B made these cookies (without my help by the way. I miss her being little and doing things together but man is it nice that she can bake cookies on her own hahah! First she was practically gagging when adding the molasses, said it smelled nasty. And we shouldn't add nutmeg 'cuz it'll wreck the cookies. 'Just follow the directions B'. The dough was very crumbly but held together when she scooped it out, later I read the directions and realized she added the 1/4 cup sugar to the dough instead of putting it in a small dish to roll the cookie dough balls in! But they turned out great anyway. After they were baked and she tried a bite she said 'they're pretty good'. Then after she finished the cookie she amended 'ok, these are great!'. 

This recipe came out of a Meijer | Holiday 2020 flyer I got in the mail

MSIH: scalloped potatoes review

Yesterday I posted the new scalloped potato dish I made to go with our (never-ending and random not-a-holiday) ham - here's what my sis (and Brooke) has to say:

So I heated these in small servings because my sister gave me a giant pan (she is aware that the other kids are all grown and out of the house, right?).  Let me just say that Brooke tried a bite of her small scoop and before I could even try mine she said “we are going to need to heat some more”.  I laughed and she continued, “no really, gonna need more”.  LOL.

She then proceeded to gush about the amazingness of these for my “review”.  She gave all the reviewers words.  She gave it a 10 out of 10, they are amazing. She loves how thinly the potato’s were sliced and felt that is what gave them such great flavor (they could soak up the sauce.. haha).  I do have to say I agree with her!  That doesn’t happen often that I agree with the teen so this is newsworthy.  They could possibly be the best scalloped potato’s I have ever had.  If you have read my reviews you know that’s saying something.  Really delicious.  Didn’t need to cover with salt and pepper, just great as is.  A far cry from the old days of my old recipe with flour and milk or even the “newer” recipe of cream of mushroom soup.

Cant wait to see her recipe and see what it actually is!  Flour, milk and a pound of butter?? Really crossing my fingers that’s not the recipe because I fully intend to make these again.. and pass the recipe off as my own. 😊

Scalloped Potatoes

Is all the hysteria about 'what foods to stockpile for the pandemic' making you as cuckoo crazy as me? I mean c'mon, I'm getting daily emails from different sources offering up their lists of 'food you should hoard in case there's never any canned vegetables ever again'. Or 'things you should have a years supply of in case your neighbor buys it all before you'. Ok, maybe that's not exactly the list titles but that's what it feels like!! So when I went to the grocery store the other day on a hunt to see if I'd be able to buy meat and saw a big pile of spiral-cut hams randomly in the beginning of December I thought - gee, we don't usually eat a big ham for no good reason and it's not even a holiday but ok, I should get one. 

There's a point to all the above rambling. I bought a ham and you know what I think goes great with ham? Scalloped potatoes. See, I brought it around. 

this is before baking, because of course I forgot
to take a photo after they baked for an hour!

I've always made scalloped potatoes the same way, I don't remember but I'm assuming it's how my mom made them (mom, is this what you do?). Layer thin cut potatoes with sliced onions, flour, salt and pepper, bits of butter, then another layer of potatoes, flour, s&p, butter, etc. Cover the entire thing with milk and bake. They are yummy but not creamy and there's no sauce to speak of. This time I googled for different ideas on making them just to change it up and found this inspiration recipe on Food Network. I did change it a bit, but not drastically, I'll give you what I did and you can go to their site if you want to see what I started with. 

Oh, by the way, these turned out great. I liked them so much that I made them for my sister the next day and will have her give her review without telling her my whole backstory and how delicious I think they are! Although I added leftover ham (cuz ham is like turkey, the leftovers are endless!) to hers and I bet they are even more amazing - if that's even possible. We'll see what she says in her review later. If you've read her past reviews you'll know she is bound to ask if these are healthy - let's hope she doesn't or I'll have to lie and tell her yes. Yes they are. LOL. Not. (click here for her review)

Here's what her potatoes with ham look like after baking -
I'm not always forgetful! These aren't as smooth on the top
because I stirred them often. You can always level them
back out if you're serving in the dish and want it prettier. 

• 1/2 stick butter
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1/4 cup finely diced onion (I chopped it super small hoping Dave wouldn't notice hahaha. You can leave bigger pieces if you want, and feel free to add more if you like onion - they were good with 1/4 cup for us and no, he didn't say anything)
• 4 cups half and half (you can mix together cream and milk if you have those on hand)
• 3 pounds potatoes (I used russet and left the peels on. Peel if you want. You can also use Yukon gold potatoes if you have them, peel or don't - up to you. I have 10 pounds of russets because of a story very similar to the beginning of this post. You can imagine why I have 10 pounds of potatoes.) FYI if you don't have a food scale, 3 pounds equaled about 8 cups of sliced potatoes. 
• pinch of nutmeg
• coarse Kosher salt
• pepper
• 2 T. Flour (or Wondra)

1. Scrub the potatoes really good. Slice them very thin, about 1/8". I have a V-Slicer, or use a mandolin, or a sharp knife and slice them by hand trying to keep them consistently thin.

2. Rub butter all over a 13x9" baking dish. 

3. In a large saucepan add the rest of the butter, garlic, and onion; saute for a couple minutes until translucent. 

4. Stir a couple tablespoons of Wondra flour (I'm sure regular flour would work but I used Wondra) into the half and half, and then stir the half and half into the saucepan. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes to the saucepan, try to separate the slices so they get nice and coated with the sauce. Let simmer for a couple minutes then turn into the baking dish. 

5. Put in a preheated 350' oven, bake for about an hour until the potatoes are tender. 

note: keep an eye on the potatoes while they are baking so the top doesn't get too brown. Stir them every so often to bring the sauce to the top and keep all the potatoes coated while they are baking. 

You can make a smaller 2-quart dish of these - same directions with these amounts:

2 T. butter

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1/4 cup or less of chopped onion

2 cups half and half

salt and pepper to taste

pinch of nutmeg

2 pounds thinly sliced potatoes (about 6 cups)