Cooking lesson: Sweet Cornbread

When the weather turns cool, I start baking.  There's nothing on a cold, dreary day like a nice pot of homemade chili and cornbread.  I have no idea where this recipe originally came from.  My mom has made it for years and I think she got it from one of my aunts.  I hope you'll like it as much as we do. :)

Sweet Cornbread

 

(Pretend this photo has flour and sugar.  My buckets are not photo worthy.)

 

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup cornmeal

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups milk

Mix eggs and sugar.

(Yes, there are 4 eggs, I double the recipe for enough leftovers to eat some for breakfast the next day.)

 Add other ingredients.

 Mix together.

 Batter should be mostly smooth and about cake batter consistency.

 Pour into greased 9 x 13 pan.

 Bake at 375 for 25 minutes or until lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cut into squares. 

Best when served with honey butter, or if you really want, it is good just plain, too.

Store extra covered and eat it for breakfast the next morning.  I suppose you could try freezing extra pieces, but I've never tried that, so I'm not sure how well it would work.

Linking up here: 

Ornament Swaps

I love ornament swaps.  Of course, that could be because a) I love getting fun stuff in the mail.  Seriously, if you want to make my day, send me something.  It's like Christmas or my birthday every time I find something besides bills in the mailbox.  Or, b) because I love everything to do with Christmas.  My mom was always very firm that we couldn't decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving.  I get that Thanksgiving is an important holiday and I am thankful, I really am, I just love Christmas decor!  I figure if I wait until after Thanksgiving dinner I'm fine and still maximize my time with Christmas stuff.

Anyway, I have a group of online friends that I have been emailing for almost 11 years.  They've seen me through good times and bad, and are some of my best friends even though I've never met any of them in real life.  We've been swapping ornaments for something like 8 or 9 of those 11 years.  It's so fun each year to pull out the ornaments and remember who sent each one and the reasons they chose that particular ornament, in some cases.

This year I decided to branch out a little and join in a couple of other ornament swaps.  I'm excited to try the handmade swap with And Nothing Else Matters and Miss Mommy.  I actually have a great idea that I'm planning to try that I saw in January or so and have been waiting all year for the excuse to actually start crafting.  We'll see how it turns out.



I'm also participating in a swap through Eisy Morgan.  This one is your choice of handmade or purchased.


Come join in the fun!

How did I get talked into this?

Hubby and I have volunteered to be on the Cub Scout Roundtable staff for our district.  About three weeks ago, he came home from the planning meeting (I was playing taxi driver that night) with the news that the ladies were going to do a lip-sync to Aretha Franklin's R-E-S-P-E-C-T to introduce the monthly theme for December.

My mind made an immediate flashback to my first year of college.
{I was in a small group assigned to give a presentation to the rest of the newspaper staff on the difference between blonde and blond.  We decided that we should lip sync to R-E-S-P-E-C-T and the group members that weren't already blonde would temporarily dye their hair.  (I was thinking I was awfully glad I'm a natural blonde and didn't need to worry about changing my hair color.)  But, the local grocery store didn't carry temporary hair dye.  Oh, and did I mention that we only had two hours for the planning and practice?  That's college procrastination at its finest!  With about an hour to go, we decided to see if the theater's costume shop had any blonde wigs we could rent.  We walked over there and found out that since it was for a class project, we could get wigs for free.  So, we all got blonde wigs (mine was a super-blonde Dolly Parton-style) and then decided to get sparkly dresses as well.  Decked out in our blonde wigs and sparkly dresses, we went to class and gave an enthusiastic performance.  I'm not so sure we got the blonde/blond point across, but oh well.  The newspaper advisor told me that I shouldn't ever go more blonde than I already was since I got really washed out.}

So, here I was living that experience all over again only without the blonde wig.

Or so I thought.

I guess I'm just destined to be a blonde!

Anyway, two of the other staffers and I did a fun rendition and made complete fools of ourselves for the enjoyment of all the other attendees.

I'm NOT ready for this

Yesterday we had the first snow of the season.  I came to the realization I do every year with the first snowfall -- I'm NOT ready for winter!!!  I'm not a cold-weather person.  Give me warm and sunny, but not too hot and sunny.  However, I do love watching the snow fall.  Seeing the younger kids' reactions was priceless.

I suppose we're fortunate that we don't live in the Northeast where they got pummeled with snow.  Yesterday's snow was really wet and heavy.  It was really weighing down the branches on my beautiful oak tree out front.

Here's some comparisons, yesterday:

Today in roughly the same spot:

More of the oak tree yesterday:

A similar view today:

In the back yard, this is "the climbing tree":

And a close up, those branches are touching the ground.

Today (don't mind the window reflections, today is much sunnier than yesterday):

What a difference a day makes!  We're even supposed to warm up into the 50s and maybe 60s for the weekend!

Halloween costumes -- Doctor Who, Perry & Doofenshmirtz, Harry Potter

We tend to get some creative Halloween costume ideas around our house.  This year The Artist decided to be Doctor Who.  Surprisingly, this was much easier to pull off than I had expected.

Take a white dress shirt and black pants, add a thrifted tweed jacket, bow tie, crocheted fez and of course, a sonic screwdriver.  (We didn't get around to the faux-suspenders out of wide, grosgrain ribbon.) 

We tried some sock-bun curls.  (There are tutorials all over Pinterest.)  I think it's a learned art, but they didn't turn out too bad.

Oh, can't forget the "Trust Me, I'm the Doctor" earrings!

Shirt: JCPenney, Pants: ??, Jacket: Goodwill, 

Bowtie: Etsy, Fez: made by me, Earrings: Etsy, Sonic Screwdriver: ThinkGeek

Mr. Adventure and Buddy teamed up with a Doofenshmirtz/Perry the Platypus combination. 

 The Doofenshmirtz ensemble is based off of a Phineas & Ferb episode where Perry gets hold of a remote control and controls Doof's every move.  A hilarious rap song ensues -- "There's a platypus controlling me . . ."  Mostly this costume was thrown together with bits and pieces.  We found the records at Goodwill.

The cute Perry outfit was made by my SIL.  It's a simple fleece hooded jumpsuit with a foam tail sewn on the back.  We added a foam visor and drew the nostrils with black Sharpie.

Our Harry Potter robe is now in its fifth or sixth year of use!  Little Miss Sunshine wore it this year. 

I made the robe out of two black pillowcases:  a king-size for the robe itself, and a standard size for the sleeves.  (Hand-sewn when my sewing machine was on the fritz.)
Unpick the seams of the standard pillowcase and cut on the fold for two equal panels.  Resew the side seam on each to form the sleeve. (The finished edge is the bottom of the sleeves.)  Unpick part of the bottom seam on the king pillowcase for a neck opening.  Unpick the side seams near the bottom for a sleeve-sized hole.  Sew the raw edges of the sleeve and robe together being careful not to sew the opening closed.  And there you have a Hogwarts-style robe.  Add a house badge and a wand.

Christmas Elf

I know it's a bit early to be thinking about Christmas, but as I've been browsing around Pinterest, I happened across a board full of ideas for a Christmas Elf. Have you seen the Christmas Elf idea?  Sometimes it is known as Elf on the Shelf.  The elf visits from the North Pole and reports back to Santa how the children have behaved.  In the meantime, the elf finds the most unlikely places to fall asleep and gets into lots of mischief.  This website explains it and links to message boards with some great ideas.

We started this tradition two years ago when Kayla was introduced to us.  (She is a Kelly doll that I found in Target's holiday section.)

Kayla did some fun things like hang candy canes from every knob in the kitchen and even on the chandelier above the table.  She used paper plates as sleds down the stairs.  We had fun finding where she went to sleep each night.

Then, last year we added Kyle and Ashley. (Found at Hobby Lobby with the other Christmas plush.)

With more heads, they were able to cook up even more mischief.  They got into a marshmallow snowball fight, had a movie night, etc.  One morning we woke up to this sight in the office chair:

Ultimately, the elves had a grand finale a couple days before Christmas when they took the car for a joy ride and drove through a nearby drive-thru for ice cream.

Of course, now I have to come up with new ideas to top that!  So, I'm glad I've found some new ideas via Pinterest.  Do you have any great suggestions?