Breakfast with Thanksgiving Leftovers

Looking for something to make this weekend with your Thanksgiving leftovers? These "pancakes" are simple and really, really good!

Ingredients:

• mashed potatoes
• shredded turkey
• stuffing
• fresh parsley
• one egg
• salt and pepper

Your staples for these cakes are turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. I used about a cup of each and it made 4 cakes. 

Add one egg, parsley and salt and pepper. Mix it all up and form your cakes. Fry them in a little bit of canola oil.

Top your cakes with a fried egg. I used the Pioneer Woman's method to make these sunny side up eggs. Learn about that here.

Chewy Double Chocolate Cookies

I found this recipe for chocolate cookies on Pinterest over the weekend and made them for my dad's birthday. If you're a chocolate fan, you'll definitely want to give these a try. They are so good.

Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 1 and 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Mix the butter and the sugars until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.

Combine flour, cocoa, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Add chocolate chips. The dough will be very stiff.

Form the the dough into balls and put them in the freezer for about 20 minutes. Place them on a lined baking sheet and bake them at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Enjoy these with a big glass of milk. They're so good warm!

DIY: Scrapbook

Over the summer my friend Jess and I took a mini road trip to Vegas (read about it here). It was so much fun. So, for Jess' birthday I made her this little scrapbook of our adventure. It was a lot of fun to make! The covers are made from the backs of legal pads and I ordered our Instagram prints from Prinstagram. I highly recommend them! Read on to learn how to make your own.

What you'll need:

• the backs of two legal pads (or some thin cardboard)
• photos
• cardstock for the pages
• patterned paper (to add some embellishments)
• stickers (optional)
• felt (about 1/2 a yard)
• twine or ribbon
• strong hole punch or ice pick to make the holes
• scissors
• x-acto knife
• ruler
• hot glue
• pencil

Instead of showing you all of the steps I took to actually create the book, I've decided to attach the video I followed. This step-by-step video makes it easy.

As you can see, I decided to make my scrapbook square. Obviously, you can make it any size or shape you like but I thought the square photos looked nice in a square book.

And here is a shot of each page. I put the book together in chronological order.

So there you have it! Our road trip scrapbook! I can't wait to make another one!

DIY: Plush Toadstool

I made this plush toadstool for my friend Faby recently so I took some step by step photos to share with you guys. I found an awesome pattern for a toadstool pincushion and blew it up to about 300%. Click here for the original pattern and an illustrated tutorial.

What you'll need:

• red felt (about 1/4 yard)
• white felt (about 1/2 yard)
• green felt (about 1/8 yard)
• scissors
• needle and thread and/or sewing machine
• hot glue
• Polyfil

Start by taking a look at the original tutorial and familiarizing yourself with the directions. The pattern is available there too. I downloaded it, blew it up to about 3 times the original size and then printed it. After that I cut out all of the pieces. You'll need: 4 red rounded triangles, 1 cap bottom, 1 stalk, 1 stalk base, lots of dots for the top (I made mine different sizes), and some grass (cut it to be exactly like the stalk and then cut thin triangles off the top so it looks like grass).

Sew two triangles together (one side only) and then sew the other two triangles together (also one side only).

Open the pieces, lay them flat (one on top of the other), and sew those together. It should look like the photo below at this point.

At this point you can turn it right side out and sew the spots on but I decided to just hot glue them on later. Now, the cap should be inside out for this part. Baste the bottom of the cap to the top.

Sew the bottom to the top.

Flip it right side out and stuff it.

Take the stalk and sew the sides together so it looks like a tube. Turn it right side out. At this point I stopped using my machine. Hand sew the stalk to the top. I used the ladder stitch. Stuff the stalk.

Use the ladder stitch to sew the base to the stalk.

Now it's time for the grass and the dots. I hot glued them on but obviously you could sew them on if you like.

That's it! It's not a simple project but it's sure worth the effort.

Happy Veterans Day!

All cards in my shop right now are buy one get one free! Just mention in the "notes to seller" section upon checkout which card you want to be included in your order. ALL proceeds made from now until Friday, November 14th will be donated to Soldiers' Angels. Visit my shop here! 

[soldier found here]

Persimmon Bread

I hung out with my cousin Amy recently and she gave me some persimmons to take home. Hachiya persimmons from my Aunt Lynnea's tree to be exact. Not only had I never baked anything using persimmons, I'm almost positive I'd never even eaten one before either. She told me to wait until they were extremely soft and I did just that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I had waited one more day to make this bread it would have been too late. Anyway... I found this recipe via All Recipes and decided to give it a try. HOLY COW. This bread is delicious. I changed the recipe a little so read on to see exactly how I did it.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup persimmon pulp
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups all purpose flour (sifted)

Preheat your oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan. I put some parchment paper in the bottom and along the sides as well because this bread is extremely moist and hard to remove from the pan. Start by splitting your persimmons open and filling a measuring cup with 1 cup of pulp. Add the baking soda to the pulp, stir it up and let it stand for about 5 minutes. It will thicken quite a bit.

Combine the sugar, oil, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix until smooth.

Add your pulp and water alternately with the flour to your sugar mixture.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for about an hour. At this point, check it with a toothpick. I ended up baking my bread for about an hour and a half.

Allow it to cool almost completely. I say almost because it's SO good warm. Enjoy!

Recently

1.) A few Etsy orders.

2.) A plethora of birthday presents from my friend, Faby.

3.) The last of my birthday celebrations courtesy of my friend, Jess (pictured next to me on the right).

4.) My mom's sneaky cat.

5.) My Halloween display. Bob bit the dust the next day.

6.) A shot from the top of the ferris wheel at a local carnival.

7.) A puppy I met one night and freaked out about. So wrinkly!

8.) Some ping pong eyeballs for Halloween.

9.) My carnival prizes.

10.) Playing with magazines and paint pens.