A Christmas Light Adenture

Twas the week before Christmas and all in the Mat-Su Valley were trying to see Christmas lights at the Alaska State Fairgrounds.

Sure, I could have tried to make that rhyme, but with the exception of a couple of twisted little poems I've done in my time, poetry and me...yeah...we don't get along.

Anyway, back to my tale...

Last week we went and saw the Christmas "Bright Up the Night" light display at the Alaska State Fairgrounds.  Armed with the instructions that the website provided (enter at Green Gate, wherever that was, and exit at Red Gate, admission free, hours of operation, etc) we managed to get the kids into the car, and I only put my son's shoes on the wrong feet twice in the process!  I packed the children snacks and some drinks just to be safe from temper tantrums while we were out and we set off.

We got to the Alaska State Fairgrounds without much incident, but we had no idea where Green Gate was (we don't go to the fair primarily because of my son and crowds).  The fairgrounds are of a decent size, for those who don't live around here, and are set up with roads on all sides of the Fairgrounds.  So, the first place we checked was the main fairground "gate".  Turned out that was Purple Gate and was locked, so my husband shot down the road a bit further and turned the corner, figuring we could get into the Fairgrounds a back way and then just drive around to where we needed to be. 

Nope.  All the entries were locked and we did a couple of U-Turns to find our way.

We finally turned back onto the highway and headed toward the Fairgrounds from a different way than when we started and finally saw an open gate, so we turned to go in.  Driving down the not well lit road we quickly saw a nice big orange sign with white letters that read, "Event" (or something similar) with an arrow and we figured, "Ah ha!  We have it now!" and drove in the direction that the sign pointed.  Another sign pointed us to enter through a gate and so we did, me noticing with a sense of unease that the gate we were ENTERING through was actually Red Gate. 

And so we followed a few more signs, all pointing us toward the "Event" and we could indeed see the Christmas lights off in the near distance, so we figured that the signs were pointing us the way.  And then suddenly the signs just weren't THERE anymore.

My husband and I, confused, tried to logic out what had happened and we drove around a bit in the back lot area of the Fair.  Finally my husband saw where we needed to go about 30 feet in front of us, but we were blocked from just driving to where we needed to be due to there being a large portion of grass and other "unknowns" before we could get there.

Finally my husband just decided to back track completely and see if we'd missed a sign.  By this point we were seeing the humor in our situation and laughing a bit at the signage, my husband joking that they'd put up the signs to confuse people and make them drive right back out of the fairgrounds.

When we were almost through the entrance/exit area where we'd come in, my husband looked off to the right and saw that the Christmas light area we were trying to get to might be accessible through a side street that you could barely make out and so he decided to take a chance and drive through the side street.

And sure enough suddenly we were in the Christmas lighted area.  We suddenly saw "Please Stay in Your Vehicle" signs on the road, but we'd have to crane our necks to see behind us to see what the signs were saying.  We quickly realized we were going through the event we'd been seeking backwards.

My husband drove until we were at the very beginning (or ending?) of the event and turned around so we could drive through the right way.  I took some pictures as we drove and we were relieved we were going through the event the right way this time and wouldn't have to worry about possibly running into another car going the right way through.  Suddenly signage started making sense and directions were clearer as we drove through the actually relatively small event (although the kids loved it :).

I was really starting to feel kind of stupid that we'd gotten lost so much and mentioned to my husband that I kept wondering if we'd missed some signs or something along the way. 

It was then that we noticed the cars.

We looked off into the night and there were cars EVERYWHERE around the event, but none of them driving through the actual event.  There were lines of cars that were ringing the event anywhere there were roads in the back lot area.  It was then that we started to really laugh as we started joking that this was going to be the one event that everyone would see from the outside in first.

By the way we did finally find Green Gate.  We went looking for it once my husband was sure where the entrance was, figuring that there had to be a road where the gate was.  It was marked by one little itty bitty sign that proclaimed the display and that was it.  No where to be had was a bright orange sign proclaiming "Event".

If nothing else, this gave us an adventure that my daughter will always remember as she laughed so much that night she cried *laugh*.

Sugar Cookies

This being Christmastime and all, I thought it appropriate to share a recipe I've made every year since my sister-in-law Ana gave me a home printed recipe card with a recipe simply marked, "Good Sugar Cookie Recipe".  Intrigued I later found out that this was a recipe my husband's grandmother had passed on.  Now whether she wrote it herself or got it from somewhere I can't say.  What I can say is that this recipe makes a really nice cakey sugar cookie if you do it right and the best part is it is a really cost effective recipe to make as it requires no butter, but shortening instead and yet it still gives a good end product.

I make these for my husband every year and then put a decorator icing on top of it that I found in an old cookbook that he loves.  The recipe for that is so easy I have it memorized by now.  It's just 3 1/2 cups sifted confectioner's sugar, 3 egg whites (use pasteurized egg whites if you are worried about safety) and 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar.  Mix together till smooth with an electric mixer and then divide into different bowls, color and paint cookies.

I know, I'm odd, but I love to paint sugar cookies for my husband every year.  It gives me an opportunity to paint, for one, but also allows me to take some time to show him how much I love him in a small way.

So, here you go.  One recipe for "Good Sugar Cookies" :).

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

• 4 Cups all purpose flour, sifted
• 2 1/2 tsp. double acting baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2/3 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 4 tsp. milk

Procedure:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  In a medium sized mixing bowl, sift flour with baking powder and salt.

3.  In the bowl of your stand mixer mix shortening with sugar, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy.

4.  Mix in flour in 1/3 increments, alternating each installment with milk (I usually end up with about double this to make a stiff, but workable, dough, but start out with four teaspoons and see where it gets you).

5.  Refrigerate until easy to handle, about an hour (honestly, I skip this step).

6.  Roll out dough on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness (I do this with about 1/4 of the dough at a time to avoid over rolling of the dough, if you over roll the dough it'll get tough).  Cut into shapes of your choice.

7.  Bake 1/2" apart on parchment lined baking sheets and bake 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges are just barely golden (seen pic above for a good visual example).

8.  Remove to towels or cooling racks to cool and then decorate with frosting of choice.

Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Well, as weeks go this one had been productive!  I managed to get the Christmas gifts buttoned up (I keep getting this nagging feeling like I wanted to make one more thing that I'm forgetting, but it'll either come to me or it won't), I took the kids to the "Bright Up the Night Display" at the Alaska State Fairgrounds (I'll cover that more in depth in a future post as it was a rather humorous story if nothing else.  One of the pictures is seen above) and I managed to get some housework accomplished.  We've actually had a lot of fun this last week doing stuff and about 99.9% of it was free (I'm not counting the gas consumption as "free" *laugh*).

I got my food and toys dropped off at the drop off locations this week too, so that got accomplished.  I managed to take pictures of the daughter's Christmas concert, got the pictures edited and saved and nothing bad happened to my SD card in between (the first time I had an SD card die, with about four years worth of pictures on it, was right after my daughter's Kindergarten Christmas concert.  I'm now overly paranoid after each concert to make sure I get the SD card backed up).  I dropped off about 80% of the Christmas gifts to my in-laws house where the majority of the family will stop by at Christmas or around.  The other gifts we were going to attempt to deliver today, but we had one family that had to go out and run errands and another that was sick, so those might be getting dropped off at my in-laws later in the week if I have to.  We shall see. 

Got all the gifts delivered to teachers (still have ONE therapist to deliver to on Tuesday) and got my daughter's friends gifts delivered as well. 

I even managed to juggle some last minute holiday problems.  My daughter's LED Christmas lights in her room died...well half the strand did anyway.  They were older lights that had no way to replace bulbs, and my husband after looking at them carefully just suggested we throw them out.  So, we did.  Instead of trying to go and buy her new lights this late in the season, I found a lighted garland I kept hoping to decorate the front porch with the last couple of years and hung that up in her room combined with the silver candy cane garland you can see in my "Gift a Day" posts as a Christmas-y background thing.  She loved it, it saved me 20.00 and we got it sorted.  Then her mini-Christmas tree that is in her room went out.  I didn't have any replacement bulbs, but I did have a brand new set of Halloween orange Christmas lights that I had gotten for 1.00 at the used store, so I used some of the bulbs from that for replacement bulbs.  Not the most cost effective solution, but it kept a little girl happy and in a Christmas mood, so it worked for me.

Man, I have to say this feels GOOD!  It's been such a terrible year for health for us and...well...a terrible year for everything else, that being able to get these things done without incident just makes me feel so relieved that they are done without problems.  I even made Christmas cookies today and my son was nice enough to nap while I did it, so I didn't have to worry about him trying to grab hot cookies off of hot trays.  How heaven sent is that???

So, onto this week's goals!

1.  Get through Christmas without anything bad happening, no kids getting sick, etc (not really an attainable by me type of goal, but I'm hoping God will help me out with this one *laugh*).

2.  Make some winter/Christmas themed cloth napkins (I really want to do this and am really hoping I'll have time *fingers crossed*).

3.  Decorate Christmas cookies with daughter (this and more Christmas baking is set for tomorrow).

4.  Blog about frugal winter themed activities (sorry this one is taking a while).

5.  Make recipes that have been screaming at my subconscious.  If they turn out, blog them.

6. Watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, have fun playing with the kids.

And yeah, that's about the total of my goals for the week and I hope I can accomplish all of them :).

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

For a nice change of pace this last week no one got sick!  I slept awful as every time my son twitched upstairs I was out of bed like a shot and checking on him, but at least we got through the week with no stomach issues.  The kids got through all of the fun school activities that went on this last week and my husband and I were even able to go to my son's class party yesterday, which was fun.

We also got to attend my daughter's Christmas concert (my daughter insisted on posing with the inflatable Santa they had by the door, thus the photo above *laugh*.  I just thought it was so cute, I had to share :).  The school this year had all the grades performing at the same concert (normally they break it up into several performances during the week).  It was very crowded (we were some of the people in the "standing room only" category), hot and my daughter was on the other end of the gym from me.  Thank goodness for 13x zoom on my camera so I was able to get some decent photos of her despite the distance.

After the concert we drove around some of the local neighborhoods and checked out the awesome Christmas lights displays people had up.  It amazes me how intricate some of the light displays get anymore with the LED's.  My kids really, REALLY enjoyed the ride and checking out some fun Christmas displays.

And now onto the week on the money saving front!

1.  My daughter's teacher sent home a list of things she was hoping parents could provide for the Christmas party.  I looked down the list and most of the things she was asking  for were things we didn't have around the house because of my son's peanut allergy, but then I saw "marshmallows".  So the free marshmallows I got last week from Carrs went to my daughter's Christmas party so the kids could have marshmallows in their hot cocoa.

2.  I ended up staying home a lot this last week as I was working on house work and honestly trying to catch some sleep while I still could as I knew naps were going to be completely out as soon as my son got on Christmas break.  So, not going anywhere saved me gas and it saved me money by keeping me out of the stores.

3.  My husband and I went shopping yesterday to get groceries for next week as much as we could so I didn't have to try and go shopping with holiday crowds with both kids in tow.   I found pork loin roasts for 1.99 lb, which beat anything I've seen on pork the last little bit, so I picked up two to cut into roasts and steaks.  I almost didn't get two, but we desperately need SOMETHING to break up the chicken monotony right now and we were getting very low on pork.

I also found my son's favorite brand of chocolate chip cookie that's safe for him on sale cheaper than I've seen it in AGES, so I bought three containers for therapy and school to use as reinforcers.  Yes, it'll be a few weeks till he's back in school, but the cookies will keep.

4.  I worked really hard to make sure to only run full loads of laundry (like that's ever a problem around here) and dishes to conserve energy.

5.  Turning down the heat at night and before we leave the house has paid off in savings on the gas bill.  My electric bill might be insane, but at least my gas bill is about 50.00 lower right now than it normally is this time of year.

6.  I got one of my "Smiley 360" missions in the mail today.  In this case it's a mission that comes with some coupons for some free chocolate covered pretzels.  So, I'll be looking for those the next time I go shopping for milk early next week.

7.  I repaired a hole in my daughter's hat.

8.  My mom called earlier and told me about Jo Ann fabrics coming out with a calendar for next year that has all kinds of coupons in it.  I really wanted to get one, but 9.99 seemed like a hard price to swallow to buy a calendar when I could just go get a free one at the bank, so I kept going back and forth about buying one.

Then my mom called me this week and told me she mailed me one.  I really appreciated the gift, doubly so, as I will now have a calendar for next year too.  Thanks, mom!

9.  I took inventory of what I had in the house and decided instead of trying to bake extra stuff for my daughter's teacher and my son's independent OT, I instead decided to give them a jar of home canned goods instead.  Since it's two jars, I'll be able to replace those easily at the used store next year for cheap.  My daughter's teacher loved the wildflower jelly and I'm sure my son's OT will appreciate the cauliflower pickles.

10.  Today I dropped off Christmas gifts for about 2/3 of the extended family at my mother-in-laws.  These are people I know will stop off there at Christmas or a couple of days before the holidays, so they'll be able to pick up their gifts from us there.  This will save us the gas of running around trying to deliver everyone's gifts and will save those people gas as well as they don't have to worry about coming to pick up said gifts.

When I went out I combined trips with the rest of the errand running I had to do today to conserve gas and time.  It worked well.

11.  When I had to go into town earlier in the week to get gas (the closest place to use my fuel rewards for Safeway/Carrs) I stopped off with my loads of toys and food stuffs and put them in the bins at the stores.  All of the stores are basically nearly across the street from one another, so it didn't take any time and didn't waste any gas to do so.  While there I also swung by the post office (also right near by) and mailed off Christmas cards.  I felt good when I went to donate my bags of food only to find the food bin nearly overflowing with other donations.  By the time I got strategically stacking my food in the bin it was overflowing, but it was so worth it and warmed my heart that people are thinking of others this time of year.

And there you are folks.  Some ways I saved money this week.  How did you do?

A Gift a Day Gift Thirty-Four: The "Black Watch Plaid" Quilt

Well, so I THINK we have finally come to the final gift in my "Gift a Day" series.  Not exactly the "low key" December I had planned, but at least I got it all done before the start of Christmas break, thus I won't have to worry about my son destroying the house while I'm obsessively running the sewing machine.

Course, I could be forgetting something, which has been known to happen, but I'm hoping I got everyone covered and all the gifts accomplished for the year.

This final gift is a gift to my husband and son, in that I MADE it for my husband, but I'm thinking my son will immediately claim it as anything blanket related he tends to grab as soon as he sees it.

Some people take great pride in being Irish or Swedish or Italian.  My husband takes great pride in having some Scottish blood in him. 

Years ago (like 12 or so) I tried to get a hold of enough Black Watch plaid to make a kilt for my husband, but I was never able to get a hold of very much at one time before Jo Ann's sold out of it, even when I special ordered it!  I have a few 1 yard scraps from all of those years ago and thought about maybe making my husband a quilt out of those somehow this holiday season.

And then I ran across a nice big chunk of black watch plaid in a high quality woven fabric and bought it at the used store for 1.50 a while back.  I finally pulled out all three remnants of fabric and picked the longest one to make my husband a quilt out of this year, and the woven fabric won on length and width.

I just used the plaid as a big center panel in the quilt and then added strips of dark blue I cut from a queen sized flat sheet I had in my fabric stores.  I was able to even get the bottom for the quilt out of the same sheet with just a teeny tiny bit left over, which worked great for me.  The final product ended up being somewhere between a twin and a full sized quilt, but I know it'll work well for my husband to curl up in on his recliner or in his desk chair, so I was happy enough with the final size.

I then quilted the final quilt with some green thread my step-mom sent me.  I ended up buying some quilt binding for the quilt as all I had was one container of this color or that color of quilt binding and I wanted it to look nice, so I just bought new instead.

Total Cost to Make Gift:  About 9.00 for the quilt binding and 1.50 for the original remnant of fabric.  I'm not sure what the original cost on the sheet was since I've had it for a long time, so I'm not counting that cost.  The batting I had bought at a yard sale for .50 a couple of years ago.  So all totaled about 11.00.

I used quilt basting spray vs. pins, but the basting spray was leftover from a previous project I had done, so I'm not counting it in with the cost of the final product here.

Total Time to Make Gift:  About four hours, as the quilt came together pretty quick and quilt basting spray is a wonder of wonders to make life easier.

Holiday Fruit Salad

In my mind there are two things that my mother-in-law makes better than anyone else.  One is meatloaf.  I learned how to make a good meat loaf from that woman.  And two is a dip she makes during the holidays for fruit, which contains marshmallow creme and cream cheese.

The dip is awesome, so I thought it would be neat to try and recreate the same holiday flavors in a fruit salad, thus saving me from having to buy tons of fresh produce for a fruit try and it would help to hide the fruit in the salad, so my daughter would be more likely to eat new fruits.

Fred Meyer has whole pineapples for 1.49 a piece right now (all of them did last week, but I noticed that my one local Fred Meyer still had them on sale for that price yesterday), so I bought one, grabbed some other fruit and got busy.

Here's the recipe I came up with.  A couple of things of note:  My husband and I both agreed the banana slices in this salad were the most awesome tasting, but the pineapple that I got was kind of sour (produce is a crap shoot this time of year up here) so we didn't like it as well.  The salad tasted good though *laugh*.

Second, yes you can use whatever fresh or canned fruit you prefer here.  I used what we had to make this, so that's what I'm listing here.

Holiday Fruit Salad

Ingredients:

• 1/2 to 3/4 of a block of cream cheese (depending how cheesy you want it)
• 10 large marshmallows
• 1/4 cup half and half (you could PROBABLY use evaporated milk or whole milk here, but I had half and half to use up, so that's what I used)
• Pinch of nutmeg 
• 1 Container whipped topping (Cool Whip) or 2 cups whipped cream
• 1 can fruit cocktail, drained
• 1 can mandarin oranges, drained
• 1 pineapple, cut into bite sized pieces (you can use a can of diced pineapple instead, drained)
• 1 apple, peeled, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 banana cut into slices

Procedure:

1.  After you cut up your apple and your banana, quickly throw them into a zip lock bag with your pineapple, shake the fruit around a bit to make sure that the apple and banana get coated with the pineapple juice (it'll stop them from browning).  Set aside.

2.  Combine the cream cheese, the marshmallows and the half and half in a small sauce pan over medium low heat.  Stirring constantly, wait until the cream cheese and the marshmallows are melted and everything comes together into a thick sauce-like consistency and is smooth (this takes a little bit, but it's worth it.  If you have marshmallow creme and a good mixer you could probably skip this step by whipping the marshmallow cream with the cream cheese and the half and half, but I only had marshmallows).  Add pinch of nutmeg and stir well to combine.  Turn off heat and set aside for a few minutes to cool (if you stir it once every 15 seconds or so this will go pretty fast).

3.  Dump the cheese sauce into a bowl and then add 1/3 of the whipped topping to the bowl.  Stir the cream and the cheese sauce together until well combined (this helps lighten up the cream cheese sauce before you have to incorporate it into the whipped topping completely).  Add the rest of the whipped topping and fold the cream cheese mixture into it until everything is well combined.  Add fruit and stir gently to coat the fruit with the mixture (so you don't beat up your bananas too badly).

Serve immediately or it can be chilled for up to 1/2 hour before serving.

Just note:  This can be eaten the next day, but the bananas do brown finally and get mushy and the whipped cream will fall in the salad and get kind of liquidy.  Still tastes good, but not as good as serving it right after you make it.

A Gift a Day Gift Thirty-Three: Fur Pillow

My son, being the sensory seeking little thing he is, I really wanted to make him something with fake fur because he LOVES it (mainly loves plucking it and watching it float, really).  Originally I REALLY wanted to make one of those awesomely cuddly looking throws with the fur on one side and something cool, like flannel or cable knit, on the other, but I realized I didn't have near enough fake fur right away and I was wondering before THAT if I'd be able to dig up enough material for the other side of a throw anyway.  So, I let the little gears in my head turn and finally came up with the idea of making him a fur pillow.

I know there are some draw backs to this as it's not even a pillow sham (I didn't think fake fur would make a good pillow sham, honestly), but an actual throw pillow.  One:  I'm sure this fur isn't able to go through the dryer and washing it might mat up the fur.  Two:  If my son starts plucking it and creating bald spots, you can't just flip it over like you could a throw and hide it.

But, I also figured that the fake fur was given to me by my husband's grandfather in a sack of cloth that used to be his wife's and I think Molly would be happy with the idea of a child getting enjoyment out of something like this while it lasts.

We'll see how it holds up over time.

I just cut a basic shape of a throw pillow out of the fur, using as much of the fur as I could (thus why it's rectangular vs. square and has a few places where it's a BIT off of straight), put right sides together and sewed it up with a 1/2 inch inseam.  I left about a four inch hole to stuff it (I have small hands, which helps for things like this) and then hand stitched the last bit shut with a whip stitch when the pillow was stuffed.  

Total Cost to Make Gift:  Free.  The batting came from the bags of batting I found in storage over the summer and the fake fur was given to me.  The thread came from the stash of thread my step-mom gave me.  I did switch out the needle on my sewing machine to a heavy duty denim needle for this, but that was also given to me by my step-mom (have I mentioned my love of that woman lately?  :).

Total Time To Make Gift:  About an hour.  The batting in the bag was the nice heavy duty fill, but it did NOT want to un-clump from it's huge lump in the bag, so I spent a good portion of time getting coated in fiber fill as I had to tear one small chunk at a time off of it to stuff the pillow.  Got done right about the time I was starting to get frustrated *laugh*.