Thanksgiving yummyness...

I have been busy this afternoon making two pumpkin rolls. I made my first on Halloween, and It was pretty good. I made these the same way, and it's a receipe from the same cookbook I posted about below, called Very Virginia.

Spiced Pumpkin Roll

Cake: 3 large eggs beaten, 1 cup of sugar, 2/3 cup cooked pumpkin, 1 teaspoon salt, 3/4 cup self rising flour, 2 tablespoons cinnamon, 1 tablespoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, Confectioners sugar

Filling: 1 package cream cheese, 1 cup of confectioners sugar, 4 tablespoons of butter

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl combine eggs, sugar, and pumpkin. Set aside. In your mixing bowl combine the salt and next 4 ingredients. Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixure and mix well. Pour the batter into a well greased 15x10x1 inch baking pan and bake for for 15 minutes. Take out and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Coat a towel with the powdered sugar, and then invert the cake into the towl. Sprinkle a little more powder sugar on top, and then starting on the narron side roll the cake/towel up jelly roll fashion and secure with a string, or be crazy like me and use a hair ribbon to tie this up. Set in your fridge for three hours. While your waiting on that, make the filling. Combine the filling ingredients until smooth and then let then chill as well. When the chilling time is up unroll your cake, and then gently smooth the filling on the cake. Rerolland place seam side down on a serving platter.

Ok, so I am not a baker but I can handle this.... kinda time consuming but it's worth it....

My love for TJmaxx just grows and grows...

My mom and I ventured off to TJMAXX in Virginia Beach this morning, and threw down in there. This TJMaxx is about an hour away from where we live, BUT it is always worth the trip. I love Tjmaxx, but this one is a Tjmaxx/Homegoods, and it's about the size of probably three Tjmaxx's put together. All of the sections are huge, and they always have such awesome brand names. On this shopping trip I hit the jackpot for my youngest. We have been clueless what to get her for her big gift...I had wanted to get another battery powered car since the jeep that they have only hold 2 kiddos, so one of them is always sitting around looking sad. But I wasn't keen on spending a lot either. I had given up hope and was just going to can the idea. But crazy enough they had one in there... it's a pink Hummer lol, and it was super cheap....I checked to see how much it retails for elsewhere, and let's just say the price at Tj's was much less then half of the retail... They only had one, so I scooped it up immediatly. Merry Christmas Emily!

Another great deal I found were the above pictured Christmas plates. These two were priced at $3.99. I plan on making some cookies to put on the plate and then wrapping them up in cellophane with a bow, and they will either be teacher gifts or a hostess gift of some sort. Easy peasy. I bought a large Santa plate for myself to use to put food on at the house for a dollar more. These plates reminded me a lot of the kind I see at craft shows during the holidays that usually cost a lot more.

They aisles of the cuttest ornaments, wreaths, and other Christmas decorations... I easily could have gone crazy, but with my big ole' pink Hummer teetering over my shopping cart I had an easy reminder that I was going to purchase enough...

So Tjmaxx helped me make a huge dent in my Christmas shopping today, and I look forward to another trip back there soon!

Snappy Mustard Dip

Tonight we are going to dinner at a friends house, and I didn't have much notice to make something, but I didn't want to show up empy handed. So I tried out a receipe from one my league's cook books- "Very Virginia" called Snappy Mustard dip.

This is very easy, and is pretty good to munch on with some pretzels.

To make you will need
1/4 dry mustard, 2 tbl spoons of white vinegar, 1 tbl spoon of water, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1 egg yolk, and 1 brick of cream cheese.

combine the mustard, vinegar, and water in a saucepan, then add the sugar and egg yolk and stire over medium heat for about 5 minutes so it thickens. Let this cool, when cooled combine the mustard mixture, and your cream cheese and beat this until smooth. Chill until you serve, with pretzels.

Flourless Peanut Butter-Chocolate Cookies

I have been invited to a cookie swap in December, and I am trying to figure out what I am going to make. The only cookies we make in our household are the standard chocolate chip cookies. Sometimes we go crazy and make oreo truffles (super easy). Dave loves making those, so he usually knocks me down so he can man the Kitchen Aid mixer. Obviously, I don't want to show up with just chocolate chip cookies, and I don't know if Oreo Truffles are ok to bring, so I am going to dabble with a few contenders to bring to the swap...

I was reading the latest Southern Living magazine, and they had several reciepes for cookies that they say are ideal for swaps. Right up my alley! As I have not made it to the grocery store yet, we are out of flour, so the only one I could try were the flourless ones....

If you want to give it a whirl here's what you need. (this makes about 2 dozen)

1 cup creamy peanut butter

3/4 cup of sugar

1 large egg

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup of chocolate chips

parchement paper

Preheat your oven to 350. Stir together the first five ingrediants until well blended. Then stir in the chocolate chips. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (I didn't have this, had to borrow some from my mom). Drop one tablespoonfuls of the dough on your baking sheet , and then bake about 12-14 minutes. When you take them out let them cook for 5 min on the baking sheet, and then transfer to your wire rack to cool all the way.

The verdict: There good. I'm not exactly a huge peanut butter cookie person. Also because there's no flour they are a little bit crumbly, so I don't know if I want to make huge batches to take to the party, and then I have a break down because I have issues with crumbling. I also kinda prefer my cookies to have vanilla flavoring in them. I will have to see what the husband thinks so as he is a peanut butter crazy man. I will say Laura threw hers in the trash can.

Yesterday my oldest had a Thanksgiving Feast at her school, and I got to go and help. Of course this meant Laura got to wear her new Thanksgiving dress that we got from Zulily.com. Love it when they offer smocked dresses because they are always at great prices! Anyways, all the girls played around for me outside and I took pictures. Emily even gave me a smile, that's a victory!

So back to the Thanksgiving Feast. They had all of the four year old classes doing it today,roughly 50 kids. Earlier that day the kids had made some of the food (Laura's class made a fruit salad) The parents met in the church kitchen to prep the rest of it, (aka heat up chicken nuggests, and put all the fixings on the plates) I got to be a butter person and walk around to eat kid and butter their corn muffin if they wanted some. I had fun and learned that a guy I used to play ball back with in my highschool, has a son in Laura's class. Small world! The kiddos were so cute when they walked in. They all dressed up like Pilgrams or Indians. I was just impressed that Laura get her paper hat on the entire time, and didn't rip that sucker off.

Rachel has her feast next week! Can't wait to see if she's going to be a Pilgram or a Indian!

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Santa Visit

My husband thanks his lucky stars that we live within driving distance of a Bass Pro Shop. It's a neat place, and the kids love going to see the displays, and huge fish tank. Bass Pro Shop started having Santa come for about 3 years now, and the last 3 years we have gone. It's actually really nice. If you go on a weekend or closer to Christmas you will have a wait. We ventured up there Monday night to stay a quick hello to Santa, and were able to just walk on up and take our time with Santa. He's a pretty swell looking Santa Claus, AND they take free pictures. There's also a few crafts you can do, or you could play free games.

Our Santa visit was pretty nice. Emily, our youngest hid behind me the whole time, but Laura and Rachel enjoyed seeing him (Rachel forgot to tell him a few things, so she has asked to go back). I took a few pictures of the girls while were were there, and outside with my own camera. They looked so cute in their Christmas dresses! These are the dresses I purchased off Etsy a while back. I will probably use these pictures for our Christmas card this year that I am making with Shutterfly.