Christmas Eve

I just wanted to take a moment to wish eveyone a very Merry Christmas. I doubt that I will be able to post much over the holiday break. Having Craig and the kids home will be very busy. I look forward to spending a lot of movie time and play time with them. have a great holiday everyone!!

Ashlei Ann Matthews

There are some people in our lives that have such a profound effect on us that we don't even realize that they are the reason for where we are today. That one person that enters your life in such and innocent way and completely redirects you towards your future and destinany that you didn't even know you had. Everyone has people like this in thier lives. Today, I celebrate one of my precious, wonderful and gracious people. My Ashlei. I didn't meet her until the summer of 1997. She and I were chosen randomly to become roommates our freshmen year in college. Little did I know that God would put us together to have her completely change my pathway in life. I owe my husband, children, and most everything that I have in my life now to this woman. She introduced me to Craig on sort of a whim. (Drew helped, but hey this isn't his day.) And within a 10 year time span we've accumulated 4 children, a warm home and a ton of other accomplishments that don't even need mentioning. She's been there for me through awful times, sad times, and the best of times. We've stood up for eachother at weddings and at funerals. We've been there for eachother through childbirth and raising the littel rascals. She' the reason I'm here today. Doing what I'm doing. Literally. I'm writing this because of her. See, it's Ashlei's birthday. And she deserves to be celebrated...have a blog written all about her. Happy birthday my dear sweet friend. I wish you the happiest and joyful day possible today and everyday!!

Pumpkin Bread

This is the sugar, shortening and pumpkin. I know that it doesn't look very pretty, but it's going to taste awesome!!



Here come the dry ingredients.



Now the eggs and water. Btw...I can't believe that Sadie has actually slept through all of this..so far!




I didn't mention this in the recipie. I always use a fluted pan greased with butter crisco and then floured. That way my pumpkin bread just slides right out of the pan after it's cooked.




On our way to the oven! See you in an hour after you bake at 350 degrees!!

Banana Bread

Here they are!!

I thought that it may be easier if I just added a new post for every item baked instaed of updating my original post. So, here we go! First off...banana bread. When I was putting everything together it occured to me that Sadie, the baby, has never had banana bread before. This will be wuite a treat for her!

Here are the 2 loaf pans all greased up and ready to go.



First off I creamed together the sugar and the butter.



Next are the eggs!




Now for the buttermilk, vanilla and mashed up bananas. These are bananas that I had previously frozen.



Adding the flour, salt and baking soda.




Divide the dough evenly between the 2 pans and bake it at 350 degrees for 1 hour.




I'll post pictures when they are done!!

Baking/Freezing Day

Alrighty! Here is the menu for the day and the recipies. I'll be updating with pictures and blurbs throughout the day. Right now I have the pumpkin, turkey and bananas thawing out.

BANANA BREAD
1 1/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter, softened
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. mashed very ripe bananas (about 3)
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt

1. Move oven racks to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350. Grease bottoms only of 2 loaf pans with shortening.
2. Mix sugar and butter in large bowl. Stir in eggs until well blended. Stir in bananas, buttermilk and vanilla; beat until smooth. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt just until moistened. Divide batter evenly between pans.
3. Bake about 1 hour. Cool 10 minutes in pans on wire rack.
4. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans and place top side up on wire rack. Cool completely, about 2 hours, before slicing. Wrap tightly and store at room temperature up to 4 hours, or refrigerate up to 10 days.

Pumpkin Bread
2 2/3 c. sugar
2/3 c. shortening
16 oz. pumpkin
2/3 c. water
1 tsp. clover
1/2 tsp. baking powder
4 eggs
3 1/3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix sugar and shortening. Stir in pumpkin, water and eggs. Mix in flour, baking soda, salt, cimmamon, cloves and baking powder. Bake at 350 for 60 minutes.

Turkey Tetrazzini (I won't be baking this, just tossing ingredients together to freeze and bake later)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
8 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 Tbsp. non-fat dry milk
1 1/2 Tbsp. cornstarch
2 chicken bouillon cubes, crushed
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. onion powder
pinch of nutmeg
2 c. cold water
3 c. cooked turkey
6 oz. broad egg noodles, cooked tender
2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheeese
paprika

Heat olive oil in skillet; saute mushrooms just until tender. Combine dry milk, cornstarch, chicken bouillon cubes, salt, pepper, onion powder and nutmeg with cold water in a large saucepan. Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens and begins to bubble.

Arrange noodles in a 2-qt. baking dish. Spread mushrooms in a layer over the noodles; top with a layer of turkey. Pour sauce over all, then sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and paprika. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until hot bubbling.

Turkey Noodles Casserole (I won't be adding the cheese until I am ready to bake this another day)
1 package (10 oz.) frozen peas, thawed under running water
2 c. diced cooked turkey
1 1/2 c. cooked noodles
butter
1/4 c. chopped onion
8 oz. sliced mushrooms
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 c. milk
salt, to taste
1/4 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
1 c. cheddar cheese

Combine turkey, noodles, and peas in a buttered 2-quart baking dish. Melt 2 tsp. butter in a saucepan. Saute onion and mushrooms until tender; blend in soup, milk and seasonings and cook, sitrring, until well blended and hot. Pour soup mixture over the turkey and noodle mixture; top with shredded cheese. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes.

Bake/Freeze Day

**UPDATE** Bake/Freeze day will me tomorrow instead of today. Today I'm grocery shopping for supplies.

Several of my blogging friends and other blogs that I follow have been doing the "bake/freeze day". So I thought I would give it a try. I love to cook, so it shouldn't be to bad. So far on the menu I have Banana Bread, Pumpkin Bread, Turkey Tetrazzini, Turkey Noodle Casserole and Cinnamon Rolls. I'm really hoping that Ms. Sadie will decide to cooperate tomorrow and maybe even help. All day tomorrow I'll be posting pictures and updating you on how it's going. Wish me luck! I may need it....

Christmas Shopping

How many of you are done with your Christmas shopping? I can finally, and proudly say, that I only have 1 gift left to pick up to complete this years exciting and long drawn out process of Christmas shopping. It is just me, or does eveyone else have those couple of people on your list that you NEVER know what to buy them. You know who I'm talking about. That person that just goes out and buys themself whatever it is that they want. Leaving nothing on the face of the earth for you to buy them. At least that's what it seems like when you are out shopping. And I hate just buying them a gift card. Ya, I know...they will use it. But a gift card isn't that exciting to open. And when people use a gift card they almost always spend more than what the card is worth. But then again, I don't want to buy them something completely useless. What to do....what to do!?!?

Happy Birthday Princess!!

I've been going over and over in my head December 9th of last year. Craig drove me to the birthing center to be induced at 7 in the morning. My mom met us there to help endure the long day ahead. None of us anticipated it to be so drawn out like it was. Sadie is our 4th child. We were imagining a quick and pretty simple delivery. Man were we wrong. When we arrived I was already having mild contractions. No big deal. They started me on my pitocin (not sure if I spelled that right or not) and monitored me as I went along. The nurse told me that she could turn my pitocin up every 15 minutes or so, depending on how well I handled my contractions. So I made up my mind right then and there that I would track her down at the nurses desk or walk the halls until I found her every 15 minutes. I was ready to get the show and the road and have this baby. The pitocin really wan't doing much for me in the beginning. The nurse thought I was crazy wanting her to turn in up as much as she could every 15 minutes. But I was ready...oh so ready. By 10:30 I was starting to feel the contractions. Not totally uncomfortable, but beginning to get there. At 12:00 my doctor came in to check on me. She said that she was surprised that she hadn't heard from me yet. At that time I was only at a 4. She broke my water and told me that there was an issue keeping me from progressing any further. A couple of years ago I had to have a procedure on my cervix that aparently left scare tissue. The scar tissue was preventing my cervix from dialating any quicker. Needless to say, my labor was very slow from there on out. To make matters worse, for some unknown reason, I like to have my children naturally. NO drugs. Totally crazy is what all of my friends say. Well, by 4 o'clock that afternoon I was begging for an epidural but the nurse wouldn't give me one. Around 5 or so they did finally give me some IV medicine to help me sleep a little. It was more like 3 pitchers of margaritas than anything. I was pretty loopy and exhausted all at the same time. My mom and Craig could have probably both used a dose of it too. =) Finally at 7:00 the nurses were able to remove the scar tissue. Within a couple of minutes I told them that they had beeter call my doctor because this baby was coming now. Sadie was born with 22 minutes. What a relief! Now look at our precious little girl!!

Sadie's 1st Birthday Party

It's the Birthday Princess enjoying her spaghetti lunch!


Here's that castle cake again. Sadie loved it and couldn't wait to get into it.


The little girl would not eat her cake with her hands. Just didn't want to get them all dirty I guess. She kept leaning over and taking bites. Yummy cake!!

There's my little frosting monster!

Thanks everyone for all of the fun presents!

She really didn't care about opening any presents. I'm glad we got this picture because her sitting there on my lap only lasted about 10 seconds.

This is Sadie with her cousin Delaney. They are 2 1/2 months apart. I'm sure that my sister-in-law Annie and I will have lots of "adventures" with them as they grow up together. Too cute!!

The little princess in her tutu. She really enjoyed her day. When we got home she was tuckered out and slept for a couple of hours. Thanks for sharing the day with us everyone!!

The Castle Cake

Sadie's favorite flavor (as far as we can tell) is strawberry. So I made her a strawberry castle cake for the big party Sunday. I actually ended up making 2 strawberry and 2 vanilla cake mixes and swirled them into the four cakes.


This was cake #1. Easy enough. Total time for this cake was 40 minutes from start to finish. Just 3 more to go!



This is the "cake" part trimmed up and glue together with icing. Easy enough. Now onto the castle pillars!





I glue ice cream cones together with white chocolate and then glued the sugar cones on top with white chocolate. Craig helped with the chocolate (of course!) and then put the pink sprinkles on for me. We actually had a lot of fun doing these.




Here is the final castle pillar after I finished the decorating on Sunday. The turned out pretty good I though. The pink was a lot brighter that I thought it would be.






The castle cake. I had a blast making this thing. Hopefully one of my girls will want another one in the future!

The Birthday Party

This weekend we are celebrating the baby's first birthday. Can you believe it? She will be one next week. Where did the time go? This weekend will be full of party prep, Hanah's first basketball game of the season and cake decorating. Sadie's party theme is "Princess". I'm excited to try my skills at another castle cake. It's been a few years since I tried to tackle this monster of a cake. Hopefully it will turn out better than the last one. I'll post pictures Monday morning. Everyone have a safe and wonderful weekend!

To My Dear Sweet Husband

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday dear Craig!

Happy birthday to you!

I wish you all the best today on your 33rd birthday sweeheart. May all of your dreams come true!