Can’t believe Monday rolled around so quickly this week. Here are the shots I submitted to Macro Mondays for the theme “Drive Me Wild.”
WHERE’D YOU PUT MY KEYS??…and yes, I’m shouting…
Suburban keys / The sunlight shining through the prisms in the window added some pretty color to the shot.
Car trouble / Sometimes it’s handy to have kids’ toys around the house…they can make great props for photos.
~~Rhonda 🙂
True confessions…I’ve never made this before. My son is a bit of a picky eater and, on Thanksgiving, after he had only rolls and ham for dinner and no dessert, I asked his wife what he *did* like these days…it’s been a long time since he lived here. She said he likes baked ziti with no meat. So I found a recipe online and am giving it a trial run. If it’s good (and it smells delicious, BTW!), I’ll put it on the menu for Christmas weekend when all our children and their families will be home at the same time.
I’ll tell you what…I begin to wonder if I’m capable of just making a recipe the way it says to make it. I changed a lot in this one. The recipe I found is this one: Baked Ziti. What I ended up with was this one…
Baked Ziti
1/2 pound dried ziti
15 ounces ricotta cheese
3 eggs [Friends gave us three dozen beautiful, brown, home-grown eggs, so I decided to add some to this, since we have a wealth.]
3 cups (or 12 ounces) shredded mozzarella cheese (divided)
29 oz. can crushed tomatoes
freshly grated Parmesan cheese [I didn’t measure this…just grated on enough to cover the sauce. Ditto with the Romano.]
freshly grated Romano cheese
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and add the ziti. Cook until tender, about 8 minutes, drain the pasta.
Mix the ricotta, the eggs and half of the mozzarella. Stir till well blended. Add the drained ziti and stir again.
Grease a 9 x 13-inch casserole dish. Spread half of the crushed tomatoes on the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the tomatoes with any spices you care to add. I used dried minced onion, garlic powder, dried crushed oregano, dried crushed basil, and dried parsley flakes.
Add the ziti mixture and cover with the remaining sauce. Sprinkle with more spices and then with Parmesan and Romano and the remaining mozzarella. I topped it off with a little sprinkle of parsley flakes.
Bake uncovered, for 20-30 minutes, until lightly browned and heated through.
The ziti is delicious.
And the bread was good, too. I used the usual recipe, but took about one third of the dough after it had one rise, and I added freshly chopped rosemary, dried oregano and dried parsley. Also some shredded mozzarella.
I shaped it into a flat bread and let it rise again, then pushed some divets into it with my fingers and drizzled a little olive oil over it.
I baked it at 350*F for 15 minutes. It could have gone a couple more minutes, I think, though it was cooked through.
I had planned to halve some slices, brush them with olive oil, a little garlic powder, and top them with mozzarella cheese before broiling for a few minutes. But I wasn’t sure when DH would be home and it was getting late, so I skipped that and we had the herb bread for supper without the extras. Still delicious. Though, if I had planned ahead for herb bread before I mixed the dough, I would have made the bread with less sugar than the recipe calls for.
But supper was delicious. 🙂 ~~Rhonda
I’ve had a couple of requests for the Chex Mix recipe, so here goes…
Chex Mix
This recipe makes enough to fill 2 one-gallon Ziplock bags with a bowl left over to snack on right away. 🙂
Fill a large oval roasting pan with:
2 pounds mixed nuts or peanuts
1 16-oz. bag pretzel sticks
5 c. Rice Chex
5 c. Corn Chex
5 c. Crispex
5 c. Cheerios
You may substitute Wheat Chex, other pretzel shapes, rye crisp rounds, goldfish crackers or Cheese Nips for any of the above.
In a small sauce pan, heat til melted:
2 sticks butter
4 tsp. Lawry’s Seasoned Salt
5 T. Lea and Perrin’s Worcestershire Sauce
dash of garlic powder
Pour over cereal mixture and stir well to coat.
Bake in a 250* F oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
I always serve this with the cookies at our open house. The salty snack is a great balance to the sweet treats.
~~Rhonda
There are less than two weeks left until Christmas. How ready are you?? Here’s a picture to help keep you focused.
Our two older girls are coming home this week. We are eager to have them back for a few weeks. Of course, the first evening they are back I’m hosting a Christmas party, so they may be taking their little sister out for supper that night. 🙂
Monday
baked ziti
garlic bread
green salad
corn
sugar snap peas
Tuesday
chicken in the crock pot
rice
stir fried veggies
Wednesday
hamburgers / homemade buns
chips
grapes
Thursday
Home Extension Christmas party
cranberry spiced meatballs
sausage balls
hot spiced punch
cold punch
coffee
Friday
roast beef in the crock pot
baked potatoes with rosemary
green beans
corn
Saturday
beef stew
Sunday
spaghetti
homemade rolls
corn
peas
green salad
You’ll find more menu and recipe ideas at Menu Plan Monday.
~~Rhonda
I have stored this magazine page in my Christmas Notebook since 2003. I wanted to make one for myself. As you can imagine, Martha’s was a little pricey for my budget.
Personally, I think the deer are a bit large for this display. My daughter calls them “deerzillas.”
Anyway, I have been collecting pictures and information about Putz houses for some time. This year, I decided it was time to make my own when I found the Little Glitter Houses web site and Big Indoor Trains with patterns and instructions for making the houses. I also found my way to a blog called Pink Trees with patterns from an old crafting magazine called “Pack-O-Fun.” That blog is no longer available, but the patterns can now be found at bigindoortrains.com.
I had a great time making the houses and churches. Here is my finished display.
And here are some closer shots of the buildings. I used the “Bay Window House” pattern for the pink house.
The little yellow house was made with the “Vintage-style Stone Cottage” pattern. The blue house to the left is made from the same pattern, though I enlarged and reversed the pattern for the blue house.
The house on the right, with the blue roof, was the second one I made. I used this “Little Charmer” pattern.
This yellow house was a store bought house that I repainted and glittered, and then I added the trees. I added the silver beads and the glitter to the larger bottle brush tree.
I made this house, using glitter glue to outline the door and windows. I added the wreath, which I made from a small piece of “evergreen” pipe cleaner. I also made the snowman. This house has a pipe cleaner hedge around it, but it’s hard to see in this photo. I used the pattern titled “Green House” at this site for this house, though I had to remake the pattern as it is incorrectly drawn in the article.
The little yellow house was made with the pattern titled “Yellow House” on the same site.
I repainted and glittered this manufactured church to match the houses I made myself.
The fence around this repainted manufactured house was made by cutting thin cardboard with scrapbooking scissors.
I love the door and windows on this manufactured church. I think this one was all white before I reworked it.
I made the bases and fences for these repainted manufactured Putz houses.
Another repainted store bought house. I like my colors a lot better than the original. 🙂
The church and the small house were made from patterns at the Pink Trees site. The house is the pattern titled “Brown House.”
I had a few houses that ended up too large for the display, so I put them on the Christmas tree in the guest room, including this Cottage Beach House.
The patterns I found online at Little Glitter Houses, Big Indoor Trains, and Pink Trees were extremely helpful! My thanks to those sites and their authors for their inspiration!
I moved from making the above houses to making glitter house ornaments from Christmas cards. They turned out beautifully! And they were faster to make as they have fewer details and embellishments.
Overall, I am very happy with the way the little glitter houses came out. And they were a lot of fun to make!
Click this link to see my tutorial for making a little glitter / putz house.
Click this link to see my tutorial for making little glitter house ornaments from Christmas cards.
Update 2016 / My Putz houses have come a long way since 2009, when I wrote this post. If you would like to see more of my Putz houses, as well as Christmas ornaments I have made from upcycled holiday cards, please visit my Etsy shop.
~~Rhonda
This morning, on the way to church, I saw this by the kitchen steps…
December sprouts.
Lovely green on green daffodil sprouts…
During the shortest days of the year, a promise that spring is coming…
I love spring. Even during Christmas, which I also love, I am happy to see a promise that spring will follow. And isn’t that the promise of Christmas, too? God’s promise. New life through Christ. ~~Rhonda
Last year, we remodeled the addition, changing the colors, the floors, counter tops, etc. When it came to Christmas decorating, changes had to be made to accommodate that.
The guest room used to look like this:
We bought this house in 1994 and renovated it before moving into the house in 1996. The wallpaper, carpet, and colors were chosen then. So it was overdue for a makeover.
We painted in blues and white, with some cream and yellow accents.
To the right of the bed is a lowboy dresser that used to be in the scrapbook room. Several pieces of furniture played musical chairs during the past few months.
On the top of the little dresser is an Advent box and a rosemary tree. The Advent box came from Target in 2008. They had several styles and colors. This one seemed just right for the guest room.
To the right is the bookcase that came from DH’s family.
On top the bookcase are lighted buildings that are replicas of the county courthouse and the historic jail house in my home town. The jail is now a county museum. The book “Tale of Three Trees” stands in front of three fir trees in silver flower pots.
And in front of the bookcase is the Christmas tree. The tree is placed there so it can be seen down the hall as you look into the addition from the music room (formerly the office, before the desk wandered off to the library…now the “music room” because the piano lives there).
Turning to the right and facing the north wall, we see the north window, a small table, a vintage chair and a corner cabinet I found on Craig’s List.
I still need to put the doors back on the bottom section, but the cabinet fits perfectly in this corner. The cabinet was stained. I sanded and painted it for the guest room. The white glass lightning rod balls on the bottom shelf are from my husband’s family farm and the blue one is from the house my paternal grandparents lived in.
My friend Laurie made the drapes. Aren’t they beautiful? It was her idea to hang them over the door, as well, which preserves the look of the lovely beveled glass but also provides privacy for the guest room when the drapes are pulled over the door.
To the right of the door is another vintage chair, painted blue. and then the armoire, which you can see in the first picture of this post used to be stained, but is now painted white with a blue interior.
The dried hydrangeas on top the armoire are from our garden.
Next is the comfy chair and the aluminum Christmas tree. The tree sparkles and shimmers in the sunlight coming through the south window.
On the other side of the window is a nightstand that had been in the attic. Works well here.
That brings us back to the bed. DH made the head board from a door his parents had acquired from their church years ago.
The guest room is so peaceful that sometimes I go in there for quiet time. Especially in the mornings when the sun is shining through the window. ~~Rhonda
What can I say?? It was a *wonderful* evening! We had so much fun and everyone seemed to enjoy the music and the accompanying Christmas cheer. After the concert, guests complimented the music with words like “comforting, relaxing, calming, soothing, delightful,” etc.
With 65 guests, we packed them in. They were sitting in the front hall and living room…
and in the dining room…
and up the staircase…
The music was beautiful. Left to right: Nathan Clark George, Ross Sermons, and Mark Stofell.
You can listen to some of the music we heard on Nathan’s web site. A few of my favorites are “Remember O Thou Man,” “O Little One Sweet,” and “What If I Were in the Garden.”
And after the concert, yummy goodies. We served sausage balls, spicy cranberry meatballs, bacon wrapped dates, a veggie tray with beau monde dip, three cheese spread [I left out the chicken and mixed everything together except the tomatoes and parsley which I sprinkled on top] with crackers, fresh red grapes, a tray of cheese and meat picks with pickles and olives, Chex Mix, and four kinds of homemade truffles. We had hot spiced punch, cold punch and hot coffee. With temps below freezing, it was a good evening for something hot to drink. I prepared all the food, except the veggie tray, the day before. Worked out great! The meatballs were kept warm in a crock pot and the sausage balls and bacon wrapped dates were kept in covered dishes in a warm oven during the concert, so they were ready to go when it was time for refreshments. Very easy menu.
After the concert, there was an opportunity to meet Nathan, purchase CDs, and even get an autograph if you were so inclined. 🙂
A lot of our guests stayed for an hour and a half after the concert, visiting and enjoying the goodies, as well as savoring the Christmas atmosphere.
There were three babies at the concert. So sweet! Christmas and babies…two of my favorite things.
Thank you, Nathan, Mark and Ross for another wonderful evening of Christmas music! We so enjoyed it!
Today I’m relaxing. I think I’ll finish Christmas shopping (via the recliner and amazon.com) and maybe I’ll take a nap this afternoon. Sounds good! ~~Rhonda 🙂
I haven’t posted a Macro Monday for a while. This week’s challenge was “drips, drops and splashes.” Here are some shots I took for the theme.
I like the way the stream gradually turns into drops.
This one has drops in the middle, falling into a frothy splash.
My favorite shot is this water crown.
I don’t know what next week’s theme will be, but I’m looking forward to it. ~~Rhonda
As usual, we did not take nearly enough pictures. We were having too much fun visiting with our company. My son took many of these shots for me just as the party was getting underway.
Living room
A gaggle of great guys in the living room.
And time to catch up with friends.
Dining room, with the table pushed against the south wall.
Library / family room, with "It’s a Wonderful Life" on the TV. The stained glass windows were made by our dear friend Gary.
Used to be the “office,” now it’s sort of called the music room, for want of a better name. It’s where the piano lives.
Addition hall, looking toward the guest room.
Guest room, with a few extra chairs for chatty guests.
Upstairs hall…these are the last walls in the house that need to be repainted. Those dull vanilla walls don’t jibe will with all the color in the rest of the house.
Speaking of color…DD#3’s room…
My crafting/scrapbooking room
DD#1’s room
Looking from our bedroom door toward DD#2’s room.
DD#2’s room
The "glass" tree in our bedroom. All the ornaments are made of glass. The tree has more than 250 prisms and crystal bead chains from old chandeliers.
That’s a quick overview of the decorating, though we missed the kitchen. I need to take more pictures for a detailed tour. And I still wish we’d taken more pictures of the guests!
This morning we woke to a very light dusting of snow, but it didn’t last long. I had a long quiet day which was very nice after being so rushed the past week. Tomorrow will be a bit busier as I begin to get ready for the house concert Thursday night. So I’m off to bed.
~~Rhonda