Mindy's Holiday Baking List

Pumpkin Molasses Cookies - soft and chewy like cookies should be, these add a nice amount of spice and variety to your cookie plate.  (And I make this recipe with gluten and non-vegan.)

Pumpkin Mousse and Gingerbread - the mousse is light and fluffy, and the gingerbread pairs wonderfully with it to add more spice and snap.  We've made it as a pie, as mini cookie pies or just to dip the cookies in.  The mousse also makes great filling for crepes.

 

Pumpkin Souffle - like a crustless pumpkin pie, this is what I'll be having for Thanksgiving this week.

Sugar Cookies - these cookies are definitely not limited to Christmas.  We usually make them for most holidays, birthdays and just-because days too.

Fairy Bites - nothing fancy about tiny shortbread cookies with sprinkles on top, but they are requested each year.

Peppermint Snowballs - I made these for the first time in 2015 and instantly knew they would become a Christmas tradition.  These are a must-make every December.

Peppermint Meringue - I like to make these for my gluten-intolerant friend.  And they are yummy for me too, of course.

Rice Krispie Squares - no reason to include the recipe because it comes written on the box.  The only difference is we use peppermint marshmallows, or you could add 1 tsp of extract to make them minty.

Candy Cane Fudge - basically two ingredient fudge with crushed candy canes on top.  So super simple but you can't go wrong with chocolate!

Cookie Dough Fudge - after the first time I knew it would be made again and again.  I've included this recipe in my daughter's journal because I know she'll want it when she's older.  It does require more than just two ingredients, but worth the extra time (which still isn't long!).

Chocolate Orange Muffins - not just a Christmas-time muffin, but I love how these taste like the chocolate orange I always get in my stocking.  I like these best as mini muffins and will also make them as lime coconut or lemon poppyseed just by swapping out the zest and one ingredient. 

November journal

1. Loads of fabric pumpkins. I lost count, but there were more than 30.

2. Two more Squared Away quilt blocks - I did make two of this block, but when I went to take the picture, I realized I'd put one of them together wrong. Fortunately, I just need to take one of the side rows off to turn it around.

3. And it's not sewing, but I made my Christmas letter blocks ...

I'm excited to do a lot more sewing this month! I spent the summer traveling and doing theater and camps. This entire fall has been totally sucked up with editing a book. Ya know what? It's December tomorrow. I'm self-employed, and I don't work during Christmas! I'm doing service, and baking cookies, and sewing for my kids!

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the kitchen. See ya.

gimme some sugar!

Welcome, blog hoppers, to the Virtual Cookie Exchange hosted by Just Let Me Quilt! Thank you for including us, Carol! We are sisters who live at opposite ends of North America.

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MINDY
Christmas and crafting go together for me. I was just beginning my sewing adventures when I came across this tutorial for a tiered skirt.  I pulled out the small stack of Christmas fabric I had been given by my mother-in-law and tried it out.  Once I saw it on my toddler I was hooked!  Now, five Christmases later, I have started quilting along with making clothes for my two daughters, so many of my holiday gifts are made from fabric.

But this couldn't be a cookie exchange without some sugar!  Our family made tin-foil-covered plates of cookies to give to our friends and neighbors as we went caroling every year.  As we got older, and many of the siblings moved out, Emily was in charge of the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and I made the sugar cookies.  

I now make these sugar cookies multiple times a year.  I play with food coloring, cookie cutters and cookie stamps.  I've made several cookie bouquets.  Last Christmas I painted them with dyed egg yolk.  And for Halloween I added crushed candies for a stained glass effect.  I've swapped out the vanilla for peppermint extract a few times, or even turned them into lemon or pumpkin sugar cookies.  This is just the best go-to sugar cookie recipe for soft, chewy cookies.

SUGAR COOKIES

Cream together 3/4 cup butter and 1 cup sugar.  Add 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon each of salt, vanilla and baking powder.  Stir until smooth.  Add 2 1/2 cups flour, one cup at a time, incorporating it fully before adding more.  Refrigerate the finished dough for 30-60 minutes before cutting into shapes, or immediately roll into balls and smash lightly to flatten.  Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes on a non-greased baking sheet.

• You can freeze both dough or baked cookies.
• When using food coloring, add it before the flour for even color.  To blend colors make two (or more) batches and then pick small pieces from each to roll out together.  Or you can add color to finished dough - it will be more saturated and will get all over your hands. 
• To make egg yolk paint, simply add some food coloring (and water to thin it out if you'd like) to some egg yolk.  A little goes a long way, so one yolk can be used for multiple colors.  Paint on the cookies with a clean paintbrush before you bake them!
• I used lollipops but jolly ranchers or other hard candies would work for the stained glass.  Crush it and use it to fill in the cut out shapes.  Bake as normal with parchment paper on the pan, but let it rest on the pan a few extra minutes afterwards to harden.

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TRINA
There's a back-story with the sugar cookie recipe. Because there's a bit of an age gap between us - I'm the oldest, and Mindy is the 7th of the 8 siblings in our family - it didn't occur to me until we were adults that the recipe story hadn't been shared until one day Mindy said something like, "I heard there's a story about this recipe and a shirt but I didn't know if it was true." Well, I do! Because I was there!

Once upon a time, Tawnia (#4 of 8) was about 2 years old and wearing a shirt with Cookie Monster and a bunch of words on it. Eric and I were 7 and 8, and it dawned on us that those words were a recipe. Did it really work? Was it a real recipe for Cookie Monster Sugar Cookies? So we asked our mom to try it. Tawnia was plunked up onto the counter, still wearing the shirt, while we read off the ingredients and measurements. And it worked! The best sugar cookies! We read it off the shirt at least a couple of times, usually while Tawnia was wearing it, before Mom got around to writing the recipe on a piece of paper. It has been our family's go-to cookie recipe for decades now, all because of a 2-year-old's shirt.

And now - seriously, just last week - I learn that it originally came from a book.

Trina's real-life, un-staged messy kitchen with sugar cookies. 

Bring on the frosting and the sprinkles! 

My go-to is three-ingredient fudge, which I first found on here on Made Everyday with these ingredients:

Chocolate mint is my FAVORITE. I wondered if it would also work with white chocolate and peppermint, so I tried my own variation.

Put all three ingredients - the both entire bags of chips (12 oz chocolate chips) and the full can of sweetened condensed milk - into a microwave-safe bowl and nuke it for a minute at a time for 3 minutes, until it's all soft enough to stir and blend together. Then spread it in a pan lined with parchment paper and let it set. That's it! Seriously!

YUM. If you get super-peppermint-y chips, I've actually had this turn pink in the past. Pink fudge is AWESOME!!! And it won me the Most Creative Dessert at our church's Christmas party a couple of years ago.


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Thanks for visiting - we'd love to hear where you're from in the comments. Please check in with the other blog hop participants as well!

November 27

Kwilty Pleasures

Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats

Songbird Designs

Creative Latitude

Ms P Designs USA

Gray Barn Designs

Alycia Quilts

Happy Cottage Quilter

Sew Many Yarns

For The Love Of Geese

November 28

Creatin' in the Sticks

Vroomans Quilts

It’s A T-Sweet Day!

Domestic Felicity

That Fabric Feeling

Home Sewn By Us

Karrin’s Crazy World

Adventurous Applique and Quilting

Bumbleberry Style

Melva Loves Scraps

Beaquilter

November 29

MooseStashQuilting

Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life

Kathleen McMusing

DesertSky Quilting

Life in the Scrapatch

Ridge Top Quilt

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Bejeweled Quilts by Barb

Pumpkin Patch Patterns & Quilting

Operation Domestic Goddess - YOU ARE HERE! 

Just Let Me Quilt

black friday boycott - craft day!

My sister-in-law and I had an awesome Black Friday! No shopping - we didn't even leave the house. Instead, we raided the bin of blocks that Adam made for the girls years ago that rarely get played with anymore, and played with mod podge, craft paper, and paint. I had some letter stickers for "Joy to the World" and little teeny wood letters for a bit of 3-D-ness on the "Happy Christmas" sign. That one needs to have a couple of holes drilled into it so I can loop craft wire through to hang it up.

My halls are a little more decked now ...

 

plump purple pumpkins

I'm the Wednesday night activity leader for the 8 to 11-year-old girls at my church, and these kiddos love crafts! They're required to do a certain number of service projects for their award program, and I love it when we can combine the two. My partner Megan and I decided to have the girls make a craft to give to the elderly ladies in our congregation as a holiday gift for Thanksgiving, and we went with these fabric pumpkins.

I cut the fabric in a 9x18 rectangle - I bought a bunch of fat quarters at the fabric store and cut them in half. So quick. I also used fall-ish scrap fabric I have kicking around in my sewing area. I ran the side seam through my sewing machine so the girls would have time to make more rather than spending the whole evening on just one.

At the activity, the girls handstitched the bottom to pull them closed, stuffed them, and sewed the top closed. I have a lot of scrap felt that they used to make stems and leaves.

Each of the girls had time to make two - one to give and one to keep. They were SO excited to keep a fabric pumpkin, and they really were very cute. Both the girls and pumpkins.

The girls LOVED it so much that I sent all their moms the link so they could make more at home to keep for themselves. I was told later that a couple of them did.

When I got them home, some of them needed some extra stitching on the bottom because it wasn't tight enough. I did large side stitches with colored embroidery floss for the pumpkin "grooves." I also made more so our gift bags would have two each.

I loved the variety of colors they chose to put together.
 

I never got a picture of all of the pumpkins in one big pile because we started giving them away before we finished them all. We made more than thirty all together. If you have time tomorrow, or maybe for next year, they make a great little centerpiece or are fun to put on a shelf or windowsill! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Hogwarts Birthday

I'm no Pinterest junkie, so I kind of shocked Adam when I started working on a Harry Potter themed birthday party for RG ... who turned ELEVEN this month, so hello! Hogwarts party it is!! (When SM turned 11, that was sadly the year I decreed no parties at all. What was I thinking!?!? We'll have to make it up to her at her next birthday.)

There are many, many more elaborate ways to have a Harry Potter party. This would barely register for "party stylist" type people, but it was a pretty big deal for me. We spiced up our living room with a bit of Hogwarts Great Hall flair.

Crepe paper and disposable tablecloths on my friend Kelly's long tables did the trick. (The dollar store is my new favorite place for things that are just going to be thrown away. What took me so long?) I also printed out small House banners on cardstock, which were on either side of the fireplace.

The birthday girl greeted her guests in her brand new Gryffindor robes.

I used this tutorial, but made things more complicated for myself by putting right sides together in a couple of places. Meh. Just follow the directions as is, and fold in your raw edges to secure with a top-stitch. It would have gone a lot faster. If using 44-inch fabric for the wrist-to-wrist side so you can do the fold on a length of yardage, this is sized for kids. I don't think you could use this tutorial with the way the fabric is folded for adults. Two and a half yards is a good amount of fabric for a child somewhere around 4-foot-6. RG is 4'8". 

As the witches and wizards arrived, they each selected their own sorting hat.

There was a single color of M&Ms in each one to identify the House (red = Gryffindor, etc), and there was no way even for me to know who was choosing what after they were glued shut. It was fully a surprise for everyone in the room.

We had 12 guests, so there were three per house for our Harry Potter Trivia Challenge. RG wasn't allowed to be sorted/compete anyway because she would have answered every question ... so to stop that before it even started, I told her she could help moderate the competition. One of the Slytherin girls - by herself - beat all three other teams. I would have liked to have seen how she and RG stacked up against each other, but RG already knew the questions.

After Slytherin kicked butt in the trivia test, it was time to eat. Butterbeer cookies, double chocolate cauldrons, and Polyjuice potion. Recipes for the cookies and cake are at the links. The potion was Sprite, blue Hawaiian punch, and pineapple juice.

The chocolate cauldrons were AWESOME. This was definitely my favorite on how it turned out. I used the recipe for the cake, which had the thick and heavy consistency of brownies, and for the center cream filling. There's also a recipe for the outer chocolate frosting included, but I just bought that. The handles were made from Wilton's Candy Melt chocolate shaped with a plain round icing tip and "drawn" on parchment paper until it set.

After our sugared-up "feast," we sent them all downstairs to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. As our guests left, their favor was a chocolate frog. I bought the mold on Amazon (watch the little spots for the eyes - I had to use my finger to press the melted chocolate all the way in), so there is a strong possibility of more Harry Potter celebrations in the future!

V is for Valentine

We went a little crazy with Valentine's Day this year. We made:

- hearts out of plastic canvas and yarn. We ended up with more than 20 of these, and we looped ribbon and hung them up in windows. TA and JK kept saying they wanted to "knit" and I had to keep correcting them to "sew" or "embroider." They had found some random sheets of plastic canvas that have been kicking around for forever, and I cut every last bit of it into hearts. It was a lot of handstitching. My little girls thought it was awesome.

- cards with cardstock, foam stickers from Target, and ink/stamps. We didn't mail any out this year, just made them for each other.

- envelopes to hold all those cards along with some treats. I trimmed the tabs off manila folders and closed the sides with packing tape. Easy. Even SM, a big middle schooler now, loves our family Valentine party every year.

- "suncatchers" (although obviously without the SUN) with contact paper, tissue paper, and a Sharpie.

I'm in a bit of a craft-like-crazy mode this year, just to clear out a lot of old supplies that have been sitting around for forever. This was helpful with the plastic canvas and the contact paper.

And even though we moved into March and now April, I was still in heart mode when I made my little quilt for A Doll Like Me. I was trying to get it done for Project Quilting, but I got just the top done. Finally did some light quilting and the binding today. I outlined the hearts with stitch-in-the-ditch to make them stand out more, and then the loops down the side. I didn't want it too dense because I'm learning that dense quilting makes things stiff. This is for a child so it needs to be soft. The back is the same flannel that I used on the doll quilt TA made.

R is for red, white and green WIP

I'm noting this project, and then hitting the Pause button.

On Christmas Day, I had a bug to start working with all my Christmas fabric scraps. I've been wanting to make a Christmas quilt for a long time, and I'd decided recently to make it with log cabin blocks. I've put in quite a lot of work on it for the past two weeks - a lot of trimming my scraps into strips, and I have 12 completed 12.5x12.5 inch blocks.

But I have two quilt starts staring at me - the Night Sky for SM and Extreme Reader for RG. And TA has been pestering me this week to work on her quilt, T's Town with house blocks. (Yes, she is literally named for the town in which Adam and I met.)

My Christmas log cabin quilt is for the couch, but the couch doesn't talk and is a lot more patient than little girls who are growing up WAY too fast. So the Red White and Green blocks are now put away and will come back out another time. After these other three quilts, and probably a lot of clothes, are done.

S is for school

We've homeschooled from the beginning, but this past summer, for a lengthy list of reasons, it was time to register our girls for the local public schools. SM went straight into middle school, RG and JE are at the elementary school, and TA and JK are still little and home. They'll join their sisters at school in a couple more years - the current plan is to put them in late, like at 2nd or 3rd grade. (Although with the way they keep fighting, they may go into 1st and K next fall just so they don't kill each other. But that's another discussion.)

So that meant that for Christmas, I entered the obligatory world of Teacher Gifts. I don't like feeling obligated (and I do), but at the same time, I really do appreciate the teachers our girls have - they've made our transition from home to public school SO smooth! The girls aren't just tolerating it, they're thriving. RG is getting a ton of therapy that we couldn't find in private practice, particularly physical and occupational therapies. (Why is no one willing to treat special needs kids? The demand is massive!!) So big huge thank yous to the new members of Team Caudle! Presents all around! I seriously had to make a list of all of "my staff" to give gifts to, and I still didn't get to them all. Need to finish the list at Valentine's Day, I suppose.

Since I have far more time than money, I made:

- Zipper bags from Noodlehead for the 4th and 2nd grade teachers. They really are amazing. This was entirely from my fabric stash, and Mindy had given me a few zippers forever ago. I got more zippers in bulk from Amazon so I can make more for all the therapists for an end-of-the-school-year thank you. (If I get to it. That's the idea, anyway.)

2nd grade teacher - the inside was a blue with an abstract of the phases of the moon

4th grade teacher. I need to make this one exactly as-is again because my sister-in-law loved it, and her birthday is coming up.

This one was for a gift exchange at a book club - I nailed it on the fabric/zipper contrast.

- Pocket handwarmers for the principal and vice principal. They are not sit-in-the-office guys, I always see them out and about, including outside at all the recess times. These were all flannel scraps. I added some lemon essential oil to them, and Mr. T loved the scent. Mr. K raved about how nice they are because it's a SUPER cold winter this year!

- Peppermint foot soak - you have to scroll down in the link to get to the foot soak. I didn't just give little tiny one-time "servings." I put it in pint jars and labeled them to use 2 tablespoons at a time. This went to the special ed teachers, 3 therapists, and their extra-curricular dance class. I saw one of the special ed teachers in the hall after I'd left it in the office, and she said it smelled so fresh! She was excited to use it! I made 7 of these. Seven pint jars out of my house! Hooray! (We have a crazy amount of pint jars and we don't do THAT much canning, so I specifically looked for things to make that would be put in jars.)

- Cookie jars - particularly to get rid of the millions of Snickers bars that I stashed away at Halloween. We had SO MANY Snickers bars! And we have an obscene number of canning jars in the basement. So all I had to buy was the cake mixes, and those are a buck each. Here's something silly for you: I saw Walmart had cookie jars for sale for $5 each. Ha! I'll make it myself, thanks! We made five jars. These didn't end up going to school - we gave them to people around the neighborhood.

- 3 minute fudge - this is my secret weapon for the holidays. My alternate is to make it with the Ghiradelli peppermint chips and white chocolate. We took a bunch to the public library for the librarians on the children's floor, because THEY are part of our teaching staff as well!

R is for runner

Entry: 2017 4th quarter finish-along - my original entry post
Final link up: 2017 4th quarter finish-along

I don't have many decorations for my house for any season/holiday except Christmas (and even there, I don't have nearly as many as I'd like). When the weather started to turn cool for fall, I got a bug for some kind of autumn something-or-other to spice up my house, and I went with a table runner.

The strips were cut to 2 1/2 x 12 inches, and the whole thing is 88 inches long. I have a really long kitchen table. There are only 2 fabrics in the whole thing that were cut from yardage - the green with silver hearts, and the red silhouette. It's Jane Austen from the Ardently Austen line - I'm on an Austen kick right now with audio books while sewing, so I needed that one. I'm sure you understand about needing a certain piece of fabric.

Anyway, the rest of the fabric was all scraps.

I quilted it with straight line X's every 6 strips. The back and the binding were separate pieces, but the same fabric.

Done just in time for Thanksgiving! 

Because I had some extra strips, I made reversible placemats for my parents for their Christmas present. Thanksgiving on one side and Christmas on the other.

2nd quarter report

I did a first quarter report at the end of March ... so here's the 2nd quarter. Because I'm still sewing like a maniac (well, for me, anyway) but not blogging it. April and May were spent on the two big projects of finishing the Nancy quilt and the Fairy Tale dress.

I also made SM an Artemis dress for her birthday in May - she wanted a Greek mythology themed party, and her favorite goddess is Artemis. The Artemis symbol is a crescent moon, so I put them around the base of the dress edged with silver thread (my applique is a disaster - it got all bunchy), and I added silver ribbon and an embroidery stitch in silver thread at the top. The pattern was my stand-by, the Playtime tunic, turned around backwards. The folded open flaps on her neckline are normally the button-up section on the back. And I left off the long sleeves and just folded the arm holes under.

And since we're talking about the party for a minute ... you want Sue to do cakes for you!! I had nothing to do with this cake, except driving to her house to pick it up. And for one of the activities, SM painted a big picture of a Minotaur (mounted on a board for sturdiness), and the kids made slingshots and other throwing devices to have target practice. This was a big hit with the boys who came to the party.

June has been kid-clothes-catch-up time. JK has a family t-shirt that's too short for her to wear, so it's now a dress with a tiered skirt so I can add another layer later. She's worn it pretty much constantly since I finished it, including on our camping trip (until it was so filthy I hid it in the dirty laundry bag).

And for our camping trip, in a week, I blasted out 8 pairs of shorts and a skirt in less than 2 weeks, which have not been photographed because there's another way I'm lacking. Not blogging, and not taking pictures either. (Of course, half the shorts were for pajamas, but still.) But it is gratifying that every day, there's at least one handmade item being worn somewhere! Usually two or three!