THE MOST AMAZING Potato Cheddar Bacon Chowder EVER!!! (And I made it up myself)

Here's the recipe for the MOST AMAZING and DELICIOUS Potato Cheddar Bacon Chowder.


Ingredients:


4-5 Russet Potatoes, peeled, diced
4 slices of thick cut bacon, cut into small pieces
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1/8 cup of flour
1/4 cup milk
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken broth
2 cups of water
diced onion or onion flakes
salt
pepper
minced fresh garlic or dried
1/4 8 oz. block of cheddar cheese
1/2 8 oz. block cream cheese


Fry the bacon, onion, garlic and butter together in a large dutch oven or stock pot.  When the bacon is cooked through add in the flour as needed until the bacon grease is mostly absorbed by the flour.  You may need more or less than listed.  Once the grease is absorbing into the flour add the milk and whisk until smooth and a nice white gravy roux consistency.

Combine separately your cream of chicken soup and chicken broth with water.  Mix together well and add slowly to the roux/gravy mixture in the pan.  Stir well.  Once blended add the potatoes and boil until they become soft.  Add in the cream cheese cut into small pieces and stir until melted well.  Then grate the cheese and add to the pot stirring until melted in.  Salt and pepper season to taste and serve hot with more cheese and crumbled bacon on top for garnish if desired.


*Optional add-in diced cooked chicken breast, whole kernel corn, or other veggies you choose.

Toddler Pumpkin Decorating

If you have a little one you have probably wondered how on earth you would incorporate the innaugeral pumpkin carving into their tiny unsteady hands.  You know that you can't expect them to work a knife or sharp tool, and you don't really like the look of a painted pumpkin with no face, well then this pumpkin decorating idea is totally for you!!

The Mr. Pumpkin Head method:

Tools needed:

Drill

Mr. Potato Head pieces galore

Pie pumpkin

First you will drill holes into all of the traditional places that a Mr. Whatever Head would have.

Then help you child pick out their favorite style of eyes, ears, mouth, nose, hands, feet, and hat for the pumpkin.  We used this as a great learning tool to keep teaching the location of each body part.  He did a great job all by himself of selecting from my eyes choices and placing them where eyes go.  Then we showed him two or three options for a nose and he chose one he liked best and placed it in the nose spot.  And son on.  Here's our progression of decorating his pumpkin this year.  He's going to be 2 in December 2013 so it was the most age appropriate and FUN filled decorating he would have possibly done.

We had some lips in an ear hole at one point lol.

Putting the finishing touches on as the last arm goes in!

Our Mr. Pumpkin Head

He has a prime spot on the porch on his little bench ready to greet our trick or treaters tonight!

Fall Fun for Tots

It's chilly but nice enough and your tot is having major meltdowns.  As mamas we know they need to be outside but we're at a loss for quick ways to be out and back in before we all freeze.  This fall activity is quick, easy, and free.

Take your toddler on a walk. Let him lead you around the block. Find fall things like leaves, acorns, mums, bugs, feathers, ext.  Collect the items in your tots Halloween pail.

Come home and glue their findings to some cardstock or construction paper.  Enjoy your fall colors.

Hope you have fun. Use the things they find to talk about colors, textures,  shapes, and more.

Caramel Apple Crumble Pie

Caramel Apple Crumble Pie Recipe:

Pie Crust:

3 cups of all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups of crisco

2/3 cup water

1 tbsp. vinegar

Use two knives or a pastry blender to cut the flour into the shortning.  Add the water slowly, working it into the dough, add vinegar and work through the dough.  Roll out into four balls.  Makes 4 12" pie crusts for tops and bottoms.  Make into a bottom crust for the apple pie we're making and shape the sides by pressing one finger in between the thumb and index finger to make triangle shaped indentions in the dough all around sealing it to the pie plate's edges.

Apple Pie Filling:

4 Granny Smith Apples

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp butter or margarine

Peel and core apples, quarter and slice thin.  (I use the Pampered Chef Peeler/corer/slicer)

Add them to the pot with the other ingredients and boil down until soft.  Add apples to the pie crust.

Caramel and Crumble Topping:

Cut butter over the apple filling once in the pie pan and then drizzle the pie with warm caramel sauce.

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup flour

2 tbsp butter

Cut the butter into the flour and brown sugar with a fork until crumbly and add to the top of the pie.

Bake pie at 450 degrees for 25 minutes with aluminium foil covering the outer edges of the crust or a pie shield if you have one.  Take the foil off and bake a final 5 minutes.

ENJOY!  I like mine with a nice vanilla bean ice cream. :)

Homemade Meat Sauce from Fresh Tomatoes

Here is my recipe for Homemade Meat Sauce from Home Grown Garden Tomatoes:

You will need:

10-15 medium sized fresh tomatoes (jet stars are what I had grown) ripe
1 lb ground beef
1 can sliced mushrooms
1-2 cans of tomato paste
olive oil
minced garlic
onion flakes
salt
pepper
Italian seasoning (or basil, oregano, garlic mixture)
Large pot
strainer
paring knife


Start a large pot of water to boil and add several tomatoes to fill one layer in the pot with water nearly covering.  When tomatoes begin to peel or get soft remove tomatoes to a cold water bath.

Gather another large pot and add some olive oil, about 1/8 cup or so.

Peel each tomato, use a paring knife to remove the cores, and rinse out the seeds in each pod area.  Then take each tomato and hand crush them into a pot.  They don't need to be finely crushed just a quick squeeze in the hand should do.  You may use a strainer to strain off the juice from the seedy portions, but you will want to use that juice as well as the meaty portions, this just helps to get some of the extra seeds out.

Once all the tomatoes are crushed into the pot with the olive oil return to the stove over medium high heat.  Begin to stir as it cooks and add the tomato paste to thicken as needed, and add all seasonings, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, extra basil if you like, garlic, onion flakes, mushrooms, and cooked and seasoned ground beef.  (Ground beef seasoned with onion flakes, garlic, Italian seasoning and the grease drained off).

Let the sauce thicken and cook until it's a consistency of a traditional pasta sauce.

ENJOY!!

In response to....

The article I came across today was quite thought provoking:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/the-types-of-people-you-will-fall-in-love-with-in-your-20s/

Deep thoughts on love....I do believe you can love many people in many ways in life.  You can love friends like a family member, love family less like family and more like friends, love your "The One" and sometimes even after that love someone else in different ways.  Love can grow, change, deeper, lessen, get better, fall apart....but the truth of all of these things is this kind of Love is human emotion, raw, and wrecked.  Biblical love, the kind that makes that old couple last forever, now that kind of love takes WORK, hard work, and it takes realizing that just because you may feel emotional human love over and over again, that it doesn't mean you always run towards it, sometimes you have to let it be and just stay in your biblical love with the one you chose and promised you always would.  And most of the time if you trust in biblical love, stick it out, and choose to stay and work hard on it, you will experience the highest of emotional loves that is humanly possible.  You may even realized that the emotional love you started out attracted to your spouse by is now so much deeper that you are that cute old couple who has lasted and stood the tests of time.  Don't give up on the one you chose, and don't fall for the emotional love traps, they are great, they feel so right, but they don't last as long as holding out for your forever love. :)

Jesus didn't stop loving you, and He didn't let His human emotions lead Him to sin against His father.  So don't let you human emotions take off with your heart...use your head and your soul and that wonderful Holy Spirit to make the right choices and stick it out and work hard to have the everlasting love of both our savior to us and us to our mate.

Love you,
Rachel

DIY Patio Set Refurbish...PART 2 CUSHIONS

This is a tutorial of the Seat Cushions I made by hand with NO PATTERN and just an idea in my head about how I wanted them to turn out.  I liked the boxy look to the cushions I was researching and decided that it would make my fabric choices blend better and stand out more.

Here are my fabric colors:

I knew that I wanted to cover the woven seat (from part 1) with the coral color, but it wasn't until I set out to measure and create the custom cushions that I decided to make them square and add the blue color into them.

So having said that here's what you'll need to recreate my ideas (keep in mind that your measurements will NOT match mine exactly):

3/4 yd of your accent fabric (I used this as the accent color on the cushions and also as pillows, and chose a fun pattern here)
1 yd. of the cushion main fabric.  (I chose a solid with texture here.)
Thread
Pin cushion and pins
Sewing supplies be it a machine or a needle and thread
Stuffing or a foam cut out in the shape of your seat
a dowel rod or wooden skewer to stuff the stuffing in good and help flip inside out
iron and ironing board
good scissors
measuring tape and cutting board/surface

So the first step was the measure and cut out the main fabric for the seat.  Mine was measuring about 16x18 so I went up and added a few inches and made it 18x20.  I left the natural crease uncut on my fabric.

Then I took the accent fabric and cut about 2" wide pieces to match the length of my cushion sides and the front piece.  I put the pretty sides together and pinned them, then sewed them together.

So here's the first strip sewn on correctly

And here's how it looked pinned together with one side sewn and one side ready to sew. see how the pretty part stays inside and now you have a pillow inside out with the strip sewn so all seams will not show.

Don't forget to leave little holes in the back for the ties to be added on later.  It also serves as a way to pull the fabric right side out.

Inside out view of hole left open

Keep in mind the whole time you are pinning and sewing that you are going to be keeping the seams INSIDE and it will all be turned right side out and you won't want any stitching showing.  Don't get scared when the whole pillow ends up sew all around inside out because eventually you will be turning it back right side out through our little holes we left open in the back for the ties to go through.


Keep in mind also that you will eventually have to add ties to keep the cushion on the chair so do not sew about an inch towards the back of the pillow where your crease side is.  Leave those small holes for filling up the pillow with the last bits of "fluff" if you are using your own stuffing or just as a space to sew in those ties and also a place to flip the pillow inside out. :)

Right side out view of the hole left at the back by the crease

As you wrap up your cushion with the accent fabric it should look like this.

Right side out view

Inside out view of the sew on accent color strips

I will show you how to stuff and close up the whole thing and then make ties and close up around those as well in this last part:

Once it's sewn all around inside out correctly, flip the whole thing right side out through the tiny holes you left.  I know it's going to be a difficult task, but it does eventually all slip through that hole and go right side out.

After it's the right way, start stuffing it with fluff stuff.  If you do this method you cannot use a foam piece.  If you want to do a foam piece instead of fluff you'll have to hand sew on whole side back together or leave a LARGE hole towards the back and hand sew that back together after getting the foam to fit inside.



I stuffed mine very full because I wanted the full box shape and the extra padding for my larger half.

When you are finished stuffing all you have left is to make the ties and close it all up.

For the ties you take the leftover square of fabric (you should have some left in a square shape) and you cut in into strips as long as you can get them to be.

Take the strips and iron folds into them.  Fold a little bit on each side inward.  Then fold those together and iron closed.  sew up the seam so they stay closed and burn off or tuck in the ends and sew again.  Then close up the hole in the back of the pillow with the ties sewed into the inside nice and neat. You can hand sew this closed or try on the machine which is how I did it.

Once you have sealed up the two holes in the back and sewn in the ties you are done and ready to tie it on and enjoy your work. 

COME BACK FOR PART 3

THE BACK PILLOWS