This Year's Christmas Ornaments

Every year I make Christmas ornaments for my family and try to have them done to give them at Thanksgiving.  Usually involving using my embroidery machine.  This year's ornaments use a pattern from Embroidery Library.  I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Embroidered Towels

My mom redecorated her bathroom and asked me to embroider some towels for here.  I thought they turned out pretty.  These were built-in patterns in my machine.

Camping Trip and a simple recipe

Went camping for a 4-day weekend.  It was heavenly -- beautiful.  Kind of sad, since it's the last trip of the season.  Now we have to clean up and put away the camper.  Hopefully we'll be back at it in March, or April at the latest.

The weather was perfectly "fall."  We saw lots of deer, and that kept Mollie (our dog) entertained.  Also the thousands of squirrels running around.  You'd think she'd get used to it, but each squirrel seems to be important to her!

I made a simple spaghetti casserole and I wanted to tell you how I did it.  I was going for a lasagna-type dish, only simple.

First layer (8 x 8 inch pan):  10 oz. spaghetti, cooked.

Second layer:  8 oz. low-fat cottage cheese, one egg, beaten, 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, salt & pepper.

Third layer:  Mozzarella cheese

Fourth layer:  Spaghetti sauce.

Bake until bubbly!

Suggested additions:  You could add a layer of veggies (zucchini, egg plant, spinach, or a mixture.)  Also, you could certainly put meat in the sauce or use "meat crumbles."

I don't have a picture of the food, so I'll post some of the camping.


This one was taken out of the camper window!



Clam Chowder in a Bread Bowl

Personally, I don't like my soup in a bread bowl, but my husband loves it this way.  So he gets his in a bread bowl and I take mine in a ceramic bowl with bread on the side.  That way, I don't eat too much bread, either.  I made Browny's Clam Chowder.  I didn't put celery in, because I didn't have any.  I used butter instead of the bacon.  I had to add a significant amount of salt, probably because of the absence of the bacon.  I used low-fat sour cream instead of the half and half.  And non-fat milk.  We really thought this turned out great!