A Little Christmas, Amazing Banana Bread, and a Monster.......!

Hi! It's Friday night, and I'm sitting here in an absolutely quiet house.....this NEVER happens! My husband decided to take our two daughters out for a Daddy/Daughter date. They have just left to go up to Stanford University to watch a womens' field hockey game. My daughters all love the sport and were excited to go.

A few things to share with you tonight...I FINALLY got my Christmas wreath done!!! For the last few weeks, it's been shuffled around from kitchen table to one of many hiding places when guests come over and I have to pretend to have a clean house (anybody know what I'm talking about?!) Here it is:



Now that I see it here, I'm going to change the bells a bit--too dangly. I'll tighten them up and bunch them a bit more...

All these adorable images are from Crafty Secrets' new "Christmas" Vintage Postcard Kit--love these vintage kits! They make projects SOOOO easy! Just bought a wreath at Michaels, some ribbon I had on hand (from Costco, I think), bells & Christmas bobbles also from Michaels. I didn't use glitter this time...***GASP!***** Yes, I know! But, I didn't want it to get messed up when I stored it, and I felt with all the silver from the bells, and the shiny crackle effect on the images, it was okay!

Showing this one VERY closely so you can see the crackle effect from the Crackle Accents I used--I love this stuff!

Such adorable images.....

Next, a card I made using Crafty Secrets' "Christmas" Images & Journal Notes booklet. When I first saw this image a few weeks ago, I knew EXACTLY what I wanted to do with it!

The kids in the image were arced over nothing--just the lines on the notepaper, and it just screamed "giant snowball" to me! So, got out my Snow-Tex and Dazzling Diamonds glitter, and "painted" a snowball--very texturized. I really like how it turned out. Apparently got a few gold glass glitter flecks in there...hmmm.....Here it is close up:

Now how about some really amazing banana bread??? We had three VERY ripe bananas, so something had to be done. Looked around for a likely recipe, and found this one, which I'd never tried before...trust me, it WILL be tried again! Many times!

We ate it warm, steaming and gooey! With every bite, my daughter Sarah literally sighed! It's that good...

Here's the recipe...got it from "The Taste of Home Cookbook", and the recipe was submitted by Susan Jones.

BANANA NUT BREAD

1/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas

1/2 cup sour cream

2-1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, beating well. Stir in bananas and sour cream. Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda & salt. Stir into banana mixture just until moistened. Stir in nuts.

Transfer to a greased 8" x 2" loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan.

I did not add nuts--no one in the family likes them but me...oh, well! Instead, I added one bag of white chocolate chips, which made EVERYONE happy--they were incredible--gooey and delicious! Enjoy!

Since I was thinking Halloween past yesterday, I decided to delve a bit deeper into the Halloween archives and found these funny photos. The first is my brother, Steve, and I about 1968-69...not sure!

I was a black cat...well, obviously, right? Steve was, as he called it, "Chief of Cherokee"! I remember that night pretty well. We were Trick or Treating, running up and down each street, gathering all the candy we could, all the while Steve was screaming, "Chief of Cherokee!" while he ran. Finally, he tripped, fell down, ripped his tights (yep, my brother was wearing tights!), and started crying, so we had to go home.

These next just make me giggle! Not Hallween, per se, but definitely dress-up, sorta...I'm so glad my Mom wrote on the backs of these photos--priceless to me! 1964...


On the back of this one, Mom wrote, "This is a picture of the 'Monster' in her bedroom, on her horse 'Fury'." Love it!


Mom again, "Another of the same. She really got a kick out of wearing these paper bags around. She wore them till we had to take them off because she was starting to get a heat rash." YIKES!


Fashionista, right? Guess I've always loved playing with paper!

Thanks for joining me once again! Hope you have a wonderful fall weekend with your families!