Christmas Calendar (under $10)

I bought this shelf at Deseret Industries for $3. It was green, falling apart, had some bad repairs made to it, and was just ugly. Somehow I saw potential (but not enough confidence to have taken a before picture). I really love how this turned out. I spent $6 on the wood rectangles for the numbers but everything else I already had. I really love the subway tiles (stickers) on the sides. This is a project that actually turned out better than envisioned. I thought I'd buy number stickers but I couldn't find any that I liked and then I realized that I own a colored printer (duh!) and I could choose my own typeface and colors. I love how they turned out. I embellished with Christmas stickers I'd bought earlier and voila!

Spudnuts

Every Halloween, my mom makes a bunch of doughnuts and all her neighbors flock to her house. She has candy for the kids (silly kids, choosing candy over spudnuts!) but the adults get a warm doughnut. I made them this past weekend and thought I'd share the recipe.

This makes over 100 doughnuts but you can half or even quarter it.

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 C Water
• 1 1/2 t Salt
• 1 C Margarine (or butter)
• 5 Eggs (if halfing, my mom suggests using 3 eggs)
• 1 C Sugar
• 2 C Mashed Potatoes (left overs are fine as long as you didn't add garlic or ranch to them)
• 2 t Nutmeg
• 14 C Flour

Instructions

1. In small bowl, mix 1/2 C water, 2 T yeast, and 1 t sugar. Let brew.
2. In large bowl (as in HUGE) mix 4 C water, salt, margarine, eggs, sugar, mashed potatoes, nutmeg.
3. Add yeast mixture and mix with a wire wisp. Add flour and mix with a wooden spoon until all flour is moist.
4. Let rise in bowl until double (approx. 1 1/2 hours)
5. Roll our and cut into doughnuts or bars and let rise again until double (approx. 1 1/2 hours)
6. Deep fry in very hot oil. Place the side that was up while rising in the oil first, then turn..
7. Glaze, eat!

Glaze Recipe

1. Mix 4 C powdered sugar with enough milk to make a glaze (not frosting), mix with a wire wisp.

Plan on starting these about 4-5 hours before you want to eat them. While they are time intensive, most of that time is rising so you aren't actually working on them.

We made ours pumpkin shaped. They didn't keep their shape too well in the rising/frying process.

Deep frying - be careful!

We added orange food dye to our glaze since we made "pumpkins"
These were yummy. We're glad we had the Voice Male gang here to help us eat them!

More V'day Decor

These are just letters from Hobby Lobby and I covered them in craft paper (using spay-on glue). They are actually now on the inside of my front door in vertical fashion (I used painters tape to adhere them).

I found this frame at the HobLob and thought it was so appropriate. I happened to have a black and white print of one of our engagement pictures so I threw that in. I really like this decoration.

Heart Bouquet

As I took down the Christmas stuff, I wanted something to put in its place. The stores have moved on to Valentine's Day, why shouldn't I? I didn't want to spend a bunch of money though so I'm making most of my v'day decor.

I have this cool white vase/pot and decided it would look so cute with a bouquet of hearts coming out of it. So, I bought some florist wire (pre-wrapped) and foam and used some of my cute craft paper and went to work.

Here is a picture of it in progress. It was so simple. Just throw the wires into the florist foam, curl them down to the size I wanted them, cut two paper hearts the same size, glue them together around the wire, and boom, there it is.