Christmas Gear Up!

Well, the finger puppets, headdresses, and trivia went over great! The kids loved them (especially the headdresses)! I don't have any pictures yet but soon to come. It was a big help keeping them a little more calm too. I also printed off a lot of coloring sheets for them. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Pat and I got to attend two! My Mom always has her's on the Saturday after so everyone is not trying to fit in two dinners in one day. That was pretty difficult!

Now that we've got the bird off the table, we are getting ready for Christmas! Pat and I have decided to get a real tree this year. I have never had one before. We always had a fake tree. Pat use to have one when he was little. We are really excited about it! Pat has already found one he thinks will work. He'll go probably next week and cut it down. We are really excited about our first Christmas together! Another way I'm gearing up for the Christmas season is this weekend my sisters are all coming back to Mom's to make Christmas candy! I can already taste Oreo truffles and cream cheese candy! Here are some of the candies I'm going to make this weekend.

Oreo Truffles

Almond Sweets

Mock Toffee

Not sure if I'll try these Sandwich Cookie Pops  or not but they sure do look good!

I'll share all the delicious recipes next time! What are you doing to get ready for Christmas?

Jess

Thanksgiving Shakedown

Hello all! As you know Thanksgiving is approaching. While this is a joyous time of to spend with family and friends it can also be very chaotic around the Ison household. With seven grandchildren between the ages of 4 and 10 you can imagine. There's usually a lot shouting, screaming, bumping, banging, breaking and so on. Although I dearly love all my nieces and nephews, I am going to attempt to capture their attention this year with these great ideas from Martha.

I would love to try this paper-bag turkey. They would love it!

They will have a blast with these headdresses!

Who doesn't love finger puppets?

For the older boys, I was thinking of giving them a little trivia.

I'll let you know how well it works! 

Jess

Happy Halloween!

Well, Patrick and I had an excellent first Halloween! Between our party and our first trick-or-treaters it was a blast!! Here are some of the highlights of this Halloween season!

My costume was a big hit!

He finally caught me!

The cake was a disaster! It looks alright here but this was the day before the party. The next morning my nephew came and woke us up and said "Your cake fell apart. I want you to come and see how bad it is." He wasn't kidding either. Part of the cake itself had slid off and the house fell down!

I decided to turn it into a graveyard and be done with it! It still tasted good and that's what counts right?

The haunted basement was awesome! These bats guarded the entry way.

Can you guess what these brains are made out of?

My icy hands of death lost a finger. Glad it was only the index finger!

The shrunken heads turned out great!

I decided to make mustaches for everyone too, and they were a blast!

We also headed up to King's Island for their Halloween Haunt with one of our good buddies. It was awesome!

This was the first year we actually carved our pumpkins and got them out in time for our trick-or-treaters to see them!

We only had 54 trick-or-treaters but we still had a great time handing out candy. We're looking forward to all the other holidays we get to celebrate as a married couple. Hope you had a fun Halloween!

Halloween Frenzy!

Every year we have a Halloween party for all the grandchildren in our family. It's so much fun because all the grown ups dress up too!! Our party is going to be this weekend and I'm spending all this week to get ready for it. My oldest nephews are getting to the age now where I can actually scare them, hehe! I'm having a haunted scavenger hunt in our basement this year for them. Pat and I are going to have a blast watching them go through it! Here are a few of the projects I am working on. I'll show you how everything turned out next week!

This is the costume I am working on: Madame Butterfly

I'm going to attempt to make this Haunted House Cake. It's going to be supper hard but I'm willing to try!

Here are the decorations I'm working on for our haunted scavenger hunt:

Ghoulish Lampshades

Glowing Ghosts

Shocking Silhouettes

Specimen Jars

Shrunken Apple Heads

All these great ideas came from Martha Stewart. She has an excellent selection of all things Halloween at her Halloween Central on the website. All these crafts I'm making hardly cost me a thing and are super easy to make (except that cake, I'm a little nervous about it!). What great ideas to you have for Halloween? Whatever it is, have fun!!

Jess

Recipes!

Over the past few months Pat and I have been trying all sorts of different recipes and these are the two that we enjoy the most so far. That is apart from the ol' stand by's like potato soup, tacos, Parmesan chicken.

Taco Casserole  

1 lb. ground beef

1 can creamed corn

1 can pinto beans

8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese

Tortilla chips

Brown ground beef. Add creamed corn and pinto beans (with juice) then mix together.

In a glass baking dish spread the tortilla chips over then bottom then spread the beef mixture over. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes. Cover the top with cheese and place back into the oven until melted. We love to eat it with sour cream.

BHG's Garden Spaghetti

8 oz. spaghetti 

2 cups small broccoli florets

2 cups fresh, canned, or frozen corn

1 cup chopped carrots

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 cucumber, chopped (optional)

2 tbsp oregano or basil

1 tsp finely shredded lemon peel

2 tbsp lemon juice

2-3 tbsp olive oil

Tomato or pasta sauce optional

Cook spaghetti with 1 tsp of salt added to water. Add broccoli, corn and carrots the last 3 minutes of pasta cooking time. Drain. Return pasta mixture to pan. Toss in tomatoes, cucumber, oregano, lemon peel, lemon juice, and enough olive oil to lightly coat ingredients. Makes 6 servings. 

For those of you who have a sweet tooth check out these Crisp and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hope you enjoy!!

Jess

 

The Autoharp

You may recognize it most from Mother Mabel Carter of the Carter family. The autoharp is a stringed instrument with a series of chord bars attached to dampeners that come in contact with the strings. When a cord bar or button is pressed all the strings except for the strings that form the chord pressed are deadened. Only the string producing the desired chord will play. This is instrument is not technically a hard but a zither. In 1882 Charles F. Zimmerman gave this instrument the name "autoharp" but Karl August Gütter created the shape that is still applied to all autoharps made today. The U.S. Music Corporation owns the trademark of the term "autoharp" so the only manufacturer of this instrument is Oscar Schmidt division. Two types of autohaprs are made: diatonic and chromatic. The diatonic harp have only a limited number of chords it can play and restricted to 4-5 five buttons. The chromatic harp can play most chords on the scale and range from 15-21 buttons. While the chromatic harp is easier to play with a wide array of songs the diatonic is preferred among more skilled players with particular songs.

In Appalachia, music has always been such an important part of life. Family reunions or get-togethers just arn't truly get-togethers unless someone pulls out the instruments and play a while. The autoharp was designed to be able to play and follow along without having to know finger positions. As long as you know where and when to change chords you can play along with any song on the autoharp. 

Mother Mabel Carter brought the autoharp into the spotlight, however it was Cecil Null who introduced the upright way of playing this instrument. Previously, it had been played by laying it across one's lap. The Carter family routinely used this position and since then most players use this method. 

Though this is a simple instrument to play it can be picked and plucked to make extraordinary sounds! Jo Ann Smith is a distinguished player of the autoharp and my personal inspiration of learning to play. My grandpa Doc owned an autoharp and it was passed down to my Dad. I had never paid much attention to it before but one day I started plucking around on it. I stumbled on to Jo Ann playing Amazing Grace and have been playing ever since.  

Jess

Our Honeymoon!

Hello again! I didn't post anything last week because Patrick and I were on our honeymoon! As you know, we were married in May but could not go on our honeymoon right away because Pat had to take the Bar Exam soon after. We were fortunate enough, with help from our wonderful family, to take a cruise! We decided to go all out and go on the biggest cruise ship in the world (at the moment) the Royal Caribbean International's Oasis of the Seas. It was amazing!! We went to the western Caribbean including places such as Labadee Haiti, Falmouth Jamaica, and Cozumel Mexico. Those places were pretty nice but we liked being on the ship most of all! Here are some pictures from our trip, enjoy!

This was the main deck of the ship. It's where all the parades and shop were plus all kinds of pubs and bars.

We had a tiny room but it was very clean and they had a safe for us to store our valuables!

This was the only person at the dock to wave goodbye to so we all let it out on him!

Did you know there was a park with live plants on board?

This was the aqua theater where all the water show were performed. All the entertainment was top notch! 

The service in the dinning room was superb! When we were seated the waiters would put the napkins in our laps for us! On lobster night they brought out the dinner and then de-shelled it for you. The food was mind blowing. Everything was delicious!

Cozumel, Mexico

Montego Bay, Jamaica

Labadee, Haiti

While we were in Mexico we got enjoy real Mexican nachos and a mariachi band!

If you are thinking of taking a cruise do it!! We will definitely be doing it again sometime. You get a great deal for your money if you take advantage of everything they offer on the ship. We had a great time and look forward to more trips in the future. 

Jess

Flash Back II

Continuing with our trip down memory lane we'll be covering cartoons, TV shows, and movies today. Prepare for picture overload! Here we go!

 Cartoons:

TV Shows:

 Movies:

Hope you enjoyed our trip!

Jess