REASONS I SMILE

Nana's Pumpkin Pie

I have always loved my Nana's pumpkin pie. I was given the recipe a few years ago and was in charge of making it for Thanksgiving this year. Nana has always made the crust from scratch, in a pretty large pie pan. Well I was definitely not going to be making crust, so I just bought a frozen pie crust. Of course I did not realize that those were much smaller than her pie crusts so my first attempt was a pretty interesting one.

Here's the recipe:

What You Need:

2 eggs, well beaten

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice

1 ¾ cup pumpkin (15 oz Libby’s can)

1 ½ cup milk

What You Do:

Combine eggs, sugar, salt, spice & pumpkin mix.

Stir in milk, pour into pie sheets (unbaked).

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 min, then 350 degrees for 40 min.

I filled ONE of the frozen pie crusts (although the directons on the crust said to let it sit out for about 15 minutes, so I did). Well I didn't want to waste so I filled it pretty full....

Turns out that was a bad idea. The crust didn't hold up! Before long it started to collapse the side, so I put a cookie sheet underneath it to catch the drip. And after having it cook 10 minutes longer than the directions said to, it still had a nice wiggle in the middle. I tried it for about 10 minutes more and it was still just runny in the middle. I decided that this was not working very well, as the sides were getting pretty solid and the middle was runny.

We ran out to the store (had to anyways) and got a few more things and I decided to make attempt #2. This time I used 2 frozen pie crusts (Pillsbury this time, to make sure they held up!) and the recipe made enough but these 2 were probably a little underfilled.

Attempt #2 was a success! I actually forgot to take pictures after it was cooked, but it tasted awesome and was enjoyed with our Thanksgiving feast!

Last Tailgate of the Season!

On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, there was a basketball game. We played UNC-Asheville and barely won the game. We played pretty crappy but it was still fun. We stayed that night in the RV, in the RV lot to be ready for tailgating the next morning!

Vegas guarding the RV while we were in the game

Saturday morning, Brenna and I got up and went for a run. People started to arrive for tailgating around 10 and it was still pretty chilly out. We stayed inside the RV for a good bit to wait for the sun to come out. It was a pretty cold day!

Allison was in town and Mariah and Greg came to tailgate too, along with the usual suspects. It was a pretty fun day and we won pretty big! We also tried to introduce Tyson to Brenna's kitten, Cheddar, but he was scared and wouldn't come close to Tyson. Ty was being very gentle and wanted to meet him!

Playing Mario Kart, hardcore tailgating!

After the game that night we went to eat dinner at El Cerro on Avent Ferry. We laughed and had so much fun. I can't remember the last time I have laughed that hard.

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we decided to go up to my aunt and uncle's house in the mountains for a couple of days! Everyone else headed up Tuesday evening/early Wednesday but I waited for Chad and Trey to get off work on Wednesday and we headed up Wednesday afternoon. Before we got there they went to one of the "choose and cut" lots up there where you pick our your tree (still growing in the ground) and cut it. They got a pretty good size tree for only about $40! Way better than getting it in Raleigh and you know it's fresh! They also had dinner at Nana's favorite restaurant, the Canyons, in time to watch the sunset!

Ready to go!

On our way up we stopped at Peabody's, an awesome wine & beer store, to get a few craft brews to enjoy over the holidays. That night we decorated their tree (with awesome colored blinking lights) and enjoyed relaxing together.

Thursday the weather was awesome. We let the dogs run around and play on all of the land and in the river a little while my cousin and uncle did some fly fishing in the river. They didn't catch anything but had fun for a while. Mom and I went for a walk with the dogs, enjoying the views.

We had dinner around 6 with all of our typical holiday foods: sweet potato casserole, broccoli casserole, turkey, rice, gravy, Christmas salad, beets, cranberries and pumpkin pie to top it off. It was delicious and filling.

After relaxing for a bit, Trey and I enjoyed the hot tub while the boys decided to brave Walmart at 10pm to get a black Friday deal on a new tv for the living room.

The next morning, mom, dad and nana pulled out in the RV at about 7 am, to get nana back to dialysis. It was nice to get and early start and see the gorgeous sunset. Trey and I lounged around for a little while then decided to get ready and do our only black Friday shopping, at Mast General Store! If you got there between 9 and 10 you got a coupon for 40% off, and we got the last 2! He bought some nice Carhartt pants for work with the coupon and basically hasn't taken them off since.

We headed back to town Friday afternoon to make it home in time for the NC State Basketball game and made another pit stop at Peabody's on the way home! Come back tomorrow for the post about the fun-NC State-filled weekend!

Christmas Crafts - Part 2

In addition to making the tomato cage tree this weekend I decided to print some of the cool printables that I have seen all over pinterest. Since we were out of ink, and I figured it may look nicer, I printed them to Walmart photo center and went to pick up a few cheap frames.

I found one on this blog, you can print it for free!

Pinterest has a lot of great printables, I found some for other holidays that I will have to print! I also printed a couple for winter to put in the frames when it is time to take down the Christmas decorations!

The first one I found is a "subway art" design of holiday words, I hung it near our front door by our key holder:

A close up of the subway art design:

The next one I found could probably be used as a Christmas card, it is set up to be printed as a 4x6, I loved the chevron pattern and put this one on our mantle:

When I was looking for frames at Walmart I found this one that is kind of like a snow globe, I thought that would add a nice touch to the Merry Christmas print!

The last one I printed is word art in the shape of a Christmas tree. I painted this frame red to add some spruce to it.

I hung this one above the tree in my upstairs hallway!

A collage of all of my cute printables on display!

Christmas Crafts - Part 1

I have been pinning tons of DIY Christmas crafts to my pinterest boards and finally got the chance to complete a couple this weekend! Brenna, Mariah and I got together Sunday afternoon to do some crafts. It is always helpful to have Mariah around while crafting so she can fix the parts that I'm not good at... she's so good at random crafts.

This pin and this pin were my inspiration for the tree I made using a tomato cage, garland and lights.

I used an old tomato cage, that Trey almost threw out! Luckily it was akward to throw away so he hadn't yet :)

I bought 4 9-ft strands of garland at Walmart ($2 each!) and used 150 lights. 100 probably would have been enough though!

Starting at the bottom I wraped the garland around and around. Every few circles, I wrapped the garland in a loop around the cage itself, to keep it from moving around too much. Cheddar, Brenna's cat, kept wanting to play with our garland trees.

I used a hair tie to hold the top of the tomato cage together (somehow Brenna has no rubber bands in her house) and hot glued it on there. Then I hot glued a little bit of garland there to keep it covered.

Once I finished wrapping it with garland, I put the lights on and ta-da so pretty!

Mariah made me a bow to top my tree :)

Brenna also made a garland tree, her tomato cage was a little bit bigger and she used color lights.

Mariah decided to put ornaments on a ribbon and was hoping to hang it from her mantle, but as she started going we remembered from my ornament wreath last year, that it takes a TON of ornaments to fill very little space. So it will probably end up being a table centerpiece!