Cannoli Spider Ball - A Halloween Favorite!

So this was one of the crowd favorites from last year's Halloween Party. I mean really, who doesn't love cannoli dip? This is a super easy dessert that anyone can make, very few ingredients, and tastes delish. That's my kind of dessert.

Ingredients:

- 1 8oz. brick of cream cheese, room temp.

- 1 stick of unsalted butter, room temp.

- 3/4 cup powdered sugar

- 2 tbs brown sugar

- 1/2 tsp vanilla

- A handful of mini chocolate chips

- 1/2 bag of Oreos, crushed - plus two whole cookies for the eyes

- 2 hershey kisses

- 1 box of cannoli chips (or) sweet pita chips

- 8 black pipe cleaners

Directions:

- Cream together the cream cheese and butter

- Add in both sugars and vanilla, mix until well blended

- Fold in the mini chocolate chips

- Place cream cheese mixture in the freezer for an hour

- Once frozen, shape into a 1/2 sphere onto a plate

- Top ball with the crushed Oreos

- Open the two Oreos making sure that the white cream part is still attached to one side

- Use this side of both Oreos as eyes - just push the cookies slightly into the ball, they should stick on their own, or you could save a bit of the cream cheese mixture and use that as glue to stick them on

- Cut the pointed tops off of two Hershey Kisses with a knife (be careful, this is the only tough part - I cut my finger pretty bad last year which wasn't fun) and push them into the whites of the Oreo eyes

- Bend the pipe cleaners 3/4 of the way up, cut them if need be to fit on the plate you are using

- Add the 8 pipe cleaners to the cheese ball, 4 on each side 

- Then just surround the ball with your chips and you are done!

Easy right?!

Here's what is looked like before I added the chips, just so you can see the size. 

Happy Halloween Everyone!

JP

Year Two in Review

Two years in the house! I'd say this is a landmark for H and I. We have never lived in the same place for more than a year, maybe year and a half TOPS! And that is dating all the way back to Freshman year of College. Each of us has moved at least once a year since then, if not twice a year. I can honestly say it feels so good to finally set down some roots.

This time last year I made a list of all the things H and I completed in the house so I thought it would be a good idea to continue the tradition. It's great to look back on everything we have accomplished and check some things off our Whole House List. I update that list at the very beginning of the year and post about the things I would like to accomplish next. Now, some of the things on this list I didn't get a chance to post about here on the Blog, but that is only because the photos are being held captive on my Nikon and with the computer working on a day by day basis, it has been a challenge. One day, they will get here, I promise.

This year we have ...

1 - Finished painting the Kitchen
2 - Painted the Family Room
3 - Put up crown molding in the Family Room to hide the speaker wires, check that out here
4 - Updated the Breakfast Nook with new chairs and rug, see it here - we also got a new light fixture not shown in this post
5 - Installed an electric fence for Pepper - money well spent if I do say so myself
6 - Installed shelving/decor to the Butler's Pantry area, check it out here

7 - Purchased a large sectional for the Family Room, posted here but later had lots of added drama
8 - Painted and decorated the front room, see it here
9 - Selected a paint color for the foyer and powder room, check those out here
10 - And had the painter in to paint these spaces
11 - Painted the guest bathroom and added a new shower curtain/towels
12 - Decorated the powder room - photos coming soon
13 - Hired a professional to design and install a huge patio for our backyard - I have before and after pictures just waiting to share
14 - Purchased and installed frames for a gallery wall in the upstairs hallway, see it here - though the frames aren't totally filled yet
15 - Started to decorate the entry way with new rugs/tables/a bench - photos coming soon
16 - Added seating to our front patio, check it out here
17 - Installed curtains and hardware for the bay window in the breakfast nook - though I still need to hem them

Then just this past weekend we...

18 - Planted some mature boxwoods up front to hide the lattice of our porch as well as two arborvitae to add some landscaping to the patio - post coming soon
19 - Purchased a new light fixture for the dining room, it's still in the box but it will be up by the end of the week

It is amazing to see what we have done in just this last year. That, combined with the first year in our home shows that this house is starting to come together. I can definitely say that it is feeling a lot like our home now and not just some house we live in. It's a great feeling! Now I just need to find the time to update my Home Tour Page to reflect all those great changes!

Sorry again that I haven't been able to post about all the changes we have done this year. A lot has happened in our lives that have kept us busy and the technology meltdowns we've had haven't helped. Hopefully I can get some of those photos off the camera one project at a time and post as I go. I have so much to share, I just hope that the computer holds out long enough to get the job done.

Until next time,
JP

A Spook-tacular Halloween!

It's hard to believe that Halloween is only a week and a half away! Where did the time go? For those of you on Pinterest, I am sure that your feed is blowing up with different Halloween-themed treats and different decor ideas. Well, I realized the other day that I never posted pictures from our Halloween party last year so I figured I would post about it now before Halloween so hopefully it will inspire those of you trying to throw your own Spook-tacular Bash and give you a few more ideas that might not be on Pinterest. Or at least not yet : )

Last year H and I threw a big party for our friends and co-workers to celebrate and yes, everyone came in costume! H was Dexter and I was one of his victims wrapped in plastic. We also wrapped the entire garage in plastic to act as a kill room - very Dexter like - and this space doubled as a beer pong area for the party. For those who have never seen Dexter, sorry you are seriously missing out. I think it might be on Netflix so I would recommend checking it out. But, for those who have seen the show,.. great costume idea right?!

Anyway, here is what we made and what a few people brought to the party:

1 - Monster Fingers - I am a HUGE fan of chocolate covered pretzels; there is just something about that salty/sweet combo that gets me every time! Thank's Kim for bringing those!

2 - A Mouse Infested Cheese Plate - brie, cranberry goat cheese, garlic herb, cheddar, and H's favorite pepper jack, all complete with some pepperoni, olives, and dried fruit - yum!

3 - Mummy Cake Pops - A huge crowd pleaser! Though I cannot take credit for these, a co-worker and friend of mine makes pops for every occasion and these were perfect.

4 - Homemade Pizza Jack O'Lantern and Eye Ball - Yea, these were creepy looking, but oh so delicious. Get the dough recipe here!

5 - Mini Mummy Dogs - can't go wrong with pigs-in-a-blanket, or as we call it in my family - Piggin's.

6 - Buffalo Chicken Throw Up - Ugh, now this was seriously gross looking, but wow, was it tasty! My girlfriend from college makes this dip and after getting the recipe from her and botching it on New Years I tried it again and I think it turned out pretty good!

7 - Deviled Egg Eyeballs and Spiders - Another co-worker of mine brought these. They were all gone by the end of the night!

8 - Cannoli Dip Spider Ball - Now this was a crowd pleaser! I will post the recipe for this amazing dip at some point this week though I don't have any other pictures. It is soooo unhealthy, but oh so good! And even better as a creepy spider!

There you have it, everything you need to make one awesome Halloween party spread. There were a handful of other things that people brought and a few things I made, but over all, these were my favs. Hopefully these ideas have given you an idea of how to create a memorable Halloween Bash!

Happy Haunting!

JP

Too Many Tomatoes...

So being a part of the CSA this year is awesome, but we are getting SO many tomatoes we just don't know what to do with all of them. This last week H decided to make a homemade tomato sauce to use up some of the ripe ones before they went bad. It turned out amazing! You might have noticed this photo on my Instagram this week:

It really tasted like you were biting into a fresh tomato with a hint of garlic and Italian seasoning. It was perfect. Now, being an Italian woman myself, you would think that I would have a family recipe that is tried and true passed down from my grandmother. Well, I don't. I don't think I have ever even tried to make homemade sauce, ok maybe once but it was just 'ok' and was a ton of work! Needless to say when H said he was going to make dinner AND it included homemade tomato sauce I was skeptical to say the least - I thought we would be ordering pizza for dinner instead.

Well, he totally proved me wrong! My hat goes off to you, my wonderful husband, who has now proven that I don't have to be the only one making dinner from now on ; ) Just kidding, he is a big help in the kitchen and has apparently learned a thing or two from yours truly. My only complaint was that he didn't follow a recipe/write anything down so I have no idea how he made it. All I know is it involved a lot of tomatoes, a pound of ground beef/turkey, and a bunch of garlic. So I apologize that I cannot type up this recipe for you guys. But, next time I will keep better track of what he is doing in the kitchen, he might just surprise me again!

We ate dinner that night and after cleaning up, realized that there was a huge pot of sauce left over. We decided to freeze it for a rainy day. So H got out our jars and started filling them. He was so proud of his masterpiece that he didn't want to waste a drop so he filled these jars up to the brim. Now, I mentioned to him to NOT do that because the liquid needed room to expand when it freezes (I would say it's the scientist in me that thinks of these things, but he is a scientist too so he really should have known better). Did he listen? Nope. 

A few days later I opened the freezer to find this:

Yup, three jars of sauce whose tops burst in the freezer leaving sauce all over the top shelf. Awesome. At least it doesn't look like the jars cracked, they just dribbled from the top so hopefully it is still salvageable. Just when I was about to relinquish dinner duties to my husband he goes and does this. I guess all is now right with the world, I am still Queen of the Kitchen and he is still my Handyman Extraordinaire : )

Regardless of how the tomato sauce turns out we still had TONS of tomatoes (Roma, Heirloom, Grape, Cherry, Beefsteak) that needed to be used. So I tried my hand at canning today. I totally cheated and used a pre-made salsa packet from Ball. It is still boiling so fingers crossed it turns out ok.

I also made this delicious Heirloom tomato bloody mary mix. Yea, it's a good one! I'll have to post that recipe later on though since this post is getting a bit long as it is. I plan to freeze one of the jars to take with us when we go camping next weekend. The weather looks great as of now, but even if it rains, at least we will have some delish cocktails!

Notice the headspace in the jar,... yea, that's the one for freezing ; )

CSA 2014

So I realized today that I never mentioned our CSA share this year (you can find last year's posts here and here). I don't know how it slipped my mind considering I go every week and have been going since May! Anyway, this year there have been some ups and downs with the farm we belong to. Some produce has been great. Like the strawberries in the Spring, they were amazing. We easily picked 10 quarts of berries over the course of only a few weeks. So much so that I made berry muffins (protein ones that really didn't turn out all that great) and a strawberry pie that was delicious! I haven't posted about that though because the photos are on my camera - cue sad face.

Some produce has taken a while to come around like the tomatoes. This is our first week of getting more than a pound or two of tomatoes. I think this summer has been cooler than normal (trust me I'm not complaining) which is making the produce peek later in the season. I could be totally off base here but that's the only thing I can think of that would have pushed the "big" produce weeks back a month. I mean it is September, right? So why did we get almost 10 lbs of tomatoes this week and virtually none in August?

So here is what our share looked like this week (sorry for the subpar iphone photo):

- 1 large watermelon

- 3 bell peppers

- 1 head garlic

- 4 hot peppers

- 1 large yellow squash

- 2 zucchini

- 1 eggplant

- 1 bunch of celery

- 2 quarts of stewing/Roma tomatoes

- 1 quart of raspberries

- 1 pint green beans

- 1/2 pint yellow cherry tomatoes

- 1/2 pint tomatillos

- 1 1/2 pints red grape tomatoes

- 1 head of lettuce

- 3 lbs heirloom tomatoes

- 5 lbs (yup 5!) beef steak tomatoes

Plus 60 stems of wild flowers and 6 sunflowers. Needless to say, it was a great week to be a CSA member! Now I just have to figure out what to do with all those tomatoes. Any suggestions?

JP