a gift

My mother in law's Christmas gift.

She likes when I make her jewelry:)

designing cards.....

I've been designing my own cards for the past year because its cheaper than having walmart, snapfish or shutterfly design them for you......

Christmas photo cards are running anywhere from 29 cents to $1 each....

....but if I design it myself and order the 4x6 prints, i get them for 9 cents.

Here's the baby annoucement i did.......

Maybe this will inspire you to try some on your own =^D

How do you do it? kind of just piece everything together like a puzzle. cropping, pasting, adding in clipart (how ever your creative juices flow) and then crop it to a 4x6 standard print

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thanksgiving leftovers? - recipe

TURKEY CORN CHOWDER

So I had lots of left overs for thanksgiving and I saved the tukey carcas so I could make a broth later on. Thought I would give you this recipe that was delicious...and what's great is you can add or take away what you want with any left overs you have =^D

I rarely follow a recipe, so bear with me as I try to give instructions. I have very few meals that turn out the same every time. None-the-less....very delizioso!

First I made my broth. Are turkey was pretty large (20 lbs.) so it made a lot of brothe so you may not use all the broth you make in your soup. You can freeze it or make a double batch of soup and freeze that. I put in a large stove top pan and fill it until the carcas is swimming in it half way up. I also add some spices. I have a favorite mix that I get from the Rochester Public Market with all kinds of herbs....rosmary, thyme, sage, basil, lavender and marjaram. Love it! And I add sea salt and pepper as well. I'll bring it to a boil and leave it on a low simmer for a a few hours (mine was 3 hours)....until its smelling the house up good. :)


We had a ton of corn left over from thanksgiving so this is why i decided on corn chowder (that...and I love it!) Once the broth is done you can strain the broth to seperate your parts and your juice. While I make the soup I let the carcas cool so I can take remaining meat on it and shredd it into the soup.

Now to get a good base you are gonna do the same portion of milk that you have in turkey broth. See what I mean when this could make a huge portion....so you may want to freeze some of your broth. You can use any milk you choose....just depends on the creamier taste you want. I used whole milk.

I opted to make my soup and froze half so my portions with everything were large. This is where you are gonna need to go with your senses (taste, smell and overall look) to see if your soup is doing well. I added two cups of whole wheat flour to mine....but I would just start off with one if you are doing this for the first time. The flour thickens it quite a bit after simmering.

Here's what I added to my soup (remember my portions are doubled so you may need to cut yours in half):

chopped carrots (4)
chopped onion (2)
chopped celery (4)
16 oz. of shredded cheddar cheese
granulated garilc - lots! :-) (only cuz I love garlic)
salt and pepper to taste
cumin to taste (cuz I didn't measure - my guess would be 2 tablespoons)
lots of leftover corn
leftover turkey....shredded
and i didn't do this but if you have any left over mashed potatoes that would be yum as well!

and you can add any other leftovers you want.

I left this on low to medium heat for a couple hours, with occasional stirring so it wouldn't burn at the bottom. If you do it in a crock pot (which would def be a smaller portion), then you wouldn't have to stirr as often.

Enjoy! the chowder turn out deluctable and everyone has been enjoying as a great winter dish. Let me know if you do it and how it turns out!