A Valentine's Day Salad full of Heart

This Valentine's day my husband and I had our traditional home cooked meal of Chicken Parmesan.  It's his favorite meal but I don't make it too often. I still haven't found a recipe that I like enough to keep in our standard rotation of meals.

I did a bit of research to see what new recipe I could try this year and I found the Hungry Happenings blog.  Beth has some great recipes but I especially like how she creates themed meals. She won me over with her heart shaped Chicken Parmesan recipe but her Salad with Tomato Hearts completely made the meal!  You can see how our Valentine's Salad inspired by Hungry Happenings turned out this year.  The instructions how to create the hearts are so simple I might be adding grape tomato hearts to all of our salads through out the year.

The best part was the look on my husband's face when he saw the tomato hearts.  It was the icing on the cake... or the tomato heart on the salad ;)

Seasonal Decorating: Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day isn't a very big holiday for my husband and I. We skip out on all the busy commercial stuff like restaurants, chocolates, and flowers. Usually we stay in, cook a dinner together and then snuggle on the couch while we watch a DVD. But that doesn't stop me from decorating the house! I started the Valentine's decorations last year with some wooden words and wreathes and kept the pillow cases very basic. This year JoAnn's had a gorgeous Antique Valentines fabric that fit perfectly with my style and the decorations we had already. I ended up loving the fabric so much I designed a Valentine's Quilt that I'm going to try to complete this month.

I've also made matching his and hers aprons with the remaining fabric for us to wear as we cook our annual Valentine's Day dinner together. Mine is a skirted apron in the Antique Valentines fabric and my husband has a BBQ apron in the coordinating plaid.

The couch covered with Valentines Pillow Cases.

Our LOVE jars filled with silk roses.

The original LOVE wooden words decorate the mantle.

Even the bathroom was decorated with a tissue box cover.

The table decorated with reversible placemats. I love the coordinating plaid.

This is the end of the Seasonal Decorating series.  In 2012 we plan to blog about all of the quilts we have made in the past or projects we are currently working on.  The first of which should be the Valentine's Quilt with the Antique Valentines fabric and coordinating plaid.

2011 Christmas Celebrations

Our Christmas Celebrations are always jam packed with activities, family and food!  This year was no different.

Christmas Eve Afternoon
We spent the afternoon at my grandparent's for lunch and games.  Grammy has the most beautiful china and always gets to set a lovely table.  She also researches great games, puzzles, and trivia for us to play to bring back great childhood memories, learn more about the history of Christmas or just have fun. She served her famous Swedish Meatballs that take forever to cook and she hates them for months after serving them but they always are a huge hit with everyone!

Grammy's beautifully set table

Christmas Eve Night
We spent the evening after church at my parent's house.  We enjoyed playing BuzzWord and snacking on a wonderful Bass spread of Christmas jello, clam dip, chips and dip, cheese and crackers.  After the game we opened our yearly Christmas Pajamas and Ornaments.

Jeanine's famous Christmas Jello

Christmas Day
The morning each family spent at their individual homes unwrapping presents.  The afternoon and evening were spent at my house for games and dinner.

Every Christmas Dinner I like to try a different recipe but always with lamb.  This year was Herb Crusted Rack of Lamb with a Cabernet sauce served with Roasted Carrots, Mushrooms and Brussel Sprouts and Mashed Potatoes.  My sister and I artistically plated each serving and provided extras family style for people to have seconds.  After two years of rack of lamb its been decided we will try a different cut of lamb next year to spend less time getting to the meat ;)  I still think two chops look the best and so elegant on a plate.

Table set for Christmas Dinner

For our wedding we received a large trifle bowl as a present but it cracked in shipment. I returned it and decided to get 12 individual trifle bowls from Pier 1 instead.  I love them for entertaining.  I wanted to make a family favorite, Raspberry Trifle, but my husband doesn't like fruit deserts. He wanted chocolate.  So I ended up making half Raspberry and half Chocolate.  Not only do the deserts look delicious, they are much easier to make then they look and with Sugar Free or Fat Free options can be a nice lighter desert.

Raspberry Trifle and alternative Chocolate Trifle

The best part of hosting a party is seeing all the empty plates and licked clean bowls of desert.  We all enjoyed a round of Disney Apples to Apples, a Christmas present opened that morning, while moaning at how wonderful the meal and the entire day was.

Clean bowls and fun games!

2011 Christmas Ornaments

Another tradition our family celebrates each Christmas Eve is opening our grandmother, Baba's, yearly ornaments.  Each year she spends most of the holiday shopping seasons hunting for the perfect ornament to portray a special moment of the year or special significance.

This year's biggest hit was the Hallmark 2011 Peanuts Wireless musical boxes.  They each have 2 songs that play and can link together wirelessly to compliment each other's songs.  Check out the video to see how neat they are.



Baba confessed she held off wrapping them till the morning of Christmas eve because she was having too much fun playing with them herself!  The family liked the 3 she gave to us (1 for my dad, 1 for my sister, and 1 for her boyfriend) but they might never be all in the same place again so Baba is going out after Christmas to buy sets for each household.

Christmas Eve Pajamas

One of our biggest holiday traditions was started by my mother, Jeanine, in 1982.  She made me my first Christmas Eve pajamas for my first Christmas.  Since then she's been making the family PJs every Christmas. 

At our family gathering Christmas Eve we open our Christmas PJs. We always know we'll get them but we never know what kind of flannel fabric mom picked out for all of us 4 kids and my dad.  Usually she tries to choose holiday themed fabric, like snowflakes, or something of interest to us, like trains, butterflies, or camouflage. Children and adults get flannel PJ pants with matching shirts while babies get footed PJs.

As our family grew up, kids moved out, went to college, got married. and started their own families.  In 2008, we were lucky enough to all be home for the holidays and took this Christmas Eve family portrait in our pajamas.  This year mom started to add more PJs to her annual to-do list.  This year she has made 10 for her husband, 4 children, 3 in-laws, and 2 grandchildren.

In 2009, I realized we all got Christmas Eve pajamas except my mother.  She had worked so hard all those years making our pajamas but she never made one for herself.  That didn't feel right to me so I started making her Christmas Eve pajamas.  She preferred an old Simplicity nightgown pattern over the PJ pants (you can see the style in the family portrait).  The first year I made her 2 Christmas themed nightgowns to make up for so many Christmas Eves that she went without.  I spent a few hours this morning making her 2011 nightgown. My favorite part is embellishing it with lace, ruffles, ribbon and rick-rack.  She doesn't usually go beyond the average for herself so I really like making her something super pretty for her Christmas Eve pajamas.

Christmas Present Wrapping

The Christmas season doesn't officially start for us until my little sister and I have our traditional Starbucks and Gift Wrap Wonderland adventure. Every year we visit Metro Point in South Coast Plaza, grab a coffee or cider and walk around Container Store picking out wrapping paper. 

I decorate all generic gifts, that would go under our tree, with more classical paper accented with red, green and gold.  I love Container Store's crinkled gold paper ribbon, it adds so much elegance to packages.  I also use craft accent tags in Victorian designs.

Other gifts we wrap in person-specific paper. My little sister always gets to pick out her own, usually something pink and glittery.  Then there is fun paper for my 5 nephews.  This year I was super lucky to find the perfect Christmas Train wrapping paper for my Foamer dad at Container Store.

Cut items from expensive paper and
use to decorate other packages.

Use tulle, available in wedding craft aisle, as ribbon.
Tie a bow, then cut the loops and tails to make a snow ball.
Cut items from paper and attach to marking tag to make matching tags.

It might be surprising but Ikea is another great place for wrapping paper.  I get their red and brown paper -- almost 9 yards for just $1!  The paper is really good for combo presents to complement the more expensive paper.  Also, the brown paper is perfect for making your own sewing patterns.

Seasonal Decorating: Christmas!

Christmas is my favorite holiday!  I love the warm fuzzy feeling you get when its cold out, you're all bundled up, holding hands with your loved ones while you hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. Decorating the house as we grew up was so much fun; turning the house into a winter wonderland!

While this is the last post of our Seasonal Decorating blog series, the decorations were actually the first I made to celebrate our Christmas two months after I got married.  I fell in love with Debbie Mum's 2010 Ornament fabric and used it as the basis for all our Christmas items.

As you've seen in our other Seasonal Decorations Love always plays a big role, so it had to be a big part of Christmas time too! Santa Claus has never been a big part of my family Christmas so choosing the Peace, Love, Joy theme was perfect for us.  For Peace I used a dove icon, for Love a heart, and for Joy a star.

Mantle decorated with fabric trees, candles and hanging stockings.

One of three handmade ornaments, the peace dove.

Christmas pillowcases with Peace, Love and Joy and Ornament fabric.

Our Love jars, pine cones, and cream and gold candles.

In-Law's Thanksgiving Left Overs Spinach Salad

I'm really particular about left overs.  There are only a few things I like left over, some of them are Thanksgiving goodies like mashed potatoes, stuffing and pearled onions. But once they are gone I'm usually left with lots of turkey and you can only have sandwiches so many times.

Thankfully my mother-in-law shared a new salad that is perfect for Thanksgiving left overs. It looks and tastes vibrant and fresh, completely opposite of usual beige left overs! 

INGREDIENTS

Spinach
Turkey or Chicken meat, cubed or flaked
Cranberry sauce (Trader Joe's Cranberry Orange Relish is delicious!)
White Stilton cheese with Cranberries
Pepitas (Pumpkin Seeds) or Candied Pecans
Balsamic Vinaigrette

What's your favorite way to have Thanksgiving left overs?

Thanksgiving 2011 at the Basses

Jeanine's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. She's 'called' it and gets to host it each year.  This year we spent it together with our family including my in-laws and my grandparents. It was one of our smaller Thanksgivings with 8 people.  In the past, when family and kids were close, we would have up to 20!

Jeanine, the chef, with the table set, waiting for food to cook!

We have a lot of traditions revolving around Thanksgiving.  My mother did her first Thanksgiving when she was 16. I followed her tradition, doing my first Thanksgiving when I was 17.  Jeanine has been serving the same items at Thanksgiving every year since she was 16... except the 1 year when I did my Thanksgiving. Just like everything we do, she follows every recipe every year and I mix everything up to try something new.  It's what makes us work well together.

The Menu
Turkey with Stuffing and Giblet Gravy
Green Bean Casserole
Mashed Potatoes
Pearled Onions in Cream
Creamed Corn
Acorn Squash (instead of the customary Yams)
Orange Jello Salad with Pineapple and Mandarin Oranges
Cranberry Sauce
Black and Green Olives
Pumpkin Pie (made from actual whole pumpkins!)
Dutch Apple Pie (made by Grammy)
Pecan Pie (Jenn's favorite!)
Cherry Pie

Traditions
From the time I've been little,Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, all us kids would sit in front of the tv, watch classic Thanksgiving shows like "Mouse on the Mayflower" and "It's Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown!" and cut loaves of white bread into little squares for the stuffing. Mom makes the best stuffing from scratch!  This year was the first year Jeanine didn't have any kids at home to cut the bread so we introduced my in-laws to this great tradition.  The bread stays out over night to harden up like croutons before they get turned into yummy stuffing and in the turkey.

Jeanine cooks the turkey in a Reynolds Oven Bag.  Its the best way! No basting needed, all the juices get collected for the gravy and clean up is a super snap.

Turkey out of the oven ready to be put on the platter.

I learned a trick, used so much that I think its a tradition, to best host a meal.  My mom does it every year. You set the table or buffet area and write the names of dishes on scrap paper on the serving dish.  This helps you make sure you have a place for everything, the right serving utensils, trivets, etc.  The first time my husband saw me do it on my own he laughed.  But to be honest, this is definitely one thing where I don't mind 'turning into my mother' ;)

Jeanine's favorite side dish, Creamed Corn.

As always, we finish Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's famous pies.  Its too hard to choose a favorite so we usually all have a piece of each!

Origami Crane Earrings and Kimono Costumes

When we were little my littlest sister and I would watch a lot of anime. Not Pokemon, the real stuff, like Tenchi and all of Misaki's films like Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle. We would wear a kimono my mother made us, play with our stuffed cabbits, and make origami cranes. One year for Christmas I imported a real Japanese kimono with kendo training pants, socks, and accessories.

Origami Crane Earrings
Eventually as we got older we made the cranes smaller, covered them with clear nail polish, and turned them into the origami crane earrings that we have available for purchase in our shop.

Kimono Costumes
My mother sewed the kimonos using the Simplicity 5839 pattern. It includes full length and tunic kimono with obi (belt wrap) and ties. She made the kimono in big vibrant patterns with contrasting solid obi and ties. She made lots of different obi and ties so we could mix and match with different kimono.


Like what you see?
You can use this information to create your own costume or contact us to find out how to custom order your own Creative Tradition costume.

Oktoberfest Show Leads to Dirndl Barbie Doll Dress

We've been busy designing and sewing these past few months for our first event of the season: Oktoberfest at the Anaheim Phoenix Club. Here are a few pictures from the event.

German Oktoberfest Dirndl Barbie dress
One of our customers suggested we should make German dirndl dresses for Barbies, after all we were at an Oktoberfest. I started sketching at the event and this past weekend we made a prototype followed by our first ready-for-sale Red and Black Dirndl dress modeled after the customer's own dirndl dance costume.

Visit us at the next Anaheim Phoenix Club Oktoberfest events:
Sunday, October 16th, 2011 11am-6pm
Sunday, October 30th, 2011 11am-6pm

Seasonal Decorating: Springtime

Decorating for holidays has always been a big tradition in our family. On the first day of every month my mother would have us all help take down the past month's decorations and put up the next month's.  Now I'm 'nesting' with my husband and creating our own holiday decorations.  We got married in October so I started decorating for my favorite holiday, Christmas. You can see a few pictures of the decorations in our Facebook photo album. I also kinda decorated for Valentines but didn't take any pictures because we had decided to upgrade our TV which lead to us getting a new couch, a new TV stand, a new coffee table and a new clock. It was a lot of work but we've finally finished rearranging our living room! Then it was my turn to decorate!

Springtime Decorations

The decorations all started with a remnant from Joann's. I love remnants!  They are small pieces of fabric, usually a yard or less at the end of a bolt and are 50% off!  We get a lot of remnants because most of our projects like our historic Barbie dresses don't need a lot of fabric.  The remnant was beautiful, but it was only 18" and I needed 18.5" inches to make an 18" pillow cover. So my mom, Jeanine, and I spent 15 minutes hunting for the bolt or roll of this beautiful modern cream, mustard, teal, green and brown leaf fabric that was perfect for my room.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find it anywhere.

April 2011 Craft Day: Pysanky Ukrainian Easter Eggs

My mother and I named our handmade gift company Creative Tradition because we have such a rich family history of making unique handmade items.  One of the biggest creative traditions we have is Pysanky or Ukrainian Easter Eggs. At this month's craft day we rediscovered our passion for them and shared the tradition with some friends and family.

What is Pysanky?
Pysanky are Ukrainian Easter Eggs, decorated using beeswax and dyes that are applied in layers. Melted wax is applied to the eggshell. This hot beeswax will harden almost instantly. The beeswax covers and seals the shell where the wax has been applied. A special tool called a kistka is needed to heat and apply the beeswax.

Pysanky in different states of completion

First the beeswax is applied to the egg's white shell. The beeswax seals the white color underneath it. Next you place the egg into a light color, usually yellow.  You remove the egg, dry off excess dye, then apply beeswax to what you want to remain yellow. You continue with more colors, going light to dark.