alex fritz

alex as well as melina have both been crowned continental champions for boulders.
nice job guys.

Happy Thanksgiving and a Recipe

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it and a wonderful weekend for the rest of you. I'm doin' the "Happy Dance" because all of my cooking responsibilities are done and it's not even breakfast time! WooHoo!

Thought I'd share the recipe for Butternut Squash Lasagna that has become a Thanksgiving tradition for us.

3 lbs. butternut squash, quartered, seeded, peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes (about 9 1/2 cups)
Trust me, if you can find it already cut up at Costco like I do, this goes a whole lot quicker!

3 T vegetable oil

4 cups whole milk

2 T dried rosemary, crumbled

1 T minced garlic

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter

1/4 C all-purpose flour

Nine 7 x 3 1/2" sheets of no boil lasagna noodles (I use Barilla because they're nice and flat)

1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmesan (about 5 oz)

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 450 and oil 2 large shallow baking pans.

In a large bowl toss squash with oil until well coated and spread in one layer among the pans. Roast squash 10 minutes, then season with salt. Stir squash and roast 10 minutes more, or until tender and beginning to turn golden.

While squash is roasting, in a saucepan bring milk with rosemary to a simmer. Cook milk mixture over low heat 10 minutes and pour through a sieve into a large heatproof 1-qt. pitcher or measuring cup.

In a large heavy saucepan cook garlic in butter over moderately low heat, stirring until softened. Stir in flour and cook the roux, stirring, 3 minutes. Remove pan from heat and add milk in a stream, whisking until smooth. Simmer sauce, whisking occasionally, 10 minutes, or until thickened. Stir in squash and salt and pepper (white if you have it to avoid the black specks if that bothers you) to taste. (I smoosh a bit of the squash into the sauce but leave plenty of chunkiness too.) Sauce may be made 3 days ahead and chilled, it's surface covered with plastic wrap.

Reduce heat to 375 (or preheat if you've made sauce ahead) and butter a 13x9x2 " baking dish.

Pour 1 cup of sauce (it will not cover the bottom completely) and cover with 3 lasagna sheets, making sure they don't touch. Spread half the remaining sauce over the pasta and sprinkle with 1/2 cup Parmesan. Make one more layer in same manner with 3 sheets, remaining sauce and 1/2 cup Parmesan and top with remaining 3 lasagna sheets.

In a bowl with an electric mixer beat cream with salt until it holds soft peaks and spread evenly over lasagna, making sure pasta is completely covered. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup (or more like I do) over cream. Cover dish tightly with foil, tenting slightly to prevent foil from touching cream and bake in middle of oven 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake lasagna 10 minutes more, or until bubbling and golden. Let stand at least 5 minutes before cutting.

Since I've been doing this for awhile, I thought I'd give you my observations and tricks. First of all, no matter how you do it, it takes longer than it says to bake. I've always found that the top layer of lasagna sheets tend to curl up and you get some hard ends sticking up. To avoid this, you can either snap off the corners of the outer noodles before smoothing on the whipped cream, or do like I do and assemble it in advance (minus the whipped cream layer) and cover and refrigerate it overnight. Remove it from the fridge well in advance of baking (or again it will add that much more to the baking time), and let it come to room temperature, then apply the whipped cream layer and bake as directed. I've found the over night thing helps the noodles soften a little before baking and anything I can do in advance, I'm all over it! If the top layer curls, you can either turn them over, or push them down a bit before adding the top layer of cream. (I still bake it longer to get a nice brown crust on top. YUM!)

This is great for a dinner party because of the whole make ahead thing. The recipe says it serves 6 as a main course but it's pretty darn rich. I usually serve it as a side dish. Particularly yumbo with pork, or in the case of Thanksgiving, roast turkey.

Again I have to say thank you to all of my cyber friends for the love and support you give me on a daily basis. I am truly thankful to share this day with you and wish you a wonderful holiday.

Now what do I do? Craft maybe? Who knows, I may just be back with a project. We'll see. xxD

melina in ecuador

here is the world famous melina costanza warming up for her final round of the bouldering portion at the continental championships in ibarra ecuador. go get em.
today alex fritz placed first in the bouldering portion. he is continental champion.
way to go guy.

Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop Day 2

WooHoo! It's Day 2 of the Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop. Hope you are enjoying all of the fabulous projects using products from Chomas Creations mini gel pen and marker holders and the fab embossing tip, iCopic and SP&Company Stamp line and be sure to comment on each and every post to increase your chances of winning the prizes along the way. If you've arrived from Amber's Blog you're on the right track. If not, you might was to start at the beginning to hear about the special giveaway on Amy's Blog and the fabulous Black Friday prices on all of her wonderful merchandise. Hurry though, the prices are only good through 11:59 pm EST tonight!

For my project today I've created custom gift wrap using the mini gel pen holder and Cricut Design Studio. I have to admit, I really had no idea the time it would actually take to fill a 12x12 page using the words Merry Christmas (from Plantin Schoolbook roly poly font) but once I got started, I was determined to finish.

I typed each word separately because in the end, I wanted Merry in one color and Christmas in another. That required 3 full pages in Design Studio and tons of cutting and pasting. This first shot from Design Studio is the entire 12x12 mat filled with Merry Christmas.

Then, in order to have Merry in Red, and Christmas in green, I had to cut and paste all of the Merrys onto one page and the Christmas' to another. I did hide the contours of the letters that were off the margins when I finally began drawing to make sure the glue on the mat didn't gum up my pens. First I loaded the mini gel pen with the red and clicked "cut" to draw the Merry page. Then removed the holder and changed the pen to green (very carefully so as not to drop it on my paper) and drew again on the Christmas page. I really thought the paper came out cool, but did not anticipate how long it would actually take to do the full page. Let's just say you might plan to eat breakfast, exercise, shower, do your hair, etc. instead of just waiting around for the Cricut because I forgot that Design Studio has a mind of it's own when it comes to speed. It takes it's own sweet time. Not necessarily practical, but if the wrap were customized with a person's name? Pretty darn cool.

For the tag I used the Embossing tip and 10 Seconds Studio metal. I taped the red side down on the embossing mat and embossed the jingle bell from the Christmas Solutions cartridge. Then I sanded the embossing to show the silver underneath and cut the bell out with my scissors. I used the blackout version of the same cut (because the shadow cut out the bottom of the bell) and sized it larger for the back of the tag.

Then I used the Mini gel pens and holder to write the To: and From: on the back. (Again 3 mats in Design Studio or your gypsy). One for cutting, and one for each word because I wanted one red and one green.) The embossed metal easily attaches to card stock with Scor-tape. Please scroll down to Day one if you're interested in a link to a tutorial about using the gel pens (Mine is actually with Cricut markers, but they work the same way) And also the entire list of hoppers in case you get lost. Rough day today, and I'm honestly too tired to type it all in and link it again, but if you're following the hop, your next stop is iCopic. Thanks so much for visiting and for your sweet comments. Happy Thanksgiving to you ALL! xxD

an american classic

FROM MY HEART

From Millan.Net

Do not eat too much, do not shop too much but 

LOVE and LAUGH 

a lot.

Tiddly Inks Christmas Card Challenge

This is my second post of the day, so if you're looking for the

Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop, please scroll down.

This week at Tiddy Inks we've got the Christmas spirit so we're kicking off the season with a Christmas card challenge. I can't believe how the time flies. My card is a diamond fold and you can find a video HERE. There are so many fabulous Winter/Holiday stamps at the Tiddly Inks Store that I had a hard time choosing. I finally decided on the adorable Bah-Huggabugs. I printed them off 3 times so I could pop one of the bugs and paper piece the tree. they are colored with Copics, fussy cut and mounted on a Labels One Nestie. On each side there are presents from the Present Time set. I printed the digital stamp line art version of the stack so I could color them to match. I just cut the stack apart and popped the bottom present to go on either side. The sentiment, little chipboard peppermints and litte round poinsettia next to the tree are K&Co stickers.

I love how this card fold stands up and makes a little scene.

And the whole shebang folds up (pretty) flat for mailing too. With all of the dimension and those little Humbuggers it still fits in a 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 envie. Wanna see some more fabulous Christmas inspiration? The rest of the Tiddly Inkers have loads, so drop by the Tiddly Inks Challenge Blog and don't forget to play along You will have 2 weeks for this challenge so you can enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with your friends and family.