With the holidays just round the corner, we’ve put together some fun study break activities that can brighten your spirits and decorate your room too!  With an idea from crafts.kaboose.com, we’ve made a paper plate Santa.  It’s simple and fun and puts you in the spirit of the holidays.

Photo by http://crafts.kaboose.com/

Here’s what you’ll need:

Miniature paper plate (approx 7-inch diameter)

Flesh-colored crayon (we used peach)

White & red construction paper

Pink marker

Small scrap of flesh-colored felt (we used peach) or a button

Black fine tip marker

Scissors

White craft glue

18-20 cotton balls

Here’s how to make it:

Turn paper plate upside down.

Color center circle of the plate with flesh-colored crayon.

Cut a simple cone shaped Santa hat from the red construction paper. Make sure the base of the hat is wide enough to cover the width of the plate. Glue hat in place, covering about an inch of the flesh-colored center circle.

Cut a hat brim from the white construction paper, you can round the corners if you like. Glue over the bottom strip of the red hat.

Draw two pink circles on each side of the center of the peach circle for Santa’s rosey cheeks.

Cut a small half moon from the flesh-colored felt, about ¾” wide, for the nose and glue to the center of the flesh-colored circle between the two pink cheek circles.

Pipe white glue around the sides and bottom of the plate and press the cotton balls onto the glue to form the beard. Start at the white brim, work around and end at the other end of the white brim.

Add a couple of drops of glue to the tip of the hat and add a cotton ball.

Use a black marker to add a smile and eyes.

Tips:

If you prefer, you can glue wiggle eyes on your Santa.

To hang, tape a piece of looped yarn to the back of the Santa.

Buy construction paper in large value packs from discount department stores to have on hand for impromptu projects!

Sometimes Thanksgiving is forgotten, but don’t fret! We have not forgotten about Thanksgiving!! Forget the oven and the dressing, we’ve got a turkey that won’t make your kitchen full of smoke.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 small straw hat

2. red, orange & yellow feathers

3. google eyes

4. black yarn

5. orange foam

6. hot glue

Here’s how to put it together!

1. hot glue feathers in semi-circle around the top of the hat

2. glue eyes on front of hat

3. cut triangle out of foam and glue on front under eyes

4. glue black string at bottom of hat for feet

5. glue black string at top of the hat in small loop to hang on the wall

ENJOY!! 

Best of luck with your turkey!

Some days, there’s nothing better than spending hours over stove and pan, baking delish goodies for all the loved ones in your life.

And then some days you’re just feeling a little less inspired.

This tasty apple recipe is great for when you’re just not feeling the baking motivation. It’s one of my classic go-tos. Easy, quick, and made of ingredients most college students have on hand. It’s also healthy (apple a day…) and fantastically affordable.

Microwave baked apples:

• Ingredients:
  1 apple
  1 tsp butter
  1 tsp brown sugar
  1/2 tsp cinnamon
  Optional: raisins, oats, dried fruit, nutmeg
• Core the apple (so cut out the center, making a bit of a bowl by removing the seeds and stem)
• Mix butter, sugar, cinnamon, and optional ingredients together. Put inside apple where core used to be
• Put on plate. Microwave for 2 1/2 minutes or until apple is soft
• Eat and enjoy.

Now how simple is that?

In honor of the 2008 Presidential Election, I have found a cute “voting booth” that you can display in your office, home, car, or where ever your little heart desires.

This is a very simple craft, but lots of fun! It puts you in the spirit with American Pride and reminds people to get out to the polls and VOTE!

You will need:

1 small box (Wheat Thin size box or smaller)

Glue

Tape

Blue and White construction paper

Red, Silver & Blue markers

Red fabric

A stick

Here is how you put the booth together:

1. Cover box with blue construction paper.
2. Make United States flag (or state flag of your choosing) and glue on front of box.
3. Make “Vote Here!” or “Voting Booth” sign with white construction paper and glue on front of box.
4. Cut small square of red fabric (size will vary depending on the size of your box).
5. Glue fabric onto box so that the bottom of the fabric ends with the bottom of the box.
6. Glue stick on top of fabric to cover top edge.
7. Display with PRIDE!!

Tags: Add new tag, crafts, election, voting booth

I’m new at this whole blogging thing. And today, the blog got the best of me.

I just typed out a glorious, witty, long ol’ hunk-of-words when the blog decided to go belly up and reboot. I lost everything.

So here’s the shortened version: nice outside, baking from Anna’s family cookbook (thanks Grandma!), snickerdoodles = delish and easy in a getting-bare kitchen.

Cream of Tarter turns out to be some sort of weird acid made through combining all sorts of chemicals… or… such. I don’t really understand the process (cheers to majoring in journalism!) but google it if you’re feelin frisky.

Recipe:

• Bake at 425 for 6-8 minutes
• Ingredients:
  1 C shortening
  1 1/2 C Sugar
  2 eggs
  3 C flour
  2 tsp cream of tarter
  1 tsp baking soda
  1/2 tsp salt
  2 tbsp sugar
  2 tbsp cinnamon
  dash of pumpkin spice (optional, but makes it seasonal!)
• Cream shortening and sugar
• Add eggs
• Sift flour, cream of tarter, baking soda, and salt; add to liquid mixture
• Roll in small balls, coat with mixture of sugar/cinnamon
• Press crisscross marks with fork

Here are all the ingredients. See that Crisco? It still is a bit bizarre to me to use shortening instead of butter. I wonder what the main difference is…

Tags: cookies

Here’s a safe way to light up your dorm room! This milk container pumpkin craft is perfect for fall and Halloween. Decorate without worrying about fire code violations.

What you’ll need:

Empty plastic gallon milk container with lid

Pen or pencil

1 bottle orange acrylic enamel or gloss paint

Sponge brush applicator

Black marker

How to make it:

Lightly draw a jack-o’-lantern face on the front of the milk container.

Paint the container with three coats of orange paint. Allow it to dry between coats.

Draw eyes and mouth on pumpkin

Before I even launch into the recipe bit, I’ve got a guilty confession to make: I hate am awful at make photojournalism professors weep when I try to take pictures. Really. I took a class where we showed the pictures on a big screen. The prof once gasped ‘oh no’ when he saw mine. There might have even been tears glistening in his eyes… (okay, exaggerating the last part, but you should have seen his face-o’-horror!) My lack of natural talent is coming out in this blog, by which I mean I’ve been really reluctant to photograph the goodies I make. It’s so much work! To.. click… the camera button. Then click it again. And requires so much skill of a single push.

Anyways, I promise to get original pictures up soon. For now, enjoy the beautifully professional photos borrowed from kind recipes.

Speaking of recipes… This week I made biscotti, intending to ship some off to Italy and California in various care packages. After pursuing countless recipes (who knew pistachio was such a popular flavor?!) I settled on chocolate peanut butter biscotti. Like reeses, only in a hard dried cookie meant for dunking.

The batter, when I first mixed it together, looked a lot like regular cookie dough. It was in the baking that things got a bit wild. First off, I had to divide the batter into three long skinny logs that stretched across two baking sheets. These cooked for a good thirty minutes, flipped front-to-back top-to-bottom on my two-rack oven in between.

The bottom one burnt a bit, but that didn’t deter me. I tugged out my log-scotti, pulled the long, flat, hard cookie type thing onto a cutting board, and sawed them into biscotti-esque shapes. The recipe recommends cooking the biscotti again, cut side down, for eight minutes, flipping, and repeating. In theory, it’s a great idea. In practice, it results in a lot of biscotti flopping around the baking pan, falling off the side of the cookie sheets, and tipping domino-style onto one another. I definitely struggled to keep those lil guys on their cut side. Perhaps if I had sawed my biscotti thicker…

I ended up with around thirty solidly good biscotti: dry, crunchy, with noticeable chocolate and nut chunks with just a hint of peanut butter. The other twenty were pretty burnt. When I was reading up on the recipe, I discovered (belatedly) that this amount of batter is best for a super-large oven or a two-oven kitchen, since you really do want your biscotti to be all on the same rack, all the time.

The unburnt biscotti were tucked into pumpkin-decorated plastic bags (found at Target for two dollars!) and shipped to foreign lands. All in all, this recipe was good ‘n tasty, but a lot more work than I expected. It takes a while too… so if you can, I would just stick with regular cookies.

Try it. Tell me what you think! You can find the recipe at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/peanut-butter-and-chocolate-biscotti-recipe/index.html

Tags: biscotti, chocolate, peanut butter, recipes

Hello, and welcome to the Creighton Cooking ‘n Crafts Corner! We’re mixing things up here at the Creightonian. Each week, Erin Korpiel and I will write about something seasonal, tasty, and sometimes successful. You can find the regular updates online.

For our first edition, I tried out two fall-related recipes: pumpkin bars and beet (yes, as in the vegetable) brownies. Guess which one turned out better…

The bars were quick and easy. My roommate found the recipe from MarthaStewart.com, and we followed it pretty much exactly. Canned pumpkin lent extra moistness and just the right amount of fall-related goodness to the bars. The entire Creightonian staff gave these little guys their vote of approval. We even made them as mini-muffins, which turned out slightly denser but still delicious.

As for the beet brownies, just say no. Self magazine said the beets would add depth and intensity to the softer flavor of the chocolate. They lied. In addition to a rather unpleasant taste, the baking process was difficult, requiring extensive whipping of egg whites and gentle folding of sifted chocolate powder. I suppose if you are a dare-devil, determined to create goodness out of evil—or if you have no tongue—then go ahead and try to bake these. On the bright side, this recipe gave me an excuse to swing down to the farmer’s market and fight with middle-aged women for fresh produce (the last market of the year is this Saturday, by the way!).

Also make sure you check out Erin’s seasonal crafts! There’s nothing better than avoiding midterms through dorm-room decorating.

Pumpkin Bars:

·     2 cups flour

·     1 tbs pumpkin-pie spice

·     1 tsp baking soda

·     ¾ tsp salt

·     1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted, room-temp butter

·     1 ¼ cups sugar

·     1 large egg

·     2 tsp vanilla extract

·     1 cup canned pumpkin puree

·     1 package semisweet chocolate chips

·     Preheat oven to 350 degrees

·     Whisk together flour, pie spice, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

·     With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium-high speed until smooth

·     Beat in egg and vanilla until combined.

·     Beat in pumpkin puree

·     Mix in dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

·     Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Bake until edges begin to pull away from sides of pan and a toothpick inserted in center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes.

Tags: bars, beets, brownies, pumpkin, recipes

Hey there! In order to get in the Halloween spirit, I found a fabulous craft and gift idea!  For this first week, I created Yummy Mummy Treat Cups.  I got the idea from http://crafts.kaboose.com/holidays/halloween.  This is a great site if you’re looking for seasonal or holiday crafts or decoration ideas.  The Yummy Mummy Treat Cups are fun, easy and we can remember our great paper-mâché skills from first grade.

What you’ll need:

· Plastic or paper cups, bathroom sized (5 oz. or smaller)

· White printer paper

· Medium wiggle eyes

· Felt, any Halloween color

· Scissors

· White craft glue

· Bowl

· Water

How to make it:

1. Cut the 8.5×11 inch paper into long strips.  Cut strips in half.

2. Add water and white glue to bowl. Mix until glue is a bit runny and watered down.

3. Cover the paper with the glue and water mix.

4. Cover cup with paper. Layer paper on top of each other for better visual effect and layering texture.

5. Cut a simple bow from felt. For a “boy” cup, use white craft glue to attach the bow tie to the bottom of the cup. For a “girl” cup, glue the bow to the top of the cup.

6. Use white craft glue to attach wiggle eyes.

7. Fill with fun treats!

* white paper can be substituted with an old white t-shirt *

Tags: crafts, cups, halloween, mummy, treat