(i can't believe it's) zucchini crisp recipe

i've become quite sentimental about traditions as of late.
i want "US" to have lot of them.

i want our kids to have the opportunity to expect things on certain occasions.
we're actually working on quite a few around here as we speak.

*like every morning after my early a.m. walk, i wake everyone up and we read the scriptures together as a familiy before school and work.
*like every night i sit and read to the boys in bed for half an hour.
*like every friday night we pig out on ice cream, red vines, pop corn, and hot chocolate, while watching the new star wars the clone wars.
*like every time a kid looses a tooth...the tooth fairy gets lost to the middle of nowhere and takes two nights to get to us. (hey she's kind of loopy like that okay?)

and a new one:
with my new found love of cooking {insert GASP here}
i want to make this (i can't believe) its zucchini crisp every year when we harvest our ginormous zucchinis.
thanks to all of you that gave me recipes to try out! this one in particular came by email from Desiree Dana.
thanks Desiree!
it was a huge hit.

(I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S) ZUCCHINI CRISP!

8-10 cups Zucchini

-Peel, quarter length wise, remove seeds, slice it into small slices (like apples).

2/3 cups Lemon Juice

1 cup Sugar

½ tsp. Nutmeg

1 tsp. Cinnamon

1 tsp. Vanilla

Cook zucchini in lemon juice until tender. Add 1 cup sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Simmer.

Meanwhile:

4 cups Flour
2 cups Sugar
½ tsp. Salt
1 ½ cups Butter (3 Sticks!!!!)

Mix flour, sugar, salt, and cut in butter. Put ½ of crumb mix in bottom of greased 9x13 pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile:

Add ½ cup of crumb mix to zucchini to thicken, and simmer while the crust cooks.

Pour zucchini mixture on top of cooked crust. Add 1 tsp. cinnamon to the rest of crumb mix and mix together and pour over zucchini. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes until bubbly.

and if you are wondering:

Yes, i let the kids assume it was apple crisp.
No, i am not going to correct them.
and YES, this most definitely, when they find out the truth, will go into their mental folders of "things i will tell my therapist" when they will feel the need to go to one in like 25 years.

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a soft place to land giveaway

you know the fab blog a soft place to land? well little miss kimba is doing a giveaway of 4 of my patterns OR a finished set of my decorative fabric balls.

so go on and give yourself a chance to win and check out her awesome diy day entries!

tutorial: garden fresh fabric tomatoes (and pumpkins)

yes, made out of a simple abundance layer cake, and can be found at the Moda Bake shop.
go on over and check out the tutorial for these little ladies, and if you happen to go to quilt market make sure you give them a little hello, for they are going to be there. along with my strawberries.
also if you want to make a pumpkin:

you will need to get a large bowl. one with the width of of 11 inches
or you can download my pdf file
(it's fixed!)

(just make sure you have it at 100% for the medium size pumpkin and you can blow it up much bigger for the larger version)
for the larger version pumpkin i used a large hoop with the width of 16 1/2 inches.

just follow the steps at the my moda bake shop tutorial for the tomato but with these larger circles and you should get some cute pumpkins!
i hope you like these as much as i do!
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tutorial: pine cone wreath (and guest blogging)

beautify your home for the fall season with this super cheap and easy wreath, that looks like a million bucks!

oh now see i told you i was going to do a craft with all those pine cones.
and here it is.
but guess what...i got to rule over at U-Create for the day as a guest blogger. so go and saunter on over there to see this tutorial and while you are there make sure you tell her how much you love it. i promise this one won't disappoint.
know how i know?
when i finish a project i usually show mr v and co. and usually he's like "that's nice dear." but this time he was all like "whoa, that's pretty cool!"
yup.
there you have it.

edited: here's the instructions as seen on U-Create. if you make this craft make sure you enter it into the flicker group!

what you will need:

a styrofoam wreath.
i bought two sizes.
for this wreath i used the larger of the two. but either one will work. (if your pine cones are big you will want to definitely use a bigger wreath)
a bag full of small pine cones (we, as a family were in the woods. while my husband cut fire wood, the kids and i gathered these pine cones off the ground.)
brown spray paint, lightly spray paint your styrofoam wreath. you don't need to douse it, you just want to lightly cover it so no white shows through.
now you are going to grab your pine cone and dab a little bit of hot glue to the bottom of it.
place in the middle of your styrofoam wreath.
okay we are off to a good start!
line up how ever many pine cones across the top of your wreath, my magic # was three.
(sorry about the blur)
okay here's an important instruction.
notice how i nestled the next row up in between the first row?
this is going to help cover up most of your wreath.
*let me mention that it would be good to add a little extra glue in between the pine cones so that they connect and stay together and make the wreath that much sturdier.
see where i'm going with this?
basically this is the recipe for the whole wreath.
as you keep adding pine cones you are going to come to the edge of your wreath. i made sure that there wasn't any corner that was bare. that meant going on the corner with some of my pine cones.
as you continue the process you will get a hint of what the final product is going to look like.
oh are you tired? keep going you're still not done.
see this is going to take a little while but...
it's so worth it when you are done! look how fantabulous it looks!
to get a feel as to how much one of these would cost i went online and i found a range of them from $59 to $110.
um... mine cost $4.25 plus spray paint i had and an afternoon with my kids picking up pine cones. yeah, i think i like my price better.
the "ribbon" was two strips of fabric(that way it makes it long enough to hang on a mirror) cut to 5 1/2 inches in width. i tied them in a knot and hid the knot behind the wreath and made a big loose knot on top of a tight knot so you can hang it off a nail either behind the mirror or right on top of the mirror. :)

yes sorry a filler post...i'm swamped over here with "things i'm working on, and getting out to places" which will be made known to you soon enough but for now...thanks for understanding! ;)
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last weekend

we got to do a few things as a family...and we worked pretty hard.


first, we picked our apples from our trees in our back yard.


and that picture doesn't show all of the apples we picked!
yeah, i'll be up to my armpits canning apple pie filling this coming week.

then we went on a scenic drive out to get some fire wood.
with fall here, and winter knocking (or is it mocking) on our door, mr. v and co. got his permit to get us some wood.
at one point i had all the kids gathering up pinecones...but mainly i kept katie occupied picking up one at a time.

oh...you betcha there's a craft right around the corner with those babies.
come back tomorrow and i'll show you.