Oh so much to get through!

Before we get down to business, one quick thing to remind you of: the aluminum foil challenge at Scrap Outside the Box is still going on until the end of this month! Don't forget to break out your Reynolds Wrap (or store brand, whatever you got) and show us how you worked it on your layout! We'd love to see your layouts! Just link them up to this blog post. 

Okay, now onto business. A lot has been going that I'd like to share with you all, so I'm going to try to do it in one post. Hope it doesn't get too long. 

First off, the other day I got a fun prize package in the mail from Nancy aka Homesclscrapper. I participated in a blog hop and won! She sent me out this really great package of goodies that I can't wait to start playing with.

Second, if you're planning on having people over for Thanksgiving, perhaps you might consider some festive decor. I saw cool, do-it-yourself yarn wreaths featured on the Cartwheels in My Mind blog and discovered the woman behind the idea for the yarn wreaths: Danielle Burkleo. Danielle posted a super easy tutorial on her blog, which you can find and follow here. These wreaths don't have to be fall-themed. You can make a yarn wreath using whatever colors you want. But I copied mine on the wreath with the multi-colored yarn (you'll see the picture at the end of Danielle's blog post) because I thought the colors reminded me of the changing leaves. I was so excited to find similar colored yarn at Michael's AND I found the perfect branch accent. Seriously, it was the only one they had! And it became mine! I wish my flowers had turned out larger, but the only size felt I could find was 8.5 x 11. Oh well. My wreath is 18 inches, but they had a smaller one. I just felt that the smaller one wouldn't be large enough over my mantelpiece. I totally think I'm going to make some of these as presents. I love them!

And last but not least: FOOD. (I think I've gotten "cook scrap craft" all in one blog post! Hey!) Something interesting I discovered at Whole Foods: gluten-free corn pasta. (As if there isn't already enough corn in the foods we eat, but I digress.)

The corn pasta is not as starchy as the rice pasta (nor is it as cheap as Trader Joe's rice pasta) and it tastes just as good. We used it to make Pam Anderson's Shells and Cheese, Gluten-Free (see picture below), which was much easier than the other mac and cheese recipe we had been making and was also very tasty. I like when I find a recipe that doesn't require a shopping cart full of ingredients, and this one also didn't take as long to prepare as our other recipe. Nor did it use up as many pots and pans as the other one. Geesh, I hate cleaning pots and pans.

And then after making this, of course, I went to Trader Joe's and found a box of gluten-free rice pasta and cheese (like the Kraft boxes) for $1.29. So I think that's how we'll be doing gluten-free mac and cheese on weeknights from now on. It's just easier because on weeknights we don't have time to wait 30+ minutes for dinner to be ready. I'm hungry when I walk in the door at 7 and the box of mac and cheese is something that my husband can definitely handle and have ready by the time I get home. Ah, it's almost like old times. :)