A LATE Posting!

Well, I had a whole posting ready last night, I worked on it for about an hour, and I was uploading the last pictures, and during that part.....my internet went down, completely down for hours -- all night and all today, actually! :-P  They said the whole network in my area went down, that almost never happens!  So it just got back up a few minutes ago, and I come here to see that my whole post is GONE.....I am not sure how that could happen, because blogger saves my posts while I'm typing them, so it should be in my drafts.....but, it's NOT!!  I guess losing the connection during my photo upload messed something up...?  *Sigh!*  So here I go again!  It will be a little different, since I have more to add today, but I'll try to remember to get everything I wanted to post yesterday on here.... :-/

Yesterday, I did some tweaking of my gingerbread ornaments....I basically like everything! LOL  So what do I pick??? :-D
Here they are just plain.....

Here are the three different finishes.....

....that's plain white glitter on the left, real silver glass glitter in the middle, and mica flakes on the right!
The light isn't really capturing how they look very well....but can you see why I love them all? :-D
Look at the sparkly silver glitter, it's really SO nice.....

Today I spent more time looking at them and thinking of what to do to make them perfect, and I think I got it right! :-D   VOILA......

I used only the white frosty glitter on these, and I think that's what looks the best!  I LOVE the silver glitter, but I don't want to use that on these -- I think the white glitter is thin enough to let some of the cookie background show through, and I love how they look with the puffy paint outlines!  So I am going to work on the rest of the shapes this way, and now I have some good ideas about making a "fake" gingerbread house!! :-D  I am thinking of using the one's with the thread hangers for the ornament swap, I am not sure if they are good enough yet, but I'm running out of time!

For the gingerbread men, yesterday I coated them with urethane to preserve them.....

They are still wet and shiny here, and they smell terrible!  So I got a little worried that I was ruining the smell, and decided to sprinkle them with cinnamon and cloves while they were wet....that made them a little rougher looking, and I started worrying that I was overdoing it (again!), so I decided to just wait until they were dry, and see what needed to be done then! Haha!!
It was a good idea.....

Once they were dry, the roughness didn't look bad or very noticeable, and the spices smelled good, so I was happy to leave them the way they were!  Here they are all piled on my kitchen chest, and around them are the things I'm thinking of hanging on a garland with them.....hmmm, there's bay leaves, and whole nutmeg, dried pear slices and cinnamon sticks....I'm not sure if I will use those, though - I might just string the little men in a line by themselves....hmmm!!  Decisions, decisions!!  They look so cool in a pile like that though, don't they? :-D

I highly recommend making these, if you've ever thought about it before (....Marlene...?? ;-D).....REALLY, it was easy and quick, and the results are great, and fun to work with!
Here is a close-up of the stocking shape, it looks even prettier in real life.....

Here is one of the gingerbread men that I tried glitter on....

NOOOT the look I am going for! LOL  I'll tweak him a little more and hang him on the Christmas tree!! :-D

Something else I did yesterday was to string up the last little pile of beans from my garden!  That was fun, but I'm not sure what they are supposed to look like.....

They are mostly still green, but there are a few that are shriveling up....is that what's supposed to happen?? LOL  I guess we'll see!  I love having dried things hanging all over the kitchen, though - it looks so homey! (to me, anyway) :-)

And now it's time for THE BEST thing about this post....a new food dish!!  I will warn you, this is for onion lovers (or at least "likers", like ME!), because it's called Cheesy Onion Casserole, and it is YUMMY!
Here is the link to the recipe....
 http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheesy-Onion-Casserole-Best-Thanksgiving-Side-Dis/?ALLSTEPS
The directions are a little overlapping, so read it through before you start!  And here's how I made it --

I started by slicing 4 yellow onions (medium size), and putting it in my skillet with 3 tablespoons of butter (it's under there somewhere! :-D  Those need to be sauteed over medium-high until they are soft and pretty clear.
In the meantime, I got the sauce ready.....

I can of Cream of Chicken (or Mushroom) soup, 1/3 cup of milk, and I used 1 tablespoon of Worchestershire sauce (the recipe says 1 teaspoon of soy sauce).....that gets stirred around over medium heat until it's all smooth and mixed up.
When the onions are ready, I put them into my oiled/sprayed baking dish.....

I made a little more than the original recipe, so I used a 9x13 dish, not the 2quart dish in the recipe.  I also sprinkled garlic powder over these (everything tastes better with garlic!).
Then, I sprinkled most of a 6oz. bag of shredded swiss cheese over it....

And then pour the soup mix over this and stir it lightly so the soup mix sinks into it.....

Then the recipe says to use French bread, but I just used a loaf of bread I bought that is so special....

Look at that!!! :-D  It's whole wheat and rolled in seeds!  I got this for $1 at the store because the date was about to be too old -- what luck!!  I'd actually like to make bread like this sometime! (a post for another time....)
Anyway, I sliced this bread and placed the pieces on top of the onions....

Then I popped it into a 350 degree oven, and baked it for 15 minutes.
When the time was up, like the recipe said, I pushed the crispy bread slices into the soupy mix (they didn't get covered, by the way, just deeper into the soup), and sprinkled it with the rest of the 6oz. bag of swiss cheese.  I had to add some shredded monterey jack cheese, too, because the recipe says 8oz. of swiss, so I didn't have enough.
That went back into the oven for 15 more minutes, and when it was done, voila.....

It was YUMMY!! :-D  That picture is after the first scoop was taken out....it didn't last long after this!
Like I said, if you like onions, you will LOVE this! :-D

I am SO happy to have the internet back!  I don't spend alot of time online, but I DO like to use it when I want to!  On the up side, I did some fun things today because the internet was down -- like take out my wool fabric and think about making a penny rug (none of the things on my list, of course! :-P LOL).....that's a really fun idea to me!  I really want to have some handwork to do right now -- that's my thing I do when it gets cooler out and throughout the winter (before gardening begins again in late February), and I'm not feeling inspired to start any crocheting projects yet!  So a penny rug would be perfect!  And I just realized today that I have quite a few nice pieces of wool felt and fabric....maybe I can come up with something to do with it....??? ^-^