thanksgiving - The Idea Room

Bread Cornucopia

Looking for a last minute centerpiece to decorate your Thanksgiving Table next week? Make a Cornucopia out of bread.

I have been wanting to make one of these for a while now after seeing one over at Taste of Home.

The process was actually quite simple. I took a piece of paper (an old homework assignment) and rolled it into a cone shape and taped it. Then, I took a sheet of tinfoil and wrapped it around the paper cone to get the correct shape.

Next, ball up some more tinfoil and fill the inside of the cone. **Make sure you have a single layer on the outside that is separate from the inside. This makes it possible to easily remove the tinfoil from the inside of the cornicopia after it has been in the oven.

Then I just make some bread dough and let it rise. After the first rising, I rolled the dough out into one LONG rope.

Take your rope and wrap it around the tinfoil cone shape. Let rise for another 1-2 hours depending on your recipe.

Then bake in the oven. I baked mine at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Times and temperatures may vary with your recipe and/or oven.

After your bread cornucopia has cooled, remove all tinfoil carefully (I had to leave some of the foil in the tail end since it was baked into the bread). Fill with fruit or anything you would like to display or serve. The best part is that it is edible. It can easily be made a couple days before Thanksgiving too!

November 18, 2010 · Filed under: Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Recipes Tagged with cornicopia, cornucopia, thanksgiving, thanksgiving centerpiece, thanksgiving recipe, thanksgiving table, thanksgiving table decor

Thankful Rolls

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Want a fun, new tradition to add to your Thanksgiving festivities? How about making some “Thankful Rolls” a perfect twist for your Thanksgiving Rolls. These are kind of like fortune cookies…but for rolls…with personalized messages.

I wrote down some different questions on a strip of white paper. Questions about things that you are thankful for. So, if you know you are going to be making the rolls for this year’s Thanksgiving Dinner and you have a list of the guests who will be there, you can include them in the questions.

I made a question for everyone in our family…For example…”Why am I thankful for __(name)___?”

Then you can also make up different questions to go in any extra rolls you may have. 1 question per roll.

Then simply cut out the questions and fold them up as small as you can. Wrap them in a rectangle of tinfoil.

Then take your favorite rolls…homemade or frozen dough. I used frozen Rhodes dough for these to share with you here, but for our Thanksgiving dinner we always make my mom’s yummy dinner roll recipe!

Roll your dough into small balls. Then take two dough balls and put them together with a note in between them into a greased muffin tin pan. Let them raise the recommended time and bake them as your normally would according to your recipe directions.

Then serve them up. Your guests will be surprised and excited to find they have a fun little surprise awaiting them. Just make sure no one eats a note on accident :). I guarantee you will be able to spark a fun discussion that will help you remember why you are thankful for your friends and family.

You could also use this idea for someone’s birthday or other special occasion. Just change what is written on the little notes to customize it for a certain event!

Can anyone else believe that Thanksgiving is next week?? CRaZy!!

November 16, 2010 · Filed under: Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Recipes Tagged with thanksgiving, thanksgiving crafts

Thanksgiving Entertainment for Kids

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Need something fun for and entertaining for the kids while they wait for Thanksgiving dinner? Encourage them to play with their food on these fun food face plates.

image found here

I have seen these Food Face Plates around and have always thought it would be fun to make faces with your food. So instead of spending $9.95 on some, we made our own by drawing a face with Sharpies on paper plates.

We gathered up a variety of food to decorate them with. For example, noodles, dry pinto beans, kidney and black beans, split peas, pretzel sticks and cheerios. Then we let the kids design and decorate to their liking. I thought the older kids would get fairly bored, but they actually made a couple of different faces.

We used regular Elmer’s white school glue and it worked great to hold everything in place if the kids want to save their faces, or don’t glue them and let the kids experiment with different faces. When finished, they just slide the food pieces off and start over again.

Then we decided to trace the kids hands and they each made a turkey. Now I know this is not exactly a new and brilliant idea, but it might be something that you can use to entertain the kids when Thanksgiving rolls around.

Especially if you have a lot to get prepared for your Thanksgiving feast or a house to clean before company comes….Just don’t clean the kitchen floor until AFTER the kids are finished decorating their faces!