How Bill saved Thanksgiving Brunch

Well, I'm happy to say that our Thanksgiving Brunch was successful, thanks in large part to Bill's presence of mind on the brink of disaster.

I typically plan the menu very carefully, being sure to cover all of the traditional food in a non-traditional way and also to divide the food between breakfast and lunch dishes. This year I was serving two casseroles: a stuffing and egg breakfast casserole and a pasta and ground turkey lunch casserole (I also served pumpkin bread, cranberry and cheese danish and steamed Brussels sprouts, in honor of our recent vacation).

In order to have everything come out of the oven at once I prepped as much of the food as I could ahead of time, including mixing a few ingredients of each casserole. For the breakfast casserole I had everything mixed so that I only had to add the egg-milk-cheese mixture before the casserole went into the oven. Well, I mixed those three ingredients together and poured them into the casserole, thinking that it looked like way too much liquid for the size of the pan. And then it hit me -- I added the breakfast casserole ingredients to my pasta dish!

This was a disaster! I totally panicked. I knew I had enough eggs, milk and cheese to make another batch of liquid for the breakfast dish, but I thought my pasta dish, a vital part of my carefully balanced menu, was ruined.

That's when Bill stepped in and suggested that we simply drain the liquid from the pasta and continue as though nothing happened. Now why didn't I think of that? Since the dish was going to be baked anyway, the raw egg would not be a problem, and the little extra cheese in a pasta dish wouldn't hurt either. So that's exactly what we did and I have to say the pasta turned out great, probably even better than if I had not mixed everything up.

There you go -- that's how Bill saved Thanksgiving Brunch. My hero!

Today's project is a place card holder made out of chipboard coasters. I first punched the opening for the name, covered the coaster with baroque motifs designer paper and added the chocolate chip taffeta ribbon. I then adhered two coasters together with sticky strip, making sure that there was no adhesive at the top edge of the opening so that a card with a name could be slipped in and adding no adhesive on the bottom 1/3 of the coasters so that the back coaster could be folded out like an easel.

I stamped the word welcome on naturals ivory card stock in chocolate chip ink and rounded the corners with the corner rounder punch. I added a mat of chocolate chip card stock, also with rounded corners, and adhered it below the name opening. Finally I stamped the coffee cup, pie and turkey images from the Voila To Go set on naturals ivory card stock in chocolate chip ink and colored them using ink and an aquapainter, trimmed them out and adhered them on the left side of the place card holder with dimensionals.