Monkey Bread

This is my favorite breakfast item three times a year: General Conference Sundays and Christmas morning. I've gone through many different monkey bread recipes in my quest for the best one and I finally found my favorite. So here it is, my favorite monkey bread recipe...

Monkey Bread

Ingredients:

1 tube Pillsbury Grands buttermilk biscuits
3 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted
1/2 C. maple syrup
1/3 C. packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Instructions: 

1. Spray a fluted pan with non-stick spray (since I don't actually own a fluted pan, I just use my cake pan...). Combing melted butter and syrup in a small bowl. In another bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.
2. Place about half of the syrup mixture in the bottom of the pan and sprinkle half of the brown sugar mixture on top.
3. Lay the biscuits on the bottom of the plan overlapping the edges to form a ring (since I don't use a fluted pan, I cut the biscuits in half and layer them around the pan and then fill the middle).
4. Top biscuits with the remaining syrup and brown sugar mixtures.
5. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for 1 minute in the pan and then invert bread onto a serving platter. And then you're ready to enjoy!!

Nursery Crafts

Tommy and I have been dedicating our weekends to getting the nursery ready. We're not quite done with everything yet (we have 4 things left on the to-do list), but here's what we've got so far in our Harry Potter-themed nursery...

 Here's a shot of the bookcase I painted gold to match the bedroom light switch. We also cut out the letters on the bulletin board to spell "Oliver" and have a small collage collecting of all of the pictures we have of baby so far.

 On the bookcase, you'll notice this little guy...Tommy and I went with Jenny and Ryan to Color Me Mine for FHE a couple of weeks ago. Tommy made a pumpkin for us to use as our trick-or-treat bowl and I made this owl to hold pacifiers in the baby's room.

Here we have the mobile that Tommy and I made to go above the crib. We got these skeleton keys and super glued feathers on the keys. Then Tommy hung the keys with fishing line to make it look like the keys were flying all by themselves. 

 Our next craft was taking these old books of my grandma's and mod podging scrapbook paper onto their covers with letters cut out to spell out "Oliver". I debated a lot over how to execute this one, and I am really happy with how they turned out. Tommy cut out all the letters for me since I cannot work with an exacto-knife to save my life (we even used Harry Potter font to make the stencils).

Now all we have left is to find a cool broomstick to hang a curtain from for the window and then we have to finish the bedding for the crib (plus get a mattress for the crib...). When it's all done, I'll post a picture of the light switch we painted and some pictures we are planning on putting on the wall after baby has arrived and we've actually taken the pictures I plan on putting up there. And then the nursery will be all ready!!