perfectgiftsinabasket

Black Friday

This year we had a very traditional Thanksgiving at my house with our family.  We enjoyed turkey and stuffing and all the trimming and plenty of pumkin, apple and pecan pies and sweet desserts .  We all probably gained a few pounds and then rushed off the next day to shop on Black Friday,  the biggest shopping day of the year.  Merchants are taking advantage of this  day’s reputation by offering discounts on their merchandise.   Some stores are even starting the sales at midnight after we all had our turkey dinner. After Black Friday is over,  we can continue to Cyber Monday which is another day which will be offering a lot of sales.

Shop at Home

As for me,  I would rather shop from the comfort of my home.  I will go out in good time and look for bargains and items I must buy from my local favorite stores,  but a bulk of my gifts will be bought right here on my computer on line.  I will try to use my free shipping when ever I can and use my saved points on some of my credit cards such as Discover and Visa and Mastercard.

If you want to save the hassle of fighting the crowds,  I do have a wonderful website that is in partnership with one of the best basket makers on line.  We offer gift baskets and items from the inexpensive items to the more upscale and elaborite gift baskets.

These gift baskets and other items will make great gifts for friends and co workers and family near or far.   We offer resonable shipping prices and can get that item off to them in three to five days depending on the time of day the order is put in.

Pick out a basket that you think they might like and you can add your own note to the gift item.    Just let us know where and when you want it shipped and use your secured credit card information and that is the way to shop from the comfort of your own home.

Sounds of the Season

Sounds of the Season

This beautiful Holiday Basket is filled  with  gourmet treats and Christmas gifts for them to enjoy throughout the holiday season.  They will find a CD “Christmas Traditions” full of all-time favorite Christmas songs and carols, a fantastic book “The Nativity Story” based on the Motion Picture, a beautiful, gift boxed, ornately detailed angel bookmark on a 12” long ribbon, “Sounds of The Season” gourmet Snack Mix, an assortment of decadent Belgian Truffles, “Malto Bella” Raspberry Truffle gourmet Malt Balls, Gourmet English Tea Cookies with Cinnamon, Ghirardelli Chocolate, Dark Chocolate Mint Meltaways and delicious Cinnamon Glazed Pecans!
All of this is complete with jingle bells, and a designer bow. It would seem that this basket would cost so much more but our price is only $90.00 plus shipping cost.

Christmas in Italy

Italian Gift Basket

This is of of my favorites because it is filled with a wonderful assortment of Italian gourmet foods and who doesn’t like Italian food.  We call this gift “Christmas in Italy.”   The heavy duty Calypso Bay, red enamel, Colander alone is worth some Oohs and Aahs. Especially when it arrives artfully arranged with an abundance of delicious gourmet Italian Foods and specialty items.

The item comes in 3 sizes.

Medium: $88.00
Large: $145.00
Extra large: $185.00

Santa's Paws

Santa’s Paws

Man’s best friend will be treated well this Christmas with this special gift that    features treats, gifts and toys for their pampered pooch.

There is even a little something for the little fur faces’ proud ”parents”!

You’ll have to click   onthis  item  to see what it holds for your pooch.

All this for only $80.00

Lasting Impression

Here is a group of stunning gift boxes filled with the best gourmet treats.  We gave the name “Lasting Impression” because when they receive your gift,  they will never forget it.  It comes in three boxes and each filled with delecious tempting gourmet treats.

This gift box sells for $89.00 plus shipping cost .

 To see more Christmas and Holiday Gift Baskets and Gift Boxes go to click on PerfectGiftsinaBasket.com and Browse for your favorite gifts. 

'Tis the Season

Preparing for the Holidays

I have made a list of things that I  need to get done in the next few weeks. That is going to be quite a challenge for me since I have quite a few people on my list. This year I am going to start early so I don’t go into the Christmas over drive mode. I say this every year and I still don’t quit get everything done the way I vision this perfect family Christmas with mistle toe and such.  This is my list  of things to accomplish.

• Create a list of Christmas gifts to give.
• Search for gifts  on line and what I can shop for in stores.
• Prepare Greeting Cards for friends and relatives.
• Create a budget for spending.
• Plan on food to buy for parties of dinners.
• What I will bake myself and what I will buy already baked.
• Get my husband motivated to put the lights outside.
• Get myself motivated to do the inside decoration.

On Line Shopping for the Perfect Gift

Please come and visit our on line shop to help you get started with one of your lists of things to do before the Holidays arrive and you haven’t been able to get out and finish your gift shopping.  Here is a preview of some of our unique baskets.

Our little elves have been busy at work in their shop creating gift baskets for the Holidays.  These gifts baskets are filled with wonderful treats to enjoy and share by friends and family.  My friendly elves at the gift basket shop have sent me a large collection of the newest additions to their products that have been imported from the north pole.

The Art of Chocolate

The Art of Chocolate

Because I am a lover of fine chocolates  I want to include this one as one of my favorites.This  endless assortment of fine chocolates rests on a  unique hand carved  wooden platter made of special Chinese fir tree.  It includes gourmet chocolates and truffles from Europe .

To get a bigger image click on the Wooden Tray of Gifts to get a better view of all the wonderful products featured in this gift. 

An Old Fashion Christmas

An Old Fashion Christmas

This Holiday Basket will bring back memories of Christmas of  long ago. This gorgeous fabric lined basket offers an abundant amount of the most delicious gourmet goodies, including rich Belgian chocolates,  fine French truffles, creamy fudge, assorted cookies and so on and so on . “This is our remake of  An Old Fashion Christmas”

Click on this basket to get a closer look.

          Let it Snow 

Let it Snow

 This is a cheerful arrangement with festive colors.  These pails

 come in  green or red. At only $48.00 each they make great

gifts for nephews or neices or grandchildren .

 Just click on the pails to see whats inside.

This is just a sneek peek of my company’s Christmas Baskets.  Please come back soon and check some of my other featured Gift Baskets that we offer here at Perfect-Gifts-in-a-Basket.

Family Tradition

Cheiti, Abbruzzo

The Holidays are coming again full force and we are preparing for special family meals and shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner. These holidays bring to mind my family’s traditional soups that have been handed down from generation to generation to my large Italian family. My grandma and mom are both from the Abruzzi region of Italy and they have brought many of their    traditional recipes to Canada and to the States.  Both my mom and grandma had many of these delicious recipies embedded in their heads and many now are lost forever.  Luckily, I did write down some of my favorites and hope to share them with you in my blogs.

Atwater Market Place

Atwater Market

On Saturday morning, she and my mom and I would make  the trip by bus to the open market place to buy the freshest chicken and vegetables for the soup. This shopping trip was a treat for me because the farmers also brought their live astock to this market that included, chickens, roosters, ducks, and even rabbits that were displayed in open pens and some in cages.  I eagerly watched as merchants cut up fresh meats for their patrons and wrapped up what was to be dinner for that night. Today the same market still exists but much more modernized and has become  “ off the beacon path”  tourist attraction.  It is still known as the Atwater Market place in Old Montreal.

Grandma’s Scripelli Recipe

I have shared my grandma’s recipe with my sister- in -laws, and my-daughter- in- laws and it has become a family favorite. One

Plate of scrippelli

thing though, it takes a few tries to make the perfect scrippelli. You must have a good unscratched Teflon pan (about 10 inches in width) to prevent sticking, and you can use a little Crisco to grease the pan slightly so that there is a little browning on the crepes.

I use about two small eggs per person and half a cup of flour (sifted) a dash of salt and 1 cup of water. This gets thoroughly whisked as to have a very loose batter with no lumps. You can adjust the batter by adding a little more or less flour  but try to make them as thin as possible.    I use  a  folded up paper towel to spread Crisco or  olive oil on the Teflon   pan before    starting each crepe. The pan has to be heated on medium heat. When the pan gets hot,  I spread about half a cup of the batter evenly on the pan by tilting the pan around  till the frying pan is thinly covered with the batter and let each crepe cook until a slight browning begins and the crepe is easily turned over  without sticking and again on the other side until the slight color is achieved.   I continue this until I make about 20 to 30 scrippelli.

Each one is cooled off first and then add a teaspoon of grated Parmesiano or Romano cheese on each one. Then they are each rolled tightly and placed in a large bowl.

I do cheat a little on my soup. I buy the soup in the cans and add my favorite chicken parts in the soup. I also add some vegetables such as celery, onion and carrots.

I have tried my best to write down the following recipe, since I have always eye balled the consistency of the batter.  I did learn that you can’t skimp on the eggs as the crepes tend to break apart.  If they do that, it means you need more egg in the batter.

These home made scrippelli can also be used in making manicotti and so many different desserts by just changing the ingredients by very little.  The cold weather is the best time to enjoy this delicious soup.

Fall is Great for Composting!

Trees at front

We live on several acres of land in a rural part of Virginia. The front of our house has quite a few tall trees that shed quite a few leaves in the fall.  My husband and I have tried different ways to clean up the tons of leaves that have fallen every year around October and actually tried to bag them and take them away to the landfill.  After bagging 50 or more bags and still counting, that didn’t work very well and soon we gave up. 

We did buy a leaf blower with the strongest wind power we could find.  This was working ok for us but the job was far from being accomplished and soon we had all these piles sitting in the front year after year slowing rotting away.  At least that was good thing though because now I understood that I could have nature working for me.

If I were to first mulch all these leaves, then process would be faster.  That is how I developed an interest in composting.  We now use our riding mower and connect our cyclone rake to the back that siphons the leaves and mulches them very fine.

We take them to the hill side on our property and that is where they get processed naturally.

We do help by adding grass clippings and other nitrogen products. By spring my husband helps me collect wheel barrels of composted mulch for my flower beds and garden.

Since I am an avid gardener, seeing all this free fertile black gold at my disposal is gratifying and exciting

Using Leaves As Compost Material Video

  Building a compost Box

simple compost box

If you want to be environmentally friendly and care about over using our landfills,   you can make you own compost pile even if you don’t own acres of land.   Find a place in your  yard that it out of the way and not in easy  view.  You can  built a rectangular or square bin with  some landscape timbers, since they don’t rot for many years, and this way you can throw in your mulched leaves, twigs, yard waste, kitchen waste, and grass clippings.

Just follow the ration below:   The ratio that works best for the fastest composting which is C: N.   C stands for Carbon and N stands for Nitrogen.  The ratio is 15:1   and up to 30:1.  This means that for every 15 and up to 30 parts of Carbon, you need 1 part Nitrogen.  For example you might need 15 bags of leaves to one bag of grass clippings. 

 Carbon Nitrogen Ratio

Let’s look at Carbon as all the brown stuff in your yard that is made of  mostly dried leaves .  As for Nitrogen, stuff like  grass clipping, kitchen wastes, dead flowers and plants.  You can find a list of items on the internet to help you with your mixology.  Just keep that ratio in mind.   I just use mostly leaves that have mulched with the  lawn mower and grass clipping and ash.  We do mix the stuff on the hill occasonally.

Since the microorganisms need oxygen because we are depending on aerobic microorganisms to work on our pile, so it is suggested to turn the pile every 14 days more or less.  This will help quicken the process.

Kitchen Garbage

kitchen scraps

You can also keep a container in your kitchen for your kitchen wastes.  Let’s see, you can add crumbled egg shells, potato peels, carrot peels, just any left overs that do not contain meat or oil.  Lettuce and scraps of tomatoes are great and of course your daily coffee grounds are an excellent choice.   I just use a covered pail to add all my kitchen wastes.  Now you have all Nitrogen products for your compost bin so you need to add some Carbon to your pile.  If you have a fireplace, that is a great way to get rid of your ashes and  throw in all your ground up leaves.  Just keep adding oxygen by mixing with a pitch fork or rake.  So that is composting as simply as I could explain it.  If you want more information there is so much info on the internet.

Meanwhile,  we can all do our part in helping our environment and recycling as much as possible .

ReuseReduceRecycle

Brentsville  is a small community that sits in the west end of Prince William County, VA. It was established in 1822.  The Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre consists of nearly 30 acres of park land, and five historic structures that include the courthouse,  the jailhouse,  the church, the farmhouse, and a school house.

Brentsville Haunted Court House

My interest in this area is because I lived in this county for many years  and pass this  small communty just about every time I go anywhere  since there  are not that many roads to get to town from my house.

Our area is very picturesque with narrow winding roads and miles of farmland.  As I drive along my route, on a beautiful day, I can see the Shenandoah mountains far beyond and miles of farm land and silos and cattle grazing in the green pastures.  I do prefer this view to the city and the traffic

Road to Manassas

Farm along Bristow Rd. VA

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As the story goes,  local community and visitors have  been reporting strange activity of the paranormal around the historic site and so in the past spring a  T.A.P.S. (Trans Atlantic Paranormal Society) team visited our area to conduct their investigation of the site along with the TV crew of Ghost Hunters a TV show featured on the Syfi Station.  So this just one of this little  town’s  claim to fame.

Supposidly there are at least three known  spirits  haunting  the site which include the old jail house, the courthouse,the farm house and  the small church.

One of the hauntings are said to be that of a slave woman who was executed for murdering her master.  She then claimed she was with child but  as time went by and she did not show,  the court went ahead and hanged her.  The other story is that of a slave boy who also  haunts the grounds, there is no record of what happened to him but his spirit seems restless and there have been sightings of him throughout the compound.  Then there is the  spirit of James Clark, who was accused of abducting a woman.  One variation of the story is   that the woman’s older brother  murdered him while he was held in the  jail  house.

Haunted Jail House?

Now these are just some of the spirits that have  raised so many hairs on a few  visitors.  Other paranormal activities include voices which can be heard on the EMF(electro-magnetic field) equipment and various audio recorders which investigators have used at the site on several occasions.

This little town was known to be a place where the civil war soldiers of both sides passed and stayed and raided homes for food and places to sleep.    Brentsville also hosted  field hospitals in people homes  where many civil war wounds were treated and many  young men died of these wounds and some buried right here on site.  The first major bloodiest battle of the civil war, known as the Battle of Bull Run, was fought on July 21, 1861 in the nearby town of Manassas.  Many of the soldiers had to pass by this area which was the only known road to get to battle.

This area is full of history and these hauntings are a result of so many tragic deaths.   If you are interested in the Paranormal, or just want to have some fun,   the week just before Halloween,  for a small fee,  you can experience a  jail house haunting.

This year I am not going to miss the famous lantern tours that takes you to the past and also conducts a ghost investigation  tour of the Brentsville Jailhouse.

Brentsville  Courthouse Historic Centre is a participating member of the Historic House Museum Consortium of Metropolitan Washington D.C. Visit  http://dchousemuseums.org/