Goal! Er, Homerun! Um, Touchdown?

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner.  Actually, we have five winners, each of whom will receive a glorious bag of Hershey's Assorted Miniatures.  Congratulations to Trash, Mary, Dilem*mama, Meghan, and katklaw777!

Winners, please email frugalhostess @ gmail.com to claim your prize.  And, if you didn't win this, consider entering Hershey's contest for a trip to the Football Hall of Fame hosted by Emmitt Smith.

The Frugal Hostess will be celebrating either way, because.....

FOOTBALL SEASON IS OVER!!!!  

GLORY BE!!!

It's Stupid We Have to Say "Big Game"

Have you noticed that all of the special events surrounding the Super Bowl have to refer to themselves as "Big Game" parties?  How ridiculous.  Hey, Super Bowl, just FYI, if people want to celebrate you, let them.  It doesn't hurt your brand, moron.

Ahem.

Listen, The Frugal Hostess hates football.  She will every once in a while pretend to be happy when FruHubs's favorite team scores, only because she is selfless.  But she totally and completely hates every sport ever.  Maybe except hockey, since that moves pretty quickly.  Whatever.  The Super Bowl is something that's always going to be celebrated up in here, so FruHo might as well get on board and enjoy herself.

This year, just a couple of close friends are coming over, so the focus is on maximum caloric intake in the minimum amount of time.  The menu is something like: fried, fried, salty, fried, meat, meat, meat, fried, and cheese.  Because the people at Hershey's are under the misconception that this blog is read by more than three people, they also sent TFH a bag of miniatures to enjoy during the Big Game.  

Have you ever tried to think of a football-themed dessert made out of Hershey's Miniatures?  Rest assured, that kind of thinking doesn't come easy.  Or at all.  So The Frugal Hostess is making s'mores.

Super S'mores.

Before baking.

Ha.

Ingredients

One (or more) bag of Hershey's Miniatures

One bag of delicious marshmallows*

One batch of this recipe by Donna Currie for Peanut Butter Graham Crackers

Directions

You are not the Super Bowl.  You are not a moron, and you definitely know how to make s'mores.  FruHo is doing hers on a cookie sheet and baking them to melt everything together.

And, yes, that's Peanut Butter Graham Crackers.  Hell to the yes.

After baking, with an extra Krackle on top.

But wait, there's more.  You can head over to the Hershey's website to enter their sweepstakes to win a trip to the Football Hall of Fame with your host, Emmitt Smith.  Who's Emmitt Smith?  No idea, but he's taking you on a trip so Google him.

The lovely, albeit deluded, folks at Hershey's have also agreed to give five readers bags of Hershey's Miniatures, so you can make your very own s'mores for the next soiree you serve up.  Leave a comment about who you want to win the Super Bowl, or the next season of Top Chef, or what your best guess is on this Emmitt Smith cat, and five people will be picked at random to get a sack of candy.  Them's good odds, y'all. 

Rules & Regulations:

Who: Any reader who leaves a comment.

What: One of five bags of delicious Hershey's Miniatures! 

When: Post your comment between now and 5:00pm on Wednesday, February 9 to be entered. The Frugal Hostess will post the winner's name on this here blog on or around Feb. 10.

Where: Down there.  In the comments.  Hello!

Why: Because FruHo is dieting and cannot have all these candy bars taunting her.

Fine print: Winners will be chosen at random using random.org and must email TFH to accept their prizes and provide mailing information.  Fulfillment will be handled by Hershey's, so don't you yell at The Frugal Hostess if you're having a chocolate fit and haven't received your bag yet.  Amen.

*Marshmallows = best food ever.

Sucky Craft Projects that Suck

Have you ever created something and been so proud of the results that you couldn't wait to share them?  The Frugal Hostess started a Valentine's Day project a few weeks ago, and it's only because her camera was on vacation in Florida that she hasn't posted about it yet.  The project is finished, or kinda finished, and the camera is back, so TFH felt today would be the perfect day to share her masterpiece with the world.

Except, when she took the results out of where they had been hiding, she realized something terrible.  This project sucks.  It is stupid and somewhat hideous.  How did it go from being awesome a couple of weeks ago to sucktastic today?  Take a look.

See, sucky, right?  These were inspired by a picture on a blog that shall remain nameless because FruHo can't remember and has searched high and low for it.  On said blog, these looked great.  The edges were slightly frayed, the circles charmingly wonky.  They were attached to chopsticks or something and meant to be flowers.  Since The Frugal Hostess has two Olympic-size containers of fabric remnants, she thought this would be an easy way to use some of them.  No, she doesn't sew.  At all.  The only things these poor remnants get used for are making finger puppet theaters, so the quantity of remnants can most certainly be entered into evidence.

What was FruHo planning to use these for, you ask?  Well, she really didn't get that far.  Maybe to top a Valentine's Day gift?

Or perhaps as a jaunty corsage?

At least they were easy.  Just cut circles of various sizes out of various fabrics.  Then stack them on top of each other and sew together with a button in the (sort of) center.  TFH found that she liked the smaller ones best; the big guys are just too floppy to do anything with.

What would you do with these crappy items if you had accidentally made them while under a spell of thinking they were cute?

Congratulations to....

Drew!!!  You won!  Email frugalhostess @ gmail.com to accept your prize.

Congratulations!

I'm Feeling Lucky!

Hey - this is just a quick reminder that today is the last day to enter the drawing for a $45 gift certificate to CSN Stores.  Post your comment on this post, which also includes all the rules and regulations, today by 5pm Eastern time in order to be entered to win.

Meanwhile, this is an amazing new R.E.M. song. Enjoy!  (If you are reading in an RSS reader, you may need to click through to the site to get the video.  It is totally worth it.)

Public Service Announcement

The Frugal Hostess reads 100+ blogs, and if she had to click around to all of them looking for new posts, she would never get anything done.  Instead, she subscribes to the ones she likes in Google Reader, and all every time a new post is published it pops right in there.  This is a great explanation of how to use RSS to read blogs from A Cowboy's Wife, and FruHo sure would love it if you subscribed to this one.

The Dining Room

NOT FruHo's actual dining room.

Unlike most Americans, The Frugal Hostess does not care for an open floor plan, preferring instead a bunch of small rooms separated from each other with doors.  Or at least doorways.  Maybe the reason for this is having lived in a vast multitude of apartments without proper dining rooms.  That little section off to the side of your kitchen in the living room may be where a glass-topped table sits to collect your mail and magazines, but it is not a dining room.

The Frugal Hostess has a lovely dining room now.  It's the best room in the house.  There is beautiful crown molding and judges' paneling that FruHubs put in and really cool curtains that were super-cheap. There is art on almost every wall (three years later, the same cannot be said for many other rooms), and the furniture is all special.  There are side tables from the old Ritz Carlton in Aspen, lamps from a thrift store in Denver that have been painted and re-shaded several times, and furniture from TFH's grandmother's house.  It is the perfect mix of old and new, although it doesn't feature any modern dining room furniture.  While lovely, that just wouldn't make sense in this 1940s house (although, scratch that; this house is a hot mess of everything everywhere, so don't be fooled into thinking there is a Design Scheme, unless a la Value Village is a new school).

Anywho, despite the delightfulness of the dining room, FruHo 'n them hardly ever eat in there.  They make proclamations about having dinner at the table every night and declare wine off-limits in any other room, but they still don't usually dine in there.  Instead, they set the coffee table with cloth napkins, silverware, and wine glasses and eat while watching Netflix on-demand. 

Tacky, right?  Well, in TFH's defense, Chef FruHubs is a fan of European-style dining, wherein the food is served at approximately 9:00pm each night, so if they didn't watch TV their faces might splash into the entrees.

Where do you eat dinner in your house?  Do you eat out more than you cook at home?  Do you feel guilty about any of it, dining room or eating out or whatever, or is that just The Frugal Hostess and her strange neuroses?  Do tell.