Homemade Goodness!

I'm hosting Bunko here in two weeks. Sometimes I go all out, other times I just “get by”… This is an all-out Bunko! I’ve had a lot of fun planning and preparing and am looking forward to pulling it all together. (Please remind me of this when I’m stressing out 2 days before!) I’ll try to post some pictures of the fun things I’m doing along the way. We're going to have make-your-own Italian Cream Sodas, fun decorations and cupcakes with cute little toppers I made in Photoshop. I'm also serving one of Hadley's favorite dishes, garlic chicken farfalle. Take that and the cupcakes, and she isn't too happy that all this is for someone else! Ha!

Anyway, one of the things I wanted to do for bunko was serve our beverages in mason jars. In order to save money, I decided to check out a thrift store thinking surely I could find jars there. No luck! But, I did score a brand new (or very near new) bread machine for $15! (Even the brand I’d been looking at!) I’ve been thinking I wanted one for a while, but hated to part with $100 or more in case I didn’t like it or ended up not using one often. The day I got the machine, I went to the grocery store and bought a mix. It turned out beautifully—and tasted great! It was a cracked wheat mix, one I’ll definitely buy again. 

I have several recipes I've been stashing on the chance I got a bread machine. I settled on this one for last night. It was a white chicken pizza with homemade crust, and in this case, homemade sauce too! We had leftover alfredo sauce that provided the main sauce for the pizza. We topped it with chicken, tomatoes, mushrooms and bell peppers. (Mozzarella cheese, too!) It was SO good! The crust was a bit puffier than I thought it should be, but everything had a great flavor. And I was VERY happy when I saw the pretty dough ball my new machine made!  For this girl, bread has always been a bit of a mystery. Mine just never turns out the way I think it should. But last night? Mmmm. Homemade goodness!