Bearded Hats and Chicken Taco Pizza

Hi everyone and happy almost New Year!  I love the new year because I can envision a clean slate on which to imagine myself doing everything I should be doing or all the things I always wanted to do.  Maybe one of these years I can make those things a reality-at least a few of them!

I want to begin this post by sharing a project I am pretty proud of.  I am a novice to crochet and I managed to take info from several places on the internet and make 7 of these beards.  My sons have the greatest group of buddies.  My husband and I feel fortunate that they are such good kids.  They tend to hang out in my husband's shop several nights a week watching movies and playing games.  They call themselves "bros" because they have been friends since grade school and are as close as brothers.  I wanted to make them official bro hats and I loved these lumberjack looking bearded hats I saw on various crochet blogs.  I didn't have time(or the skill) to make 7 hats too so I cheated and bought seven basic Winter hats at Target for a little over $3 a piece to start.  Then I bought 2 big skeins of basic dark brown yarn and a 9mm"N" crochet hook.  I had to fiddle with how many to chain on for a men's size because I saw alot of info for kids hats on line but I came up with chaining 24 loosely with two strands of yarn.  I had to keep my tension loose because I tend to knit and crochet pretty tightly.  The whole thing is done in half double crochet so you just do that for the first row then you chain 2 and turn.  Go into the second stitch and 1/2 dc 8 stitches then chain 4 for the mouth opening.  Skip 4 stitches on your project and continue 1/2 dc until the end.  The next row is all normal until you get to that chain 4,  then yo just 1/2 dc 4 times into the opening and finish the row like normal.  Now you taper off at each end by doing the first and last 2 stitches differently.  You yarn over and go into the first stitch you would normally do, but then you pick up the next stitch, yarn over again and go through all 4.  This may not make sense because I am not a true crocheter(is that a word?)  Maybe I should just say decrease each row at both ends the way you would normally.  I think they turned out cute and the whole gang of bros liked them.  I hear they keep your face really warn while shovelling snow!  We have gotten quite a bit of that lately!

     Here is my youngest son Christmas morning trying on a shirt he got for Christmas and being a good sport to model his bro hat.  I am amazed I got them all done in time for Christmas Eve but I am very happy I came up with the idea. 

On to a yummy idea my husband had.  Christmas Eve we usually have hot and hearty appetizers for the four of us.  We watch a Christmas movie or two and play games.  It is a very special tradition we enjoy.  This year, while discussing what we wanted to have, my husband came up with this pizza idea-chicken taco pizza.  I started with a Boboli pizza crust.  I mixed mild taco sauce and Ragu pizza sauce and spread that on the crust.  In a large frying pan, I heated the shredded breast meat of a rotisserie chicken, water and taco seasoning mix.  I cooked it until the water and seasoning mix really coated the chicken and became thick and bubbly.  I put the chicken all over the crust and sprinkled shredded Mexican blend cheese over the chicken.  I baked it according to the Boboli instructions.  Meanwhile, we chopped tomatoes and shredded lettuce to put on top.  My oldest doesn't care for lettuce or tomatoes so we let everyone put on their own but you could pile that stuff on when the pizza comes out of the oven.  We served it with taco sauce and sour cream.  It was fantastic.  We will definitely have that again!  We also had Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip and we played Clue and Uno and Mario Cart on the Wii.  It was a great Christmas Eve.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I can't believe how fast this vacation has gone.  I am not even close to being ready to go back to work this week!  Have a safe and happy New Year and take care.  I will talk to you next year!   Nancy