pizza muffins, a christmas tree, and one more snowman

Since we moved to VA, I only shop twice a month, once each pay day. (Well theoretically anyway). The commissary is too far to justify more than that, and the prices at the grocery stores are too much to justify shopping anywhere but the commissary. Since I'm not that great of a planner, I have to get pretty creative just before pay day.

Here are some recipes I made earlier this week based on desperation, that we happened to enjoy:

I had a bag of maybe 10 pepperonis and some cheddar cheese in the fridge, so I was thinking of doing some kind of pizza for the kid's lunch on Monday. But I was not in the mood to make dough or sauce. I searched around online and found this cute recipe which was fabulously transportable and yummy.

Behold, the pizza muffin:

I found the recipe at FreezerDinner.com. You can go here for the recipe. We will definitely be making these again, especially when we have more pepperoni and green onions (we just used white). I wanted to save some for the freezer, but they were too good. We'll be making a bigger batch when we do them again.

My next food crisis was family home evening, where a dessert is required. I had just used my last egg on the pizza muffins which seriously eliminated a lot of possibilities. I dug through the cabinets and found a box of ice cream cones (they were from my witch cupcakes). Perfect to make Christmas Trees. Luckily, I had about a 4th of a can of frosting in the fridge, but I could have made frosting. I have a cookie jar full of smarties from Sophie's candy girl costumes, so those were my ornaments. And I raided the kids halloween bags for starburst tree toppers. Cole put these together and I think he did a fabulous job.

The night before, Sunday, is also a night where dessert is essential, don't you think?? I had cupcakes in my freezer (again, cupcakes I put aside when doing the halloween ones) and snowmen still on my mind. I have the book Hello, Cupcake!, and have always wanted to try their snowmen which are darling. I didn't have all their accesories, but used what I could find. The only thing I bought was the pull apart licorice for the scarf and earmuffs, but I used my extra care bucks from CVS to do it (in case you are concerned that I went to the store before pay day;).