Yet another Pine Cone Idea

These pine cone fire starters would make a great hostess gift or Christmas gift for someone with a fireplace.  Use a "Christmas-y" scent like cinnamon, bayberry, or pine and they are not only useful but also a nice festive decoration.

October 20 ~ Friendship Cake

One one of my other blogs about unusual holidays you'll learn that today is National Brandied Fruit day.  That reminded me of something I had learned about many years ago from my brothers girlfriend.  She made something called a Friendship Cake that started out with "brandied" fruit.  I never really saved the recipe she gave me so I had to do a search for it.  I found several sites with the recipe and all of them are very similar. The basic idea here is that you make a "starter" using fruits that you ferment.  Once you have the starter done, you can share it with a friend so they can make their own and then share their starter with another friend and so on and so on.
I particularly liked the recipe by Kitchen Koala as she also supplied pictures of the starter.