I'm Definitely Thankful for Chocolate Chip Bourbon Pecan Pie

This is my favorite pie and I have making it for Thanksgiving ever year for almost the past ten years. I remember the first time I made it. Right beforehand I had been watching Martha Stewart and she was making this pretty pie crust. Well, when my mom then gave me the task of baking the pie, I decided to give it a go. I remember being so proud of the way it turned out. In fact I thought my pie should be on the cover of MS Living, it was so pretty. Every year since then I've been doing the decorative leaves around the edges of my pies. This year I had to make the pies at my house, not my Mom's, so I used cookie cutters that were a little different, but I still think they turned out pretty. Below you'll find the recipe in case you want to try it this holiday season. I PROMISE you will LOVE this pie and it is well worth the hard work!

Reeves’ Thanksgiving Bourbon Pecan Pie

• 2 single pie crusts for a 9” pie, 1 to be rolled and fit into a low pie pan and 1 for outside decoration
• 1/3 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 1 T flour
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar
• 5 eggs (4 for pie and 1 for the egg wash)
• ¾ cup corn syrup
• 3 T bourbon
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup pecans, broken into large pieces

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

Melt butter and let it cool. Place pie crust into pan. Cut leaves or any other shape from the other dough. Place around the edges of the pie crust. (I make an egg wash to help the leaves stick to the edge of the pie crust and then at the end I also brush the tops with egg wash so it'll brown nicely).

Measure chocolate chips into the pie crust and cover them with the pecans. Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine flour and sugar. Stir together until flour is evenly distributed.

In a large bowl, beat eggs and corn syrup.

Add bourbon and vanilla.

Add the sugar mixture. Stir well.

Add the butter, stir again, and then pour this mixture into the pie crust.

Bake in the lower 1/3 of the oven at 300 degrees for about an hour, or until set.

This pie can be made well ahead of time.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thankgiving!

Look - Emery likes Martha Stewart, too!

Gobble up your scraps this Thanksgiving!

My friend Emily Huband made an adorable applique turkey shirt the other week which inspired me to try some, as well. All the little cousins will be together this Thanksgiving so I thought it might be cute for them to wear matching turkey shirts on Thanksgiving morning. I've only tried a couple of things so far with applique on my machine, so I thought this might be a good idea for more practice.

First, I made my pattern pieces out of card stock for the feathers and body of the turkey. Afterwards, I cut all my fabric out and then did the same with the interfacing. I then attached the interfacing to each piece of fabric with an iron. Next, I cut some triangle beaks out and appliqued them to the bodies. Then I hand-stiched a few french knots to make the eyes. To attach to the shirts I started with the center feather and appliqued each one. Last step was to applique the body and then I was done! I started off using a tan/cream colored thread for everything but then switched to a brown thread for the bodies on the last two shirts - which i think look better. To applique things onto fabric I use the zigzag stitch on the machine and put the width of the stitch at 2.0 and the length at 1.0.