I am thrilled to be a part of this year’s Progressive Dinner Party over at the Book Blog Social Club. I will be contributing my favorite Cinnamon Apples for a beginning side dish.
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CINNAMON APPLES
Ingredients
› 8 large apples
› 1 cup of water
› 1 cup of granulated white sugar
› 1/4 cup Red Hot candies
Instructions
› Peel and thickly slice apples.
› Combine the water and Red Hots in a large sauce pan. Heat until the sugar and candies have disolved.
› Add apples and sugar to the heated pan.
› Cook apples on medium heat until they are tender.
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That’s it! A simple addition to any holiday feast! These apples always remind me of Christmas. It’s the special dish that I can always count on to grace the table on Christmas morning.
Don’t forget to stop by the Book Blog Social Club to see everyone’s link-ups throughout this entire week! There will be main dish ideas, desserts and decorating ideas.
For those of you who haven’t checked out 5 Minutes for Mom lately, they are on the last run of the Christmas Giveaway this year. There are some AWESOME things being given away!
Each of these contests will be ending Friday, December 4th, so make sure to get your entries in before the end of the week!!
Here is a list of things up for grabs! And also keep in mind that there is still an entire week before it comes to a close, so check back OFTEN for an updated list… there are MORE TO COME!
It’s almost Thanksgiving!!! Is anyone else as excited as I am?? Bug is now 27 months old, so this is the first holiday season that he will really be able to participate and understand what is going on around him. I am also SO very proud of hubby! He took the initiative to plan and schedule all of our family time and visits so that we would be able to keep everyone happy and everyone gets to see us all.
This past Thursday, my mom came up for a visit and lost of baking. I love baking; it’s a passion, but it’s so much more fun with company! We had our Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin from Halloween still around since we decided not to carve it this year while we weren’t home this year. So instead, I decided that I wanted to make some fresh, REAL Pumpkin Pie!
It was so much fun!! We chopped up that big ol’ pumpkin, roasted it, mashed, mushed, and turned it into a Perfect Pumpkin Pie! Here’s what we did!
When you destroy a Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin, this is what it looks like. The 9×13″ pan was overflowing!!
The roasted pumpkin seeds!
When all is said and done, THIS is how much pumpkin you get!! Each bag has 2 cups-worth of pumpkin (except for the little bag, that only has one cup). That is a total 13 cups-worth of pumpkin that we made from that ONE full pumpkin!!
And if you remember my earlier post here, about the picture I found… of course I had to do it! So who else do I recruit for my turkey but my sweet Bug!! Here is the finished Baby Turkeys Pumpkin Pie, that we will be enjoying next Saturday at my side of the family’s Thanksgiving.
And, the close up view. He LOVED pressing in the dough making the hand prints!! And he even helped paint some of the “feathers”.
Bring on the feasts!!!! What special Thanksgiving traditions do you and your family enjoy? After this year, we are adding our Turkey Hand Pumpkin Pies!
I thought that since Thanksgiving is seven days from now, that a post for Thankful Thursday would be appropriate.
We tend to focus on a lot of things that we are thankful for during these fall months, with Thanksgiving right around the corner and looking forward to spending time with our family, friends and the ones that mean the most in our lives.
This has to be the best holiday season for myself so far. I can truly say that I have a wonderful husband. He may have his faults, but he will always go out of his way to make sure that I and our son have everything that we need and are always happy.
And my son; what else is there really to say about my Bug??! He is the absolute Light of my life! This will be the first year that he will really be able to “participate” in all of the holidays. He has grown into the sweetest little two-year-old that I think I’ve ever known. I may be a little biased, but really now. He is the ruler of clean! There can be NO trash, or he must throw it away. He puts away his books and toys when he is finished with them. He is just a WEE bit obsessed with reading; he LOVES to read. He will get offended if I do laundry without him. We now know 13 body parts, can ask for something in a complete sentence (including “please”!), knows at least 15 animals and 3 shapes! Oh yeah, I can’t forget that he is the best hugs and kisses giver-outer in the whole wide world. (Nah, I don’t think I’m biased. But, really! He is!)
What are you thankful for this week, or this year?
I apologize for the lack of posts! The Bug got sick late last week with a high fever, and now the fever has faded and left a cough in its place. So I have had my hands full with an under-the-weather little boy.
In the meantime, this song came on the radio this morning on our way to the pediatrician. It is called “God-Shaped Hole” by Plumb. If you don’t know the band, this song was on the soundtrack to Bruce Almighty. And if you’ve REALLY been under a rock and haven’t seen it yet, I highly suggest that you go watch it!! It’s such a great depiction of God’s grace and care over the situations in our lives, with a good dose of just how much of a sense of humor our Lord has! After all, what good or fun is a life without a little laughter and jest??!
In light of talking about all of those savings, I thought that I would share this set of coupons that I came across. It is a set of 4 visits for a free 8×10 portrait and cheap packages at Target Portrait studios!
Since these coupons do say that they are valid through four visits, I’m thinking (for my family at least), a good sitting for Bug since we haven’t gotten any professional pictures done of him this year, AND we can go back as a family to have some good family pictures taken! And possibly on a third visit, hubby and I can get some pictures together (we’ve been together going on four years now and can you believe we’ve never had professional pictures taken together, just us?).
This set of coupons expires January 31 of next year, so you have a good two and a half months to take advantage! Just click on the link below and print!
That seems to be my current “quest” and what all of my friends are chatting about these days. And why not? With the price of just about anything you can think of shooting through the roof these days, we have to buckle down and get smart somewhere!
I would consider making a menu Step One if you were trying to cut down on costs. This way, you know exactly what’s in your pantry, and if you set out a plan of which meals are what days, then you won’t have to be panicking over what to pull together at 5 o’clock.
Now, I have spent a decent amount of time smoothing out and adjusting our menu. And personally, I thought I was doing really well. I have gotten our menus polished to a four-week plan, and for basic groceries, we have been spending around $150 a month or a little less.
There’s still a LOT that I have to learn, though. I’ve never been good at coupon clipping. Every time I have tried, it just never seems to work out as anything beneficial. Apparently, after a friend of mine shared this video, all I could do was stare at my screen in absolute amazement. You will not believe what she pays for these groceries!!!
What do YOU do to cut back the costs of groceries? What are your best tips, the best sales you hit, or the best stores you shop?
OK, well today leans more toward Word-full Wednesday, because the picture comes with a little story.
Bug is just shy of 27 months old. He is now my Big Boy. He’s so grown up. He does his laundry (with virtually no other help on big things he can’t reach like the detergent and knobs). He puts away his dishes. He asks for juice in complete sentences – “I want more juice, please.” He puts himself to bed, loves to read and is always handing out kisses. Yesterday, he put away just one more milestone to growing into my Little Man.
The highchair. Up until now he has been using his highchair pushed up against the table when we eat. A few days ago, he flat out refused to sit down to eat. He either would stand at the table, or sit in my lap. So I pulled out our old portable highchair seat that we used to take along on outings when he was a baby, and strapped it on to one of our big chairs.
I came across this event on Facebook. It’s an event called To Write Love on Her Arms. If you are on Facebook, it’s definitely worth checking out their event here on Facebook. It doesn’t even take hardly any effort to attend. I am!
After reading through their Mission Statement and Vision, I was incredibly happy to be attending TWLOHA this Friday, November 13th. Here is the Mission Statement and some of the Vision for To Write Love on Her Arms (quoted from their page):
“Mission Statement:
To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.
Vision:
… We live in a difficult world, a broken world. My friend Byron is very smart – he says that life is hard for most people most of the time. We believe that everyone can relate to pain, that all of us live with questions, and all of us get stuck in moments. You need to know that you’re not alone in the places you feel stuck. …
… The vision is the possibility that your best days are ahead.
The vision is the possibility that we’re more loved than we’ll ever know.
The vision is hope, and hope is real.
You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story.”
As a person who has been to those darkest places myself, I can speak from experience that everyone going through these struggles needs that helping hand reached out to them.
To share a brief history, I was trapped in a failing, neglectant, and abusive marriage. I was depressed and highly suicidal. The worst part about it, was that I was so good at hiding how I felt, that I was able to fool military specialists to believe nothing was wrong. After a time I developed a chronic condition that I still struggle with today.
But thanks to finally finding the strength to free myself, I am now remarried to the most amazing man who lifts me up, involves me and best of all we now have the most perfect Angel of a son and I couldn’t ask for a better life that I have been given to start again!
Together as a whole, we can work to stop violence, abuse and depression!
*Disclaimer: I was in no way compensated for writing of this event. I solely find it a very worthy cause and am sharing the word of this event.
I feel good to say that I finally have redesigned the site, to make it a little cleaner and easier to navigate for everyone.
And I have added a few updates!! The navigation at the top left of the page consists of my Facebook page, my Twitter profile, and where to find me on Technorati. And now… you can now subscribe to my feed via my RSS FEED, as well as follow me via EMAIL and you will be updated on my new posts!
I hope you enjoy the new feel! I will also slowly be bringing back the links to my favorite blogs. If you would like a link or banner on my site, or a possible exchange, please leave me a comment here, or feel free to email me any comments or requests!
It’s been a while since I have posted a recipe for everyone, so I thought I should share my Simple Stroganoff with you.
Everyone these days is looking for quick and easy recipes to get on the table without much of a fuss. And having a two-year-old boy who loves to eat, I’m surely no different. I had searched for an easy way to make Stroganoff one day, that didn’t require a million ingredients like all the other recipes I had found. When I came across this recipe, I can say that I no longer even consider making it any other way.
SIMPLE BEEF STROGANOFF
Ingredients
» 1 LB ground meat
» 1 PKG pasta (we use mini pastas to make it easier for Bug to eat himself)
» 1 CAN cream of onion soup
» 8 OZ sour cream
» salt, pepper to taste
Instructions
Step One
» Bring water for the pasta to a boil, pour in the pasta to start cooking.
Step Two
» After starting the pasta, brown the ground meat in a skillet. Drain.
» Add the cream of onion soup and salt and pepper, and heat through. Cover and keep on lowest heat to keep warm.
Step Three
» Drain pasta once it is cooked. Return to pot.
» Add the sour cream to the meat, stir until combined and heated through.
» Add meat and sauce to pasta and serve.
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Personal Notes
» This recipe makes enough for hubby, myself and Bug, with enough left over for someone’s lunch the next day. If you have a large family, I would suggest doubling the pasta and sauce.
So today, November 3rd, is National Housewives Day! Who would’ve known??
They make deal after dead of all the other “holidays” this country acknowledges, and yet, I haven’t heard much promotion of the day supporting us women who have the most gruesome job of all… The Housewife!
Well, HERE’S TO YOU! All you women who work tirelessly at home. The ones who don’t get “sick days” or have the ability to “leave the office” for the night.
I love being able to stay home with Baby Love! Being able to watch him learn, grow, laugh, and share is the best, and hardest job I could ever have. And I’d never trade it for the world!!
I’m also one of the weird ones. I love to clean, wash laundry, and take care of our home. I’m not the World’s Best cook, but I get the meals done, and I love to bake! It takes a while to get a good schedule running when you stay at home, but once you have a good schedule set, chores go by so easily! Here is what my weeks look like, for example:
Mondays, I deep clean the kitchen. Look through the cabinets to see if any need de-cluttering, do a good wash-down of the counters, and a sweeping of the floor.
Tuesdays I do the floors. Treating any spots and spills (you have kids, it will happen), vacuuming the carpets and a good mopping of the hard floors.
Wednesdays I leave free. This way if I’ve gotten behind on anything, I can always catch up on what needs to be done. It also leaves a lot more time for Bug and I to play, read, go on walks, or whatever we feel like doing.
Thursdays – Laundry Day!! I love Laundry Days for some reason. I guess having my two-year-old who LOVES helping makes it much more fun. He is now tall enough to put items into the washer, puts the washed clothes into the dryer as I hand them off, and has started putting them where they belong. He has even started learning how to sort the colors. It’s a blast to watch him want to help!
Fridays are probably my least favorite days. Fridays I tackle the bathroom, which means taking care of the kitties’ area. I put the bathroom on Fridays, so that when hubby is home for the weekend, there isn’t any worry about a mess. Everything is fresh, clean and orderly.
By this time, I can take the weekends off to spend with my Baby Bug and hubby!
And then there are the daily chores, of course. Even though we have a dish washer, I have opted to wash our dishes by hand. When they are done after a meal, it really isn’t all that much of a daunting task. ?
So… Happy Housewives Day, to all you women who are employed by the most worth-it employers in the world… OUR BABIES!!!
I came across this event on Facebook. It’s an event called 
“Mission Statement:
So today, November 3rd, is National Housewives Day! Who would’ve known??
