Christmas Eve 2013

Well... it's finally that time again. Doesn't seem like Christmas time has made it again already...lol We have finally gotten a little tree that we found growing alongside the banks of the pond trimmed and decorated... ready for presents to be under the tree. :) Just put a ham in the oven and already have the sausage balls ready for breakfast in the morning.

I made a rather large batch this year because the boys just love them so much that sausage balls go really fast around here.... lol I wrapped presents last night while everyone was asleep. Now with the tree decorated, (only took a few minutes for us to decorate the tree), I can begin setting things under it. I added several of the light bulb ornaments that I have been working on lately. I had planned to list them on ebay, but due to some difficulties the past few months.... never got around to getting them listed on there. I always try to get all of my holiday items that I plan to list on there ready in plenty of time to list, but this was the first year that that didn't go as planned. Good thing it... I can have them ready for listing next holiday season... a jump start on my holiday listings for 2014. :)

I plan to read the boys a holiday story... then hot chocolate and off to bed. But first.... I think I will fix enchiladas for dinner. Lately, I've really been into fixing casseroles and such. For our family, they're not only quick and easy, but makesw cleaning the kitchen up the night a cinch. I have to say that I really like the Mexican Cornbread Casserole right now. It's so good... there are never any leftovers when I make it. I still plan to make some dressing using some of the homemade broth I made at Thanksgiving and froze in the freezer. I always save broth from what I am cooking for user later, by freezing. Even vegetable broth is great to cook with. Here's my recipe for my homemade dressing: 1 Pan Cornbread (can either be fresh or frozen, as I always freeze any left over) 1 Tablespoon Ground Sage 1 Small Minced Onion 2 Pinches Salt A Little Black Pepper 1 Can Chicken, Turkey, or Vegetable Broth (Or you can use frozen broth) 2 Tablespoons Butter 1/2 Cup Finely Chopped Celery 2 Hard Boiled Eggs, Sliced & Chopped Spray the bottom of your baking dish with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. Preheat the oven to 375' degrees; Add all ingredients to a large mixing bowl and stir well. Make sure to see if you need to add more sage before you pour the mixture into the baking dish, because depending on your taste, you may want to add more sage. Place the backing dish into the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the top is a golden brown color on the top. Serve with cranberry sauce and any choice of entrees or casseroles... and don't forget the giblet gravy... lol This is always a huge hit with our family and like most of the casseroles and dressing I make... it goes quickly. I already have a pie ready, that I made 2 nights ago, from some cookies for the crust and cream cheese and cool whip with crushed cookies added to the filling mixture. I added some extra crumbs to the top.... It is awesome.... a quick little cheesecake made in just a few minutes. Since all of the ingredients were on sale, I was able to make 2 pies at once. I also coupon and I was able to get enough items to make a great holiday feat without spending a bundle. I will have to talk more about that in a future post. Well... off to get things prepped for cooking in the morning. I plan to do the same thing that I did for Thanksgiving.... cook everything in the morning. Only took 3 hours and casseroles, desserts, and main courses were all ready. We mad some really good time that day.. first time that I had ever tried this method, and since it worked out very well, I plan to do this every year. Everyone take care, stay safe and have fun!!! Merry Christmas o all of ya'll!! May God Bless!!! :)

Merry Christmas 2013!!!

First I would like to start this post off by saying Merry Christmas to everyone!! It's been a very busy time around here the last few months... and it was not easy to get time to drop by here and post. This was our first year homeschooling and so we decided to slow down a little bit until after the holidays are over with. We still didn't get around to decorating for the holidays, but we plan to do some of that next year. We have begun a lesson study unit about settlers. As a fun learning project we made a cabin out of cardboard, which my son will be decorating and making it look more like a log cabin once the project is done. I still have to buy some more glue sticks and few other items in order for him to finish the project, but he is so excited about it.

I added a couple of pictures below, of what the progress on the project look like so far. It is a work in progress and since both of my sons are loving this, I think I will have to do more projects likes this with them. By the way, yes there are scribbles on various locations of the cabin project, but baby brother who is 3, wanted to contribute, since he is too young to use a glue gun right now.

There are so many wonderful websites with awesome amounts of homeschool information, curriculums, lessons, unit studies, and worksheets, that it is very hard to keep it all organized. That is something that I do plan to work on over the next few months. We've also been working on phonics and reading heavily. Once the beginning of the year gets here, I plan to begin a new schedule for us for our school days. I want to teach the boys as much as I can and usually the morning hours are total chaos...lol. It's very hard to know what each day will bring our way. Is why it is extremely difficult to make plans for anything in advance. We just take things day by day and moment by moment.

My oldest son is 5 (soon to be 6) and he does very well with his copywork for his handwriting, since he has never been in any preschool or school-like environment. He loves to study how to write what he's gonna be doing on the worksheets by tracing over with his fingers, and then once he gets it down he writes it out... I love how he does that. I must admit I have never seen this done before, it's also great to see that he has developed his own methods to learning things like that. :)

Not too steer too far off topic....after much consideration lately, eventually I plan to scan everything after the boys school work has been graded and placed in a folder. The reason I want to take this step in an effort to reduce the amount of papers that I have to keep up with, plus we will be moving into a smaller space, so there will not be a lot of room to keep a lot of papers in plastic storage bins. I just recently got into the act of doing this with all receipts and important papers, as I really don't have the space to hold that much paperwork, not do I have the time to organize like I used in the years prior to 4-27-11. Word of advice, always have a backup plan for keeping records of personal papers.... never keep personal pictures on cd discs.

We had always kept personal pictures and paper work on cd discs.... but when we fell victim to a natural disaster a few years ago, we lost all of personal papers and family photos. All of our papers were kept inside of a metal filing cabinet and our photos were a discs..... I've learned to not do that again. I'm thinking that an external hard drive would do great for personal papers and upload out family photos onto an online photograph website, where I will at least have a copy of them in the event that I lose all of our pictures and would still be able to have a copy printed out. The good thing about the external hard drive, is that since I use my laptop most of the time, it will be a cinch to just unhook,and put everything in the laptop bag. All of the boys work will still be with us should a disaster strike.

We do have preparedness drills for different things to make sure that we know what our plan of action is and that we know what to do should something ever happen. I wish I had done more to be prepared years ago..... Yes, we do keep a "storm" bag ready with items that we will need should something severe happen ever again. I make sure to keep coupons in there because when you experience something such as a natural disaster, it will definitely come in very handy.

We have worked making some ornaments, but unfortunately didn't get to decorate with them this year. I may take a last minute go at decorating the mantel Christmas Eve. I used to begin decorating for the holidays on Thanksgiving Day, but there has been a lot of changes to our family over the course of the last few years. I hope that next year, things will be back to normal for us. This is the second Christmas since the EF-5 tornado changed the lives of our family, and everyone in our town forever. So praying that 2014 is a bigger and better year for everyone.

Above are some pictures of some of our holiday projects this year. I always try to figure out ways to repurpose things to avoid wasting things. I have made light bulb ornaments every year for the last 12 years. I love coming up with new techniques to decorate them and style them to make them look beautiful. I have sold some of them over the years and given them as gifts. The boys love to help make them as well, so now it has become a family affair when making ornaments.

I go to thinking the other day to myself... I have a lot of empty metal coffee cans and I don't want to just throw them out. After cleaning out some of the old paper work that we had, I noticed that we had some old holiday cards. I took 2 Christmas cards and affixed them to the sides of the coffee can with Mod Podge. I then to 2 pieces of holiday themed ribbon and glued in between the gapped edges between the 2 cards. It turned out really well, not to mention, this would be a great gift to fill with candy of some little goodies and give as gifts. I think that I will be making some more of these to give as gifts for different holidays throughout the year for sure.

I hope that some of these ideas, will inspire you to do some creative projects of your own. I am a full-time stay at home wife and mother always trying to think outside of the box. When possible, I try to repurpose what I can and upcycle. There is so much that can be done with things that you would just normally throw in the trash.

I do hope to hear from any readers out there... I've only been into blogging since January 2013, and there has been lots of changes this years... ups and downs that have kept me away from blogging more than I would have loved to. I love to blog and plan to blog as often as my time allows me to. I pray that 2014 will be a much better year than 2013 was. So to everyone, everywhere... from our family to yours MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Take care and please feel free to leave any comments about any of the issues or topics that I have mentioned in any of my blog posts. I would love to hear from you.... Have a wonderful Christmas!! Will try to post a post-holiday blog when I can... so please stay tuned. Until next post..... May God bless!!!!