Sunday Family Dinners and A Fruit Project.

Our Sunday family dinner this week consists of a Pampered Chef Open House. Tis the season for busy schedules and a lot of parties so this week we won't have our usual family dinner. Like I said before, it seems to be a biweekly event or close to it, especially the busier times of the year. December is a busier time usually so anyways, this weekend the guys are hunting (usually) and the girls are cooking/baking. 

My Mom is a Pampered Chef consultant and loves to cook and bake. It is a perfect fit for her. I love the idea of keeping it quick and simple (especially weeknights) just to be sure the family can be together at the dinner table each night. The big one is always make a meatloaf in the microwave in about 20 minutes using the Deep Dish Baker. I love mine! Plus always trying to find quick and easy things that we can make on a busy day ect... At the Open House, we will all be trying dips and more, including this tasty Hot & Cheesy Bruschetta Dip. 

I will leave you with another simple "fruit project". 

 Apple Fish. 

I used...

Apple Slices

Raisins

Celery 

Carrots 

Yogurt (just to hold the eyes on) 

The Countdown Begins... Grinch Smoothies.

Finally it's here, December 1st! I am not normally the person who says "I can't wait for..." I truly believe in living in the moment and enjoying each day as if it were your last. But for some reason, this past month, I have been counting down for December and everything Christmas! It may have something to do with the fact that I have been watching too many holiday movies and searching Pinterest for too many holiday ideas! The tree is up, house is all decorated, and now it's time for everything Christmas. 

I recently won a giftcard from FedEx and American Express for Small Business Saturday to promote shopping local and supporting small businesses. This was in addition to the promo American Express offered (if you "shopped small/local" on Nov. 24th and used your American Express card you could earn a credit of $25.00 back on your statement) so I was searching online for where to use it! More on that in a minute. 

There are so many great local small businesses around us but I figured I would shop for something we actually need. That is exactly what I got, $25.00 worth of veggies, fruit, eggs and milk from The Market. 

Counting down to Christmas, I love the idea of everything holiday/Christmas themed. Today was a Grinch smoothie. Yum. Everyone's version of a smoothie is different, as is mine every time I make them. They are never the same, usually just whatever fruit I have that needs used up, or what I bought through the summer and threw in the freezer. It also depends on what yogurt I have fresh or frozen and what I am hungry for. I also try to add some ground flax seed or some oatmeal to it too. 

The "Grinch" Smoothie

2 slices of Pineapple (I had mine in the freezer from this summer, you could use a handful or two of chunks instead)

1 big bunch/handful of fresh spinach (perfect for the green grinch color. 

1/2 cup or 3/4 plain yogurt. I used Stoneyfield Organic today. 

About 1/4 cup Oatmeal (give or take a little) 

Feel free to add a little aguave nectar, honey or your sweetener of choice. 

Mine was sweet enough with the pineapple.  

Just toss it all in the blender and there you go, you have yourself a Grinch Smoothie. 

The great thing about smoothies is you can pretty much add or replace anything you would like. Like I said, mine is different every time. 

As I mentioned above, I also shopped local for Small Business Saturday and took advantage of the free $25.00 credit on my American Express. I searched on the site for local businesses participating and I found our local bookstore Read's Ink on the list. My Mom & I decided to stop in and check out their selection. So many great books but I was on the hunt for a specific cookbook, the new Rachael Ray My Year in Meals! The owners kindly ordered it for me! I just picked it up this week! Now I have to decide which recipe to try first! 

What is your favorite holiday theme food/drink/snack? 

Hat or No Hat?

That is the question. Pinterest is a great place to find ideas, sometimes I find too many ideas. I love the holiday projects and crafts. Although, I am really not a crafty person but I love to see what other people create. If it is simple enough, I will try it. I have been searching for a few simple crafts for my niece and nephew (M & B) and I love to stick with a holiday/Christmas theme. Lately we have done mostly fruit projects as M calls them, but I may try something different tomorrow. 

 Anyways, back to the hat or no hat. My latest (simple) craft, is this snowman. 

I just used three boxes and wrapped them with wrapping paper with the white side out. I just happened to have a make your own snowman kit my grandma gave me a few years ago so I used those pieces for the nose, mouth, pipe & scarf. But you could just draw the mouth on and roll up a piece of orange paper for the nose. 

Now back to searching for tomorrow's craft. Although I know I better have a fruit project lined up because that is the first thing M will ask when she gets here. Maybe I can find a good craft and side track her with a good fruit smoothie. She loves to make those too, I just have to remind her not to leave the spoon in the blender. :-) Yep, that actually happened. B will be happy with whatever we choose, he pretty much loves everything haha. 

 What are your favorite simple kids holiday/winter/Christmas crafts? 

Fruit Project

Busy day today so I thought I would share with you another fruit project. I mentioned before about making these adorable and simple edible projects with my niece. I love the fact that they are usually semi healthy for her and always fun to make. Did I mention I found this idea on Pinterest of course. 

If you would like to make this adorable Palm Tree Fruit Project you will need...

One or two kiwis (depending on how thick you slice them)

One Banana

One Tangerine

That's it! 

As you can see you slice the banana in half lengthwise and then cut into smaller chunks. Slice the kiwi and peel the orange and split the pieces. Then just lay it out. Take a picture and then your done. Oh haha, you don't have to take a picture! Have fun with this project and stop back and let me know how it turned out. 

The finished product.


You can see our last fruit project here. 

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy & Christmas Trees.

In this house, the weekends usually bring a big breakfast. Everything from pancakes to egg sandwiches and this weekend I wanted to try biscuits with sausage gravy. I picked up some fresh sausage at the local Market Friday, I usually buy all our meat from a local farm several times a year so my freezer is always stocked. For this, I just wanted to have some fresh meat already thawed, and I had a giftcard to the Market! 

 I searched for different recipes online and there are always so many to choose from. I also called my Mom and our conversation may have consisted of a few questions about how to make sausage gravy. Now remember I am a newbie cook! Just learning here. 

Biscuit Recipe: 

Ingredients

• 3 cups Flour
• 4-½ teaspoons Baking Powder
• 2 Tablespoons Sugar
• ¾ teaspoons Cream Of Tartar
• ½ teaspoons Salt
• ¾ cups Butter, Cold
• 1 whole Egg, Slightly Beaten
• 1 cup Milk

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut in cold butter. Mix egg and milk in a small bowl then pour into the dry mix. Stir together with a fork. Combine all the dry mix with the wet mixture until it forms a soft ball.

Turn out onto a floured counter. You can use a buscuit cutter, but I just dropped like cookies with a spoon on trays.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.

Sausage Gravy Recipe:  

1 pound fresh sausage
3 tablespoons shortening, or bacon drippings
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Heat the 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil in a skillet . I used my cast iron skillet. Add the sausage and cook until cooked through, break up sausage.

Remove the sausage and drain, reserving the fat. Return 3 to 4 tablespoons of the fat to the pan. (If you don't have enough grease, add more bacon grease or butter to make up for the difference.) Add the flour and whisk, allowing the flour to brown and form a dark roux. Keep whisking and pour in the milk. Whisk out the lumps. Return the sausage to the skillet and you can add in any herbs you'd like. Simmer the gravy until it thickens.

 It was a relaxing cozy weekend at our house and I am happy to say my hubby LOVED breakfast! I am often trying new recipes or trying to make things healthier a little at a time, so let me just say there aren't very many times he LOVES what I have made. Don't worry, he is very sweet about it, but I can just tell. :-) So this breakfast goes down in my daily journal and recipe binder as a keeper! 

 We also finished the rest of our Christmas decorations and our tree this weekend. I am always curious about everyone's Christmas trees. Do you do a set color/theme or do you mix and match ornaments? We mix and match. Since I was little, we get new ornaments every year. As "newlyweds" (I still like to call it that although it's 8 years this year) I always pick up ornaments when we go to gift shops on vacation or find a new personalized one each year. I love opening that ornament box each year and seeing all the different trips we have taken or all the different memories that go with each ornament. Including our first Christmas ornament and our first trip to Disney! 

Our first Christmas ornament. 

A special ornament that was on my Great Gram's tree. 

Another special ornament that belonged to my Mother In Laws tree. She passed away 3 years ago. 

From our trip to Maine with my parents! 

From our 2nd Honeymoon, to Disney. 

Our trip to Deleware! 

This one was from our wedding! Notice all the Winnie the Pooh, I am a fan haha. 

If you would like to see the original recipes, the links are as follows:

Biscuits.

Sausage Gravy. 

4 Weeks to a More Organized Life - Day 11.

Update on day 11 of 4 Weeks to a More Organized Life. 

 I have always been mostly organized. I am a list maker, planner and scheduler but sometimes as we all do, I tend to go off track a bit. So when Money Saving Mom started this recent challenge, I thought why not! 

 Incase you are just tuning in, this is what happened in the past 10 days. 

 Day 1

Pick up the main living area of your home.

Day 2 

Do a quick clean of your refrigerator.

Day 3

Quick Clean of your freezer.

Day 4

 Clean under beds and furniture.

Day 5

Clean under couches/cushions ect...

Day 6 

Quick clean and sweep your vehicle.

Day 7

Sweep the main living areas of your home.

Day 8

Wipe all the door handles in your home.

Day 9

Wipe all the light switch plates in your home.

Day 10 

Wipe down all the light fixtures and ceiling fans in your home. 

 Day 11

Clean our your silverware drawer, including all those little crumbs that somehow sneak in there. 

In with all of those smaller things our daily goals were to make a list of 5 to 10 things for that week and try to accomplish on or two each day. 

 My list this week isn't too bad! I did a quick clean of the silverware drawer and made my list for the week. I want to get started on my household binder! 

You can join in and see the rest of the ideas/goals here. 

Laundry and the usual are of course included. And this is what happens when I cough drop goes through the washing machine, thankfully in a Ziploc bag. It's all liquid now! 

 

 Are you participating in this challenge? How are you doing? 

Even Better.

I mentioned a while ago about my excitement for a new cookbook! I was counting down for the arrival of a cookbook from my favorite food blogger from Dinner A Love Story. 

I follow this blog and I love it. Always so many great ideas and stories that go together with the concept of "It all begins at the dinner table". Something I truly believe and love. Like Jenny, I believe that no matter what happens in your day, the best time to talk and regroup with your family is at the dinner table. Since I was a little girl, no matter where we were going that evening or who was busy with something, we always sat down together as a family at the dinner table. Now that I have a house of my own, my hubby and I follow that tradition and we always sit down at the table, turn the tv/radio or whatever off and eat. 

 My parents had also started a little dinner time ritual of saying our hi & low points for the day. So as we are all sitting down to dinner, we go around the table and say our hi point for the day, and our low point. You have to have one of each & you can't use the same one as anyone else. It is a fun way to get a quick idea of what the family has done that day. 

 Anyways, back to my excitement! I have been keeping an eye on Jenny's book signings but none local just yet! So... my hubby got me this awesome cookbook and today he surprised me with something even better. A bookplate for in my cookbook signed by Jenny Rosenstrach! Could it get any better??? No! Jenny even wrote a little message...

If you haven't checked out her blog and cookbook yet, you can check it out here.

Fruit Projects

My niece and nephew love their playdates with Aunt C. I am always searching Pinterest for more ideas of projects/crafts and other super simple ideas for things to do with them. 

 I had found this on Pinterest a while ago and when my niece was here for her playdate, we decided to call our project a fruit project. So from then on, she always wants to make a fruit project. So I have pinned a few too many projects! 

 This week's project was a caterpillar. I love these fruit projects because they usually involve foods that I already have, usually semi healthy and they can help make it and eat it for easy clean up! Now I didn't have the pretzel sticks for this one so we had to improvise. But Bananas, Peanut Butter, Grapes and Mini Chocolate Chips. So simple. 

I found this over at Little Page Turners and M. loved it! 

Feel free to share any great fruit projects you have made! 

Christmas Lights

As I mentioned yesterday, we put up our Christmas lights this week on the front of the house. YAY. I have to be honest and say that we isn't really the right word to describe who put up the lights. I am the one who really wants to put the lights on the house so I thought I would get out on the porch roof to help put the lights up on the roof and up the peak in the middle. 

It seemed like a good idea even though last year ended the same way but as I am trying to stand on the ladder on the porch roof to climb up onto the roof, my legs may have been a little shaky, and I decided it just wasn't going to be possible. We had to call for backup haha. So my father in law had to help my hubby finish the lights! 

 So we (my hubby, father in law and I) got the lights up! 

G perfectly cozy inside waiting for us! 

 Now I feel like I am ready to watch a little Christmas Vacation or Home Alone! Two of my favorite Christmas movies. What are your favorites?

Freebie Friday

 Free with coupons at Giant Eagle! 

My free sample pack from P&G and my Dial Foaming Hand Soap! 

What did you get this week?