To do list is done

Now I can give thanks, my clean up is done and the turkey is in three gallon ziploc bags---one bag of turkey breast and stuffing in the freezer as a meal ready for another day, one of dark meat in the freezer for turkey and noodles, and one of meat for sandwiches in the fridge for this week,the mashed potatoes and corn are in baggies to make a Shepherd's pie to freeze for another night, one bag of gravy in the freezer for supper another day, turkey carcass is in the pot boiling with pepper, salt,celery,onions, and carrots for stock to make turkey and noodles. (I cut the celery,carrots, and onions when I did the relish tray veggies and bagged them in the fridge --left over relish tray fixings works great for this too.) I wish I had a pressure canner small enough to fit under the hood of my stove. I would can my broth stock for easy storage and use. Our freezer is full of venison and I even sent some home with my daughter Jessica when she was here. We always had home canned venison stew when I was growing up. It tastes great over noodles.

Pumpkin Dump Cake

Pumpkin Dump Cake
15 oz pumpkin
1 cup evaporated milk
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
Mix and put in greased 9 x 13 pan
Sprinkle dry yellow cake mix on top
Spread on pecans
drizzle on 1 cup melted butter
Bake 350 degrees for 50-55 minuets or until golden brown.

So easy and tastes like pumpkin pie.

Blessings in disguise

I saw a similar post and thought I should do one just like that because so many of my blessings come in disguise too. So here is what I am thankful for...

Today, I'm thankful for:

1.  The Chaos and Noise in My House:  It means that I am surrounded by my four youngest happy children.

2.  The Mess That Takes Over the house:  It means that we've had a fun day filled with learning and crafty activities.

3.  The Piles of Dishes:  It means that we've had plenty of food to eat.

4.  The Never-ending Laundry:  That giant pile in the middle of the family room waiting to be folded means that we have clothes to wear, sheets on our beds, and towels for bathing.

5.  The Lack of Sleep:  It means that my children feel safe enough to call out for me, and that they trust me enough to know that I'll come to them when they're scared, or hungry, or in pain.

6.  The Bills - It means we've had running water, electricity, and a roof over our heads.

7.  My Hectic Schedule - It means I have a wonderful family, great friends, and an active rich life.

8.  My  commute - It means I have a job to pay the bills and health insurance for our whole family.

9.  My Phone- It means people care enough to call me and tell me about the things going on in their lives.

10.    The Little Trials In My Life - It means that God's not through teaching me and molding me to be the wife, mother, and woman that he wants me to be. I have more potential.

Christmas count down

I know its barely almost Thanksgiving and already I am thinking about Christmas right? Well not really because I am cleaning for Thanksgiving this weekend. I had to move a bookshelf in my living room to rearrange the furniture for company on Thursday. Jessica my oldest is bringing a BOY home from graduate school! I want a clean living room. Notice there is no hope for  an entire clean house. We have had sore throats ans ear aches, myself included, all weekend. I have dreams of getting the furniture moved but Aaron won't help me and it is too awkward to move alone. I will not let cleaning stress me out. OK maybe I am a little crazy stressed. Everything I have organized Aaron has come along and moved back or taken the table I was putting stuff on until I could find it a home!!! So I am a little irritated right now. It is Monday and I feel sabotaged right now. I  have to work Tuesday and Wednesday. I AM STRESSED! Anyway while moving the book case out of the living room into the kids playroom-homeschool room I pulled out all the Christmas books. Every year for about seventeen years now I have made a basket of Christmas books to read a different one each day in December to the kids since Taylor was a baby. I see posts where people wrap them like presents but there is no need to waste paper wrapping them. We just love reading them and rarely can we stick to just one! Back to stressing out cleaning today. No fun computer time for mamma today.

Mashed Potatoes

 Mashed Potatoes
1 10# bag potatoes, peel and cut into pieces, boil and drain
1 stick butter
1 cup sour cream
pinch of salt and pepper to taste
Mash and blend together adding milk until smooth. (Can be made the day ahead, refrigerated, and reheated in the crock pot.)

Grape Salad
1/4# seedless grapes (about 3 cups) various colors make it prettier
1 cup sour cream ( I omit this)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup cream cheese
Toss grapes with sour cream slowly add in sugar and melted cream cheese. Chill. Can be made a day or two ahead and refrigerated until serving.

Cherry Jello Mousse
3 cups boiling water
1 pkg jello ( we like cherry)
1 tub cool whip
Mix, chill until firm, may also make this a day or two ahead and store in refrigerator until serving.

Green Bean Casserole
2 cans green beans
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can mushrooms chopped
Mix together. Top with 1 can french fried onions
Bake at 350 degrees until browned.

Christmas punch recipe

This is part of a small series of recipes for my daughter Aimee who is planning her first Thanksgiving Dinner.

Christmas Punch
1 cup sugar disolved in
6 oz lemonade and add to
1 qt cranberry juice,
2 cups apple juice,
1 cup orange juice
Chill until ready to serve then add 1 liter 7 up
Freeze more apple and cranberry juice to make and ice ring. Aimee you could use a small bowl if you don't have a jello mold for the ring.

My scalloped corn casserole

I am doing a series of recipe posts for my daughter who is planning her first Thanksgiving Dinner.
Scalloped  corn
2 cans corn drained
1 tsp dried mustard
about 1 cup milk
1/2 a stick of butter
Mix  in small baking dish. Top with crushed ritz crackers. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown about 40 minuets.

Grandma's Stuffing

Bread Stuffing
Save all the crusts and heels of bread. Set out to dry or toast in the oven. Stale bread from the outlet works great for this.
4 cups dry bread cubes
3 Tblsp chopped sweet onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp poultry seasoning
2 to 3 dried sage leaves
1/3 cup melted butter or margarine
1 cup chopped celery
About 1 cup chicken broth to moisten bread
Mix together add broth last enough to moisten. Bake at 350 degrees until top is browned. About 30 minuets to an hour.
Aimee for the number of people you are talking about I would double this recipe. You can use stove top in place of the bread and spices and adjust the recipe a bit to follow the directions on the box. For example use broth instead of water and add celery and stale bread crusts on hand to make it go farther.


Turkey Basting
1 stick melted butter
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves
Brush lightly with butter mix frequently during roasting.

Tammy's Own Chocolate Pie
1 precooked bottom pie crust or graham cracker crust, put 1 cup marshmallows, and 1 cup chocolate chips in bottom.
cook 1 pkg instant chocolate pudding with milk following pkg instructions,
pour hot pudding into pie crust.
Chill.
You can make the day before and chill until serving.

Started "rowing" Boxes for Katje today

We started rowing "Boxes for Katje" today even though I haven't got the book yet (It's on order). We read the intro on line then found a video of teens interpretive reading/acting out the book that we watched. Pitty-pat the anti-reader was fascinated. Then I watch a Samaritans purse video with them on how to pack our shoe boxes. While I was out today I bought plastic shoe boxes and some more things to fill them it cost me $20.00 but I got enough for 2 boxes. If all goes well we will fill 2 boxes. One for a boy age 7 and one for a girl age 9. Today for our boxes I bought toothpaste, hairbrush and comb set, washcloths, peppermint candy, Ziploc bags, 2 plastic shoe boxes, pencil sharpeners,erasers,matchbox cars, rubber balls, spinner tops. I also got scarfs for the girls in our other giving project. I did good for $20. I will look tomorrow at the dollar store in Midland while I am on call for a few more small toys. The boxes need to be done November 14th since that is my day off to drop them off.

30 days of giving

Camryn took crackers to her Youth For Christ meeting Thursday night for  Feed The Need a program through the Salvation Army they are filling 40 bags of food for the hungry in our area. I am counting this for one of our 30 days of giving.

Boxes for Katje

Homeschool share has a great lapbook here for Boxes for Katje which goes along with our Samaritans purse giving activity we are doing this month. We have been assembling the boxes for the deadline. I am so excited for the kids to have 30 days of giving this month.

Samaritans Purse shoe boxes

In order to teach the kids gratitude I think we will do shoe boxes for Samaritans Purse this week.We started to make shoe boxes last year and missed the drop off deadline ( I had to work) so this year when I saw an announcement about the program I went around the house and found these things to try to do at least one box right away. We had just went to a hotel so small soaps made the box, 2 pairs of brand new boys white socks, a new toothbrush, small packages of hard candy [from our Halloween stash],a boy's t-shirt( new) from our school shopping trip, four brand new number 2 pencils. Ok that's a start. This year there is a local drop off in my hometown. Having a drop off close will be a blessing, as it was too hard to get to a drop off last year. I would like to do 3 boxes this year one for Sawyer/Cam to share, one for a boy Tippy-toe's age and one for a girl Pitty-pat's same age. The one for a boy Tippy-toe's age is well on it's way. The cost to send on box is $7.00 maybe the kids could help earn some of the money by helping me return our pop bottles to send and track them. I want to know which country our box goes to as part of our geography study. They should be grateful for what blessings we have there are so many kids in the world that don't have a Christmas because of poverty.

How to draw a turkey!

I found this link to Art Projects for Kids showing how to draw a turkey. We just had to make a few yesterday. i printed out the turkey then had the kids trace over with tracing paper then they painted them with coffee and sprinkled salt on the turkeys. They all loved this activity! Especially little-man, he often has used brown paint it's his favorite and he got a paintbrush for the first time. Tippy-toe who hates handwriting traced two turkeys no problem, no fuss. And the paint smells so good and I don't have to worry if they taste it. Hurray! I pinned the tracing paper and picture to their cork boards so it would stay put for the work.

What's on our shelves this week?

 What's going on this week? Well, we are celebrating thanksgiving early since Trent leaves this week for Basic Training. So our theme is  Native Americans!

Indian corn under investigation. Tippy-toe likes his new magnifying glass. He's a detective. Here he is looking at all the colors of our indian corn under the microscope.



I saw this idea for a dino play mat last week but can't find the paper-- I wrote down on where I saw this idea. If you know where it is from please email me so I can link back to it. Little-man likes to hide the dinos in the pockets I left open under the grass and behind the volcano, which is my twist on this cute mat.. Found the link  I saw it here. Thanks for the great idea.

These pumpkin life cycle cards are also freebies from Montessori for Everyone. We are watching our Halloween pumpkins decompose still so we are stuck on the whole pumpkin theme.

These cards are from Montessori for Everyone. They are free printables in the cultural section.Last year we focused on the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving so this year we are studying the Native American Peoples. We are fortunate to live near a reservation with a children's cultural museum and will be making a field trip there this week.



Thanksgiving resources

I got this recipe form Pre-K Themes:
Pumpkin Pie in a Cup
Ingredients: 1 can Libby’s Pumpkin Pie filling, 2 boxes vanilla instant pudding, milk, 1 container of Cool Whip, graham cracker crumbs, 3 oz size paper or plastic cups OR if you can find the Jell-O instant Pumpkin Pie Pudding use that instead of the pumpkin pie filling and vanilla pudding.
Prepare the vanilla pudding according to directions and refrigerate.
Mix the can of Libby’s pumpkin pie filling (not plain pumpkin) with the chilled pudding.
Fill a 3 oz. cup with a layer of graham cracker crumbs or vanilla wafer crumbs
Spoon pumpkin/pudding mixture into each cup
Top each cup with a spoonful of Cool Whip
I just bought mini graham cracker pie crusts--Yummy and mostly healthy!

Pre-k themes also has a nice word wall pdf here we are using.