Merry (belated) Christmas!!

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas celebrating the birth of our Savior! We have had three celebrations so far with one more to go. I always love getting together with family and friends, and, of course, all the yummy goodies we all share together....back to my love of food again. As the year ends, I am trying to get my house organized again and prepare for our last gathering, which will be at my home. Since I haven't had much time to do any extra craft projects other than cooking, I thought I'd share some recipe links for some of my favorites that I plan to prepare the first week of 2012!

Four Cheese Lasagna---YUMMMMMY and easy!! The best homemade version I've tried and budget friendly!

Chicken Stroganoff-
A fresh twist on a classic and a kid approved one too!

Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork--I LOVE this Pioneer Woman recipe! I don't like really spicy food so I don't use all the peppers to keep it mild.

Don't forget to have some black eyed peas for New Year's!!

A Goat and Two Chickens--Update

We have about $40!!!! That's the chickens and 1/5 of a goat! (see the post in November about our mission project)

Christmas Card Garland

 Ever wonder how to display all those cute Christmas cards?? If you're like me, you can only put so many on the fridge and they keep falling off (or little hands want to move them all around).
This is an easy, inexpensive, and space saving way to display and keep them out the way! All you need is some clothes pins and beaded garland, yarn, tinsel, or anything you can hang clothes pins on. I used the ends of my curtain rods, but you could also use some hooks (the removable 3M ones are great!!). I doubled the red bead garland so I have two rows and just attached the cards with clothes pins and lapped a few over the garland if they were horizontal ones. It took me a whopping 5 minutes to do this and only cost about $3.You could also decorate your clothes pins if you wanted or make your own decorations to display this way. Now I am thinking of some fun clothes pin crafts! It's such a simple way to be able to see your cards, it's a little eclectic, and just plain fun!

Christmas Craft & Candy

Santa pretzels were a huge hit at my house! My four year old loved to make them with me and they were super easy!!! This is a really good one for kids to do! I LOVE Pinterest for this reason!!! All you need are pretzels (we used mini ones), almond bark, colored sugar, and marshmallows or white chocolate chips. You can heat up the bark in the microwave and dip just half the pretzel in, then coat with sugar and put your marshmallow or chip on for the ball on the hat. I couldn't find a larger container of just red, so we used the multi-pack with green, yellow, and blue and adapted them to be stocking hats...they turned out great! We made enough to eat and send to my brother overseas in the military.

 We made handprint tree Christmas cards for my brother and his buddies to send with his care package.

This wreath is for my fridge....little handprints are just precious!

Bread & Cookies!!

My four year old helping make rolls

Thanksgiving was great! I am a little behind, but as usual, I have to post some food, if nothing else!!

We love bread around here and the best is my great grandmother's roll recipe that I use to make dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls. She was a sharer, no secret recipes here, so I will pass it on!

Mamaw's Yeast Rolls:

Mix 1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp) yeast, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, with 1/2 cup warm water and let melt a few minutes. Then add 1 cup warm milk, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup melted butter to yeast mixture. Sift in flour and mix with a spoon til too thick to stir, then knead really well with flour and put in a greased bowl. Turn on oven light only (gives it just enough warmth) and place in oven to rise for 1-2 hours (2 is best if you make more than one batch). Then roll out and knead again til stiff, set bowl over it for 10 minutes. Grease your baking pan of choice with butter while it sits. Then cut up into sections and let rise in pan for 1 hour.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes or until they are golden. Makes about 12 big rolls!

This one, I can't take credit for either, but it is amazing!!


Chocolate Toffee Cookies
Make chocolate chip cookies by the direction on the chocolate chip bag, add 1/2 cut  quick oats and 1 bag (yes, the whole thing) of Heath toffee bits, then bake by your directions.....sinful!