Vegetable Delight Lentil Soup
It’s cold out there! What better than a warm bowl of soup for dinner. I love soup, but I have a hard time with the cold and dark weather of the winter. So I try to make new recipes for wonderful healthy soups to cheer up my days. Then I get warmed up from the inside out. Here is a recipe I adapted for a healthy lentil soup.
Ingredients: …
Read MoreCinnamon Applesauce Christmas Ornaments
Christmas carols are playing in many homes and in most stores. The crowds are bustling around the malls. The calendar is filling up with holiday parties, gift exchanges, open houses and other casual get togethers. All these aspects of Christmas are wonderful, but my favorite traditions during the month of December are decorating our home, baking homemade cookies, cooking our family favorite meals and snacks, and making homemade gifts for friends and family. When the girls were young, (before Pinterest existed) we tried a new craft project each year. One that we absolutely loved was making cinnamon applesauce ornaments. They were fun and easy, inexpensive and made the house smell wonderful. So put on your favorite Christmas CD, gather these simple ingredients and have fun creating. …
Read MoreTacky Sweater Tradition
As I have said before, I LOVE CHRISTMAS! I love the smells, the holiday spirit, the time with family! And, I love traditions! One of our newer traditions in the last few years has been to have a Tacky Sweater Party. This was not only a really fun time to find the ugliest sweaters in our homes (some of which were found in my mom’s closet…Sorry Mom, we were just helping you out! 😉 ) but it was also a great idea for gathering with friends when coming home from college! It gave us the opportunity to open up our home and see a large group of our friends to catch up and enjoy time together during our short break away from different colleges! …
Read MoreThe Season of Christmas Music Has Begun!
I love everything about Christmas!! But, Christmas music may be one of my absolute favorite parts! As today is the day after Thanksgiving, you know there will be Christmas music playing all day in our house! Here are some of my favorite albums and songs that will be on repeat for the next month! 😀
FAVORITE CHRISTMAS ALBUMS …
Read MoreA Basket Full of Thankfulness
Today is Thanksgiving Day.
“O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord,
Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation,
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving,
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms,
For the Lord is a great God
And a great king above all gods,
In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
The peaks of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, for it was He who made it,
And His hands formed the dry land.
Come let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts,”
Psalm 95:1-8
My favorite family tradition as we sit around our Thanksgiving table is to pass a small basket and place a dry corn kernel into the basket and share what we are thankful for. Today, we are creating new traditions. My husband and I have the privilege of sharing this holiday with our oldest daughter and her family at her in-laws home. Since the rest of our daughters will be celebrating with friends and family all over the world, I sent them messages and asked them to share what they are thankful for so I could hold each one of them close to my heart today. …
Read MoreCrock Pot “Coq Au Vin”-French Chicken Stew
When I was growing up, one of my favorite fall dinners was a simple french chicken stew that my mom made. Before the invention of the wonderful and convenient Crock Pot, we made one pot meals in big metal stew/stock pots and they simmered on the stove for hours. I took our family favorite Coq Au Vin and modified it for a crock pot and it was fantastic. The same delectable aromas filled our home and the savory flavor was just as I remembered it.
Ingredients …
Last Minute Thanksgiving Crafts
Holiday season is here! It’s time to cook the food, bake the desserts, clean the house, organize activities, and entertain the families. Is your plate full yet?
Well here are a few easy, last minute activities you can do with your kids.
Turkey hands. Trace your hands and draw a turkey!
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“Make Your Own Snack Bag” Activity
I had a fun snack activity at Elliana’s 2nd Birthday. (Birthday party post coming next week!).
This “make your own snack bag” activity was great for Elliana’s toddler friends because it incorporated food (a toddler favorite!), making choices (I know my toddler loves to choose), and our polka-dot/circle theme. …
Read MoreThanksgiving Gatherings become Blessings
November seems to stir something deep with in me to acknowledge my feelings of gratitude and thankfulness. Since I have the privilege of hosting our extended family Thanksgiving celebration dinner, I also have the opportunity to guide our time around the table with traditions that mean a lot to me. For as many years as I can remember, we have had a tradition of placing three corn kernels at each person’s place setting. After the blessing and sometime during the meal, we would begin passing around a small basket and placing our corn kernels into the basket while we shared what we were thankful for that year. There were years when the basket went around two or three times as we had so many joys to share and then other years when it took the entire meal to make it around once, as family members shared how they were thankful to have made it through a year full of some difficult situations with health or other struggles. This time of intimate sharing always reminds us how grateful we are to be sitting around a table with loved ones in a country where we are free to worship God. …
Read MoreThankfulness
“But one of them, seeing that he was healed, returned, and, with a loud voice, gave glory to God. He fell facedown at His feet, thanking Him. And he was a Samaritan.” Luke 17:15-16
“Thankfulness is a conscious response that comes from looking beyond our blessings to their source. As Christians, we have been forgiven, saved from death, and adopted as God’s children. There could be no better reason for a grateful heart. …
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