December Shenanigans

Hey y'all!

Whew it's been crazy around here. This past week I had something going on every single day and night. I was one tired mama! The only day I was home during the day was Monday and I canned turkey that I bought around Thanksgiving for $0.39/lb.

We did celebrate a few things:

St Nicholas Day with socks and a little chocolate, National Cupcake Day with chocolate cupcakes (I was going to turn them into Rudoloh, but someone ate all the pretzels!), and we celebrated chocolate covered anything day with homemade chocolate covered peanut butter balls. Tomorrow is National Maple Syrup Day and we'll be having pancakes for dinner! Yum!

This week is a lot slower, thankfully. I do work an extra day though, so I have tons going on for the two days I'm not working. I've got presents that need wrapping, a house that needs cleaning, laundry that needs washing...you know how it goes!

I'll definitely be posting regularly after the New Year, but I do hope to get a few more posts in before then :)

December Daily (5)

Ugh! My house still isn't decorated, my tree is up but it is naked (no lights, no ornaments). Christmas is coming, just slowly! lol! I don't even have presents wrapped. Fingers crossed for next week, though it is shaping up to be another busy week. I think Monday is the only day I'm going to be home most of the day, and that's only if I can get some grocery shopping done over the weekend. But what I do have is St Nicholas Day gifts. Just some socks and a little candy for each kiddo. Just a little something to be festive!

Tonight we are watching A Charlie Brown Christmas :)

December Daily (4) and National Cookie Day!

Like most days around here, today has been busy! I've managed to finish canning up sweet potatoes (a total of 21 quarts) and get a few things done, but I've still got quite a bit left to do this afternoon. We'll be decorating the tree tonight :) And while we decorate, we'll enjoy some hot chocolate or eggnog and some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, made this morning to celebrate National Cookie Day! The recipe I used has been around a long time. I've always referred to them as Miracle Cookies, but I've heard them called other things, too. Here's the recipe I used.

Miracle Cookies

1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)

Measure your sugar and put into a bowl. Crack in your egg. Mix the sugar and egg together. No need to use a mixer, a spoon will do just fine. Measure out your peanut butter (use a clean spoon :) ) and add to your sugar mixture. Mix well. At this point you can add in chocolate chips (I use mini ones) if you wish. Use a teaspoon or a cookie scoop to measure out balls of dough onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Criss cross with a fork and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. That's it! Easy and delicious!

Take care!

MPM (December 2-8) plus December Daily (2 & 3)

Here am, a day late and a dollar short...as usual! lol! It has been very busy around here the past few days and tomorrow will be extremely busy as well, but it is a good busy!

Yesterday was National Mutt Day! We "celebrated" by giving our sweet fur babies extra love (they are already spoiled rotten!) and a little treat. I also went grocery shopping and went by a store to pick up some stocking stuffers. Today I spent a good portion of the day with my mother, Christmas shopping. She was able to cross several items off of her list and I was able to cross one thing off of mine. I'm almost done! We'll be going out again next week. Here's the menu for the week:

Monday- Honey Garlic Chicken with rice and steamed broccoli

Tuesday- Turkey tetrazzini using leftover Thanksgiving turkey

Wednesday- Ham and cheese casserole using leftover Thanksgiving ham, hash browns, pineapple

Thursday- City chicken with rice, green beans

Friday- Kids and I will eat out with in laws. Not sure where yet

Saturday- Leftovers

Sunday- Cube steak, mashed potatoes, corn

What's on your menu during this busy season? Check out orgjunkie.com for ideas!

December Daily (1)

It is so hard to believe that it is the first of December! This year has really flown by. It has had some good moments, but it hasn't been the best year. I'm already looking ahead to January and what the new year may have to offer. Yet, I know I will still enjoy this month!

Today I found a list of holidays for every day in December and wrote down the ones that I thought my family would enjoy. Stay tuned to see what tomorrow's holiday is! As far as Christmas preparations, well, I did buy a Christmas gift today. I'm actually almost all done with my shopping. I'm hoping to start wrapping tomorrow. I was hoping to have the tree up and decorated today, but the weather conspired against us, so that will be happening on Wednesday, along with the house getting decorated. I try to keep my decor fairly simply and all encompassing. What does that mean? It means that I don't want to spend hours upon hours of putting out Christmas decor only for it to come down at the end of December. Our tree and stockings are the only real Christmas decorations (I'm still waiting to get my grandmother's creche from my mother!) that go up. Everything else is snowmen or snowflakes. Very winter inspired. This means that the snowmen stay up and are enjoyed through January :)

Have you started preparing for the holidays?