It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

The Happy Home was filled to the brim with family over Thanksgiving.  It was such wonderful fun spending time with them all. We ate way to much yummy food and played a fun/funny card game called Spoons.  Oh it was so fun. Have you ever played Spoons?  Well there was a lot of laughing.  What could be better.  Everyone was able to be here except Ryans girl friend she of course spent Thanksgiving with her family.  But the family got to finally meet Alyssas prince charming.  His home is in Colorado and so he was not able to go home for Thanksgiving.  I know his mommy was sad. 

We have our home all decorated for the Christmas season.  It is such a wonderful, cozy feeling.  I have made my gift list and checked it twice and trying so hard to stick to it.  Black Friday sales did not help me out to much.  I have vowed not to impulse shop.  I have prayed and prayed about the gifts we should give.  I hope I have it right.  Our tree is up with our angel on top.  When I was a child we always put a home made star on top.  My dad would cut a star out of cardboard and wrap it in tin foil.  The star was always the last to go up  and we 3 kids had to take turns putting the star on top of the tree.  My dad would write on the back of the star who did it that year and of course it went by age.  To put the star up was a big deal in our house with dad holding us up to reach the top of the tree.  I don't know why I did not follow this tradition with our kids.  We just chose to have an angel on top.  But there are good memories with the Christmas tree star.  As there should be.  It is just one of the reminders this time of year why we celebrate this season.  Stars are amazing to look at and I have heard there are as many stars in the sky as there are grains of sand.  Wow, I just can not imagine that.  Amazing, amazing.

I hope you are able to enjoy this season with out feeling stressed.  It is a magical time of year.  Make your list, check it twice and pray, pray about it. Start enjoying some family traditions.  I hope you can take the time to enjoy your cozy, decorated home and truly remember the reason for the season. 


Blessings

Crystal

                                                    I just love the country Christmas look.   

 

Still Enjoying the Fall Time

Life in the Happy Home has been busy once again.  The kids have been taking turns coming home on the weekends from college.  Not that they are taking turns on purpose it just happens to work out that way.  It is always nice to hear them say, "I just needed to come home for a couple of days".  Sweet words to the heart. 

It is almost competitive volleyball season again for Court.  She had tryouts this last weekend.  She is on a team but there has been so much confusion.  My hubby keeps telling me it will all work out and not to worry.  I am trying, really, really trying.  He was right it all did work out and Court is on a team.  And to make things even better one of the coaches was a setter at one time and she plans to work with court.  Yea.  One on one is always helpful. 



I have been busy watching for sales on all the Thanksgiving items we need.  So far we have 18 people that will be here.  I have been watching for those turkeys to go on sale at a great price.  Right now the best price is at Walmart for .68 cents a pound.  That is not bad but I am still holding out a few more days.  There is just nothing better than getting groceries at a good price.  Every week I usually save 40-50% on my grocery bill.  I of course use lots of coupons and I usually don't buy something unless it is on sale.  The other day I was about out of milk.  I just have not had time to run to Sams Club, which is about 45 minutes away, to stock up on my milk again.  The going price at Sams on milk right now is about $2.30.  That is really a pretty high price for them.  But I needed milk to make potato soup so I ran into my local grocery store and had to pay $3.59.  Wow!  That is a high price for milk.  Having a nice bowl of soup on a cold day is wonderful.  Here is the potatoe soup we love.

9 medium potatoes

2/3 cups flour

2/3 cups butter or margarine

7 cups of milk

1/2 Tablespoon of salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1/2 cup crumbled bacon

3 green onions chopped

10 oz. cheddar cheese

8 oz sour cream

Bake potatoes (or microwave) until almost done.  Scoop out and break into bite size pieces.  Melt butter, add flour and cook for 1 minute.  It will be very thick.  Gradually add milk.  Stir constantly till thickened.  Stir in potato pieces salt and pepper, bacon, onion and cheese.  Cook until heated through then add the sour cream.  

Love this with home made rolls.  One of my favorite recipes comes from $5 dinners.  I use this cookbook all the time.  I was not sure I am allowed to post the recipe sorry.  But she has a great web site if you have not seen it before go here.  There are so many recipes to save you money. You would love her book I think.  I ordered mine using my Swagbucks on Amazon.

We are still enjoying this fall weather.  At times it is a little cooler than I like but when you get outside it just seems to open your mind up.  My dog loves it when we go for a walk/run.  He can also sit out there forever just basking in the sun.  I do not really enjoy how early it gets dark though.   It seems to make my night short.  I know it really is not but I just can not get use to it.



Well lastly I want to give a shout out to Rachel at the Cupcake Sprinkles in Life.  I was the winner on her blog for a $20.00 gift card to DaySpring.  Yea!!  My husband asked what I was going to buy myself.  I am thinking I am going to buy a Christmas gift for someone.  I am so excited.  Thanks Rachel.  You should check out her blog.  She is a sweet, cute, God loving, family loving person. 

Blessings

Crystal

  

  

Fall is Finally Upon Us....

Fall is Finally Upon Us.....


Life in the Happy Home has been pretty quite lately.  I have made calls to the family and it was decided to have Thanksgiving here at our home.  Our home is not large but it is so fun to have everyone gathered together.  Don't you just love the cozy feeling of being surrounded by loving family.  There is nothing better.  I am planning the meal and watching for sale items.  This week at the store I shop, baking items were on sale,  I picked up some chocolate chips, coconut, butter, sugar and oil.  Even if I don't use those for Thanksgiving, Christmas is just around the corner.  I am just waiting for those turkeys to go on sale.  We are planning to have turkey, dressing, yams, green bean casserole, jello apples, frozen apple sauce, mashed potatoes with noodles, corn, home made rolls, vegetable tray, pies and cookies.  Wow that sounds like a lot of food but the family is helping by bringing a few things.  How blessed we are. 

The mornings are getting so chilly and when I step out of bed I have to shiver a bit.  I usually will head straight to the kitchen and make a nice cup of hot tea or hot chocolate.  I then can not start my day until I do my devotions.  Have to make sure I have my priorities straight.  On the chilly weekend mornings I love to fix a hot breakfast.  A favorite breakfast in our family is pancakes.  The home made kind of course.  My husband loves blueberry pancakes.  My daughters love chocolate chips in their pancakes.  Ryan likes his plain and I love peanut butter on mine.  Yummy.  With pancakes everyone can have them just the way they like them.  Here is my pancake recipe. 

1 Cup of Self Rising Flour (see below for home made kind)

1 cup milk

1/3 cup oil

1 egg.

Mix all together.  You can make the batter thicker by adding a little more self rising flour if you would like.  Make them like your family likes them.  I always double the recipe.  We like our pancakes big and I have some left to make Court breakfast on school day mornings. 

(To make self rising flour mix 2 cups flour with 1 Tablespoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt.  Sift together.

Enjoy



With winter upon us we have been trying to get everything outside ready.  My sweet father-In-Law came to our house and help hubby cut a big tree down in our yard.  The tree just up and died.  Oh boy those men scared me.  Scared me so much I forgot to take picture of them in the process of cutting it down.  And I was helping pick up.  But as the men started cutting and stacking the wood we had several people stop and ask if they could haul it away for us.  But we had one nice lady offer to pay us for it.  Wow what a blessing.  We did not know what we were going to do with all the wood. I am using that money to buy some Christmas presents. God always gives us little surprises. Here are the pictures of the tree I did manage to take.  They still have a little more to go but at least now if we get a bad storm we won't have the fear of the tree falling on the house. 

Tree before it was cut.

First day of cutting

This was cut the 2nd day

Still needs to be cut another day.

On my wish list right now is this wonderful book by Farm Chicks.  I went to the bookstore to check it out but it is not in my budget to buy it with Christmas around the corner.  I hope she is giving it away in her Christmas Extravaganza and I hope I win.  You should check out her website.  She is so cute.



I hope you can enjoy these fall days.  Make some hot chocolate and enjoy a movie or game with the wonderful family God gave you.  Don't forget to tell each person how thankful you are for them. 

Image found at aaagiclee.com

Blessings

Crystal 







Children

Alyssa, my oldest daughter, was telling me a story about a young women where she attends college.  She said an apartment manager went to check the big trash can bin to see if the trash had come and he heard a bag moving.  At first he thought it to be a squirrel or something.  But thought again and decided to check the bag.  When he opened it he found a baby.  He called the police and it took a few days for them to figure out who the baby belong to.  When they did they learned the young lady is 24.  She had one baby she gave up for adoption.  Her 2nd baby she dropped off at a fire station.  And her third she put in the trash.  I am not sure what happens in a life to make a person resort to throwing away their baby.  She is intelligent enough to know what her options were with the first two. Of course the young women is in jail and as of right now her charge is attempted murder.  I am sure more charges will follow.  I just found this such a sad story.  I do not know what I would do with out my three.  I feel so blessed that God gave them to me.  Please pray for the women she is going to need all the prayers she can get.

Another kid story my son, Ryan, and his girlfriend went to rent a movie in their college town.  He said as they were picking their movie there was a women and man with a little boy.  I think my son said the boy was probably around the age of 5.  He said the women was calling the little boy all kinds of mean names that I will not repeat on my blog.  He did say the women and her boyfriend/husband did seem a little slow.  But I don't think Ryan knew how to handle the situation.  He was distraught over the names these people were calling their child.  What do you think is a good way to handle this kind of situation?  You know if this is going on in public think about what is going on in their home.    Should he have approached the women and told her it is inappropriate to talk to a child that way?  Should he have told the store manager to approach the couple?  Or call the police and let them approach them?  The police of course can not do anything about verbal abuse, I don't think, but at least it would have been on record.  This is a hard one for me. 

I remember having days I thought I was just going to pull my hair out when my kids were little.  Sometimes I still have those days at preschool.  But what a blessing those little ones are.  They all to soon grow up and go off to college.  Just keep remembering to breathe and pray.  They will be grown in a blink of an eye. 

Blessings

Crystal

Another follow up

I went in to have my sonogram today.  My husband came home early from work and took me.  So sweet, I did not know he was planning to go along with me.  He said of course he was going he was not going to have me go by myself.  So off we went.  I go back in the room and get my gown on.  The tech comes in and tells me the doctor would like to compare my xrays again so we know what we are looking at and what we need to do.  I said ok and she was off.  I think I was in the freezing cold room in the beautiful gown they gave me to put on for about 10 minutes.  By myself, sitting and wondering how this was going to go.  I said my prayers while I sat there.  I thought about what kind of life changes this could bring to me and my family.  I thought about preschool that morning and singing the song over and over in my head we sang.  It went like this: 4 hugs a day thats the minamin, 4 hugs a day not the maximum. Then I am thinking do I hug Court 4 times a day?  Hmm.  Note to self to pay attention to that.  I think, ok, how are we going to pay for our half of this sonogram with Christmas coming?  I pray again that Lord whatever your will is that I accept it with grace.  Then the tech comes in and says well the doctor is not seeing anything different in the mammograms from a few years ago.  Your cysts are in the same place and the same size and he was not sure why the other doctor wanted me to come in.  So she apologized again and said we are not going to need to do the sonogram.  So  I am going to take that as a blessing and wanted to thank everyone for their prayers.  I know they are what made all the difference. 

Blessings

Crystal