I love stuffing stockings for my family. It is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season.  My husband and I have given each other stockings since the very first Christmas we were married.  This will make Christmas number eighteen since we were married.  After that many years, I feel like I put the same things in his stocking every year, so I need some fresh ideas.  I also am having trouble thinking of original stocking stuffers for the youngans.  It was easy when they were little, you just bought small toys.  Now that they are teenagers, the small toys cost a small fortune.  I saw this blog on Pinterest.  It has some great ideas for stocking stuffers.  I am sure that my family will find more than one of these ideas in their sock this year.  Thanks Jenna!You can find Jenna's ideas here.

Thanksgiving Reflections

 The turkey!  I actually made two turkeys this year.  I had fifteen people at my house for Thanksgiving, and it takes a lot of turkey to feed that many people.  I tried something new this year, I cooked the turkey the day before Thanksgiving.  I was concerned that it would be dry when I reheated to the 165 degrees that is required to keep from making everyone sick.  So...I asked the foods teacher at school what she suggested.  She said she always had to do this with her classes when they prepared their Thanksgiving meal at school.  She suggested I take the meat off the bone and place it in a casserole dish.  After it is in the dish, cover it with some of the drippings and some chicken stock.  So that is exactly what I did.  It was wonderful.  The moistest turkey we ever had.  I cooked the turkeys in Reynolds baking bags and stuffed them with lemons, onions, and bay leaves.  They were delicious!!

 This is the dish I am most proud of, my Gingersnap Pumpkin Cheesecake.  Isn't it beautiful?  I thought it looked pretty enough to have come from a fancy bakery.  You can find the recipe here if you would like to make one for your holiday.

This was one of my brother's favorites, the sweet potato casserole.  I used a recipe that I found on Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman blog.  I have it pinned on my recipes to try board on Pinterest if you would like the recipe.  I changed one thing.  I didn't have time to bake the sweet potatoes so I used canned ones.  Plus I had a coupon for $1 off of Bruce's Canned Sweet Potatoes.  I used two cans.  I also used evaporated milk instead of regular milk.

This is my favorite part of Thanksgiving, the dressing.  I love it simple, no fruit, no meat, and no nuts.  I simple use one package of Pepperidge Farms Herbed dressing, two cakes of cornbread I make in advance using Jiffy Cornbread Mix (the best!!), celery and onions sauteed in butter, chicken stock, poultry seasoning, and celery seeds.  Here in the South we like our cornbread dressing, and in the mountains where we go for simpler things we don't mess it up with all the things you can add to it.  It is the best!!

We enjoyed the day with our family and give thanks to the Lord Jesus for his blessings this year.

Praise b 2 Him!

Inexpensive Baby Gift

Here is an idea for baby gift.  A designer burp cloth.  What mom wouldn't want to wipe spit up with this?  Lol.  I used a cloth diaper and added a piece of flannel down the center.  I turned the edges under about a quarter of an inch and stitched around the entire piece.  I added my label and some grosgrain ribbon.  I have probably $1.50 in the entire thing.  The cloth diapers come in packs of 5 for about $5 a pack.  The flannel I got at Hancock Fabrics in the remnant basket for nearly nothing.  There is enough of it left to make at least 4 more of these.  The ribbon is $1 a roll and will probably make 4 or 5 of these designer burp clothes.

Buttermilk Biscuit Love

This is a southern woman's secret.  This is a wonderful way to make biscuits without all the shortening and the cutting in of the shortening.  I make a great biscuit, but I don't make them real often.  Usually when I get ready to make them I don't have any shortening because I don't use it very much.  So...I try to keep Southern Biscuit Mix on hand.  All you have to do is add the buttermilk.  I usually keep buttermilk on hand because it has so many wonderful uses and one of my youngans favorite foods is buttermilk pancakes.  Believe me, they know when they are made with buttermilk.

Here is a picture of some beautiful sausage biscuits I made using the Southern Biscuit Mix. 

You too can make biscuits just as beautiful as these using Southern Biscuit Mix. 

These are delicious.  My youngans like them as well as they do my "from scratch" version.  I like the fact that these take a fraction of the time and use viewer dishes to create than the traditional method.  Try them and let me know what you think.

Bargin Decorating

So, I am at Lowes Hardware store looking for a new spikit (better known to people off the mountain as a faucet).  Ours had sprung a mighty powerful leak.  I didn't have much luck in the spikit department, but I did come across a real bargin on this Valspar paint.  It just happened to be the color I had been looking for.  I had bought some new furniture more than a year ago.  At the time I had a navy blue and green living room set.  It was set against my beautiful sage green walls.  Well this new set of funiture didn't have any green in it at all.  I had lived with the browns and blues against sage green back drop for over a year now.   So you can imagine how happy I was when I stumbled upon this beautiful Valspar paint with a clearance sticker on it.

   

  I don't know why this beautiful paint had been placed on the clearance rack or what caused me to stumble upon it, but it was perfect for my living room and I couldn't wait to get it home.

This paint normally sells for $30 a gallon, but this was marked $10.  I jerked it up so fast that the breeze could be felt all the way to the plumbing section

Here is a sneak peak of how it turned out.  I think it is beautiful.  I am working on some of the accessories.  They too are budget friendly.  I will keep you posted of my progress.

I love this color scheme!!!

Linking at Domestically Speaking

Couponing Troubles

Does anyone else have this problem?  There are two Sunday papers that have coupons in our area.  Neither are local, but do deliver to this remote area.  One paper has the Smart Source insert and the other paper has the Red Plum insert.  Do they call each other up and say "OK, you do this insert and I do will do the other that way we have those crazy coupon ladies over a barrel, they have to buy us both?"  I can drive 30 minutes away and buy a Sunday paper from a neighboring town that doesn't deliver to this area for a fraction of what these guys charge and it will have both inserts.  Let me know if anyone else has this problem. 

Another Gift Idea

I found this idea on Pinterest.  I loved this.  I have had a couple pottery soap dispensers, but they seem to leak soap either from the bottom where they were not glazed or the cork where the pump is attatched.  I used items that I found in my kitchen.  I had a canning jar, an old ring and seal that happened to have fruits and veggies on it, and I recycled the pump from a Bath and Body works soap pump I was given as a gift.  I heated up the old glue gun, poked a hole in the seal with a hammer and a nail.  I had to shorten the pump because it was too long.  I simply snipped the bottom of the tube with a pair of scissors.  I insterted the pump in the hole I cut in the jar seal.  I secured it with hot glue. 

I filled the jar with my favorite liquid soap, placed the seal on the jar and secured the ring over the seal and Voila!  A beautiful liquid soap dispenser.

House Warming Gift

Here is an example of a gift you can make for someone that doesn't cost a lot of money, but still lets them know that you care and are thinking about them.  I purchased everything in this picture at Dollar Tree except for the recipe cards.  I am sure you could probably purchase those there as well, but I already had these so I didn't need too.  I color coordinated the spatulas with the oven mitt.  I included some of my favorite recipes and tied it up with a matching bow.  So for less than $5 I was able to give this gift.

Wreath for the Front Door

My wreath for my front door was looking pretty shabby.  I made it several years ago and the wind had taken its toll on it.  I found an idea for a beautiful wreath on Pinterest.  I recycled the base of my wreath and spent about $2 on felt and this is the creatiuon I came up with, isn't beautiful?

Organizational Bliss

Since I have not had time to do my profile for this lovely little blog, you know very little about me.  So...I am going to share just a little sneak peak with you today.  I am a very busy mom with three children, 2 teenagers and 1 preteen.  I also work full time as a teacher, am the wife of a teacher/basketball coach.  Our children are very involved in school activities as well as travel baseball.  We have been out of town every weekend for the past 8 weeks playing baseball.  Many of these tournaments, or should I say most of them are out of state and require us to spend the night in a motel.  Needless to say my home has suffered tremendously while we have been away.  Yesterday I spend the afternoon organizing my cabinets after my big coupon shop.  I needed to know what I had or having this big stockpile of groceries would do me no good.  I could easily over look ingredients and buy more needlessly.  I took a picture of the results, what do you think?

Coupon Love

I am an avid couponer.  I am not as good as the one's featured on the TLC show extreme couponing, but I hold my own.  I went to Wal-Mart this morning and was able to purchase 20 cans of Campbell's soup for $0.40 a can and Dixie Crystals brown sugar for $0.54 a box.  This was made possible by using $1/5 off Campbell's soup coupons I printed at SouthernSavers.com.  I also printed my $0.45 off Dixie Crystal coupons from their coupon data base.  SouthernSavers.com is one of my favorite coupon sites.  They match up coupons with all of the stores in my area of the country.  I will post more deals as they happen, so stay tuned!!!