Christmas Treat Ideas

I know most of you are out shopping for those great Black Friday Deals so I am going to make this one short.

Who doesn't love Christmas cookies? Here is a link for 50 recipes to make for church, school, friends, and family; or just because!


50 Cookie recipes

Here is a link for 59 more Christmas Treats

59 Christmas Treats

And one more to thumb through to see if anything good catches your eye.

Christmas Recipes

Have Fun!!!

Leftover Ideas After Thanksgiving

So...we like to have a big turkey just so we can have leftovers. We eat turkey sandwiches mostly with leftovers but this year I want to see what else we can do with the leftovers.

Here is a recipe for Thanksgiving Leftover Casserole, looks good.
Casserole

How about Turkey Soup?
Creamy Afer-Thanksgiving Turkey Soup

This one I have to try, it sounds so good (may as well finish up the week with fattening stuff).
Thanksgiving Leftover Stuffed Shells

There are so many ideas on the Internet for leftovers, I just didn't know where to begin. You will have to do further research if you don't like these ideas. Here a couple of places that might be helpful.

Taste of Home

The Food Network has some great ideas to try, take a look.
Thanksgiving Leftovers

Now is the time to start planning to enjoy those leftovers!!!

Christmas Shoebox Project

When we lived in Utah I had the great opportunity to work on Hill AFB, at the chapel, where I learned a lot about different religions. I loved participating in a few of their activities like the one I am going to tell you about today. This program is called Operation Christmas Child.

My family loved this one. As I was searching today for good ideas for family service projects this came up as an option, then I remembered how much we enjoyed doing this and asked my family if they wanted to do it again, they did.

So for family home evening, Monday night, we will be going shopping and filling shoe boxes with gift items for these children, who otherwise might not have a Christmas. It's a fun project and easy to do, especially for younger children, but your teenagers will love it too.

The only catch is the collection date runs from Nov 18th - Nov 25th so it has to be done like now. Here is the link to show you where the closest drop off place is and some great ideas to fill the boxes:

Operation Christmas Child

Random Acts of Kindness

My youngest son will be turning 18 in January and then come summer he will probably be starting his mission for our church. My children have asked that we make this years holidays extra special. We talked about these like watching old Christmas movies, driving around looking at lights, and making goodies to snack on.

So I started looking for service ideas for my family to do this year as well and I came across an idea called "Random Acts of Kindness". I like what I saw and want to try this idea out this season. Take a look and see if is something that sounds fun to you.

Random Acts of Kindness

The website says this is for Valentines Day but you can do the same thing for Christmas. This is an easy project. Maybe an idea to enhance the goody bag is to add special messages attached to a few of the kisses. Maybe you can come up with another idea that would be more memorable to your family or to the families you service.

I'm going with this one as one of our projects this year!!!

Homemade Costumes

My youngest son was always so creative with costume ideas for Halloween. He almost had to because I never really had the money to buy the costumes that he would have wanted. But every year he would ask for a certain costume, knowing the answer was going to be that I could not afford it so he started getting creative.

Here a couple of his costume ideas from the past. I'm looking for the pictures, once I find them I will add them to the post. Sorry about that.

Super Mario

Mega Man

So I thought that maybe there might be a few people out there that would be interested in ideas for homemade costumes. I have provided links with a picture of one from the link. Have fun and let the creative juices flow.

Spoonful.com

 

Brit & Co

DIY

 

parenting

These are just a few of the fun ideas you can make.  If you put your mind to it you can come up with many more. 

Plan a contest with your kids and their friends to see who can come up with the most creative costume from things found around the house. You will be surprised at what they will do. I certainly was with my youngest. See, Halloween can be lots of fun!!!

Christmas Before You Know It

Hey!!! Do you realize that Christmas is just around the corner? Yeah, I was surprised, too. What happened to this year? When I was young it seemed like days lasted forever, but now that I'm...older, it seems time flies. I was surprised when my teenager said the same thing. So when someone young notices time is flying bye then you know you are running out of time.

I was thinking, that since I would be looking for gift ideas for Christmas that I would share some fun things that I find easy to do and inexpensive. I hope these ideas will be helpful to you.

Mod Podge Tile Coasters

I think I'm going to do this one for my co-workers. Last year I made them a glass plate with our company logo on it. It was a lot like this.

Take a glass (see-through) plate (any size you want), lay it on a table and lay some material of your choice on top and cut out the circle a little bigger than the plate. I could find material with our company logo on it so I found a pair of pajama bottoms with the logo and cut the material I needed (then I hemmed the bottom of PJ's and sent it to my favorite Uncle); he loved them and still wears them.

Take a sponge brush and add Mod Podge to the back of the plate. Lay the material on top of the Mod Podge side and smooth it out. Let it dry for about 10 minutes, trim the edges and Mod Podge on top of the material for a matte feel. Let it dry and then display your peace of art on a stand. I gave all mine away and didn't keep one for myself so I can't show you what they look like. Mod Podge can be lots of fun to use.

Here is another one using Mod Podge, I can't wait to try this one.

Stained Glass Candle Holder

I just have to include this blog spot because there are tons of Mod Podge ideas that can be helpful in completing your Christmas shopping list.

Wall Art with Mod Podge

Easy Art Work

This one was pretty cool and easy to do using a 2 liter soda bottle, no Mod Podge needed. I might have one of my kids do this for a teacher gift.

Friday is Pizza Day

 OK, I'm trying to create a spiritual thought daily for this blog and help people understand what the righteous should be doing, but on Friday and Saturday I want to focus on some fun stuff. So today I have found some food ideas for Halloween, or just the month of October.

Did you know that there were National Food Days? I never did until I started researching for food ideas for October. I have add a  link for you to see what I am talking about.

October National Food Days

So according to the link today, October 11 is National Sausage Pizza Day. So I have found a recipes for pizza. My family love pizza on Fridays so I think we are going to have to plan to make this tonight.

Making pizza dough would be the first place to start. You can buy it already made, or from a box, or frozen food dough, or you can make it from scratch. Here is a recipe for pizza dough from scratch.

Pizza Dough, makes 1

3 cups of all purpose flour
1 pkge of dry yeast (25 ounce)
2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon of white sugar
1 cup of warm water (110 degrees F)

Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl.Mix in oil and warm water. Spread out onto a pizza pan and add the toppings.
Bake 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Pizza Sauce - makes enough for 4 pizzas

1 - 15 ounce can tomato sauce
1 - 6 ounce can of tomato paste
1 Tablespoon of ground oregano
1 1/2 teaspoon of dried minced garlic
1 teaspoon of ground paprika

In a bowl mix in the tomato sauce and paste until smooth. Add oregano, garlic and paprika. Spread onto the pizza dough leaving about a half inch from all edges. Add topping as desired (pepperoni, sausage, vegies), and cheese.

Here are some links to some other fun ideas with pizza ingredients.

pizza rolls

I can't find the recipe but something my kids really liked was crescent rolls with a tablespoon of pizza sauce, 1/2 string cheese stick, and any other topping like a slice of pepperoni. Roll it up in the crescent and bake according to crescent directions.
pizza treats

Enjoy!!!

It's Halloween Already?!

You know, I have never been much into Halloween. When my kids were young we would get dressed up and go trick or treating but that was about the most of it. I wasn't big in decorating or even baking treats for this holiday. However, as I was searching through Pinterest I found so many fun Halloween things that it got me a little excited about the day.

My daughter has already started Halloween fun with her boys and they are loving it. So this week I decided to get with it and find some fun Halloween things to share with you.

Crafting Chicks Halloween

Rantin' and Ravin' Halloween

Its Written on the Wall Halloween Games

Better Homes and Gardens Halloween

Pillsbury Halloween treats