December 2- More Christmas things

There were 17 family members visiting today, 19 total counting me and my husband.  

The grands like to craft so we did 2 craft projects. 

One was painting wood ornaments from a kit that I bought on clearance after Christmas 2016.  

Serious painting going on..........

Great grandpa Richard with his namesake baby Richard James or RJ,  didn’t paint but they had fun being outside.  

The finished ornaments- a few by adults, others by 2, 4, 5 and 7 year olds.  

The other craft was inspired by Pinterest and craft supplies I had on hand.  I used wood popsicle stick, with 3 held together with hot glue.  Then I spray painted them silver. My first plan was to paint them white but I had silver paint on hand so silver is what I used.  I did this before kiddos arrived.  

The kiddos used white school glue, glitter and sequins to decorate them.  

I’m so glad it was warm and only a very light breeze blowing.  We did all the crafting outdoors so the glue, paint and glitter mess stayed outside.  

No photos, but lunch was chili in the big crockpot with corn chips, crackers, cheese and sour cream for toppings,  a fresh fruit tray and some raw veggies with dip.  Dessert was cookies made with a hello cake mix and mini M&Ms and brownies made from a Berry Crocker mix.  

After lunch,  I took a nap with this 2 year old cutie. ❤️ she is the easiest napped of all 8 grands.  

My daughter said the photos I posted yesterday left her a bit confused so here is a full length photo of the dining table.  

Merry Christmas again everyone.  

I may post more but it may be after Christmas.  Who Knows?  I’ll just play it by ear.

Hello everyone,  we have had 3 busy weekends in a row and this weekend is also going to be busy

Life just gets busy this time of year, doesn’t it?  

I’ve had ideas for blog posts but just haven’t had the opportunity to actually do the posts.  

We did put out ours Christmas decorations this week so I’ll show them.  

We have 2  Nativity sets,  this one with tall ceramic figures made by a dear friend years ago.  

This plastic set was bought our first married Christmas at Kmart in Oceanside California.  The pieces are very durable as all our children played with it and it doesn’t look too worse for wear.  Son Bobby made the stand for the angel when he was about 10.  He cut and bent a clothes hanger to make it and I’ve used it ever since then.  

My brother makes us a fresh evergreen wreath every year and he delivered it yesterday.  

We rearranged the living room and I am so happy with how much roomier it seems.  

The white tree is new this year, purchased at Hobby Lobby.  

You know how women usually prefer clear white tree lights and men usually like colored lights? 

This tree has a big selling point——-

The lights are programable and can be clear or multicolor, they can be continuous or they can blink in several patterns.  

My mother in law’s thing has always been Christmas ornament collecting,  she’s done it so long and has several thousand.  Now,  she is starting to downsize a little.  She asked which ones we wanted and I chose the Campbell soup balls as my grandparents were Campbells.  

These balls are fragile and we decided to use them on this silver tree as a centerpiece.  This tree is very sturdy so I’m not worrying about them.  The limbs must be heavy wire under the tinsel and don’t sag at all when things are hung on them.  We bought the silver tree at Pier 1, maybe 10 years ago.  

The Campbell Soup Kids are different on every ball but they all seem happy, kind and of course cute.  

That’s the extent of our decorating this month.  

And if you don’t see any posts from me for awhile, maybe even until Christmas, it’s only because life is busy right now.  I’ll be back blogging when extra activities slow down.  

Merry Christmas everyone,  even if today is just December 1.  

🌲

Baking with a souvenir and a thrifty tip

We didn’t really do any shopping on our recent trip except for a few groceries that we ate in our condo rental. 

We stopped at the College of the Ozarks as we left Branson.  We had their very fancy brunch buffet which was truly first rate and just delicious. 

In their gift shop area, we bought a bag of stone ground cornmeal.  They raise the corn and grind it there at the college.  

It’s even in a muslin bag.  

I wanted to try it so I baked cornbread muffins for our supper. 

I used our favorite recipe, this cornbread is just slightly sweet and perfect to eat with soup or stew.  

It was easy to find my recipe since I redid my recipes a month or so back.  

Most of the recipes are ones I’ve had a while.  I prefer recipes that just use ingredients, over recipes that call for a package of something or prepared storebought ingredients.  Basic recipes are usually the thriftiest and they are also best for homemakers like me that keep a pantry.   

 Below are the finished cornbread muffins and the pot of vegetable beef soup.  

Close up of the soup - I used some cooked roast beef from the freezer, onion, celery, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, corn, canned diced tomatoes and some beef bouillon.  

Thrifty tip - some produce is priced per pound and some is priced per item.  

Aldi’s cabbage was $1.19 a head.  It was very obvious that the heads were very different sizes so I picked out the biggest one I saw.   

My head was marked as weighing 2.5 pounds.  I knew it was bigger so I weighed it when I got home.  

It weighed almost 4 pounds!  

So when produce is priced per item,  look them over and pick out the biggest or heaviest one to get the most for your money.