We also both have “wish” lists, but they are really small as we really don’t need anything so once again we are always looking for the special item that will surprise the other. 😀 My list for this year hasn’t changed much since last year has AGAIN been so full of pandemic drama and unanswered questions.
CAST IRON SKILLET MEATLOAF
2 pounds QUALITY Ground Beef
3-4 slices bacon, chopped and browned crisp
1 cup quick oats
¼ cup QUALITY ketchup
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
FRESH ground sea salt and black pepper
GLAZE
¼ cup QUALITY ketchup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Again this year I have a station set up just outside the front door in the alcove for delivery drivers with a nice variety of drinks and snacks for them to choose from. They all seem to enjoy it and our regular drivers have come to know it will always be there. One of them saw me at the post office the other day and actually asked if there would be my ‘special Christmas goodies’ again this year.
I normally do this, but again this year tried for an even nicer variety so they really realize just how much they have become essential in this day and age.
I usually do a large plate of goodies for my neighbors and regular delivery people. But, this year again with smaller gatherings and everyone having been home so much and already snacking too much probably, I’m changing it up again to make it easier on me, more cost effective for me and more fun too.
These jars are from last year when I did gift jars for brownie mixes that can be used whenever they want instead of a plate of goodies that may go bad before they eat them all.
PEANUT BUTTER* BROWNIE MIX
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup baking cocoa
1 cup peanut butter chips*
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup FINELY chopped walnuts
Include a cute little square of Christmas fabric, some ribbon and tag with the following instructions:
ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS
2 LARGE eggs at room temperature
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon PURE vanilla extract
Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)
NOTE: It is easy to change up this flavor by just changing the flavor of chips you use. I’m posting my peanut butter recipe, but you’ll notice the picture is of the jars I made with mint chocolate chips. This batch of 12 had a variety of peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, caramel chips and mint chocolate chips, LOL 😀 NOT all together of course!
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These are this year’s recipes:
HARVEST SOUP – picture soon
3/4 cup dried split peas (yellow or green)
1/3 cup+ granulated beef bouillon
1/2 cup barley
3/4 cup dried lentils
1/2 cup dried, minced onion
3/4 cup long grain wild rice
3/4 cup mini bow-tie or alphabet pasta
You can do this two ways. You can make pretty layered rows of each ingredient ending with the granulated beef bouillon allowing it to trickle down through it all. Or you can mix it all together and then fill the jar and add a lid.
Include a cute little square of Christmas fabric, some ribbon and tag with the following instructions:
ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS:
28 ounce can diced tomatoes (DO NOT DRAIN)
1 1/2 pounds stew meat
1 tablespoon butter or oil
1/4 cup flour
FRESH ground salt and pepper, to taste
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HERB RICE MIX ~ PER 1 PINT JAR:
2 cups long grain rice
2 tablespoons celery flakes
2 tablespoons dried, minced onion
1 teaspoon dried chives
2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon sera salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
INSTRUCTION TAG:
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CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES – this jar will be seriously FULL so pack each layer as tightly as possible!
1 cup PACKED brown sugar
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup baking cocoa
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
additional ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
SHRIMP SCAMPI PASTA
Shrimp Scampi always sounds a bit decadent and eat out at a restaurant date night meal to me, but is a super easy to make at home.
The prep time is only 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes of cook time and VOILA’ dinner is ready. Light the candles and serve.
1/2 package (8 ounces) linguine pasta
1 + 1 tablespoons butter
1 + 1 tablespoons avocado oil
1 shallot, FINELY diced
1 cloves garlic, minced
1 pinch red pepper flakes (Optional)
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
FRESH ground sea salt and black pepper, to taste
¼ cup dry white wine
1 small lemon, juiced
1/8 cup finely chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste
Stuffing stockings is one of my favorite things to do. I’m always on the look out for special little items that I tuck away ALL year long waiting for just this day.
The picture above contains:
The picture below was a few years ago.
✨Top 2 Winter Beauty Essentials?
✨Top 2 Winter Fashion Essentials?
✨ Favorite Winter Accessory?
✨ Favorite Winter Nail Polish?
✨ Hot Cocoa or Apple Cider?
✨ Favorite Winter Candle?
✨ Does it snow where you live?
✨Have you ever made a snowman?
✨What is Your Favorite Holiday Movie?
✨What’s your favorite holiday drink?
✨Candy cane or Gingerbread men?
✨What’s your favorite holiday/Christmas song?
✨What is most important to you about the holidays?
Outdoor decorations haven’t panned out as well this year as we planned. The blowups are getting old and tired 🙁 we’ll rethink things for next year.
So I’m offering your the outdoor lights from the 2 local festivals, Festival of Lights and Shore Acres that we’ve been to locally over the years. Hubby did “announce” that we will be going to find a parking space to watch the Timber Town Toy Land Electric Light Parade on Saturday the 18th and I hope to get pictures that I will update this post with later.
The Festival of Lights is now over 20 years old and a great way to kick off the holiday season. It’s ALL Volunteer and NON-Profit. It began as a fundraiser sponsored by the Rotary Club to help get the city out of debt and then took on a life of its own and now helps with scholarships and special projects. The festival runs every night from Thanksgiving to New Years and was perfect for this year since it is a truly socially distant event. You can drive your own car or take a horse drawn carriage ride (normally and hopefully the carriage rides will be back in 2021) through the displays. They have also coordinated a local radio station to listen to as you view the displays. The night we went through the fog was moving in early so a few of the pictures look a bit “smoky”.
As of that year they have the world’s tallest (41 feet, 16,000 pounds with working jaw) nutcracker built by a local company (unfortunately the nutcracker was a no-show for 2020 because of COVID), 500,00 lights, 90 animated displays, 3D displays, horse drawn carriage rides through the displays and a Holiday Village with Santa, hot cider with a bake sale and a synchronized light show in the courtyard (also closed this year due to COVID). The displays depict fairy tales, the military, patriotism, the local logging industry, local vineyards, local fishing and the traditional Christmas songs and scenes. People come from all over to see it. Unfortunately for locals, it doesn’t change much, but is still fun every few years. The lights were all the same this year though!
Three of my favorite munchkins from next door were coincidentally there that same night we were so had to snap a few pictures of the discussions with Santa. They were sooooo young! Now 2 of the 3 tower over me and they’re only 13 and 15!
Even the lights with errors turned out cute. It was difficult to get great pictures or continuous pictures of the animated scenes since there were so many cars behind us.
This snowman is on a corner in our neighborhood hugging a light standard.
A couple years ago we went to HOLIDAY LIGHTS at Shore Acres on the Oregon coast. ALL of our travel is “AROUND” Christmas and never ON Christmas. And while it was beautiful I am so glad to be home this year with nowhere to go until 2022. We arrived fairly early, just before dusk so we could walk through and get the lay of the land before walking through a second time after dark. The displays were animated and themed.
Shore Acres is literally perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean and began as a private estate for Louis J. Simpson, a shipbuilder. Simpson developed the 3 story mansion complete with an indoor heated pool and ballroom as his “summer home”. The surrounding grounds included 5 acres of formal gardens full of shrubs , trees and flowering plants brought from around the world by himself and various lumbermen. There is even a 100 foot lily pond and caretaker’s cottage. The cottage still stands and was really decorated cute! I’d live there. I really wish I had seen the original mansion, but it has since been torn down after a fire in 1921 and the rebuild was never finished because of the depression and fell into disrepair. Oregon bought the property in 1942 for use as a public park. The gardens, lily pond and caretakers cottage were restored while the mansion was razed.
Shore Acres Holiday Lights is by decorated sponsors and volunteers. This was the 33rd Annual event. and is famous for its beautiful 7 acre botanical gardens and Japanese lily pond on the Oregon coast among the trees. It has over 350,000 lights, animated displays, Santa, choirs… A beautiful holiday tradition for the whole family.
Even on the years we travel to SIL’s party, we are home by Christmas itself. I love having our tree and decorations with a relaxed Christmas Day schedule. We do try and take 1 trip to see some sort of “City Sidewalks” type event.
These are a few of my favorite pictures from our trip to Holiday Lights at Shore Acres on the coast. We took some time to play in a couple of the small towns and stayed over so we didn’t have to drive the windy roads late at night in the rain. We were fortunate to be able to have lunch with an old friend to catch up the next day before we drove home. It was super rainy, COLD as all get out, but ALSO really beautiful. It’s a walking tour so umbrellas were a MUST, but also a hindrance at really seeing the true beauty of it all.
NORWEGIAN MEATBALLS & LUTEFISK minus the LUTEFISK
I adapted this recipe from Molly Yeh
Lutefisk is one of those things that you either love or you hate it – there is no middle ground. It may be super common around where she lives during the holidays since so many families have Scandinavian heritage, but it won’t happen here LOL 🙂
Lutefisk consists of a dried white fish that is pickled in lye & it has a very strong smell and a gelatinous texture. She is ABSOLUTELY correct that it’s quite polarizing to a lot of people but to others, it’s very nostalgic and usually served with meatballs and lefse.
Molly used unsalted butter as did I the first time and we found it really lacking in salt so I switched to salted butter.
MEATBALLS
3 tablespoons butter
1 LARGE shallot, FINELY chopped
1 LARGE bunch green onions, FINELY chopped
1 tablespoon FRESH chopped sage, about 6 leaves
1 1/2 cups crustless white country bread cubes
1/4 cup WHOLE milk
13 ounces 80/20 ground beef
13 ounces ground pork
2 tablespoons FRESH chopped Italian parsley
FRESH ground sea salt and black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon FRESH grated nutmeg
1 LARGE egg, beaten
SAUCE
3 + 1 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons FRESH chopped sage, about 4 leaves
1/4 cup WONDRA flour
3 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon QUALITY Worcestershire sauce
FRESH ground sea salt and black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup FULL FAT sour cream
2 tablespoons FRESH chopped Italian parsley
Prepared pasta, for serving (optional)
Mashed Potatoes, for serving (optional)
Lefse, for serving (optional)
Be sure to join us for Happy Homemaker Monday and link up
with our host, Sandra at Diary of a Stay at Home Mom
Did you have a good week? Are you ready for the holidays? Are you going simple this year or going BIG after last year being so low key? We’re going low key, but I didn’t have to be talked into decorating this year. Wanting to downsize many things made that choice easy.
I had a pretty good week and accomplished quite a bit. I also ended it with a painting class yesterday that I enjoyed, BUT was really a bit of a pain in the butt because many people weren’t paying attention and she had to repeat herself quite a bit.
Here are mine and Jessica’s paintings. I’m fairly happy with it so far, but will probably do some touch up in the future.
Don’t forget to join in to BLOGMAS when you can. Here is a list of the links to date. I’m not doing a linky, but will visit you if you comment so I know you played along 😀
DAY 1 ~ Holiday Schedule
DAY 2 ~ Elf on the Shelf / Gnomes
DAY 3 ~ Christmas Movie MUST Watch List
Day 4 ~ Christmas Music Playlist
DAY 5 ~ Quiet Christmas?
Day 6 ~Christmas Cookies
Day 7 ~ Real or Artificial Tree?
Day 8 ~ Winter MUST haves
Day 9 ~ Christmas Cards
Day 10 ~ Advent Calendar
Day 11 ~ Favorite Decorations and Ornaments
It’s going to be quite a wet week. Snow was even in the forecast for 2 days, but we’ll see if that materializes. Our highs will be in the low 50’s and low’s in the low 30’s. Hubby has an early doctor’s appointment that I need to go to also this morning so I’m in layers of warm things 😀
Hot water and baby food squueze – apple pineapple carrot today – actually a favorite flavor!
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THIS WEEK’S TO DO LIST, PROJECTS & APPOINTMENTS
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WHAT’S ON THE DVR/TV
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I have been so exhausted when I fall into bed that I haven’t gotten much reading done recently. I did get 3 new Bible journaling and devotional books delivered over the weekend and will be beginning on them soon.
I did my part for shopping local and then encountered feeding time on the way home from town – only in the country do you have to wait for the cows to be fed in order to get where you’re going.
with the links to last week’s posted recipes, featured party links for the week and upcoming recipes to be posted soon.
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MONDAY
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TUESDAY
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WEDNESDAY
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THURSDAY
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FRIDAY
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SATURDAY
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SUNDAY
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DINNER
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RUEBEN EGG ROLLS
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ORANGE APRICOT CHICKEN
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GRILLED CHEESE PIMIENTO SANDWICHES & SOUP
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KILBOURN SANDWICHES
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MEATBALLS with PAPPARDELLE
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ORANGE PECAN CHICKEN
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BAKED BEAN DIP, DRIED BEEF PICKLE ROLL DIP
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DESSERT
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BLUEBERRY SOUR CREAM CAKE, GRAHAM CRACKER BROWNIES, RUSTIC NUT BARS, VELVEETA FUDGE, MILLIONAIRES & SNICKERDOODLE POPPERS
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My husband would tell you I never met an ornament I didn’t like. He would also tell you that our tree is going to collapse under the weight of all of the sentimental and treasured ornaments. 😀 What he forgets is that MOST of the family has made me the “safety deposit box” for all things nostalgic.
One of our favorite shows was THE BIG BANG THEORY which always makes me laugh as I picture Penny asking about Sheldon’s Ornament Placement Template.
There is no such thing as a proper way to place an ornament in our house 🙂 We believe in the more the merrier theory.
The ornaments below are some of our homemade bulbs. Several years ago I made quite a few and then did them with my girl scout troop also. Hubby liked them so well that we have now donated all our store bought bulbs and made MORE than enough of these for the entire tree.
My cousin that passed away in 2014 made the ornament below for me. It will always be hung by my shooting stars in her honor even though I’m still mad at her for leaving the mess called A HOUSE FROM HELL for me to deal with as well as her father who swindled us out of more than $75,000 dollars, but that’s NOT a story for Christmas time.
And our handmade ornament by Design Chick Creations.
There are literally thousands of different advent calendars. These days most are promotional items and come in every form from daily chocolates to beers. You can make your own, find them on ETSY, EBAY… but what do they stand for? What is advent?
Advent itself is Christian followers remembering the birth of Christ in celebration of His birth and the anticipation of His return. Advent originates from Latin meaning “coming” or “arrival. Advent begins on the 4th Sunday before Christmas.
This year the first Sunday was November 28th, the second IS TODAY, December 5th and the third one will be the 12th. The third one is also known as Gaudette Sunday and is a time of rejoicing that the fast is almost over.
Advent calendars are a cute little way to help kids not only countdown to Christmas, but also learn along the way. Many families offer up a daily scripture or devotional reading to go along with the chocolate treat as a way to stay focused on the reason for the season.
Many families also use an Advent Wreath, burning the candles as they countdown to Christmas. Each week features a different liturgical theme. Traditionally the first week features hope and expectation of the Jewish people as they await the Saviour’s arrival and reminding Christian believers to wait for Jesus’ second coming. The second week focuses on preparation and the third week celebrates the coming of the Messiah while the final week celebrates God’s peace and love.
Both royal purple and Sarum blue are used to symbolize the preparation, penitence and royalty to welcome the new king at Christmas time while purple is also used as the color of suffering during the week of Lent and Holy Week. Most churches have shifted their emphasis to the Sarum blue for Advent and reserving the royal purple for the Easter season. Pink replaces the blue in week 4 as a shift happens to lessen the emphasis of penitence and turn the attention to the celebration of the season.
Red and green derive from old European practices using evergreens and holly to symbolize the ongoing life and hope that Christ’s birth brings to the world. Red and green are NOT actually liturgical colors for the season.
I DO try to make my own Christmas cards every year, and I PLANNED to do homemade again this year, but years like this last year full of COVID and the years before full of health issues, surgeries and issues from the HOUSE FROM HELL sometimes finds me sending out box cards. The carpet cleaning and the BIG Christmas decoration sort was a bit more time consuming and adventurous this year adding to the not getting to the Christmas card making.
They box cards are pretty cute and I’m glad to be using them up! I WILL do homemade again next year 😀 I did try an annual letter a few times, but ended up in just doing a few paragraphs eventually hitting the highlights from throughout the year since.
I do still send Christmas cards out, but I fear they are becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately I receive fewer and fewer each year it seems. Vitual cards just aren’t the same. AND I can’t reuse virtual cards the next year as gift tags.
