Menus in the Making

Yesterday I shopped for both a freezer fill (cooking meals to freeze and eat another day) and a family game night tomorrow, also known as New Year's Eve. My trip to the grocery was my first venture out in a week's time. We had been snowed in during Christmas as the blizzard that arrived on Christmas Eve continued as snow showers for the three days following. It's snowing again today, even as I write, but we are not supposed to get more than a couple more inches total.

For me, a plan for party food is always a challenge. Fourth of July, Labor Day or Memorial Day I can plan for without blinking. Food for the grill and the standard picnic/cookout sides is easy to plan and I always try to throw in one new recipe. Thanksgiving and Christmas are pretty traditional around here and I just have to time everything right to make that work. Now New Year's Eve has been done so many different ways around here. We've done make your own pizzas, taco bars, potato bars (notice we do a lot of bars). Would love to do fondue, but, alas, I don't have a fondue pot. My brother Robert is our fondue expert. He hosted a very yummy fondue gathering last New Year's Day. Maybe I'll set the goal of doing fondue next year. Anywho, I am instead thinking of a different menu, and it is something I haven't done in a while. What's on tomorrow night's menu? I guess you'll have to wait as it will be unveiled in a future post.

Okay, while I'm on the subjct of menus, before I went shopping yesterday, I was tempted with the idea of freezer cooking by a friend, love you Candace, that was planning some freezer meals using Leanne Ely's Pantry to Freezer Vol. 1 menus and recipes. After commenting on her plans, we found out that there would be a special on the recipe plans at Leanne's site. I ended up getting a very large e-cookbook that had many freezer recipes and menus. My grocery list also included enough ingredients to get some meals in my freezer. In the past I have done once a month cooking, the Robin Miller cook extra on weekends and enjoy plan overs during the week type of cooking, the double recipes when you cook and freeze half method, and other equally helpful do it ahead of time plans. All were wonderful. The plans allowed me to also create meals I could share with friends that were ill, recovering from surgery or that had returned home with a new baby. Nothing says you're a friend who cares more than a hot meal for someone that's down. So today I will create some handy freezer meals to make starting the new semester at work easier to handle.

Cousin Fun

My sister Anne and I formed a plan to get the kids out of the house and do some shopping. We took them to a Chuckie Cheese that had JC Penney's very near. The kids had fun. We got to shop a good sale. Win, Win!

Still in a Freeze

Joe and I went into Wal-Mart for eggs and fruit and ended up coming out with a full cart. I did all my shopping on the grocery side. It is amazing how little food is left around our house since we have been out of school since Thursday. I was feeling pretty good as my gift shopping and wrapping were finished, and we were just picking up enough to tide us over until the Christmas leftovers were done.

The boys and I also baked over 9 pounds of cookies for family and neighbors, and a few dozen for here. The dough was made and I just set myself to baking one batch after another. I tried a new recipe for chocolate covered pretzels, but I didn't like it at all. The recipe was much like my no bake cookie recipe, but instead of adding quick oats I dipped the pretzels into the mixture, and there was no peanut butter. The pretzels got soggy and the chocolate was dry. Raymond liked them.

For tonight's countdown surprise the boys opened the book Here Comes Santa Claus. There is only one cookie left on the boys cookie ribbons when they went to bed tonight.

Here is Daniel reading to one of his new friends.

Mending

Well I don't mend socks, but I am hoping that I am going to get better soon since I actually don't feel worse than I did yesterday. Unfortunately, I don't feel better yet either.

It feels like winter has decided to make an early appearance. Today is the final day of autumn and typically should be a day with a temperature that reaches above the freezing point. Joe took Rick, Steven, Raymond and Daniel to Olathe so the older boys could finish up their shopping today. They visited Toys R Us, The Great Mall, Wal-Mart, Target and had dinner at Ryan's. While they were at the mall, the boys found a Bookcrossing share book, "The Twits" by Roald Dahl. Raymond is excited to read it and then report his find on the internet before passing it on to the next lucky recipient. If you have never heard of Bookcrossing before, it is a very interesting way to pass along books and then track their whereabouts. Santa was at Ryan's and Daniel told Joe that this Santa was a fake because he had a Ryan's tag on and the real Santa is not an employee of Ryan's. They did not get home until late and we had to wake Daniel up for the surprise of the day and to get the cookie off the cookie ribbons. Both boys saved their cookies until tomorrow as they had eaten a large meal and dessert and they were pretty tired.

I stayed home to rest and continue recovering from my cold. The antihistamines that I take to stop my nose from running also have a tendency to knock me out and today was no exception. I rested with frequent naps, some Lifetime Christmas movies, a couple of podcasts and my trusty box of Kleenexes with lotion. I am so thankful that I had some handy, otherwise I would have a much sorer nose than I already do.

Tonight's surprise was the story, "Santa's Christmas Surprise". It is a cute book that has Santa creating a surprise that ends up being the book we were reading. Daniel was barely awake for the story so I am sure I will share it with him again later.

Tree Trimming and Shopping Time

We have been wrapping up the decorating and shopping today. Joe did not go out hunting this morning so we took advantage of having him home and did some shopping with the little boys. They did all of their shopping for their brothers today. They already had their shopping for cousins and school done just after Thanksgiving. We decorated the tree today while Joe and all the boys were home, too. It really turned out nice and I don't think I did much at all to help. Joe took charge of putting the lights on. We skipped putting garland on the tree, and Richard took charge of the boys putting on the ornaments. The boys also enjoyed peanut butter cookies baked by Rick and eggnog.




Tonight's countdown surprise was the collection called, "Christmas Stories and Poems". It has a definite Old English influence.

Good-bye November

There are just 25 days until Christmas. There is snow on the ground, which has been a great thrill for the boys, and for Daniel especially. The boys went out to catch snowflakes last night before bed and then played in the snow today. The snow was pretty wet, so it made some good snowballs. They cleaned off the patio furniture and then made paths in the snow in the yard. Oh, and they did get to sip on cocoa when they came in to get warmed up.

The major part of my Christmas shopping is done. I put the last order in yesterday. I just have a few things to pick up for my team at work and the boys' school gifts and then just a few small finishing touches that are more fun to do when shopping. The little boys also need to shop for their brothers, so Joe or I will take them out to do that soon. I have had plenty of years where I waited until December weekends and more often I had waited until my Christmas break to do the bulk of my shopping. Last year's ice storm knocked out a lot of my shopping time as we spent two weeks before Christmas dealing with electricity and heating issues, so I wanted to make sure that being unprepared with shopping was not repeated this year. Two years ago I had all of my big shopping done the first week of December, but I procrastinated on the finishing touches and the wrapping until my break. I know I don't want a repeat of that either.

Still on my to do list:
( )Finish up Christmas cards
( )Order pictures online
(X)Wrap 24 Christmas themed books so that the little boys can unwrap 1 book each night to read until Christmas as a countdown
(X)PTO agenda for meeting this week
(X)Let family know about plans to pick up tree Wednesday evening
( )Plan for cookie baking
(X)Check calendar for parties and programs

Black Friday

My shopping experience for this year's Christmas list has been totally different than in the past. I am just shy of reaching my halfway mark with my budget, but I have only made one in store purchase. That was a bargain at $10 off what I had priced in other stores and online, and the purchase was relatively effortless as it was right on a shelf in the aisle I was in as I was doing my weekly shopping. I have already bought several of the major gifts for everyone, but I have done most of that on-line. Now I just have a moderate list of little things and clothes for several of the kids on my list and then I will be done. My goal to be finished shopping is December 6th and I want all my wrapping finished by December 14th. Since I am ordering several things on-line and through catalogs, sometimes it takes a bit of time for all the items to get in, so Monday is my goal to be finished with online and catalog ordering.

This year my budget was a bit different than in the past. I have had a budgeted amount for Christmas shopping set aside each year. I save from January through October and that is what I use for all of my Christmas purchases. This year, I broke it down to how much I was going to spend for each person on my list and tried to even the amounts I was spending for my kids and then with the cousins, and then gifts for work and school. I still have a way to go, but I hope that I can meet my goals with shopping and wrapping so I can enjoy my weekends and the first five days of my break.

The Thanksgiving decorations are still up. I will probably leave them up until Sunday, and start decorating for Christmas then. I think we will go to get the tree Wednesday or Thursday and get the house decorated by this weekend.

Cool Runnings

Last night Joe and I went out and picked up a new refrigerator... finally. I had been looking and waiting for a good price, and patience paid off. In fact, when I went in to shop for the model that was advertised on sale, I found a bigger model for the same price...and it would fit in my kitchen. In fact it was bigger than the fridge that I had in the kitchen (but not bigger than the one that died). We got it home before the rain started, moved the kitchen refrigerator into the pantry and the new fridge into the kitchen. By that time it was after 10 p.m., so I put off stocking the new fridge until today. Now life can get back to normal.

Odds and Ends

My big accomplishment yesterday was to get the shopping done. Instead of going myself, which is the norm, Joe, Ray and Danny went with me. It took a lot longer, but Daniel really loves to shop. Raymond only likes to shop if he has something on his personal list, but he got some exercise following the cart around.

This shopping trip was quite challenging for me as our back refrigerator died last week. We had to shift a few items to the neighbor's freezer and pack our kitchen freezer and fridge until there was no space left even for more than two ice trays. I am currently in the market for a new one to replace the one that died, but I have to figure out exactly what I want. Can I get by with just a freezer now in the pantry, or do I want to get another large side by side as I had back there before? I wish I could find a model that had a larger freezer area and a smaller fridge area. That would be my ideal. Actually what I would really like, if I had a larger area in my kitchen, would be to get one of those large French door refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom and then get just a medium sized freezer for the pantry. To do that I would have to lose a row of cabinets on the top and bottom. Of course that would lead to a major kitchen renovation and I don't think that is happening anytime soon.

So I had to retrain my brain not to shop for weeks ahead, but just what we need this week. I really hate to shop so this is really difficult for me to think I will have to go back and do it again so soon. I do have to think about the fact that I am blessed to have the refrigerator I do have (that is 13 years old and small but still running), and that it is full. I am also grateful that I have a full house of family that is here to eat meals and be a part of each others lives.

To update the illnesses around here, most everyone is on the mend. Joe Joe is going back to work today, although he is not 100%. He spent the day Thursday in the doctor's office, or at least waiting to be seen, as he had called for the appointment the day before, and with so many people sick going in to be seen, it was difficult to work him into the schedule. It was rough but he made it through the day. The little boys have lost their coughs, which is a relief, but Raymond still has a lot of congestion in his head. Steven and I are now dealing with allergies, which is what I am suspecting may be happening with Raymond. Joe was sick last weekend and had a few down days this past week, but he still rose to the occasion in working on the driveway, yard and a few other helpful tasks.

Now to give an update from the ice storm damage and our yard, we have been just stacking up the limbs that came down in December. I am so overwhelmed by the number that had come down. If we were to burn it, it would be a really large job. Hauling it away seems a big job as well. The piles just from the sycamore tree would fill the large trailer ten times with some of the limbs far too long to fit on the trailer at all. Even the smaller trees lost limbs. We will wait to see how they progress when they get their leaves to see if any need to come down. I suspect we will need to lose at least two. At this point I think we will need to burn some of the limbs and haul some away. Now we will have to wait for a wet and windless day to start burning. It has been much too windy over the past two weeks. My yard looks so sad. Everything is brown or gray, and the trees look like they are no longer proportional. Some trees lost their tops and others lost limbs from varying levels. I am really waiting for when everything starts to green up; I hope it will look so much better.

The sun is shining today. Although it is still quite cold out, I feel a bit of energy to get something accomplished. With the time change I will need to work hard to turn in a little early this week so that I can get up and off to work in the dark mornings for several weeks until the days stretch out to mornings being well lit by the sun. The Spring Equinox is less than two weeks away, and Spring Break is just a week away!