The Holiday Season is here!!

   IT'S HERE!! IT'S HERE!!! Christmas is here! LOVE is a complete understatement for this time of year! I love Thanksgiving and all that it entails. I love getting to cook way too many items, making things homemade that I normally don't get to make on any given day, and bake way too many things at once. It was just the three of us this year. Mom went down to spend Thanksgiving with Dad.

   I made as much of the food the day before because I wanted to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with Maddie. Jeff had to make mashed potatoes and gravy for the 50 of the marine students that morning. The night before I made homemade bread, Jeff's jello salad thing with mandarins and cool whip, Jeff's peach pie that is traditional to holidays for him,  pumpkin cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting for the marines, cheesecake for me and Maddie, homemade strawberry puree (which I have fallen in love with), and blueberry lemonade. On Thanksgiving day, we did the potatoes, sweet potatoes, turkey with the stuffing inside and carrots underneath, broccoli, salad, homemade spinach dip, and gravy. Jeff kept trying to convince me to prepare less since it was just the three of us, but that would be breaking tradition. I just couldn't do it. I would rather eat on the meal for days than to have a regular small meal. We did eat on it for a few days, but can I just say that the turkey was BEYOND moist! Jeff went to pick it up out of the bag and it broke in half. It was still moist by the third day into it. It was a really good day with good food and family. It was sad that we didn't have family to spend it with though.


Of course the day after Thanksgiving is black Friday, but more importantly the day we put up the Christmas decor!! :) This is the day that I break out my NSYNC (YES, NSYNC) Christmas CD along with all of my other CD's, the Christmas tree goes up, all of my garland and lights, and decor goes up! I get all giddy and can't wait for this time of year! I'll post pictures of putting the trees (yes, Maddie has her own tree) up in another post because I have some great pictures!


    Jeff and I didn't plan on going out for Black Friday. He had a few things he had wanted to get, but we didn't see them in any ads and wasn't going to voluntarily go to a crazy store to see if they had them on sale. I had been wanting a food processor for years. As you know by now, I love to cook and bake! I am always trying new recipes, but couldn't try some because I didn't have a food processor. I found one for a great price and it was a food processor/blender duet! Which was exactly what I wanted because my blender is about to go out of commission. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE it? Jeff found a wet/dry vac at a good price that he has been looking for. We didn't leave the house until 11 and just hoped that they still had what we wanted. To our surprise, they still had a lot of things left at the store. Merry Christmas to us!


Be on the lookout for another post about our Christmas trees. Until then, enjoy the pictures!

She's ready to say prayer

My beautiful!

Happy Thanksgiving!

trying my blueberry lemonade

My handsome husband

Our feast!

the moist turkey

Jeff's jello salad

Steamed broccoli

the most amazing carrots I have ever had

My homemade decor

cranberry stuffing

homemade rolls

Enjoying her food

ready to chow down!

asking her to put her hands together for prayer

This is her 'closing her eyes'

Lori

My new love!

Marine Ball 2011 Pt 2

The start of the dance!

Only them!

Singing to each other!

I didn't have all of my pictures before when I posted and finally got to upload my pictures. These are some funny pictures that I couldn't resist sharing. :)


That is all. Enjoy!

Baking with Maddie

I already posted a recipe about the death by oreo cupcakes, but this time I made it with Madison and actually got some pictures. I am going to post the recipe on this post, in case you missed the other post. Maddie loves to help with anything, especially cooking or baking. As soon as I started to make this, she started screaming 'me help, me help' at me. I took the chance and snapped a few pictures while I was at it. :) Enjoy!

Ingredient

1 pkg oreos, regular size 1 pkg mini oreos, for decoration 1 pkg chocolate cake mix 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature

 8 Tbsp butter, room temperature
 3 3/4 c powdered sugar
 1 tsp vanilla extract
 cupcake liners




Directions
1.   Preheat oven to 350. Mix packaged cake mix according to directions. (Do not bake.) 

2.   Line cupcake tins with liner, place an regular size oreo cookie in the bottom of each one

3.   Take 1/2 of remaining cookies and chop coarsely and add to cake mix. Fill the cupcake tins. Bake for 15 min (or according to box directions). While cupcakes are baking make the frosting.

4.   Cream together butter and cream cheese. Add vanilla, then add powdered sugar slowly until blended well.

5.   Chop remaining regular-sized Oreos very fine. Add to frosting.

6.   After cupcakes are cool put frosting on and decorate with a few mini oreos on top

After dinner, Maddie had to taste her cupcakes and see how they turned out! :) I think I got the approval!

I will say that these cupcakes are delicious!


Hope you enjoy!


Lori

Walgreens trip 11-10

If you don't already know, then I am a couponer. I am not a great one, but I am learning. I frequently go to Walgreens because they offer military discount on Thursday and have some great deals. So, today I went and came home rather proud of myself! I got 12 smart waters, 10 tubs of blistex, 4 bag of chips, and 2 bags of mars mixed candy. I paid $11.32 out of pocket. I saved over $46 and got $16 in RR's ( it's like Walgreens money that I can use on my next purchase within a week). Let's hope I can continue doing well :).


Just had to share!

Lori

Making brownies

A couple of nights ago I wanted some brownies. We hadn't had sweets in our house in about a week and that is a very rare occasion, so I had the itch. It wasn't homemade or anything. Maddie has turned into quite the little baker and tries to help with anything in the kitchen. Well anything actually!! I asked her if she wanted to help and before I knew it I heard skid marks and a chair moving closer to me. She jumped up and immediately took over. I let her mix it up for a couple of minutes with a few mixes from me. After she finished helping me, she got a bath while they baked. When they were finished baking, I pulled them out and let her have the first bite! :) she was happy to help and get to be the first to try it!
It was another great memory for us and another accomplishment for her! :)

Marine Ball 2011

 

 

My hubby and I :)

Some of my beautiful friends!

The hubby dancing

  

My beautiful friend and me

  

My love and me dancing <3

 I was really bad about taking pictures this year! I wish I would have taken more pictures, but my good camera is broken and I don't get great pictures with my little camera. I had a lot of fun celebrating the Marine's birthday! I had chills the whole time during the ceremony. It was such a humbling, proud, emotional moment that I couldn't help but tear up most of the ceremony. The guest speaker gave such a good speech and I think that spoke to the students there. Half of the people there were students and a quarter were guests, so that left the instructors (us). My parents came into town to watch Maddie for us (which was SUCH a problem for them LOL). We went out after for a little bit because we didn't have a timeline. It was a lot of fun to go out and know that our daughter was in such good hands.

Maddie had a lot of fun with Mimi and PopPop! She got to stay up until 10 (Which never gets to happen), got some muffins and other goodies, play time with them, and so much more! This little girl gets spoiled unbelievably by them. She doesn't complain though. :)

Unfortunately, Mimi and PopPop had to leave the next morning to prepare for their next adventure. Maddie was sad for  them to leave and still asks for them every time she wakes up in the morning or in the afternoon. 

I was so thankful that my parents could come down, that Maddie got to spend time with them, we had a good time at the ball, and my husband who proudly serves our country!

Lori

Cheesy Baked Potato soup! YUM!!

I tried THIS recipe a couple of weeks ago since it is starting to get cold enough to have soup! It was so good! :) Seeing as I can't have onion and don't like celery ( and didn't have any on hand any way), I left those items out of my meal. Also, I only had hash brown shreds instead of diced. It turned out rather tasty! :) My husband thought it was good, but would add the diced hash browns along with the shreds and use less fatty bacon. Ha! I would have to agree with him! We will definitely use this recipe again! I love using recipes that I can use in my crock pot! Now, that I have found the slow cooker liners, I love using crock pot recipes even more! If you haven't tried those liners, you are missing out!


I used:


1 bag of thawed potato shreds
sprinkled some onion powder in
(2) 14.5 oz. cans of chicken broth
1 cup of water


I let these cook for about 6 hours
Then, I mixed (3) tablespoons of flour and 1 cup of milk together in a small bowl and added it to my crock pot mix and stirred.
I let the mixture thicken for about 20 minutes
I added (2) cups of chedder cheese and let it melt.
Since I love me some greasy bacon, I loaded it up on my soup once in the bowl!


It was so good! Maddie actually ate it as well which means it was good. The way I made it is a slightly different from what the recipe says, but it was YUMMO!


I know I need to start taking pictures of what I make since I am sure it will sound a lot more appealing if you SEE how yummy it looks! I'll work on it! :)


Enjoy!


Lori

Awesome Idea to try out!

Oh the lovely things: Scratch Off Lottery Tickets - DIY + Free Printable...

This seems like a really neat idea that I want to try out! I had to share this idea since I know a lot of my friends like doing creative things. : ) If you do this, let me know how it turned out and if you would do it again.


Lori