Happy Holidays

We've been working on putting up our Christmas decorations! I think we are almost all done except for the tree. I HATE putting up the lights on our tree. Every year, I end up cursing Chris out and it's not very Christmasy at all!!! Once they are put up, it's great putting the ornaments on but before then is not pretty. Here's what we've done with the fireplace area.

Porcupine Balls

Isn't that the greatest name for a dinner? We made these tonight out of the Paula Deen's my first cookbook. Chris and the kids got a kick out of the name of course and so the kids started asking him what we were having for dinner the other nights of this week and he thought it was funny to start naming every other animal he could think of and add balls after it (Rhino balls). The kids found this to be hilarous! Here's the recipe:

1 lb. lean ground beef

1 1/4 c. uncooked rice

1 tsp. dried onion

1 tsp. seasoned salt

1 tsp. italian seasoning

1-14 oz. can of diced tomatores with juice

1-10 1/2 oz. can of beef broth

Turn oven to 350 degrees. Put the ground beef in a mixing bowl. Measure 1/2 c. of the rice and put it in with the meat. Add the dried onion, seasoned salt, and italian seasoning. Mix it all together. Roll it into 8-9 golfball size balls of meat. Put the rest of the rice in the bottom of the baking dish. Pouor in the tomatoes and the beef broth and stir with the spoon. Put the meat balls on top. Cover the dish tightly with foil. Bake for about 1 hour. The rice in the meatballs will have puffed up all around the meat, and your meatballs will look like little porcupines!

It was really good! We (okay I) am trying to make more homemade meals at home but it sure takes a lot of time. Oh well it's worth it.

Today we made salt dough ornaments! I love making things with Cameron. Here's the recipe for these:

1/2 c. salt

1 c. flour

1/2 c. water

Mix together and when it becomes dough knead until smooth. Use cookie cutters to make fun ornaments or gift tags. I think this year we are going to make gift tags out of them. Last year we made ornaments for everyone.

Bake at 250 degrees for 2 hours.

It was fun making these and in the next couple of days we will paint them!

Our camera

THANK GOD for warranties! We were setting up our Christmas decorations and Cameron & I were wearing our Santa hats.

The camera just froze! I don't know what happened but now we have to take it into Best Buy to get it fixed! I've never used a warranty before so I hope it's worth it.

Button Turkey

My button turkey turned out awesome!! I brought it to school today and my mom asked if I could keep it there. I have to sub tomorrow afternoon so I will bring it home tomorrow and show what it looks like. Thanks for the great idea! I think I'm going to make a christmas tree next and use buttons to put ornaments on of different shapes.

Epcot's Food and Wine Festival

Some of you know how much I HATE cooking! It's not that I wouldn't like to but I just a) never feel like it turns out right or b)have the time. I'm starting to realize that we really need more balanced and healthy meals here! I've known all along but just need to get busy with it. Well,

I went to the greatest workshop while I was in Disney. Okay, they really weren't workshops; one was called, "Authors without borders" and it had the authors of the book, "Real food for healthy kids" and they talked about their book and I realized that I needed to really do something about this. Of course, I bought the book and had them sign it and talked to them for a while. The same day, they had a cooking demonstration and I went to that and realized that I could really do this for my family!! Thank you to the authors for showing this to me!!

Well, so far we are doing great. One of the things they said to do is have fresh veggies out before dinner and offer those if anyone is hungry. This seems to work good so far! Okay, I am SOOOOO excited! We are on our 3rd homemade meal in a row (to some of you this doesn't seem like much but for us it's a HUGE deal) and everyone is really enjoying it! Cameron ate everything I put out for- him tonight and Chris, Kait, Anthony and I had a BLAST just chit-chatting away! This is great! I made two different kinds of pasta dishes tonight (I couldn't make up my mind on which one I liked better) and everyone was so excited about them. It's amazing and I'm really excited for this winter because I think it'll be easier to get homemade meals on the table with Chris around more. Hopefully, he can keep Cam entertained while I cook. I think tonight we'll do some sort of fish dish with rice and I think corn.

I'm a big Sam's Club shopper and have many meals in the freezer still and need to get rid of them before I truly get to make everything from scratch. I will just have to have fun with side dishes while I get rid of the rest of the Sam's Club stuff.

Also, I bought some Pampered Chef items and have been using those the last 3 days too! The lady from Pampered Chef just send me an email where I can get the cranberry deep covered baker at 60 percent off (I can just see Chris shaking his head when I say that because he doesn't think I can pass up a deal and I really can't ha-ha) and send a bunch of recipes for it too so I can't wait for that to come it. Hopefully, I'll have the Sam's Club items gone by then. LOL

Wish me luck!!

Alright, I'm back from Disney (I'll post about all the fun; hopefully soon!!) but I am working on a project that is so awesome I found it on The Crafty Crow. I love everyone's blog! Some are so inspiring; it makes me really excited to try new things and a lot of the instructions are so easy to follow so thank you, thank you, thank you!!! Here's what I am making right now: http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/2008/11/a-little-someth.html
Wish me luck though!! I'm handstitching it with a blanket stitich. My mom taught me at church this morning how to do it on a napkin. What a lady! She can help me with everything I need. I really appreciate when she takes the time to help me with my crazy projects. She is always willing to help me in how to do it easier or even how to do it. THANKS MOM!! I hope my kids come to me the way I come to her for help. She's taught me so much (but I can ALWAYS learn more from her) and I want to be able to show my kids all the cool stuff that she knows. You might ask, why not use the sewing machine but here's the problem. I don't have any thread for the colors I need. I have little bobbins but no big ones. That's something I could use for christmas (hint-hint)!! I really only have white, teal, light yellow and tan. I guess that's the only colors I've needed so far. I'd really like to build on my sewing skills too! Right now, it's easier to handstitch because I can be by Cameron and still play with him while I do it. I'll show you the finished project when I'm done! I want it done by Tuesday so I can bring it to school; I don't know how much Cameron will play with it but I'm hoping the kids at school will like it!