Well, our Polar Express Party was full of family, fun, food, and lots of love. I think everyone had a great time and it all seemed to have gone well despite the bad weather we were experiencing.
The cousins had a lot of fun visiting, playing hide and seek, enjoying all the sweet treats, and having a special movie night experience. The grown-ups also got to talk and enjoy the movie… I love these special memories that our kids will be able to fondly look back on when they are older.
I’m sure our Polar Express was a hit and everyone had a good time as they always do. Now we really need to focus on Christmas! Here are some of the things that we will be working on this week:
I’ve definitely been trying to streamline things around here… in some ways, we need to look at our homes as a business and try to find ways to make things run a little smoother. I’ve had a master shopping list for a while although I’m not sure if I’ve shared it here. I might’ve been a little inspired by these vintage-style grocery boards**:
The problem with our previous shopping list was that it was outdated and our diets/tastes have changed quite a bit. I wasn’t quite as health conscious when I first made my grocery list so I did have things like Koolaid and Bisquick on there. We’ve also been growing some of our own veggies and making some of the convenience foods like ranch seasoning and onion soup mix so we don’t buy them anymore. We really want to try to grow some of our own herbs to make them even better!
I took a little time one evening while Mr. Awesome and the kiddos were out to look through our grocery purchases over the past year… yeah, it did take a little time to sort through the orders we have placed but it was worth it. I know the orders I went through didn’t show EVERYTHING we bought over the past year but it did give me a good idea of what we are buying regularly and how much we are buying. Some of those things were quite surprising!
When we did our pantry makeover, I really wanted to see just how much space I needed to dedicate to certain items before getting too happy with my organization.
I know that Christmas is fast approaching and many have already gone over their holiday budget but I wanted to let you know about a special organization that has touched my heart deeply over the past couple of years.
They have been on our prayer list for a while now and in our daily thoughts and prayers so I don’t know why I haven’t shared about them before but now is better than never.
I know that there are so many charities that are asking for donations at this time of year but this one really touches my heart.
Are you still trying to come up with a gift idea for someone? This is a great gift to give… either finish the starter out to bake the bread or gift some starter and a copy of the directions to your friends so they can bake their own bread.
I was recently gifted several starters so I had to dig through my old binders to find my old recipes for this gift. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve made any of these recipes. I ended up making 2 loaves of the Basic Recipe, 2 loaves of Banana Bread, 2 loaves of Chocolate Bread, and a double-batch of pancakes, and I still have 2 cups of starter left over to start another batch.
I have included the basic bread instructions in this post and I will also try to include a pretty printable for gifting. This would be so cute to give a small loaf of bread with a small jar of starter and the instructions.
There are many other variations available and you can easily search for more flavor variations online. I will try to update the blog with some of the other recipe variations that I have in my binder.
