Pollywogs Place Homeschool – Page 34

It’s Just About Fudgin’ Time!

Published on December 12, 2022November 29, 2022 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

It’s just about that time of year when I need to get started on my Christmas Fudge. I definitely need to get it made before the Polar Express Party so we can share it with our family and friends who may come to visit.

Here are the recipe links for the fudge flavors that we have made in the past:

The Milk Chocolate Fudge has several flavor variations to try.

Butter Pecan Fudge

Easy Peanut Butter Fudge

Milk Chocolate Fudge (Christmas Fudge) — several flavor variations!

Peanut Butter Fudge

Peppermint Bark

Red Velvet Fudge

I am hoping to try a couple of new flavors this year… maybe even an egg nog flavor! It’s always fun trying out new flavors and sometimes we have great success while others are total flops but we have fun trying!

Here are some of the other candies that we make around this time of year as well:

Caramel Pecan Candies

Chocolate Covered Eggs (updated with more flavors!) (shape into balls for Christmas Candy)

Chocolate-Dipped Goodies

Crockpot Chocolate Peanut Clusters aka Reindeer Poop

Haystacks aka Noodle Cookies (2 versions here)

We hope you find these recipes easy to use and we pray that you have a blessed holiday season!

Let us know in the comments what your favorite Christmas Candy is!

Give a Clutter-Free Gift Without Breaking The Bank!

Published on December 10, 2022November 29, 2022 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

Are you trying to find the perfect gift for someone on your list this year?

With the economy the way it is many of us have drastically cut back on gifting as we just don’t have the money left after paying for the basic necessities. Why not make sure that you give a gift that is sure to be appreciated?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret that many people are afraid to tell anyone… I don’t know why it is so hard to say but we love our friends and our families but CLUTTER is driving us CRAZY and Christmas seems to bring another level of CRAZINESS with it. Some of us, myself included, are drowning in the CHAOS of LIFE right now and the holidays can get very overwhelming!

I’ve seen many posts in many different groups about people asking for these kinds of clutter-free gifts and really these make a lot of sense in a lot of ways. I know many of us have been trying to simplify our lives and our homes so many of these ideas would help to keep the clutter out of our homes but allow us to benefit in so many ways.

Zoo/Museum Memberships

I know our family loves going to the zoo or the museum and these would be awesome gifts… maybe someone you know would like this as well. If we had an aquarium near us that would be amazing as well.

There have been a couple of times that we’ve received tickets to go to local places and we have had an amazing time… without the thoughtfulness or generosity of others, we would not have been able to have those experiences.

Online Subscriptions

Another idea is to gift a subscription or membership for a service that someone may use or need. In our home, we love using various programs but many of them have also had to increase their prices.

We also love using our Amazon prime for videos as well as a couple of other companies as we don’t have any TV service here.

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Hot Cocoa for the win!

Published on December 8, 2022November 29, 2022 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

There’s nothing like snuggling up with a cup of hot cocoa after coming in from the cold… ok, ok, I know… it doesn’t really get that COLD here in Florida but I sure can remember some cold days from my

time further north and I still enjoy a nice cup of hot cocoa every now and then.

I can remember my mom making us a pot of cocoa on the old wood cookstove. We would sip as much as we could before we had to head out the door to catch the school bus… at one time we had to walk 1/2 mile uphill to get to the bus and in another place we lived it was an even further walk downhill… not much easier if the driveway was iced over.

Here are some of our All-Time Favorite cocoa recipes:

Cocoa In A Crockpot

Hot Cocoa (Powdered)

Single-Serve Hot Cocoa

The Best Hot Cocoa

Of course, you can always use the ready-made kind at the store too but there is just something a little extra special about whipping up some cocoa from scratch and the memories you make will be cherished for a lifetime!

You can also whip up some fresh cookies to go along with your cocoa for an extra special snack!

St. Nicholas Day 2022

Published on December 6, 2022December 10, 2022 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

Yesterday afternoon I had the kiddos help me dig out the Christmas decorations and the tree. I’m so thankful that we’ve used color-coded totes (dark green for Christmas) for our seasonal decor as this makes it much easier to find the necessary items.

The kids were a little upset that we didn’t put the tree up last night but they were super excited to find some early gifts on the table this morning.

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St. Nicholas Day is just around the corner!

Published on December 3, 2022November 29, 2022 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

We are trying our best to get back into some of our routines and traditions around here but it’s been tough going with one thing after another. I do plan to do a little something special for St. Nicholas Day and we hope to get our tree up then as well. I had thought about doing our Polar Express Party on St. Nicholas Day but it falls in the middle of the week so that wouldn’t work out well for anyone right now.

We won’t be doing anything really spectacular but I’m sure the kids will be excited anyway. I did manage to snag a couple of bags of chocolate coins a couple of weeks ago too so I’m hoping they won’t have melted by the time St. Nicholas Day gets here.

I just wanted to post this in case anyone else wanted to try to do something a little extra special… maybe you will have a chance to grab some things over the weekend to start a new family tradition. Maybe we can schedule a quick drive around town to look at Christmas lights or something as well.

Here are a few posts from previous years:

Happy St. Nicholas Day 2018!

St. Nicholas Day 2016

St. Nicholas Day (12/6)

We usually make Santa Pancakes and I think we did something a little different last year but I can’t remember what we did for sure as it was so crazy then.

Before you think that you couldn’t possibly pull anything like this off because something always goes wrong here’s another post about how our day really went on a previous St. Nicholas Day: