Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 6 (The week of Thanksgiving)

Thanksgiving is almost here and I can’t wait! Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted about some of the things we are doing to help prepare our homes for the holidays and hopefully prevent a little of the CHAOS. We will continue to review those things and work on a few more things this week. Our list is as follows:

  1. We will take a little extra time during our weekly ‘Home Blessings’ to make sure that everything is cleaned, windows are shined, and floors are swept, mopped, and vacuumed.
  2. I will be checking my Holiday Planner for the timeline of things I need to do to prepare for Turkey Day. ex: defrost turkey, clean oven, clean kitchen, empty fridges, get out centerpieces, etc.
  3. I will review the menu lists in my Holiday Planner so I can add all of the perishables to my weekly grocery list so I can get them purchased ASAP and not have to make a last-minute grocery run on the day before as things will definitely be CRAZY and many shelves may be EMPTY!
  4. I’ll review my list of ‘make-ahead’ items and try to knock out a few of them so there will be less to do at Thanksgiving.
  5. I will pull out some of those Thanksgiving activities that I found earlier and let the kids work on them while I work on other things. The kids will help with preparations when they can but there are some things that I just want to do myself.
  6. If we have decided to do any Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping we will review our planned lists and budgets.
  7. I’m also trying to plan to do the 3 gift rule here this year but I’m not sure how it will go yet. I’ve got some links about this idea HERE, HERE, and HERE. This will hopefully encourage the focus to be more on Jesus than Santa and the gifts he will bring.

Most of all we will do our best to be thankful for all the family and friends that we have been blessed with and try to create some special memories with them during the holiday season! We pray that you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving!

For more great ideas you can check out the FlyLady website HERE.

Fall Gardening 2023

Our Fall garden is doing so well and I can’t believe I’ve never tried this before. We recently harvested our first squash from the Fall garden and we are eagerly anticipating more!

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FREE! FREE! Links to FREE Printables!

I just realized that I probably need to have a page with all the FREE printables listed to make things easier for myself and others. I’ll try to get a tab on the menu soon too! Not all of these links are to products on my site, so they may not be available in the future.

Scroll DOWN to access the FULL library or click a link below for specific printables.

Bible Studies and Devotionals

Homeschool Resources

Keeper of the Home

Other Freebies

Here are the links to the printables we have added to our site:

Homeschool:

Printables from our 2021-2022 Crisis Homeschooling Year

printable-lesson-plans-updated

printable-lesson-plans

daily-routines

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Art

Free Picture Study Resources

Bible

Ten Commandments Copywork

 Scripture Cards and box system found for FREE on the Simply Charlotte Mason site.

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Nothing Hidden Ranch Seasoning, Dressing, and Dip

My kids all LOVE the ranch dressing with the green label… you know which one. We can’t keep enough in the pantry as they would drink it straight from the bottle if I let them. I didn’t like the fact that it had so many extra ingredients so I’ve been on a mission to make it ourselves.

This is also great for making your own Seasoned Pretzels!

We like using whole milk with a couple of Tablespoons of kefir mixed in to make this.

Nothing Hidden Ranch Seasoning, Dressing, and Dip

Ingredients:

  • 2 T. garlic powder
  • 6 T. onion powder
  • 2 T. minced onion, or you can just use 8 T. onion powder if you want it smoother
  • 2 T. salt
  • 2 t. basil
  • 2 t. chives
  • 2 t. dill weed
  • 2 t. parsley flakes
  • ½ t. sugar or monk fruit sweetener, optional
  • 2 t. thyme
  • 1-2 t. Cornstarch, Xantham gum, or Glucomannan powder to thicken, optional
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Special Holiday Meals: Our tried and true favorite Thanksgiving recipes plus a new tradition in the making

It’s so hard to believe that Thanksgiving is next week! I haven’t finished all my shopping yet but plan to have it wrapped up before the end of the week. We will probably have a lot of our usual dishes plus a couple of new ones ‘keto-friendly’ versions. We won’t be ‘restricting’ ourselves to keto foods for Thanksgiving as we want to have the freedom to enjoy, but not overindulge, the dishes that everyone brings to dinner.

I love using Canva to make up pretty menus and such! Please excuse my typos… oops!

Continue reading “Special Holiday Meals: Our tried and true favorite Thanksgiving recipes plus a new tradition in the making”