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”

A Christ-Centered Thanksgiving and other Thanksgiving homeschool resources

This week we have been focusing on Thanksgiving with our homeschool studies. I had purchased ‘A Christ-Centered Thanksgiving‘** several years ago but just never got around to using it. This season I am trying to be a bit more intentional and I have included different seasonal activity slots into our school schedule to help me remember to look through what I have.

Continue reading “A Christ-Centered Thanksgiving and other Thanksgiving homeschool resources”

Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 5 (The Week Before Thanksgiving)

Thanksgiving is getting closer and I’m sure you are getting constant reminders about how close it is getting to Christmas! 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 continue to look for things that don’t belong and get them put away where they belong or get rid of things we don’t really need as we do our weekly ‘Home Blessings’.
  2. If we have items (or cards) that need to be mailed, we will try to get them taken care of ASAP… sometimes I have gifts sent directly to the recipients, but I try to warn them ahead of time so they can be on the lookout for them.
  3. If I haven’t bought the wrapping paper and supplies, then I will try to make sure to get those this week. I also make sure that I have ordered any special tablecloths or tableware that I may need so it gets here in plenty of time.
  4. 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.
  5. I will review the menu lists in my Holiday Planner so I can try to add as many of the pantry goods to my weekly grocery list as well as double-checking to make sure that we have plenty of the everyday essentials like toilet paper and paper towels because we don’t want to run out of those things when we have guests.
  6. 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. I will also pull out some of my recipes that will use up the leftover turkey and such if we have any.
  7. I will also look up some information about Thanksgiving traditions and history to add to our homeschool lessons as well as some fun Thanksgiving activities. You can check this post HERE for some ideas!

Life is crazy enough without adding holiday stress to it. The simpler we can keep things, the better in most cases and we are always trying to find creative solutions to things we need to get done. By spending just a few minutes a day working on these tasks it helps to get us prepared without causing a lot of unnecessary stress.

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

Recipe Ideas for the Holiday Season

We are getting closer and closer to the upcoming holiday season and maybe you need some ideas for new recipes or some recipes for dishes like you remember from your childhood… well, look no further. We have a ton of different recipes on our blog and below you will find a few links to those recipes as well as links to previous holiday menus. There is no need to get fancy… just focus on the things you have been blessed with and express your thankfulness and gratitude for the family and friends you invite into your home!

Our 2019 Thanksgiving Dinner Menu with recipe links!

Our Family Favorite Thanksgiving Desserts for 2018 (plus a peek at our Thanksgiving Menu)

Reblog: David Lebovitz’s Thanksgiving Recipe Roundup

Holiday Recipes from our blog

Cakes

Cookies

I hope these help you to have a wonderful holiday season!

Getting Ready for the Holidays Weeks 1 & 2

Is it ever too early to think about Christmas? Probably not, especially when you consider all of the extra things that happen during that busy season. We just got everything decorated for Fall… I think this might be the first year we have really decorated this house as I kept waiting until we had everything ‘just right’ but who knows when that will be, so we might as well try to make things a little nicer today.

 12 Weeks of Holiday Planning – Pollywog’s Place Blog

Continue reading “Getting Ready for the Holidays Weeks 1 & 2”