Meal Planning – Page 36 – Pollywog's Place Blog

Amish Friendship Bread – A gift that keeps on giving!

Published on December 12, 2023December 12, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

Update with more pictures! Preparing for Christmas… St. Nicholas, Gifts in a Jar, and so much more!

Published on December 5, 2023February 22, 2024 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

We’ve had a busy weekend… well, I have. I’ve been working on my pantry makeover and I’ve completely moved things around 3 times already! I will post pictures as soon as I have it the way I like it but it is an improvement already and I think it makes better use of the breakfast nook space that just didn’t work for us.

Continue reading →

Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 7 (The Week After Thanksgiving)

Published on November 27, 2023November 30, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

Thanksgiving is over but there’s no time to rest yet as the real preparations are beginning for the holidays! One of the biggest things we need to do is to take time to sit down and evaluate how our Thanksgiving was. What was everyone’s favorite part? Was there anything that didn’t work well? Do you need to set up a rotating schedule to have dinner at other family member’s homes? (Odd year here, Even year there, or every 3rd, 4th, year?) Would it be better to have a potluck-style meal where everyone brings something? Was there anything you would like to do differently? Start now for your planning for next year so you don’t forget these ‘little things’! We will also be getting all of our Fall decor ready to be put away next week so we can start pulling out the Christmas decor.

Continue reading →

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

Published on November 20, 2023November 30, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog6 Comments

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:

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.
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.
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!
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 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.
If we have decided to do any Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping we will review our planned lists and budgets.
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!

Light of the World Advent Study: A Family Journey Through Scripture, Nature, and Worship

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

Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 6 Download

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

Published on November 17, 2023September 23, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

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.