Meal Planning – Page 42 – Pollywog's Place Blog

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.

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

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A Christ-Centered Thanksgiving and other Thanksgiving homeschool resources

Published on November 15, 2023November 17, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog4 Comments

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.

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Holiday Planner Pics… Nothing Fancy!

Published on November 10, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog11 Comments

I’ve mentioned in several posts about my Holiday Planning Binder but I don’t know if I’ve ever really shared what it looks like. It’s definitely nothing fancy… just an old Trapper Keeper that the kiddos didn’t use and the folders are old pocket folders that they aren’t using. I really like that it zips up because it helps to keep everything contained really well and prevents the inevitable spillage that happens when you have kiddos running around.

This is what the outside of the planner looks like… nothing special at all but the fact that it is purple helps me to identify it from other binders on the shelf and I can tell almost anyone to grab me the purple binder and they have no trouble finding it all. I probably should’ve tried to clean it up a bit before the pictures but this is how LIFE goes around here and these smudges and smears remind me of all the little blessings that are running through my house!

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Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 3

Published on October 30, 2023November 30, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog10 Comments

Last week I 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.

12 Weeks of Holiday Planning – Pollywog’s Place Blog

Our list is as follows:

As we do our weekly ‘Home Blessings’ we will 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.
We will sit down and discuss where and when we will be having dinners and get-togethers as well as menu ideas so we can begin preparing those grocery lists! We like to have a special breakfast for St. Nicholas day and something special for Christmas morning plus we have some favorite desserts and cookies that we make around the holidays so we need to make sure that we add all of those things to our list. We may even try out a few new recipes beforehand to make sure that we like them.
If we plan to do any Black Friday shopping we will start making plans of where to go and with whom but this isn’t something I usually participate in. I may try to do a little ‘Cyber Monday’ shopping but who knows?
I’ll try to make a few freezer meals so that we have them for busy days during the holiday season as well as make a list of desserts, like pumpkin rolls, and things that can be made ahead of time and put in the freezer… these may also make great gifts!
I also need to check over our calendars as we have a lot of birthdays and special occasions that we don’t want to forget in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
I will review and mail order items that we want to purchase and try to get them crossed off the list so that they will have plenty of time to get here before the holiday rush arrives. It’s not fun when your ‘perfect’ gift idea doesn’t arrive because it was back ordered or delayed for some unforeseen reason. By ordering early you will have time to prepare if the unforeseen happens.
I will review the menu lists in my Holiday Planner so I can find a few things to add to my weekly grocery list as well as 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.
We will decide what other gift ideas (and budget amounts) we may have in mind or if we would rather do a gift exchange for other family members… money is tight this year so we will be looking at some creative ideas that we can use to make sure everyone gets a little something. We may try to have a potluck on Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner to help with the cost of things or we may have a cookie exchange along with the Polar Express to help provide a few extra snacks for the kiddos.
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.