I saw the cutest little outfit the other day and just had to order it for Clayton! It's a little red long sleeve onesie with a reindeer that says "Baby's First Christmas", with a little hat to match and red and white striped pants.
I'm going to try to get some pictures of him in it - I'll post those later.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
With Christmas just next week, I'm sure everyone is getting out their cookbooks and making their menus and grocery lists. One thing that is always on our holiday menu is my mother's dressing. Oh, it's delicious. This year, we've opted to have a less traditional "Appetizer" lunch, so it's not likely that this will be on the table, but as delicious as it is - I'm thinking it will probably make an appearance somewhere.
It does take awhile to make, but the results are totally worth it! If you're up for it, here are the directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Then, start a large pot of boiling water. Add some salt, pepper, garlic powder, and about 4 chicken bouillon cubes. Take a whole fryer (chicken), and place in the boiling water. You want it to boil for a good while - until your kitchen smells like chicken. But be careful, you don't want all of that liquid to be gone - you'll need it later.
As the chicken is boiling, take 3 boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix and mix those up. (I believe you need an egg and ¼ of a cup of milk for each box). Mix that up and pour into a greased baking pan or cast iron skillet. Then, stick that into your pre-heated oven.
Fill a small saucepan with water, and boil 4-5 eggs.
While your cornbread is in the oven and your eggs and chicken are boiling, chop up a medium white onion and about 8 celery sticks. Take a medium skillet and put it over medium/high heat and melt a stick of butter. Then, sautee until onions are clear and celery is tender. Set to the side.
When the cornbread comes out of the oven, you want to crumble it up, as best you can. Use a spoon or a fork, so that you don't burn yourself. Add the crumbles to a large mixing bowl. Then add the celery, onions and butter and mix together. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, poultry seasoning and sage.
Peel and chop the hardboiled eggs and add them to the cornbread. Stir until eggs are combined well.
When the chicken is finished, pull it out of the water and place it in a casserole dish to cool. Once cooled, pull the meat off the bone, in shreds and add to the cornbread/vegetable mixture. Mix all together. Add some of the chicken broth to moisten and continue to stir, until everything is combined. Once combined, spoon into a casserole dish and spread out until even. Bake for 35-45 minutes or until golden brown.
Reserve the rest of the chicken broth to moisten dressing, as necessary.
My mother usually makes giblet gravy to go over the top of it, but I don't like giblet gravy so I'm omitting that part. The dressing is delicious and really doesn't need anything else!
Hope you'll make it and find out for yourself! Trust me, it's worth all the trouble!
Happy Cooking!
D and I decided not to put a Christmas Tree up this year. Mainly because we are so darn busy that we won't even be home to see it. I mean, the only free time we have is this weekend and we have about a million things on our to-do list... grocery shopping, Christmas shopping, wrapping, etc. so we won't really be able to enjoy it then either.
Another reason is because I just have a small 4' Christmas tree (I somehow managed to accidentally give my big one away). So, I want a new tree but I don't really want to spend the money right now, so D told me just to wait and that when we start having children, he would buy me a new one and we'd start from scratch.
The very next day, my Ballard Designs catalog came in the mail and I saw this...
And this is some of the things that you can use it to make!
Vinyl lettering!
I want my front door to look like this!
You can use it to make temporary tattoos, which happen to be a great way to "label" golf balls and small toys.
You can use it to make adorable cards.
Turn your crockpot on and start warming it up. While its warming, clean your vegetables, wash and peel your potatoes and then chop everything up. Just a rough chop - its going to cook so long that if you dice everything, its just going to turn to mush. I season the meat with salt, pepper and garlic powder and then put it in the bottom of the crock pot. Then, I pour the beef broth over the top, pour in the tomatoes and then add all of the vegetables and potatoes. Season again and mix all together. I cook on low for 10 hours and just check on it every few hours. When the meat is cooked, you can check the broth and see if you need to add any more seasoning. About 30 minutes before its done, I make up some cornbread, which more times than not, consists of Jiffy Cornbread mix. It turns out wonderfully if you make it in a cast iron skillet, but the kids might like it if you make it in muffin pans.
It's December 10th, and it's snowing!
Look at that blizzard!!
"Snow" on the ground.
The Christmas Tree. I got lazy this year and instead of putting up our tree, we ran to Hobby Lobby and got a 4' pre-lit tree. It so worked for me.
My favorite Christmas ornament. A red glittery ribbon. Its plastic, so you don't have to worry about it breaking and they were only 99 cents a piece at Target.
The stockings were hung, by the chimney with care. (The little elf boot is Coco's).
The fireplace screen. - I just love it.
We drove up to Toldeo Bend Lake on New Years Day, and stayed with Darren's parents. Darren was so proud of himself! He caught quite a few while we were out, but these two were the biggest.
Getting ready to clean fish! Nasty job, but somebody has to do it!
Fileting fish!
Coco made her very first friend while we were at the lake. Buckshot - he belongs to Pops & Mama Jackie's next door neighbors.
They played for about 3 hours like this. They are about the same age, he is just a little bigger. He tried to play nice, but she showed him no mercy. Darren said she must take after me.
She had just learned to climb the steps earlier that day, so everytime she wanted to get away from him - she would climb them and try to hide under my leg. Little did she know - he could climb them too!
