Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Junior Chef Club Registration OPEN AGAIN – One Week Only!

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Did you miss out on getting your Junior Chefs signed up a few weeks ago? Great news!! We’re all caught up with our initial registrants and able to give you one more chance to get your kids registered!

Get all the details here!

But here’s a quick breakdown of this week’s final offer:

  1. Subscribe to our Junior Chef Club – hurry to use the coupon (LASTCHANCE10) to get a super great discount on the entire year’s subscription!
  2. Yearly subscribers receive a big packet of bonus materials to help their Junior Chef get started with an amazing cookbook binder.
  3. Every week, beginning December 22,  we’ll send you a packet of Recipe and Serving Ideas Printables to print and give to your Junior Chef. They can add it to the 3-ring binder Junior Chef Cookbook they are building and they can have a blast trying new recipes!
  4. This offer officially ends Friday, December 3, and will not be available again until November 2022.

Sign up for the yearly subscription and get these right away:

Can’t wait to add your Junior Chefs to our list!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Family Game Night: Favorite Games!

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I love sharing our favorite games!

It’s much trickier now to find time to play games as a family – mostly because we have a lot of little ones who like to put game pieces into their mouths. But whenever we can, we like to pull out a game to play with our 6 and 7-year-olds. And once all six little ones are put down for the night, we can get out some of the more detailed games for the grown-ups!

In case you’re looking at games to enjoy during the holidays with your family, we wanted to share these lists again. We’ve added new ones too!

Favorite Games List

Family Games Little Ones Enjoy

  • Hoot Owl Hoot (my favorite to play with the kids!)
  • Pop the Pig
  • Spot It!
  • Candyland
  • Memory
  • Hungry Hippos
  • Trouble
  • Don’t Break the Ice
  • HiHo Cherry-O
  • Uno Attack
  • Farkle
  • Pass the Pigs
  • Huskerdu (great for younger kids – still fun for adults)

Family Games for Bigger Kids and Adults

  • 5-Second Rule
  • Connect Four
  • The Game of Things (Great fun for a group!)
  • Rummikub
  • Settlers of Catan (With extentions, which you’ll need if you have more than 4 players.)
  • Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights (This is an expansion of Settlers of Catan. This is our favorite add-on to regular Setters.)
  • Seafarers of Catan (Also an expansion of Settlers.)
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Carcossonne
  • Bohnanza (This one is unique. Great for older kids and adults. We love this one!)
  • Life
  • Risk
  • Manhattan
  • Guestures
  • Taboo
  • Blink (A great stocking stuffer!)
  • Headbandz
  • Acquire
  • Sequence
  • Clue
  • Apples to Apple Junior (This is probably our favorite group game. We don’t recommend the regular version of this game because the cards are less familiar to the kids.)
  • Scattergories
  • Pictionary
  • Cranium
  • Boggle (This game totally counts as school work, but no one knows they’re learning.)
  • Monopoly
  • Sorry
  • Quelf (I’ve actually decided that I very much dislike this one. The kids like it though.)
  • Racko
  • Balderdash
  • Yahtzee
  • Mastermind
  • Skipbo (We’ve played hours of this game through the years!)
  • Wits and Wagers
  • Anomia (One of my new favorites!)
  • Pandemic
  • Castle Panic
  • Mars Attack
  • Codenames
  • Tsuro
  • Avalon

Your turn to weigh in! What are your favorite family games?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

The BEST Pumpkin Bars

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Are these really the BEST Pumpkin Bars? I guess you’ll have to try them to see!

I love how moist these are! And how cool is it that they are made with whole grains and no one can tell?! (I use freshly ground soft white wheat, which is a whole wheat pastry flour, to make these.) I love that they are lightly sweetened instead of loaded with sugar. And this:

I LOVE THE CLOVES.

There’s something about the flavor that the cloves gives this recipe that makes is so very good. Cinnamon? I’m always all in with the cinnamon! Sometimes I skip other spices just so I can enjoy the cinnamon in a recipe.

But don’t leave out the cloves in this one. Oh, it makes the Pumpkin Bars – well – it makes them the BEST Pumpkin Bars.

The BEST Pumpkin BarsYum

The BEST Pumpkin Bars
 
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Author:
Serves: 15
Ingredients
  • 2 cups whole grain flour
  • ¾ cup brown sugar or sucanat
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 4 eggs
  • 16-ounce can pureed pumpkin
  • 1 cup melted coconut oil
Instructions
  1. Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and cloves.
  2. Add eggs, pumpkin, and oil, stirring until batter is smooth.
  3. Pour batter into a 9x13 inch baking dish.
  4. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Here are more Pumpkin Recipes you’ll love. Twenty more to be exact!

  1. Pumpkin Spice
  2. Make-Ahead Pumpkin Donuts
  3. Pumpkin Breakfast Cake
  4. Easy Low Sugar Pumpkin Whip
  5. Pumpkin Cheesecake
  6. Easy Flourless Pumpkin Muffins
  7. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread
  8. Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
  9. Pumpkin Pie
  10. Cream Cheese Pumpkin Muffins
  11. Pumpkin Bars
  12. Low-Sugar Pumpkin Roll-Out Cookies
  13. Simple Pumpkin Pancakes
  14. Simple Pumpkin Waffles
  15. Chocolate Pumpkin Cake
  16. Whole Grain Pumpkin Bundt Cake
  17. Warm Pumpkin Custard
  18. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake
  19. Pumpkin Pecan Pie Squares
  20. Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eaters
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Favorite Fall Recipes: Crockpot, Oven, and More!

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I love lots of recipes in the fall. But these are my favorite fall recipes!

Favorite Fall Recipes For the Crock Pot

I use my crockpot all year long. But somehow in the fall, the food tastes more comforting when it comes out of the crockpot!

Favorite Fall Soup Recipes

Because it’s fall. So it’s soup time.

Favorite Fall Throw-Together-Quickly Recipes (10-20 minutes start to finish):

We need a lot of these quick ideas handy because we are on the go for soccer games during the fall!

Fall Apple Treat Recipes

It’s a great year for apples. We love making these fun treats with all the fall apples!

Fall Pumpkin Treat Recipes

There’s something about pumpkin recipes from September to December!

What are your favorite fall recipes?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Get Our Homemade Vanilla for Gifts and Baking (While Supplies Last; Freebie with Purchase!)

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It’s that time of year again! We have a batch of our delicious Heavenly Homemakers Vanilla Extract bottled up and ready to ship out to you!

Our Heavenly Homemakers Vanilla Extract is perfect for:

  • Holiday Baking! and
  • Gift Giving!

Our vanilla is:

  • 100% pure
  • Not watered down
  • Has no sugar added
  • Shipped for free!

We make it like this – it’s the best of the best. It’s better than what you can buy at the store, yet it costs about the same or even less. Shipped to your door!

BONUS – free “Made With Love” Stickers!

When you buy 2 or more 8-ounce bottles of vanilla, or 3 or more bottles of 4-ounce bottles of vanilla, we’ll send you a free sheet of these gorgeous Made With Love stickers ($8.95 value ~ 20 stickers per sheet!)

Use these beautiful stickers as you give gifts of homemade goodies this Christmas season! (You can personalize them here if you want to purchase them separately!)

Our Homemade Vanilla quantities are very limited, so get this while you can!

Usually, we sell out within less than 48 hours.

Home / Shop

Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 8 ounce

$33.00
Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 8 ounce
Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 8 ounce

Home / Shop

Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 8 ounce

$33.00
Model Number: 8-ounce-vanilla-extract
Maximum quantity exceeded
Minimum purchase amount of 0 is required
Maximum purchase amount of 0 is allowed
OUT OF STOCK
Categories: Vanilla Extract
Manufacturer: Heavenly Homemakers
  • Description

Made with only the best ingredients, this vanilla extract is 100% pure! Ingredients include high-quality vanilla beans and vodka - that's it! Slow brewed for 6 months, this vanilla is delicious and perfect for your baking needs. Because this extract has such a strong, pure flavor, feel free to cut the amount of vanilla in half when following a recipe - then you can get even more bang for your buck. FREE SHIPPING included with your purchase.

Home / Shop

Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 4 ounces

$21.00
Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 4 ounces
Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 4 ounces

Home / Shop

Heavenly Homemakers Homemade Vanilla Extract - 4 ounces

$21.00
Model Number: 4-ounce-vanilla-extract
Maximum quantity exceeded
Minimum purchase amount of 0 is required
Maximum purchase amount of 0 is allowed
OUT OF STOCK
Categories: Vanilla Extract
Manufacturer: Heavenly Homemakers
  • Description

Made with only the best ingredients, this vanilla extract is 100% pure! Ingredients include high-quality vanilla beans and vodka - that's it! Slow brewed for 6 months, this vanilla is delicious and perfect for your baking needs. Because this extract has such a strong, pure flavor, feel free to cut the amount of vanilla in half when following a recipe - then you can get even more bang for your buck! FREE SHIPPING included with your purchase!

How we make Vanilla Extract

Want a peek into how we make our Vanilla Extract? Here you go! We highly recommend that you try this at home. ;)

Want to make it quickly – even in time for Christmas? Here’s how to make Vanilla Extract in your Instant Pot!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Delicious Pie Recipes

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It’s that time of year again! Baking season! I think we’re going to need us a list of Delicious Pie Recipes.

I’m here for you. I have such a list. Oh, and if you recall, I also gave us all permission to buy pre-made pie crusts if we need to.

If you make several pie crusts ahead and freeze them, or if you purchase them already made in the freezer section, it is super easy to put together any of these great pie recipes!

10 Delicious Pie Recipes

Just for kicks, I wanted to re-mention this fun Chocolate Pie Crust idea.

And it only makes sense that I end by telling you more about eating Pumpkin Pie for breakfast. In March?? Read about that here.

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Junior Chef Club – JOIN US!! (This Makes a Great Gift!)

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Our brand new Junior Chef Club is a perfect way to help your kids have fun learning in the kitchen! We can’t wait to include all of your kids in this!

What is the Junior Chef Club?

The Junior Chef Club is a weekly cooking subscription just for kids! (Bonus: Parents get to enjoy all the recipes and food too, and maybe even a night off!) Here’s how it works:

Each week, we’ll send a brand new Recipe Printable Packet to your inbox. You can print this packet and turn it over to your Junior Chef! It will share simple prep instructions for a brand new recipe plus a Grocery List, a Kitchen Supply List, and a bonus page with Serving and Sharing Ideas.

We suggest that you print the pages each week and let your Junior Chef add them to a 3-ring binder as they build their Junior Chef Cookbook!

Here’s a sample of what your Junior Chef Club Member will receive each week:

Cost for the Junior Chef Club?

Your Junior Chef will receive an email packet of recipes and printables every single week! What a super fun gift that keeps on giving!

To make it easy, we have options to make it work for your budget! What works best for you?

    • $2.00/week ($104/year) or
    • $5.00/month ($60/year) or
    • $36.00/year (BEST VALUE!)

—> And check out the additional huge Christmas Coupon below that we’re giving you! <—-

Yep, there’s more…. :)

Yearly Subscribers receive a Big Bonus for joining!

We want to encourage you to save money with our yearly subscription fee, plus we want to set your Junior Chef up for success!

If you choose to jump in for an entire year, you’ll save lots of money AND receive the following printables right away so that you can get your kids set up with a fantastic 3-ring binder and begin to Build a Cookbook. Check this out!

These bonuses add $15 to the value of the subscription. And guess what else?

We’ve got a Christmas Coupon for you!

YES. That means that if you hurry, you can sign up for just $26 for the entire year!!! AND, the $10 coupon will be re-applied year after year, so your subscription will always be $26 instead of the regular $36. Woooo!!!! What a fantastic gift for your kids!! Are you as excited as I am?!

COUPON CODE: LASTCHANCE10

This offer is only good through Friday, December 3. After that, registration will not open again until next November. GET IN WHILE YOU CAN!

Let’s review!

  1. Subscribe to our Junior Chef Club – hurry to use the coupon (LASTCHANCE10) to get a super great discount on the entire year’s subscription!
  2. Yearly subscribers receive a big packet of bonus materials to help their Junior Chef get started with an amazing cookbook binder.
  3. Every week, we’ll send you a packet of Recipe and Serving Ideas Printables to print and give to your Junior Chef. They can add it to the 3-ring binder Junior Chef Cookbook they are building and they can have a blast trying new recipes!
  4. This offer officially ends Friday, December 3, and will not be available again until November 2022.

Questions?

Let’s see if we can answer them for you!

When will I receive the free Bonus Pages? If you choose to become a yearly subscriber, we’ll email you the Cooking and Baking Basics eBook, the Cookbook Cover pages packet, and the Cookbook Divider page printables just as soon as you sign up. We’ll also email you a certificate that you can print and include with your gift which helps explain all the fun to your Junior Chef!

When will my Junior Chef start to receive new recipes? We figure a lot of you will plan to give this subscription as a gift to your Junior Chef at Christmastime! Therefore, we will begin emailing the Recipe Packets starting Wednesday, December 22. 

So the printables to get started will hit your inbox immediately after purchase, as described above. But the year’s worth of recipes won’t start coming in until right before Christmas. When your Junior Chef opens the Cookbook Binder on Christmas morning, you can explain what they’re getting, and you’ll have a starter pack of recipes waiting for them in your inbox to get them going!

What if I have more than one Junior Chef in my family? Awesome! We allow the printables to be used for more than one person IN YOUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY.

If I only want to pay per week or per month, will I still get the freebies? No, those are only free for yearly subscribers. But you can purchase that packet here for just $15 if you’d like!

Let us know if you have more questions!

 

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

How to Have an Easy Thanksgiving

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Want to have an easy Thanksgiving? I’ve shared these tips for years, but every year I feel like they need to be shared again!

How to Have an Easy Thanksgiving

The key is to get ahead. Start making food ahead of time (yes, even the turkey!!) so that you can enjoy people on Thanksgiving day instead of spending so much time in the kitchen. Here are my tips and tricks, and of course, recipes!

One Week Before Thanksgiving

Two Days Before Thanksgiving

One Day Before Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day

  • Enjoy a large cup of steamy coffee in my recliner for a very long time (because I can)
  • Everyone on their own for breakfast (probably cereal)
  • Mix dry ingredients together for Stir-and-Pour Rolls (for easy, no-brainer mixing about an hour before meal time)
  • Put Cranberry Apple Cider into a crockpot to heat (this is a huge hit with guests!)
  • Set out butter to soften for rolls
  • Plates, silverware, cups, and napkins set out

About 1 1/2 hours before serving time, I will bake or re-heat prepared foods. Then I will make gravy and bake the rolls. Easy peasy!

Here are the quick links to all the recipes you’ll need:

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

The Best Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

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This Chocolate Pumpkin Cake is so good, I decided to repost it so you would be sure to see it and try it this fall!

I love any treat that includes ingredients healthy enough for us to serve for breakfast.

What? Cake for breakfast? Oh yes. All year long. And since this one includes pumpkin, it’s a step above. #veggiecake

Of course, the pumpkin in this recipe makes it super moist. And the chocolate in this recipe? Well, that makes it chocolate. Need I say more?

You’ll love that this cake is topped with a thin layer of Honey-Sweetened Chocolate Frosting. Sigh…while I sure do love summer best, NOTHING can beat fall baking!!

Chocolate Pumpkin CakeYum

The Best Chocolate Pumpkin Cake
 
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Author:
Ingredients
  • 1 cup melted coconut oil
  • 1 cup water
  • 4 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • ½ cup sucanat
  • dash of sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup pumpkin puree
  • 2 eggs
Instructions
  1. In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, sucanat, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda.
  2. Set aside. In a saucepan, bring oil, water, and cocoa to a boil.
  3. Pour liquid mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredient mixture.
  4. Stir well.
  5. Add pumpkin puree and eggs, mixing well.
  6. Pour batter into a 9x13 inch baking pan.
  7. Bake in a 350° oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow cake to cool completely before frosting.

 

Low Sugar Chocolate Frosting

 
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Author:
Ingredients
  • ½ cup butter
  • 4 Tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 2 Tablespoons milk
  • 2-4 Tablespoons honey (sweeten this to your taste)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
  1. In a small saucepan combine butter, cocoa, milk, and honey.
  2. Cook and stir over low heat until ingredients are well combined and mixture begins to thicken slightly.
  3. Removed from heat.
  4. Stir in vanilla.
  5. Spread over cooled cake.

 

Do you love fall baking like I do? Will you be eating this cake for breakfast? :)

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

How to Stop Letting Your Thoughts Control You

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Are your thoughts controlling you? Here’s what helps!

Resposted from 2014.

Stop Thinking and Pray

70,000.  That’s how many thoughts we think every day, which breaks down to 1.2 thoughts per second.

Yoo-hoo, dear wonderful person who did the research so as to provide us with this thought provoking information: What I’d like to know is, how many of these thoughts of mine are rational, logical, emotional, or have something to do with cream cheese? Does this statistic count the thoughts I think in my subconscious while I’m sleeping? Or in fact do I cram my 70K thoughts into my awake hours, which ultimately means that all the thoughts I think are running into each other, tackling, punching, vying for attention, thus resulting in a big jumbled pile-up inside my head?

I’d like to believe my thinker works in overdrive because I am an efficient multi-tasker. Yes. This is a gift I have, which in effect allows me to plan dinner, read to my kids, make a mental list of phone calls I need to make, and question whose feet are the culprit of my nostril discomfort – all at the same time. Unfortunately, it is also the thinker that allows me to create scenarios, envision disasters, replay conversations, invent situations, and ultimately freak out inside about what did, could, should, didn’t, would have, and might just happen. It is this thinker that makes me believe that I’m completely on my own and able to solve all the world’s problems, prevent all physical and spiritual calamities for my children, and figure out how to appropriately respond to all conversations and encounters.

This kind of thinking makes me crazy.

So what to do? We can’t stop thinking. (because then we’d be dead. okay then.)  Are those of us who tend to “over-think” situations, worry, fret, and constantly analyze just destined to have a lot of frustration for the rest of our lives?

Jesus says, no way. Just like any sin and struggle, God gives us a simple way out of the crazy.

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5

Take Every Thought Captive

Want to print this? Click here to download.

We control our thoughts. They do not control us. If we allow thoughts that are anxious, frustrated, confusing, angry, controlling, or ungodly in any other way – we need to take them captive and intentionally refocus them to make them obey Christ.

This takes courage, intention, and a heart open to surrender. Christ wants to overtake our thoughts, to fill our minds with his goodness, and to rule our actions. He can’t do that when we ignore Him. He can’t talk to us if we aren’t listening. He can’t fill us with His peace and joy when we refuse to let go of swirling, corrupted thoughts.

Take your thoughts captive. Make them obey Christ. Stop thinking about and trying to figure out all the stuff. Just stop.  Stop thinking and pray. Before every decision. Every situation. Every step forward.

Be amazed at how God offers a solution to every problem you face and how He replaces your anxiety with peace.

Stop thinking and pray. It works! But did we really expect anything less?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!