Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting
Tonight’s soccer team dinner includes a baked potato (or two) for everyone. When cooking for a large crowd, I always wash my potatoes in the dishwasher. Never heard of that idea before? Read more about it here. It’s a huge time saver.
And while we’re on the subject of potatoes, I should let you know that after I wash them in the dishwasher, I’ll throw them into a crock pot to cook. (Or in this case, a huge roaster oven.) Love how easy it is to feed baked potatoes to a crowd!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!I’ve always loved cooking for them. Preparing hearty and healthy meals that fill the college soccer girls in the midst of hard core pre-season training has always been a joy. Blessing them by giving them home cooked meals – especially for those who are away from home for the first time – has always been my goal.
But I have to say, this year a little extra love has been stirred into the gravy. Why? Because this year, the team is returning the blessing by helping us paint our house. Truly, I don’t need anything more from them than their “thank you so much, this food is awesome” and I don’t even need those words of affirmation since their smiles say it all. But since helping us paint worked into their pre-season schedule (team bonding with paint brushes!) – I couldn’t be more pleased.
Here was this morning’s crew. Another eight will show up tomorrow, and then Wednesday…
For several mornings this week, the army of girls will come ready to work – after their morning workout and before their afternoon practice and wow these girls are tough, hard workers. This is why they need loads of good food. :)
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’m so thankful that our family can be a part of the lives of these young women. They’re great with a soccer ball at their feet, and have proven themselves to be quite handy with a paint brush. Blessings all around!
Share how God is working in your life on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for! Please read through the Gratituesday Guidelines so that you understand what kinds of posts you can link up to share here. Posts that are linked but do not fit our Gratituesday theme will be deleted.
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Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!You’ve got to go take a look – my Heavenly Homemakers Facebook Page just got a makeover!
See, I told you we had fun new things to reveal this week. Free printables, new Facebook page, and that’s not all. There’s something else we’ve been working on, and I’ll share that later this week!
Let me be very clear about the “we” who has been working on all of these projects. I am very clearly not a designer. I’m the one who was trying to decided between white or off-white when picking paint colors for my living room. Designing, choosing colors, and creating art is not my gift. (Be relieved – I called in for back up and had an artistic friend of mine come help me pick great living room paint.)
The free printables we’ve started featuring will all be created by Charlene of Delight Design. I send her the ideas of what I’m looking for – she turns them out better than I even picture them to be! My new facebook design was done by Andrew of Andhedrew.com. I love what he’s come up with! It’s so great to have brilliant and talented people behind my ideas for this site. I’m very thankful.
So, go check out my new Facebook page. Go grab the Free Printables we’re starting to offer. And be thankful I’m not trying to create these entirely on my own. White documents with black New Times Roman text is not cute.
Hey, and if you haven’t “liked” my Facebook page yet, I’d love for you to do that while you’re over there. We’re working to improve that page to share more ideas, tips, recipes, and fun, and we’d love for you to join us!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!
I am very excited to share a new feature here at Heavenly Homemakers! We all love free printables, do we not? Each week or two, I’ll be offering something new for you to download and use – for FREE! Our goal with these printables is to bless you in your homemaking efforts – and to encourage you to bless others as well.
First up: Encouragement Cards
The original intent with these was to provide you with little cards to slip into your kids’ lunch boxes so that they know you’re thinking about them and praying for them while they are at school. (Or if you homeschool like I do, you can instead slip these under your kids’ plates at lunchtime, or maybe place one in a book they’re reading so that they find a surprise encouraging message from mom when they aren’t expecting it.)
Beyond surprising our kids with these, if you look real close, you’ll notice that most of these can really be given to anyone you’d like to encourage! I’ll be sliding these into my friends’ Bibles at church, tucking them in with a loaf of bread I’m delivering to someone – the possibilities are endless really.
Best yet, while some of the cards already have a message included, there are plenty left blank as well. That way you can write an encouraging message or scripture to someone you feel called to bless.
You are welcome to download and print as many as you like!
Download Lunchbox and Beyond Encouragement Cards Set One Here
(or click on the image below to download)
Download Lunchbox and Beyond Encouragement Cards Set Two Here
(or click on the image below to download)
Be watching for more free printables we’ll be providing in the weeks to come!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Last week I said that I was taking a two week break from official menu planning since I was focused on the five days I am feeding the York College women’s soccer team. That was a good idea in theory, because at least I had all the meals planned out for feeding the team. However, the rest of the meals needed for my family, in the midst of schooling and cooking for extras? Well, without at least giving it some thought – my overloaded brain had a hard time coming up with anything that didn’t involve simply picking a tomato from our garden and calling it lunch. Since that didn’t go over well, and neither did my creative suggestion to eat their tomato with a side of jalapeno pepper – I decided that at least I should make myself a list to draw from this week. That way, when my mind begins to feel frazzled (I say that as if the frazzle is in the future and not in the present) I will have a cheat sheet to draw from.
I was able to snap a couple of shots right before feeding the team last night (Bbq chicken, cream cheese corn, green beans, carrots with ranch, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies):
See how simple the meal was? No need for fancy. Just meat, sides, a dessert, and water.
Here are the final three meals I will be feeding the team (about 32 people each meal):
Sunday: Roast, carrots, gravy, raw veggies, whole wheat butterhorns, chocolate chip cookie bars
Monday: Cheesy salsa enchiladas (x4), tossed salad, grapes, brownie fudge sundaes (these brownies, this hot fudge sauce, store-bought vanilla ice cream)
Tuesday: Italian chicken (in the oven), baked red potatoes (in the roaster), steamed broccoli and carrots, watermelon, crustless cheesecake cups
And here are some breakfast, lunch, and dinner ideas for my family the rest of the week, all served with fruits and/or veggies:
Breakfast:
Lunch or Dinner:
There, that will at least give me some ideas. Now on to the announcements that I’m not quite ready to share with you.
Just know that there are some really fun and exciting new features coming up here at Heavenly Homemakers, some of which I will be able to share with you as soon as tonight! So check back for the actual announcements. I just wanted to let you know that they are coming. We’re always working to help you in your homemaking efforts. And who is a homemaker? Every last stay-at-home, work-outside-the-home, work-from-home, married, retired, single, home schooling, public schooling, young, not-as-young, beautiful one of us. :) Check back in soon to learn of the resources we are creating to help you manage your home and love on your family.
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!
You can’t go wrong with a recipe that has the word “fudge” in its name. These cookies are very easy to make and live up to their name. Mmm, fudgy cookies. Yes please.
Flourless Fudge Cookies
2 1/4 cups sucanat powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Put 2 1/4 cups of sucanat into a blender. Process until sugar has become powdered. (Here is a post with picture tutorial showing you how easy this is!) In a bowl, mix sucanat powdered sugar with the remaining ingredients. Scoop teaspoon sized balls of batter onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet (very important). Bake in a 350° oven for 8-10 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool completely while on the cookie sheet.
If you bake them on a baking stone or try to remove them before they are completely cooled, you’ll end up with this:
See below, how the cookies sit patiently and cool on their parchment paper so that they will come off the pan nicely?
Ah yes, that is the way to do it. These cookies are worth the wait!
Have you ever made your own powdered sugar with sucanat? It’s very easy – and these cookies are a great way to experiment with that idea!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Baked potatoes are the best!
The making baked potatoes in the crock pot idea is rocking my world almost as much as the freezing muffin batter idea. I love it when delicious, simple, and healthy all come together in the same sentence (and on our plates).
Now that we’ve started school, I really need easy lunches that don’t take long to prepare. (Which is funny to say, because it’s not like on non-school days I look for meals that are difficult and time consuming. Easy, real food cooking is the way I roll.) The food I’ve made and put into my freezer has helped a ton. I also decided to try throwing potatoes into the crock pot on “hi” instead of “low” one day so they’d be done by lunchtime. It worked perfectly.
Then, I rewarmed some leftover roast and gravy, thinking that would taste great on the potatoes. (It did.) We have garden fresh green beans, plus we’ve been picking loads of tomatoes and peppers. This lunch went together so easily, was very filling, and super nourishing!
It was also so pretty that I had to take a picture.
The point of this story: Crock pot baked potatoes are going to be a regular lunch around here. And the other point of this story (or rather, a reminder and encouragement): It is very easy to add fruits and vegetables to a meal to add lots of extra nutrients. We are blessed to have access to such variety. Don’t hold back on fruits and veggies!
What are some of your favorite, quick, healthy lunches?
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I don’t drink coffee. I don’t like coffee. Coffee smells great but tastes terrible. Coffee is super bitter, how could anyone like it? Yuck, coffee, no thank you. All things I’ve said about coffee for years and years.
I then experimented with a Homemade Chocolate Caramel Creamer because so many of you asked for a healthier creamer option. To my surprise, I kind of liked it. But only kind of.
Months went by. I maintained my “I’m not a coffee drinker” status. During the winter I was introduced to Crio Bru, which is brewed ground cocoa beans, and it is delicious. I began enjoying a cup during my God time each morning. Perfectly delightful.
Then, I started holding Meet and Greets. Many of them were in coffee shops. I began to try iced coffee, which were offered in some very tempting flavors. Hmmm, not bad. Not bad at all…
I believe the kicker was my Oklahoma City Meet and Greet. We met at Vintage Coffee, a lovely shop owned by my cousin and her husband. My cousin, Carie, talked me through options she thought I might like, which resulted in her making me a cold coffee with chocolate and toffee or some such wonderful combination. It was so delicious, I guzzled it down, wished for more, and have been craving another one ever since.
I blame my new interest in coffee on Carie. And on those who came to Meet and Greets. You all obviously forced the stuff down my throat, creating a coffee interest in me that I can no longer deny. I have yet to recreate the delicious brew Carie made for me, and that’s probably a good thing. I would be making them way too often.
So here’s my new coffee status: Don’t like it hot. Can’t drink it black. Tastes great cold with an equal part of milk and a little bit of homemade chocolate sauce. Craving a Chocolate Toffee Cold Coffee drink from Vintage Coffee.
And now you know.
How about you? What’s your current coffee status?
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It’s our wedding anniversary this Gratituesday!
What I am actually most excited about this year is that while soccer season has usually already started by the time our anniversary rolls around, this year it begins the day after. Wasn’t that thoughtful of the calendar to work with us this year? (Remember our 17th anniversary? While we couldn’t be together that day since Matt was away at a pre-season soccer retreat, I think that still may be one of my favorite anniversary memories.)
This year, we get to be together! And so, we’ll spend our special day schooling the kids, working on our rental properties, painting our house, doing everything we can to get ahead so that our busiest season of the year will go more smoothly. Then come evening, we’ll steal away without the kids to use a gift card at a local restaurant, and enjoy time to eat together and have real and uninterrupted conversation.
Soccer season? Bring it on. But the evening before during our special date time? It’s all about us. 19 years and looking forward to many more!
Share how God is working in your life on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for! Please read through the Gratituesday Guidelines so that you understand what kinds of posts you can link up to share here. Posts that are linked but do not fit our Gratituesday theme will be deleted.
If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday, please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!
Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!I think I might just do it.
I love the Victorio Food Strainer so much that I may just go into business. I’ll pack a bunch of apples and tomatoes into my kids’ wagon, then I’ll go door to door, demonstrating to everyone I meet how wonderful the Victorio is for making applesauce and tomato sauce. I’ll show everyone how easy it is to set up, how much time it saves in making these great sauces, and how lovely the finished product is. Once they see it, they will hug me and thank me for sharing this invaluable kitchen tool. Then they will excitedly begin chopping some apples so that they too can easily make applesauce in their brand new Victorio.
It will be beautiful. Can’t you just picture it?
Sure, some will be skeptical. They will say to me, “Thanks anyway, but I already know how to make applesauce. It’s easy. You just have to core the apples, cook them, then run them through a blender.” And then I will tell them that as easy as that is, using the Victorio makes the process even easier and saves even more time! And I will add some exclamation marks to the end of my sentence because of how much time this will save them. !!!!!!!
Yes, it just might be my new career. But first, I’ve got to finish using my Victorio in my own kitchen to make my own tomato sauce and apple sauce…
This message was brought to you by the Heavenly Homemaker after quickly and excitedly finishing a delicious batch of tomato sauce.
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