Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting
There is something about special drinks at Christmas time that I just love! Below, you’ll find 7 tried and true holiday beverages that you’ll love too…
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!This Cheesy Vegetable Casserole makes it possible to help your entire family enjoy veggies!
This recipe is versatile so you can add your family’s favorite veggies – or be creative so you can learn to eat new ones. The mixture of all these ingredients makes any vegetable taste great!
This recipe is perfect to add to your holiday brunch table. Here are some dishes I recommend serving with your Cheesy Vegetable Casserole for brunch:
The thing about brunches is that you’re wide open to serving just about anything – from main dish to side dish to breakfast dish to dessert. That’s what makes them fun. Putting this Cheesy Vegetable Casserole on the table – even with other breakfast type foods like muffins and sausage – really adds something special. And let’s not forget that it means your putting veggies on the table. With cheese. Veggies with cheese are always a hit!
What are your favorite dishes to add to a brunch table?
Check out DHGate for their fun kitchen gadgets!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!!! Tropical Traditions is offering all of us a FREE quart jar of coconut oil again this Christmas! I love it that they do this! (You’ll find the free jar on this page – scroll down until you see it.)
This isn’t just any coconut oil. This is a jar of their very highest quality coconut oil – the very best I’ve ever had. It is delicious and super high in nutritional value. It’s an entire quart, and it is free with any order of $19.00 or more!
See that? It costs $0.00!!!!!!!
We will have to pay shipping on this order, but I’m planning to put several light-weight items in my cart (like my favorite Natural Soaps!) and I’ll still make out great.
You can also get a free coffee mug in your order. See the link on their side bar and add it to your cart.
I’m very excited to take advantage of this, and I hope you will be too. What a lovely gift to come in the mail!
This post contains referral links.
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Welcome to our first brunch recipe of 2014! You’re going to love this one. It’s great with a cup of coffee. <— You know, this time last year I was just beginning to realize how awesome coffee is. Oh how far I’ve come in a year. Mmmmm, coffee with cream during my Bible time each morning. How I love it.
This bread is also great with a cup of hot tea, hot chocolate, Warm Vanilla Soother, or a cold glass of milk. Pretty much it’s great with anything you like to drink. It’s also very easy to make, and can be baked ahead of time if you’d like to wake up on Christmas morning to a delicious ready-made breakfast.
Cranberry Almond Bread with Orange Glaze
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour (regular whole wheat works okay, but pastry flour is perfection in this!)
¾ cups sucanat
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons sea salt
1 ½ cups milk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoons almond extract
3 eggs
1 cup melted butter or coconut oil
1 cup fresh or dried cranberries
Mix flour, sucanat, baking powder, and salt. Add eggs, milk, extracts, and oil. Mix well. Fold in cranberries. Pour batter into 2 well-buttered loaf pans (or six small loaf pans). Bake 45-60 minutes at 350°. Makes two loaves.
Orange Glaze
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup honey
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
Heat orange juice and honey in a small saucepan. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and almond extracts. Pour mixture over loaves of cranberry bread about 3 minutes after they have been removed from the oven, but before removing the loaves from the baking pans.
Be sure to leave a comment on this post for a chance to win one of five $10 gift certificates to our Heavenly Homemakers Shop!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!The beauty of the internet is that while most of us can’t actually hang out and share a meal together (seeing as we’re located all over the globe), we can still enjoy community and fellowship. For the 5th year in a row, we’re inviting you to join us in a lovely Christmas Brunch, held right here every day through December 24.
What’s on the menu? Oh just wait until you see! You’ll get to enjoy new recipes each day, as well as have chances to win prizes. Now that’s always fun!
Each time you see the Christmas Brunch invitation (pictured above), leave a comment on that post to be entered into a drawing for one of five $10 gift certificates for downloadable items in our Heavenly Homemakers Shop. The day after Christmas, we’ll tally all the entries and do a random drawing. The more you comment, the more chances you have to win.
But don’t forget the recipes and fellowship. That’s the best part of all! So make plans to join us from now until Christmas. We have a lot of fun in store for you.
So let’s start now! Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win one of our Heavenly Homemakers Shop gift certificates!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!
I just found out that Amazon is offering a great supply of Green Toys
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Tis the week before Christmas. I know what we’re all thinking about right now: The most natural way to clean a bathtub. Obviously.
No? Perhaps that’s because you’re more focused on making a plan for your garden this spring. Maybe you’re distracted with all the excitement in the air over the joy of creating a balanced budget. Oh, wait. I’ve got it. You are deep in thought about ways to incorporate more kale into your diet.
I know you all so well, don’t I? Or maybe my crazy self forgot what day this is and that the countdown to Christmas is ON! Wrap, decorate, bake, peace, joy, love, go, go, go!!!!!!!!!
It’s okay. We are all very busy and also likely a tad more interested in frosting cookies than steaming brussels sprouts or cleaning bathtubs with vinegar. This time of year is FUN!!! There’s much to be said about taking time to enjoy this season with all its tinsel, peppermint, gift giving, and focus on Christ.
But I also wanted to take the time to share something really cool with you, even if “a healthy lifestyle” may not be at the forefront of your mind in these last few days before Christmas.
It’s been nine and a half years for our family. That’s how long we’ve been on this healthy living journey – ever since our youngest was born with chronic eczema and turned our lives upside down (which totally spilled my Pepsi). I get tired just thinking about all the hundreds of changes we’ve made during this “almost decade.” From boxed cereal to homemade granola, from chemical-filled cleaners to non-toxic options, from conventional doctors to homeopathic doctors and herbal remedies – we’ve made huge strides.
We love this lifestyle, recognizing more and more that we still have much to learn, that balance is key, and that if Jesus isn’t in the center of it all – none of it really matters anyway. There were times we felt better immediately after making a healthy change, and times we felt worse as our bodies had to get used to the good changes we were making (fun times).
Change can be very difficult, and I’m telling you – making transitions from poptarts and boxed cereal every day to learning to make wholesome food from scratch was hard at times. I didn’t even know what wholesome food was (or where, pray tell, to buy it). Ditching the comet, lysol, palmolive, and tide to find non-toxic cleaners? Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. Finding doctors and home remedies that treated root causes instead of slapping a band-aid on symptoms was foreign to me.
But dear ones: That was just the beginning of the journey. It wasn’t the end of the story (though it was the end of my Pepsi drinking days).
The journey never ends. We will all continue learning more and becoming healthier. It’s exciting, really! The changes we’ve made on our healthy living journey have been so very worth it – even (especially) the really difficult changes. At 41, I feel more physically and emotionally stable than I ever have. This is absolutely because of God’s work in my body and my heart.
Are you on a healthy living journey too? I hope so. No matter where you are in your journey, I want to offer you encouragement. Stick with this! Don’t be discouraged about the difficulty that comes with trying to do what’s right in a fallen world. God’s grace covers all in a powerful way. (Picture it!)
Yes, right now. Each step will take us no more than 5 minutes a day. This is SO doable, even during this busy time of year, I promise. The challenge is so easy, so simple, yet so effective. Most of all: it will change your life. (Feeling good feels so good!)
Sign up for the challenge here. The smallest changes can be the biggest blessings in your life. Let’s do this together! You have nothing to lose. It’s FREE!!!
How’s you’re healthy living journey going?
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Here’s a fun idea Karen sent in. All it takes is someone with a vision – then a simple pail becomes a snowman. Love it!
Good afternoon Laura,
While I am not particularly crafty, one of my daughters is very gifted. She took one look at these metal buckets and saw snowmen! The little ones come three in a package in the party supply section of our local Dollar Store (3 for $1). The bigger one was on a clearance rack at Joann Fabrics for $2. We simply cut shapes from some felt scraps we already had and used the hot glue gun to attach. We thought about adding more decorations but decided on the simple look. Just fill with treats, nuts, or granola for gifting. With the huge success of Frozen and the snowman character Olaf, these have been a big hit with kids!
Blessings, Karen
This ends our Homemade Gifts for Less Than $5 series. I have had so much fun creating gifts and learning from you. THANK YOU all for making this series so successful and enjoyable. Now be watching for what’s coming up next here at Heavenly Homemakers – a special healthy living invitation and our annual Holiday Brunch. I can’t wait to share these delicious recipes with you!
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Of all the school subjects we try to cover in a day, science is often the one that can get shoved to the bottom – and sometimes off the list entirely. Don’t even talk to me about science experiments. They always sound like such good ideas while the lesson plan is being made. But when it comes to executing it, somehow the act of coming up with vinegar, twist ties, or a bar of soap seems like a daunting task.
I don’t think this is just my family. I’ve heard this is struggle from others too. And it’s not just a home school thing. When I taught at a public elementary school many years ago before our boys were born, we focused on reading, writing, and math – trying to squeeze science in as we could.
The good news is that now that three out of four of our boys are old enough to read and study many subjects on their own, it is getting easier to be consistent with all subjects, including science! This is largely the result of handing them all good ol’ assignment sheets that have to be completed each day before they “have any fun.” We still don’t get around to doing all of the experiments, but as assigned, they complete an entire science curriculum each year. (Our older boys use Apologia Science books.)
So what about that fourth out of four boys? That one’s going on 10 (happy birthday this week!), and still needs quite a bit of our guidance and instruction throughout his school day. This is fine, and between Matt and me, along with occasional help from older brothers, he gets his work done. But science? It gets shoved to the bottom if no one has time to spend working on it with him. Now that it’s Christmas season? Have mercy.
Well, I’m excited to share a little idea I tried that is working marvelously. Three words for you: Magic. School. Bus.
We have several Magic School Bus books that we’ve read throughout the years with the boys, and Malachi really loves them. But right now, we’re pulling out our Magic School Bus videos – watching one episode each day. Talk about a fun way to learn science! And guess what else? About the time we ran out of our own videos to watch, we discovered that there are episodes on Netflix. Malachi gets it set up by himself, and we’ve got a 25 minute science lesson right on the screen.
What else can often get shoved to the bottom of the list during a busy day? Exercise. So what have I been doing while we’re watching a Magic School House episode? I’m on my rebounder getting my heart pumping and working up a sweat while Ms. Frizzle takes us on an adventure through the solar system or digestive tract. It’s been perfect.
Afterward, I do some yoga poses while Malachi and I discuss what we learned. (Ever done downward dog while asking your kid, “Tell me about echolocation…”)
I’m so excited and thankful that this has been working for us as a way to accomplish these tricky-to-work-in daily tasks. It’s been great for conversation, as these videos bring up quite a few lessons that are applicable to everyday life.
As for getting dressed at a reasonable hour? I’ll have to continue to wait until after science/exercise time each day. It just makes sense, and really, who cares if it’s almost noon before I’m out of my pj’s? :)
What are you thankful for this Gratituesday? Leave a comment to share!
Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!Where was this idea when my boys were babies? Lacie sent in these instructions and pictures. What a fun gift!
Sensory Bottles are a cheap, easy gift for infants and toddlers. I purchased Voss waters because they look so cool! They are a bit pricey but since I can reuse the bottles I’m ok with it. ( I was able to find them cheapest on sale at Walgreens locally for $1.25 each.)
Drink the water. Then remove the labels and wash. Decide what you want your bottle to be. Obviously for $5 you can’t do a whole color set, but you could do 3 or 4.
I used only items I had on hand for the color ones. Some Items I used: Marker lids, pompoms, q-tips, crayons, colored pencils, buttons, pennies, scraps of paper or fabric, yarn, or ribbon, legos, small plastic animals, straws, plastic utensils, foam shapes, shoe strings, chalk, marbles, anything!
For the Christmas ones I did purchase things to put inside. The red and green rice one is easily made by mixing a capful of rubbing alcohol with a small amount of food coloring and putting it on rice. Mix together (wear rubber gloves or you will have colored hands). Lay out on paper towels in a thin layer stirring occasionally until it dries out. Then put it in the sensory bottle. The colored tinsel can be purchased at a dollar store.
You could do an eye spy one for any age, even older child by putting rice in the bottle with various small items (many of the ones listed above would work) and include a “To Find” List naming all the items you have included). The recipient can turn the bottle to move the rice around and find all the included objects.
You could do different sounds by placing small items that would make different sounds in each one (buttons in one, jingle bells in one, rocks in one, etc.).
The lids CAN be hot glued on to prevent spillage and a choking hazard. I have found that if I tighten them as tight as I can, I can barely get the lids off myself and have yet to see a little one even try to take them off.
This is not an original idea. My inspiration came from pinterest.
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Thank you, Lacie! Everyone be sure to check out all the other Homemade Gifts for Less Than $5 Ideas shared so far. I hope you are all enjoying this series as much as I am. So many wonderful ideas!
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