Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Heavenly Homemakers Holiday Gift Guide

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In past years, I have written individual  posts highlighting some of my favorite gifts to give (or receive). This year, I decided to post the links for you to look through if you’re interested. Each link will take you to a post describing some of my favorite gifts. (P.S. I’m not into bling, knick-knacks, or anything expensive. I like practical gifts. This surprises you so much, doesn’t it?)

Why yes, as a matter of fact I do have Pyrex dishes on my “Gifts for Women” list…

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Cranberry Pecan Granola {Gifts in a Jar ~ Day Ten}

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Tweaking my Easy Homemade Granola recipe just a little bit, you can create a yummy Gift in a Jar that is perfect for the season. Shoot, what am I talking about? Cranberries and pecans are great during any season. ;)

Cranberry Pecan Granola

4 cups rolled oats
1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup sunflower nuts
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup honey

In a small sauce pan, melt together coconut oil and honey. Stir all remaining ingredients together in a large bowl. Drizzle on the honey/coconut oil mixture and stir well. Pour mixture onto a large, parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake at 300° for 35 minutes, stirring after the first 20 minutes. Store granola in an air tight container.

This makes 4 pint sized jars of granola, so you can make lots of gifts…or have several servings of granola on hand for busy mornings. :)

Want a fun tag to use for your gift? Download Your Free Gifts In A Jar Tags Here!

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Pasta Alfredo ~ Real Food Dollar Menu

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One of my family’s favorite meals is Pasta Alfredo. It is easy to make, and tastes even better than when you order alfredo at a restaurant! And of course, when you’re making this at home, you can use real food ingredients, making this dish super healthy. :)

Isn’t it nice to know that while you’ll pay around $8.00 per plate for a nice meal of Pasta Alfredo at a restaurant – when you make it homemade, it will cost you (drum roll please)…

…$0.99 per plate. Seriously. And that’s including whole wheat pasta and steamed veggies. Yes indeed!

(My calculations* told me that our steamed veggies cost us $1.65 and the pasta with alfredo sauce broke down to about $5.30. This meal fed seven people.)

pasta alfredo

You’ll find my Pasta Alfredo recipe here. Feel free to add leftover cooked chicken to this if you have some!

*I calculated my cost based on the food sources and prices I have available to me. Most of the ingredients I use are organic. Your cost may be slightly more or less depending on where you find your ingredients.

Looking for more meals on our Real Food Dollar Menu? Here are the recipes I’ve shared so far:

How much do you love Alfredo Sauce?  My boys, who have birthdays “coming up”, are already telling me that they will be requesting this for their birthday dinner. (It’s never too early to plan for your birthday which is three months away, you know…)

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Santa’s Snot {A Gift in a Jar for the Practical Joker ~ Day Nine}

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A few years ago, I was invited to a gift exchange in which the gift needed to be silly…and homemade. If you ask me, that was a tough order to fill. I’m not big into making crafts, so I could think of nothing cutesy or crafty to make. I could think of all kinds of homemade food gifts I could make – but something silly? I’m way too practical (and apparently boring) for that. Plus, I didn’t want to go to the trouble to make something and have the food be wasted. 

Finally, I remembered that sometime in my life, I had seen mini-marshmallows in a baggie, given as a joke with the label, “Snowman Poop”. Ha…very clever. And so, I looked around my kitchen and tried to think of what other yummy…yet disgusting homemade gift I could create.

Thus, the idea for Santa’s Snot was born.

Disgusting? Yes. Funny? Mostly. Still practical and edible? Absolutely. (As long as you forget the label and remember that the jar actually contains Homemade Applesauce.)

This is certainly not a Gift in the Jar for everyone – can I get an amen on that? But if there’s a practical joker on your Christmas list and you have no idea what to give him or her…might I suggest a lovely jar of Santa’s Snot?

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programing in which Laura brings you cheerful, tasty, and much less icky posts….

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Honey Pecan Pie ~ Real Food Makeover

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Yum
I have had several requests for a healthier Pecan Pie – one that didn’t call for corn syrup. My family was happy for me to try this experiment. I’m excited to share that I was easily able to adapt a recipe to use honey in exchange for corn syrup. Simple as that! (If only all of the Real Food Makeovers were this easy…)
Hey, guess what else? Not only was this recipe simple to figure out – the filling for this pie only has five ingredients. It’s super quick to put together!
Honey Pecan Pie
Honey Pecan Pie
Honey Pecan Pie ~ Real Food Makeover
 
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Author:
Ingredients
  • 1 cup honey
  • 3 eggs
  • ⅓ cup melted butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1¼ cups crushed pecans
Instructions
  1. Whisk first four ingredients together until eggs are beaten and everything is well mixed.
  2. Add pecans and stir.
  3. Pour mixture into an unbaked Whole Wheat Pie Crust.
  4. Bake in a 350° oven for about 45 minutes or until the middle of the pie no longer jiggles.
Here’s my Whole Wheat Pie Crust recipe.
(My use of the word jiggles proves how professional I am in my use of cooking terms.)
pecan pie bites4
How about another, even easier Pecan Pie idea? Try these Easy Pecan Pie Bites! They are wonderful for your holiday dessert table because people can pop one or two in their mouths and still enjoy other favorite desserts too! Not that we all need more than one dessert. But that’s pretty much a holiday reality, right?
Cinnamon Sugar Pecans
And while you’re working with pecans, you might try these great Cinnamon Sugar Pecans! They are a great gift or snack!
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Homemade Peppernuts {Gifts in a Jar ~ Day Eight}

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Ahhh, Peppernuts. Little bites of delicious memories from my childhood.

One batch will go a long way – filling several jars for gifts! If you’ve never had peppernuts before, I can only describe them as spicy, sweet, munchy, crunchy bites of Christmas. My grandma made them each year at holiday time, and we all loved them. They are great for gift giving – and great to keep in a jar on top of your refrigerator! :)

Click on the link below for the recipe!
Homemade Peppernuts

Want a fun tag to use for your gift? Download Your Free Gifts In A Jar Tags Here!

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Gratituesday: Beyond Blessed

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It has occurred to me recently, as I’ve talked about making Gingerbread Houses, creating Gifts in a Jar, and especially doing much of my shopping online to find special gifts on sale through Amazon…

We are beyond blessed. 

I have been reflecting about this anyway during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, but I was especially “pricked in the heart” as I was looking into Trades of Hope and learning more about the women in those countries. These families are doing everything they can just to protect themselves, put food on the table, and educate their children. And here I am, in my very comfortable home with plenty of food – and not just the beans and rice kind of food, but treat kinds of food like Hot Cocoa and Muffins. We have shelves and shelves of books to read and learn from. We have too many toys to play with, which is evident by how they are spilling out onto the floor where they don’t belong.

And I’m sitting at my nice computer shopping for presents??? 

Sure, I am being practical as I choose our gifts. Sure, I am being responsible with our spending, even using more gift cards I’ve earned through Swagbucks than actual money for our purchases and finding good deals and discounted prices. But the very fact that we are able to buy our kids (and extended family) gifts that they need or want – I cannot take that for granted.

Need I feel guilty that we have so much when others have so little? No. But I do feel called to be responsible, to be generous, and to continue to pray for wisdom as we make decisions each day about how to spend our money, energy, and time.

I’ll just say it again. We are beyond blessed. And I am so, so grateful.

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!

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Apple Crisp {Gifts in a Jar ~ Day Seven}

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Remember how I mentioned how easy it is to bake in a jar? How about putting together some individual apple crisp desserts in small jars? Or peach crisp. Or cherry crisp. Or a combination of them all. :)

Find my Fruit Crisp Recipe, then fill several half-pint sized wide mouth jars with fruit and topping. Place the jars in a baking dish with just about an 1/8 inch of water in the dish. Bake at 375° for about 25-30 minutes or until fruit is tender. 

You may need to taste test one of these before giving them as gifts, as it is almost impossible to smell this baking and not eat one. :)

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Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffin Mix {Gifts in a Jar ~ Day Six}

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I love muffins. Most people love muffins. Putting ingredients for muffins into a jar = happiness. :)

One of my favorite muffin recipes is Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins. If you layer the dry ingredients into a quart sized jar, the result is fun and enticing.

The ingredients in your jar will include:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup sucanat or brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup chocolate chips

Include instructions for mixing and baking:

Add 1/4 cup melted coconut oil or butter, 2/3 cup milk, and 1 egg. (Add a little extra milk if your dough is too stiff or dry.)  Mix well and scoop mixture into 12 paper lined muffin tins. Bake at 400° for 15-20 minutes.

Want a fun tag to use for your gift? Download Your Free Gifts In A Jar Tags Here!

 

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Menu Plan for the Week

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Yesterday, our Homemade Vanilla Extract sale was hopping along just fine. Vanilla was flying off of our “shelves”, invoices were being printed, packaging was underway.

And then my website crashed. Ugh. It is so not fun when that happens. Several hours later, after a long online chat with our hosting company and a phone call to my webmaster, the site is back up. Shew!

All that to say, if you came to my site yesterday to buy vanilla, and you couldn’t access my site, I am so sorry. What rotten timing for my website to take a siesta. We have exactly seven bottles left. Grab it now if you want one!

Here’s part of the vanilla – packaged and ready to go!
Why yes, my living room is a mess of bubble wrap and boxes.
And yes, we will be hanging out for a few hours at the post office tomorrow.  ;)

Here is our menu plan for this week:

Sunday, December 2
Baked oatmeal cups, pears
Barbecue chicken, baked potatoes, green beans, cream cheese corn, tossed salad
Pizza with youth group

Monday, December 3
Chocolate chocolate chip muffins, apples
Bean and cheese burritos, smoothies
Beef stew, cornbread muffins

Tuesday, December 4
Flaky cream cheese pastry, bananas
Cheddar ranch burgers, potato wedges, steamed broccoli and carrots
Creamy chicken and rice casserole, tossed salad

Wednesday, December 5
Easy breakfast casserole, clementines
Chicken salad in homemade pita pockets, fruit salad
Shepherd’s pie, tossed salad

Thursday, December 6
Pancake sausage muffins, applesauce
Chef salads
Italian roast wraps, fruit salad

Friday, December 7
Creamy orange coolers, toast
Tuna salad, crackers, apples, oranges
Italian pasta bake, tossed salad

Saturday, December 8
Peanut butter pancakes, bananas
Leftovers
Popcorn chicken, creamy mac and cheese, peas

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