Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Our Big Family Food Needs (Follow Our Journey!)

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I always thought it was so much fun to read about big family food needs! You know, those grocery pictures from moms who tell about how they feed their ten kids every day?

I was fascinated by the pictures of their huge grocery hauls. Seeing their weekly super-sized piles of bananas, their multiple gallons of milk, and everything else it took to feed their families always made me smile.

And now? Now, I get to be the one with big family food needs! God has grown our family from six to twelve! So would you look at that? I’ve become a mom with huge banana piles to enjoy. Therefore, I decided that I get to share about this too! Want to follow along?

Our Big Family Food Needs

Here’s a peek at a week’s worth of overflowing Wal-mart shopping cart. (And that is why, if I’m shopping at Wal-mart, I only shop Walmart pick-up now, oy!)

When I go to Costco, I skip the regular carts altogether and grab one of their big orange utility carts. Where do I put the huge haul to get it all home? Oh not to worry. It all fits in the back of the “Mama Copp Mobile.”

It’s a 12-passenger with a lot of cargo space in the back for ALL THE GROCERIES. And the strollers and fold-up wagon, of course.

Everything feels big right now.

Big van. Big needs. Big responsibilities. Big messes. Big family. Big food.

I love this, even if this comes with some big hardships too. We can’t grow if we don’t struggle.

Did someone say grow??

We’re growing in several ways. Adult kids, a daughter-in-law, an almost daughter-in-law, a girlfriend (not pictured), two adopted boys, and four little girls that we’re still fostering. Our current family total is 15, counting Matt and me. Nine kids still live at home (technically one of them lives on the college campus across town but he’s still considered part of our “household”).

A Little Back-Story

Many of you have followed our story from the beginning of this blog. You watched our four biological sons grow from little to big. And we thought our grocery needs were big then (because they were, ha).

Beginning in 2018, God surprised us by making us foster parents. Then adoptive parents. And foster parents again. Six little ones are a part of our family right now.

An answered prayer?

People look at all our babies and tell us how lucky we are. “Look at all those babies you get to snuggle!” And they’re not wrong. It’s absolutely amazing! Sometimes I ask God, “Why did you choose us for this? Why do we get to be so blessed as to enjoy all of these soft cheeks, squishy toddlers, baby cuddles, piggy tails, and pre-schooler giggles? Why do we get to have such a big family? Why did you choose us to be this family, these parents, to have all these kids?”

It appears that He chose us because we asked for it. Not this, actually. We were praying, but we didn’t ask Him for foster care and adoption. We never asked God to grow our family. We were actually on our way toward empty nesting, and we weren’t even sad about it. Our high-need parenting years were almost over and Matt and I were looking forward to the time we would have to devote to different ministries (lol). So we asked God:

Teach us how to truly love our neighbors. We are ready to serve you in new ways. Show us what you want for us!

Oh. So see? We actually did ask for this. We just had no idea how He would answer.

It’s what God wants for all of us.

Not foster care or adoption specifically. But He wants open hearts ready to serve in whatever ways He calls us. His ways are incredible and His plans are big. He asks us all to become uncomfortable with Him because constantly sitting in comfort doesn’t accomplish much for God’s Kingdom.

Did I say this was about food?

I’m getting there. But first I needed to share the beginning of the story.

I wish I could say, “So long story short…” but goodness has this story been long. And it’s only been three and a half years. So much has happened in our family and so much of it has involved challenge that it pains me to begin sharing it.

Our gain comes with loss. Heartache is at the root of our family’s growth. Our bonus children bring baggage that only God can heal. And while I don’t like to admit it, I’ve had to grieve loss too. Loss of what I thought my life would look like right now. Loss of freedom. Loss of comfort. Loss of well, sleep, ha.

I thought I knew who God was. Turns out, I only knew a little bit. We can’t know what we know until we know it. And as we’ve been brought through so many new life challenges, God keeps showing us more about who He is. How He works. What His power can do.

The more we walk this new journey, the more we realize how much more there is to God and His ways. It makes me wonder what in the world I might be able to share with you next month. Next year. Five years from now. What a God!

So here we are.

I guess I should start talking about groceries now because that’s really what you came for. But oh I can’t talk about the food until I talk about the faith. The journey that brought us to today. The path we’re on that continues to lead us down unknown futures.

Truth: The future is unknown for all of us. We can dream some dreams and make some plans. But our tomorrows are under the control of One who dreams bigger and plans better. It’s incredibly exciting when we choose to put our trust in the Father!

Big Family Food, then?

Yes, Big Family Food. I thought it would be fun to share what this looks like in our family right now. I have a series in the works to share:

  • What my grocery store hauls look like
  • How much I spend (are you sitting down?)
  • How I cook for this many
  • How I manage our meal plans and snacking needs
  • Where and how I store all the food
  • How we afford it
  • How I keep from going crazy (she has, in fact, already gone crazy)

Who We’re Feeding Daily

  • 3 adults (Matt and me, plus Justus who is finishing out his senior year of college and living at home to save money)
  • 1 high schooler
  • 2 elementary kids (currently ages 8 and 6)
  • 2 toddlers (who just turned 2 and 3)
  • 1 baby (currently age 17 months, but I’m in denial and refuse to call her a toddler yet)
  • 1 infant (who doesn’t affect our grocery budget yet)

And yes, I’ve been around the block enough to know that what our big family food needs are now will only keep getting bigger as these little ones grow into big ones!

Who We’re Feeding Frequently

  • All of the above plus…
  • Elias, our college junior, who lives in an apartment across town. We supply him with some of the food he takes back to his apartment, plus he comes home (often with his roommates) a few times a week for meals
  • 20ish college students most Sundays for lunch (our kids bring their friends, the friends bring friends, it’s turned into a big thing and WE LOVE IT)
  • Some of Malachi’s high school friends once or twice each week so they can hang out during their lunch period.
  • Whoever else God brings to our table during the week

Our grocery needs go beyond our family

But then again, we kind of feel like everyone is family. All the college kids? They are ours. The high school kids? Ours. Extras who we’ve just met who came with the regulars? Welcome to the Coppinger Zoo. You are ours now too (here, please hold this baby).

So actually, if ever we are eating a meal with “just our family” we feel like something is off. Where are the extras? How is it just us right now?

How do we do it?

Well, that’s what I thought would be fun to talk about during the next few weeks. I’ll start taking more pictures as I grocery shop and cook and serve meals. It won’t be glamorous and some of what you see might make you cringe. I’ve had to let go of trying to execute plans perfectly and instead settle many days for “just surviving.”

But hey. At least the kids are cute.

Join us?

 

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Clean Out the Fridge, Freezer, and Pantry: What to Make

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Is it time to clean out your fridge, freezer, and pantry? Here are some ideas for what to make!

I super love to grocery shop. Scratch that. I love to have a grocery store in my own house. I’m not actually such a huge fan of going into the store and buying all the food. After all, one cart is usually not big enough for my family anymore. And the new self-checkout at Walmart with a heaping cart of groceries? IT IS JUST TOO MUCH.

Here’s a picture of the final time I shopped and bagged my own groceries before finding some different/better options!

My current favorite ways to buy groceries are:

I said something about having a grocery store in my house?

What I mean is, I try, if possible, to have just about every common grocery item in my house at all times. This means I can make just about any meal or snack food we need or want without having to run out to the store. I can just go to my store room and grab what we need. Or I can look around my food storage and plan meals and snacks based on what we have.

I don’t take it for granted that I can do this. I am incredibly thankful for storage space, extra fridge and freezers, and the financial ability to stock up regularly.

I almost never let our food supply get depleted as this actually costs more money and takes more work in the long run. Every few months though, I feel like I should challenge myself to use up some of the forgotten and neglected food that has been stuffed into the back of our pantry and freezers.

You know what I’m talking about, right? Those random half-packages of pasta. The meat that was on sale and sounded good at the time but is now almost freezer-burned. The jars of peaches we canned two summers ago and are somehow saving for a rainy day?? Just eat ’em already, right?

If you need some motivation to clear out some of your hidden and neglected food, I thought I’d share what I did recently in an effort to use up some miscellaneous groceries that I didn’t want to go bad.

Clean Out the Fridge, Freezer, and Pantry: What to Make

1. Creative Casserole

Listen, you may never make a casserole like this again, so hopefully, your family doesn’t love it so much that they ask you to duplicate it every week. But when cleaning out the fridge, if you take some kind of pasta or rice, some kind of meat, and some kind of sauce and mix it together, it’ll probably taste pretty good. And you can call it “Creative Casserole.” These are truly a favorite around here.

If you have a half tub of cottage cheese or sour cream in the fridge to stir in, that’ll probably be good too. Shredded cheese? Yes, please.

And just like that, you’ve used up a few neglected food items, saved some money, and fed your family a tasty meal!

2. Trail Mix

If you have any assortment of nuts and dried fruit, you can dump them all into a bag or bowl and voila. You have trail mix. It’s a great snack for everyone to enjoy – even for breakfast!

3. Omelets, Breakfast Casseroles, or Scrambles

And speaking of breakfast, or even lunch or dinner – why not grab out the tidbits of this veggie and that meat to scramble with eggs? Or if you’re feeling fancy, make omelets! If you have frozen meats, cheeses, and veggies to use up, omelets or scrambles are a fun way to use them up! Or stir them into a Breakfast Casserole like this.

4. Saucy Meat in the Crockpot

This is one of my favorite ways to use up two items: Sauce and Meat.

You can hardly go wrong, and you should trust me on this because I am the queen of grabbing the tail end of three different kinds of sauces from my fridge, pouring them all on a roast or package of chicken, and slow cooking it in my crockpot. It always turns out good – no matter what combination of sauce I use.

Then the shelves on the door of my fridge that hold our sauces become less cluttered. The meat in my freezer has been put to good use. And my family has a great meal!

5. Smoothies

I often have several bags of frozen fruit in my freezers, and using them up really frees up space! I’ve found that you really can’t go wrong by throwing any combination of fruits into a blender for a smoothie. So go ahead. Dump in the oranges with the grapes with the blueberries with the bananas. It’ll be great and your freezer will be less cluttered!

6. Stir-Fry

Collect all of the miscellaneous fresh vegetables in your fridge that have started to shrivel up: broccoli, carrots, squash, mushrooms, sweet peppers, etc. Rinse them, chop them, and make your family a delicious stir-fry side dish. Bonus points if you chop up some leftover cooked meat like steak, roast, or chicken to stir in to make this a main dish!

7. Pie, Crisp, or Cobbler

If you had great intentions during a fall harvest and froze fruit like apples, peaches, or berries – dig them out now and make a special dessert! Since it IS fruit and it MIGHT be topped with oats, you could MAYBE even make it for a special breakfast. :) Here’s my cobbler recipe. Here’s my fruit pie recipe. Here’s my fruit crisp recipe. Use them with any fruit you have!

 

What other great ideas do you have to share?!

 

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One Easy Way to Meal Plan

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Here’s one easy way to meal plan. Well, besides just letting us meal plan for you!

When figuring out what to make each evening, I’ve found that this is what works best for me right now…

One Easy Way to Meal Plan

  1. Begin by figuring out the starch I want to cook.
  2. Create my meal around that starch.

Weird maybe? I know. Many meal plans start with the meat/main dish and go from there. But if I want to be sure we’re eating a variety (instead of say, three meals in a row that include pasta), I’ve found that it often works better for me to plan our meals around these starch possibilities:

  • Rice
  • Potatoes
  • Pasta
  • Corn
  • Bread
  • Tortillas
  • Chips
  • Beans

This list includes are eight starch categories (and there are probably others I forgot to include!). So we can have a great variety of meals each week if I simply plan around these eight categories!

Here’s a sample of the meal variety I could come up with for eight consecutive days:

No more overloading our families with pasta. No more burning us out on rice. No back-to-back heavy meals that include bread. No overdoing the beans, ahem.

Do we even need starch anyway?

Some of us don’t need to eat much starch to begin with.

All of the athletes in my family do great eating all eight meals eight nights in a row as I detailed above. But me? I don’t need starch every night. My system does better on a meat and vegetable-based diet. I tend to go easy on pasta and bread. My body thanks me for this.

Still, I’ve found that I tend to plan my meals this way. I like the results! No burnouts. No overload. And it helps me be more creative with meal planning!

What have you found that works best as you plan your meals?

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Golden Latte Recipe (oh so delicious!)

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For years I’ve seen other bloggers post pictures of Golden Lattes. I’d skim the recipe, and stare in disbelief at the list of ingredients: coconut milk, black pepper (!!), turmeric, cinnamon, ginger…it sounded more like a stirfry than a sweet drink.

(Laura’s note: Bethany has done it again! Enjoy this awesome recipe idea!)

And yet…

I couldn’t get it out of my head. These mugs full of golden, frothy goodness. Not only did they look amazing, but their ingredients were so healthy. So many health benefits are tied to ground turmeric, and ginger. They are immune-boosting, and anti-inflammatory, but also just plain delicious. 

I just had to try it.

So one chilly evening, I pulled out a jug of coconut milk, and poured it in a saucepan. I added a crazy amount of ground turmeric, a hesitant shake of black pepper, a large spoonful of other spices, and some honey. I stirred and stirred, and then when it was hot, blended it with an immersion blender to give it some froth.

Then I poured it into a mug, and gave it a taste.

You guys: oh wow. This drink is so unbelievably good. It is as comforting as hot chocolate. It has the spice of a chai tea and the sweetness of a vanilla latte.

We’ve been making these lattes almost every night, and now I’m eyeing bulk ground turmeric. At this rate, we’re going to have to begin purchasing bulk spices. 

Try it! You won’t be sorry!

A few questions…

What if I don’t have all the spices?

It’s okay! Use what you have. When I made my first Golden Latte, I only had pepper, ground turmeric, and cinnamon. So that’s what I used. As time has gone by, I’ve added the other spices to my latte as well!

What kind of milk should I use?

We use coconut milk, but it would be just as delicious if you used dairy, almond milk or another type of milk!

Why is it called a latte when it doesn’t have coffee?

There are many recipes that include instant espresso. You can add some to your latte if you prefer! I just like a nice, caffeine-free drink for the evenings, but a bit of espresso gives it an extra kick if you drink it earlier in the day.

Why black pepper?

You barely notice it, but it does give the drink a nice, spicy kick. Also, did you know that turmeric is WAY more anti-inflammatory when you eat it with black pepper? It’s true! Add a pinch of black pepper every time you cook with turmeric to get its full anti-inflammatory benefits.

5.0 from 1 reviews
Golden Latte Recipe (oh so delicious!)
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 cup milk of choice
  • ½ tsp ground turmeric
  • ½ tsp ground cinnamon
  • ½ T raw honey or maple syrup
  • Pinch of black pepper
  • Pinch of ginger powder
Instructions
  1. Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.
  2. Pour into a small pan and heat for 3-5 minutes over medium heat until hot but not boiling.
  3. Enjoy!

What’s your favorite hot drink?

 

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Don’t Have Time to Cook Dinner? Make This!

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Laura’s note: Enjoy this fantastic, helpful post from Bethany!!

Don’t have time to cook? Eyeing the fast food line? Wanting to eat at home, but don’t have the time for lots of prep work? Here is what I make when I’m in survival mode.

Don't have time to cook dinner? Here's a list of easy recipes to make at home within minutes!

Yum

I used to cook and bake for fun. Before I had kids (barely remember those days!) I’d spend all morning on Saturdays leisurely whipping up cinnamon rolls, soups, muffins, and pastas. I remember those easy breezy mornings: listening to my podcasts, humming away, stopping to leisurely sip my hot coffee in silence.

Fast forward to present time: I now have three kids, ages four, two, and four months old. Gone are the leisurely baking hours. Now I’m just desperately trying to get something—anything—in the oven with two toddlers clinging to my legs, and one baby in the baby carrier on my chest. If the something I get in the oven is healthy than I feel like I officially deserve a gold star. 

It’s called survival mode, and I for sure am in it these days. The first few months after having my third, we had a wonderful meal train and lots of help. But now that baby girl is a bit older, we are self-sufficient, and I’ve had to figure out how to feed us all (three times a day!) without hitting up the fast food line too often. 

Here are the dishes I turn to again, and again when I just need to throw something quick into the oven or crockpot to get food on the table, and into bellies without a lot of chopping or prep.

Simple Cheesy Salsa Chicken

This is one of the most incredible main dishes, if you ask me. It takes TWO MINUTES to prep this. Just throw three ingredients in your crock pot or Instant Pot, turn it on, and walk away. The most laborious thing you might have to do is shred the cheese, but you can even skip that step if you purchase shredded cheese. It couldn’t get any easier!

I use this to make soft or hard tacos, burrito bowls, nachos, or for soups! It’s the best!!

Beanie Weanies

Is it glamorous? Probably not. Is it easy and does it fill tummies, and make my toddlers happy? Yes, yes, and absolutely yes.

Easy Noodle Stirfry

My husband LOVES Chinese food, but none of us like how we feel after getting food from the restaurant. When I tried this Easy Noodle Stirfry, I was blown away by how good it was! Now, it does require some vegetable chopping (which is stressful if you’ve got a bunch of littles around) so I like to prep the veggies early in the week, so it takes just minutes to throw this together. I chop up a bunch of veg on Sundays and then use it throughout the week to make easy, nutritious meals!

Simple Hawaiian Crock Pot Chicken

This one’s right up there with the Cheesy Salsa Chicken in the easy category. You guys, it is SO simple to throw together, and incredibly delicious! I like to quickly get some rice simmering as a side, and then set out fresh fruit and we’ve got an entire, nutritious meal that took minutes to prep!

20-Minute Taco Soup

Here’s what I do when I make this soup: toss the ground beef in the skillet, and walk away. Stir it now and then. Pour in the salsa and broth. Stir in the cheese. And done. It has only four ingredients, and doesn’t require anything of me except perhaps opening the salsa jar. It’s delicious, nutritious and a crowd pleaser!

Simple Barbecue Beef RoastIs there anything better than coming home to a roast in the crock pot?

Here is what Laura says to do to make this recipe:

  • Walk to the freezer and get out a roast. (30 seconds)
  • Open the package and put it into a crock pot. (20 seconds)
  • Get out some barbecue sauce and dump it on the roast. (20 seconds)
  • Grab an onion, pull off the outer layer, rinse it, and quarter it, then threw it in with the meat. (40 seconds)
  • Plug in the crock pot, turned it on low, walked away. (10 seconds)

Now that’s my kind of recipe! The fact that it tastes AMAZING is a bonus.

Those are my favorite recipes to make when I don’t have the time to cook. Try them and be amazed at how much easier they make your life!

Your turn to share! What’s your favorite easy-peasy recipe to make when you are in survival mode?

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Spiced Holiday Tea

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Tasha made this Spiced Holiday Tea for us one day and we fell in love with it!

holiday spiced tea

Spiced Holiday Tea

by Tasha Hackett

Or as I like to call it the drinkable potpourri. I’ve been simmering water with lemon rinds and a cinnamon stick for the past month just to enjoy the smell, but why only use it for the smell when you can drink it, too?

This spiced tea was introduced to me the first time I went home for the Thanksgiving holiday with my then boyfriend. He’s now my husband, and I won’t claim this drink has brought us together because for some odd reason, he doesn’t like it. Which is completely fine with me and his mother, because that means more for us. My mother-in-law always has a pot of this drink simmering on the stove over the holidays.

Sweeten your spiced tea to taste!

 

I have stayed true to my mother-in-law’s recipe in all except the sugar content. The original recipe that she used calls for a full cup. But I’ve decreased it to 1/2 cup in year’s past and nobody noticed. This year I will add even less, but please don’t tell them!

To get started, first boil a full gallon of water in a large pot on the stove. Then turn the burner down and add the tea bags. Please never boil the tea! Follow the directions on the package of your tea to brew a full gallon—I use decaf so we can enjoy anytime of day and share with the kids without any caffeine messing up our sleep.

Once you’ve removed the tea bags, add in 5 cinnamon sticks, 10 whole cloves, and one of each limeade and orange juice concentrate. (Not straight lime juice, but the sweetened limeade in the freezer section with other fruit juices.) Basically you just used tea instead of water to mix the juice. You do not need to add extra water with the juice concentrates. Add in the sugar to taste, approximately 1/2 cup more or less. Wait to taste for sweetness until the juice concentrates are mixed in.

Let the holiday spiced tea simmer—but not boil—for at least an hour.

This tea is better tomorrow.Yum

After we’ve all enjoyed a cup, we store the rest in the fridge overnight, keeping the cloves and cinnamon sticks in the pitcher and the tea gets a stronger spiced flavor throughout the holiday weekend. We enjoy it cold or reheated. I can’t really tell you which is my favorite because I like it both ways!

What’s your favorite holiday drink?

Tasha HackettTasha Hackett is a friend of Laura and has officially been writing since she asked for a journal for her 10th birthday. Her first novel, a historical Christian romance, Bluebird on the Prairie was released just this year, 2021, and she looks forward to sharing many more of her stories with the world. For now, you can read more about her and her fiction from her website: www.TashaHackett.com. 

Holiday Spiced Tea
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Author:
Ingredients
  • One gallon of tea brewed to instructions on tea package (regular or decaf)
  • Limeade concentrate
  • Orange juice concentrate
  • 5 cinnamon sticks
  • 10 cloves
  • ½ cup sugar (more or less to taste)
Instructions
  1. Brew the tea in a large pot on the stove.
  2. Once the tea bags are removed, add the rest of the ingredients.
  3. Simmer for a minimum of one hour, being careful not to boil.
  4. Enjoy warm or cold.
  5. Store leftovers in the fridge.

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Consumable Christmas Gifts – Not Just Food!

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This year, I’m very focused on consumable Christmas gifts for our family. Let me explain why!

As most of you know, we had gotten to a point in life that we’d traded our gifts of toys and snuggly jammies for gifts like video and music equipment. I only kept a few toys around that I felt were worth saving for our future grandkids. AND THEN. Then God brought us more babies.

Woohoo and wow. The past two Christmases we have enjoyed building up our toy supply again. And not only that, for the first time ever, some of those toys are of the GIRLY variety.

Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know we shouldn’t put a gender label on toys for kids, but listen. My big boys never asked for a dollhouse for Christmas. Nor did they request baby dolls and lip gloss. Last year though, all of our little kids (both boys and girls) got a dollhouse. With a pink roof. The girls play lovingly with the dollhouse dolls and furniture. Meanwhile, the toddler boys strip the dollhouse dolls naked and send them sailing down the dollhouse staircase to see how far they’ll fly. Fun is had by all, so yes, dollhouses can be gender-neutral. But anyway…

This year, we don’t need many more toys.

As we’ve accumulated toys the past few years, we’ve also accumulated even more children. There are a lot of people living in our house – currently, ten to be exact. Lots of people take up lots of space, and so do their shoes, backpacks, clothes, and naked dollhouse dolls.

Also, our 7 and 6-year-olds struggle to share, put things away, and get mad when their “really important toy” that they leave out on the floor gets chewed on by a baby or hurled across the room by a toddler. I don’t want to give them more “stuff” that will ultimately create more conflict. So between that and the fact that – did I mention we have a lot of kids – this year, I’m very focused on:

Consumable Christmas Gifts

Am I only wrapping food and putting it under the tree this year? Nope! Not that kind of consumable. Though food and drinks definitely make great gifts and there will be some of that for sure!

As I’ve been planning for Christmas this year, I’ve been excited about how many items are really fun to open but can be used and not accumulated! Like craft projects. Office and school supplies. And yes, food and drinks.

DON’T TELL MY KIDS! But here’s what they’ll all be getting this year. It’s both fun and practical, and woohoo, not terribly expensive! Each person will get:

  • Something to Make
  • Something to Bake
  • Something to Do
  • Something to Chew
  • Something to Drink
  • Something with Ink
  • Something to Wear
  • Something to Share

Here are a few more details to help you understand what I’m planning:

  • Something to Make -craft kits and supplies for the littles plus the adult girls, kitchen/foodstuff for the guys
  • Something to Bake – fun muffin, cookie, or cake mixes (we almost never buy things like this so it will be a real treat for the kids!)
  • Something to Do – a book to read, a game to play, a puzzle to put together
  • Something to Chew – favorite snacks
  • Something to Drink – hot cocoa, coffee, Martinelli’s, tea
  • Something with Ink – new pens, markers, or sharpies
  • Something to Wear – anything from clothes to gloves to socks, depending on what they need
  • Something to Share – something they can use with the whole family (littles) or with friends at college and beyond (bigs)

There will be 14 of us at Christmas this year with Matt and me, all of our kids, plus the oldest two boys’ wives! I am having SO MUCH FUN putting all of these gifts together!!!

Tell me who you’re shopping for and what your gift plans are. This is so much fun!!!

Some more consumable gift ideas:

We go through cases of applesauce pouches at our house. But these Brainiac snacks are a step above and would make a great stocking stuffer that your family would consider a great treat! Get free shipping on orders over $35, which makes this even better!

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Our friends at MadeOn skin care have been helping people fix their dry skin with their 3-ingredient Beesilk lotion bars for years. I LOVE using their products, and all of my kids do too. That’s why I put several lotion bars and lip balms in all my kids’ stockings. I’m going to buy them anyway, might as well use them as gifts, right?!

THIS LINK will get you $3.00 off the regular-sized lotion bar. Plus use the code: HH10 for an additional 10% off your entire order!

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Why I Don’t Make a Traditional Christmas Dinner

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What? I don’t make a traditional Christmas dinner at our house? Well, it’s traditional…for us. But it’s not normal for most.

First, let’s talk about how much I love Christmas. I MEAN I LOVE IT. So much. I go all out at Christmas and I don’t feel bad about it. (Though it’s going to look different from past years simply because we have so many kids now! It’s going to have to be smaller simply because we’re bigger. Eh?)

Current family count: 14
2 parents, 6 sons, 4 foster daughters, 1 daughter-in-law, and 1 very serious girlfriend.
This is amazing.
Side-note: If you’re going to date a Coppinger, you need to love babies.

Christmas last year looked like this:

But of course, that was before we filled our “loving room” with people.

And I mean FILLED. It gets nuts. The baby gate can’t handle how crazy this is. I have so much fun spoiling everyone at Christmas and in short: I don’t want to cook that day.

But Laura. You love to cook!

Yes, but not on Christmas day. I don’t want to miss one second of our Christmas fun! And there’s something else:

We eat turkey at Thanksgiving. Sometimes ham. Plus several days of leftovers. So we kind of want something different for Christmas.

What is our traditional Christmas dinner?

Lasagna, baby. It’s a family favorite and after so many years, it is now our Christmas favorite.

My personal favorite thing about lasagna for Christmas is that I can make it weeks ahead of time and freeze it. Then I pull it out and bake it low and slow while we’re enjoying our gifts. Mid-afternoon when we come up for air, we head into the kitchen and eat lasagna with salad and sparkling juice.

It’s easy. It’s delicious. It’s one of our favorite traditions!

I’m chuckling at this picture because it’s an old one from back in the day when one 9×13 pan would be enough to feed our family. Now I usually make huge lasagnas in these. They freeze great. And then we throw the pan away.

(Wow have I changed a little bit from back in the new HeavenlyHomemaker days, huh? Aluminum pans? Chuck it after using it? Yes. I’ve learned that people are a much more important focus and I don’t feel bad about taking some shortcuts so I can instead focus on people.)

How to Make Lasagna Ahead of Time

  1. This is the easiest way to make lasagna ahead of time. I make several at once.
  2. Freeze it.
  3. Cover it with foil, put it into a COLD oven, turn the oven to 250 degrees, and let it bake for 3 hours or until cooked through and through.

So there you have it. We enjoyed turkey at Thanksgiving. We got tired of turkey. I don’t want to mash potatoes on Christmas day. We eat Lasagna.

God bless us everyone.

What’s your traditional Christmas dinner?

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80+ Christmas Side Dish Recipes

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Not sure which side dish to take to your family Christmas dinner this year? We can help! Here’s a list of 80+ of our favorites that Bethany put together!

80+ Easy Side Dishes for Christmas

Can I let you in on a little secret?

My favorite Christmas treat is always found on the side dish table.

Yes, I love the turkey and the ham and the desserts (you know I love the dessert!) but there’s something extra special about being able to eat a plate full of mashed potatoes, salads, stuffings, and dips. I think it is because I don’t usually prepare a lot of side dishes for our every day life (I tend to pull out easy side dishes, like Laura suggests in this post). Adding fresh fruits and veggies is the easiest way to help my family eat healthier, and add variety to our meals!  So when Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, I love being able to enjoy the potluck of side dishes. There’s just so much goodness there!!

If you are hosting this year or even if you are simply looking for a dish or two to contribute to your family’s holiday celebration, we’ve got you covered! Here’s a master list of my favorite side dishes for Christmas. 

Delicious Veggie Side DishesYum

Delightful Dips

Fun Fruit Side Dishes

Yummy Bread Side Dishes

Easy Salads

What’s your favorite Christmas side dish? Share below!

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