family

Holidays Upon us..week 6

/ Jeanette / Leave a comment

We have 2 more weeks of Holidays upon us post and then it is here. All the craziness of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.

Thanksgiving: Get your final menu figured out! Hand out assignments of who is to bring what. Figure out your portion of the meal and make a grocery list. Also remember plates, cups and silverware. If you are fancy and use non-paper items, make sure you have enough. I use paper goods, but I like all of my food served in regular dishes. So I will be getting them out this week and washing them up and seeing what I still need.

Black Friday: The ads are slowly starting to roll out. I am still waiting for the 2 bigger ones: Target and Walmart. But there are a lot that have already been posted. Check them out here.

If you haven’t started yet, then start that shopping!!!

You only have 45 days to go!

I know I didn’t say anything about Christmas in this post. That’s because I have a special Christmas post coming on Wednesday.

Holidays upon us week 5….

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Week 5 and 1 holiday down! How was your Halloween? Let me start by saying my plan of action didn’t happen like I thought it would because I didn’t actually go around and find out trunk or treat times. So we ended up in the one neighborhood in our entire city and now I know where everyone tricks or treats on Halloween.

Only 2 of my kids went trick or treating, my oldest was sleeping over at a friend’s house and my middle daughter had a homeschool glow party to attend. So it was just the littles with us.

Halloween 2015 Growing a large family

I was so proud of my zombie make up skills. I started to use the cheap Halloween make up and he immediately turned red. So I used my eyeshadow and lipstick. He loved it.

In character

In character

Our witch had a great time too. Until the next morning, when she realized she lost her hat at the last stop of the night.  Story of our life.. always losing something. But I did learn 2 valuable lessons for next year…

  1. take my own advice and actually plan by finding out the exact times
  2. Buy a wagon for little man to ride in. With his feet problems, he had a hard time walking a long distance.

So we are now in the first week of November. This is the perfect time for a nice deep cleaning. Get a jump on it instead of trying to pile in cleaning and cooking the week before. Halloween is over so I plan on getting rid of all the cobwebs in my house this week. Put away Halloween decorations and pull out anything for Thanksgiving. Reorganize kitchen and give it a good scrubbing. I am also hoping to steam clean the main carpet areas.

Friday before Halloween, I officially started Christmas Shopping! Definitely sit down, look at your list and get started!

Also you want to get an official response on who is coming for Thanksgiving or maybe where you are going. Get the menu set in stone this week and let everyone know who is to bring what.

Do you have family members that can’t stand to be in the same room? Me too! Usually this is never a problem because it just worked out that they weren’t in town at the same time. But this year, I am running into this exact scenario. I am going to tell you how I am handling it. I called one (the one I knew would be upset the most) and explained SO & SO is going to be here on Thanksgiving. You are more than welcome to come but I understand if you don’t want too. The response I got was “we will play it by ear.”

So what do you do with a response and situation like this? You don’t want to rely on someone for cranberry sauce and then they don’t show out of pettiness. Give them the small stuff. Say well if you do come, we would love if you would bring a dessert or a drink. Don’t give them any part of the main meal. Give them an item that someone else is also bringing so if they show and you have extra YAY. If not, then you are still covered.

In my family, I take over and do 99% of the cooking. My hubby likes my particular way of cooking things and I enjoy cooking and feeding people. It’s the southern in me.

Happy Holidays, Ya’ll!

Have fun chasing squirrels, Justice

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I am not sure what is happening around here with my dogs. But it seems like this is the year for sadness.

A few months after Hubby and I moved in together he brought home 2 little kittens that the kids found at daycare. We named them Smokey and Bandit.

About 2 months before our wedding, I decided I wanted a little dog. Some how we ended up with a cocker spaniel named Justice. He did not stay little.

Fast forward 2 years, I still have the mind-set that I want a toy type of dog. We bring home Gucci, a toy poodle.

A month later, we buy a big property in the middle of the country and Hubby decides we need a big protector dog. So a month of looking leads us to get Duece, a great dane.

The end of June, we put Duece down. He was having hip problems and so much pain that he couldn’t sleep and whined most of the time. With him being such a large dog, we had a vet come and take him to put him down. My hubby and I have so much guilt about not being there with him in the last few minutes of his life. And it honestly haunts us, especially my hubby.

We got Harley, our golden retriever puppy about a month later. And we really thought we have our 3 dogs again.

We never thought this would be the year that we would lose 2 of our fur babies.

Growing a large family

A few weeks ago, Justice just wasn’t acting right. He lost all his energy, he was wheezing and breathing heavily and stopped eating. I called a vet in the morning and by that afternoon, Hubby and I were sitting on the floor saying good-bye thinking this is it. He couldn’t move and his breathing was bad. Then a few hours later, he was fine. Slow moving, but he was moving. Vet came out and said nope he’s just old. A week went by and Justice was getting worse. Because of our guilt with Duece, I took him to another vet who said he had congestion and ran some blood work which said there was an infection. So antibiotics it was. But a week later and he is still not showing any improvement. Hubby and I had said we can’t let him suffer. Let’s get through this weekend so everyone (extended family has become very attached to him) could say good-bye.

But he didn’t make it until the weekend.

Hubby found him yesterday while the kids and I were out. Hubby called and said don’t come home, I don’t want you to see this. When we did go home, Hubby was still burying him. I offered to help, but he said not until he had him covered where I couldn’t see him. I am a farm girl now. And homesteading has toughened me up. But it was sweet seeing my hubby treat me like that.

A little while later, the kids and I went out and put my flowers on his grave. Today we are making a marker for it. It’s only right because he was family too!

RIP Justice! You were the best dog ever. You loved and protected me and our family more times than I can count. Your thrill of riding in the car, or getting treats will always bring smiles to my face, especially when thinking of your little nub of a tail wagging behind you. You were our first son and will always be in our hearts.

 

This blog post participated in the Simple Homestead Blog Hop

Holidays upon us…week 3

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Good Monday Morning ya’ll. I hope this week is so much better than last week. Maybe I can play catch up on my To-Do list. So let’s jump right into it.

Halloween: You should be pretty well prepared for this Holiday. I picked up the last 2 items I needed this past weekend. But I know some of you have kids in school and sometimes they do a Halloween party. Start thinking about what you want to donate for that. Even though we homeschool, I make a big deal out the holiday and make it feel like a fun day. We have special treats and theme lunches or breakfast. Ghost pancakes anyone?

Growing a Large Family

Throwback pictures

Those of you in neighborhoods that participate in Trick or Treating, buy your candy now. And make sure it’s candy you like! This way if it’s one of those years where not many kids came by, you aren’t stuck with a bunch of candy you can’t stand. I personally like to buy plain chocolate bars, M&M’s, Reese Pieces and peanut butter cups. Why? Because they can be frozen and made into yummy desserts throughout the whole year. I also buy lollipops or goldfish crackers for the little ones who can’t eat candy.

Thanksgiving: Make your invite list. And start putting the word out that those people are more than welcome to come over on Thanksgiving. But give them a deadline on when they need to give you a definite answer. Start thinking of your menu and what items you want to be in charge of. I am also making up my cornbread and freezing it this week for my cornbread stuffing. I am changing it up a little bit this year. I will post the recipe later in the week.

Throwback pictures

Throwback pictures

Black Friday: I added this category this week because I know a lot of people are into that day after Thanksgiving shopping. I did it once, with a 4 month old, while being exhausted and sick. Thank god my hubby and brother went with me. But since then I haven’t seen anything that has made me jump up and rush out at 3am! But I do still check the ads, which is what you should be doing too. Starting now, keep checking for Black Friday ads online here. You know everything gets leaked on the internet and these are no exception. As of this morning, there aren’t any out but you can sign up for ad alerts when they do start hitting the net. And believe me they will start coming out very soon! So why not get a heads up!?

Throwback pictures

Throwback pictures

Christmas: Maybe you aren’t the hit all the stores and get everything done the day after Thanksgiving type of person. Me neither! But I do like to shop and I like to shop in my jammies! Shopping online has become my favorite past time. And if I have to buy something why not get a little money back or points towards a gift card for myself. My 2 favorite websites for shopping is My Points and Ebates. My Points also has a store where you can buy gift cards and earn bonus points. Get an account set up and familiarize with the website and how things work. Also look for their daily deals where you can get double or triple the points. Might even see a deal you can’t pass up.

Also if you are one of those people that buy little things throughout the year (like me!) then now is the time to go through all that stuff and make a list. I always have list broken down of who I need to shop for and what I have bought them already. This year I will add an amount category.

I hope you are enjoying this series as much as I am enjoying writing it. See you next Monday for week 4.

Holidays upon us…week 2

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I know I am late this week, it’s just been the week from hell. Sickness, Doctor appointments and more sickness has taken over. But I finally have a chance to get week 2 posted.

Halloween: Finalize your plans and costumes! If you wait too much longer, you’re going to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find your or your child’s costume.

Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving seems to be the one holiday I use the most spices. So now would be a good time to go through your spice cabinet and make a list of any that need to be replaced. This will make it easy when you see a really good sale or coupon. Another thing, I forgot to mention, sign up for Fresh Market’s emails. Last year they sent out an email to pre-order your turkey and also sent a coupon for $5 off.

Start collecting your recipes and putting them some place where you will know where they are at. This will save you time when you are making a grocery list and begin cooking on Thanksgiving.

Christmas: Just keep looking for different ideas. This year looks like it will be really tight budget wise for us, so I have already started letting people know that I am shopping for kids 18 and under only; with the exceptions of my Mom and my Mother in Law. And while we are on the subject of budgets: make one and stick to it for Christmas. This is the hardest thing for me! But I am going to try my best this year.

This is all I can think of right now. I am literally running on caffeine. I promise next week will be much better and on time.

Holidays upon us…Week 1

/ Jeanette / 1 Comment

Well it’s the first full week of October. And that means the holiday frenzy begins. But first, can I just say Man, this year flew by! So I thought I would blog about what I am doing to prepare for the holidays. Every Monday, there will be a post about what I have done to get ahead of the craziness. In October, we have homecoming, Alissa’s 18th Birthday and Halloween. But I am also thinking ahead to Thanksgiving and Christmas because with a family this size and a schedule as busy as ours is, I don’t have time to be running out the door the day before to prepare.

First thing, get your kids talking about Halloween. Especially if they want the most popular costume on the shelves, you have got to find it now. Believe me, I ran into this problem last year with my son’s costume.

Last years Olaf costume

Last years Olaf costume

Everybody wanted to be a character from Frozen. And trying to find the costume in his size at a reasonable price was a nightmare. As you can see, I got it but it was a close one and cost more than I like to admit! So get them talking now. I have a feeling if you try to go out even the week of Halloween you will have a hard time. At our Walmart, the school supplies were gone and it was the day of school starting. Everyone is trying to get ahead so you need to be even more ahead of them. And if your going to be making your child’s costume get started NOW!

Luckily for me, my kids have been talking about it for the last 2 weeks. I actually had to put a rule that no one could talk about Halloween until October 1st it was becoming an all day, every day conversation.

Now is also a good time for figure out your plans. Usually we go to my mom’s house in the next city over because my little country city doesn’t do much as far as house to house. But this year, we will have 1 kid doing their own thing, 1 kid going to a party and 2 with us trick or treating. So we have to stay close by to be able to pick up one or both kids. We will be going to the trunk or treats around Plant City.

Next, Thanksgiving! If you plan on ordering a farm fresh turkey, now is the time to do it and put your deposit down. Some areas it may even be too late. If that’s the case start looking for a backup plan. I can say with total confidence that if you can’t do farm fresh and you have a Fresh Market near you, get it from there. That is where last years turkey came from and it was the best one we ever had. I know in my area most of the farm fresh have all been reserved. So I will probably get a Fresh Market turkey.

Growing a large family

 

Now, Christmas!  Definitely start looking at sales ads, emails or just cyber window shopping. Start getting an idea of the new holiday items coming out so you can be making a list of things to possibly buy. I haven’t actually bought any presents yet because I have 2 birthdays to get through first. But I usually start shopping the end of the month. But I have been keeping my eye out on the new video games coming out, toys and latest electronics.

This month is actually a pretty easy month. Mostly just mental stuff. So what I also like to do is declutter and start organizing. I have actually been doing this for a few weeks already, but I still have a tons more to go. I just have this need to purge before the holidays hit and the all the gift giving happens. What I am doing is selling what I think someone else would appreciate and donating the rest.

And of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t at least mention homesteading preparations. I use the deep litter method during the winter. And even though I still have about 3 months before a significant cold front moves through, I like to be prepared and not caught off guard. Now is the time to do a deep cleaning of your coop and fix anything that needs to be fix. I have a fence that has been calling my name for a couple of months now. I also took everything out of the coop, scrubbed it good and put bed shavings in. This is the start of deep litter method. Every day I fluff and turn the bed shavings and add more in once a week.  I keep adding more bed shavings for a good month or two, depending on the weather, before I start adding the straw layer which will hold the heat. I will also be ordering my ingredients to make my own chicken scratch.

Look for week 2 next Monday. Happy Holidays Ya’ll!

 

2 weeks of craziness

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Sorry for being MIA but life kinda took over again. Ya know 4 kids can keep a girl busy. Plus losing 2 of our chickens was awful and rough. But life came full circle when 3 days later our first batch of chicken eggs started hatching. This was a small batch.

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As you can see we started with the 6 in the front, 1 wasn’t developing. So 5 went into lockdown. The 3 white eggs in the back are our duck eggs. They ended up not being developing either. Out of the 5 that went into lockdown, I got 4 to hatch! Not too shabby for a first timer. Of course, I had been watching the first cracked egg for hours and nothing major was happening. So I went out to run my errands with the kids and my Grandma called and said you have a baby and it is chirping extremely loud. My poor cocker spaniel was going nuts trying to find the babies. By the next morning, I had 3 waiting in the incubator and the last one hatched while I was cooking breakfast. Those little boogers can move fast when they are ready to break free!

About 48 hours old here

Here they are after their first night in the brooder. Everyone is doing great and seems very healthy. When they were waiting in the incubator to dry, they were extremely loud and responded whenever I talked to them. Now they recognize “the hand” and enjoy pecking food out it.

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Here they are 4 days old and already starting to get their big chick feathers. They are growing so fast!

In other news, Lil man has lost his first tooth! This momma is mad because she missed it. I was out to dinner and literally pulled into the drive way about 5 minutes after he yanked it out. But he was very excited because his tooth fairy didn’t bring a dollar, instead he got a new Skylanders Trap Team Trap. Yup, that kid is spoiled rotten by everyone, including the Tooth Fairy. But how can you not love him!?! Look at this smile.

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We also went to local Renaissance Festival with my Dad and Aunt. We had never been and it is something my Dad really enjoys. It was an experience to say the least. LOL But the kids got to try a lot of new things and had a lot of fun. I will post more when I can figure out how to get the photos off my stupid phone.

The kids are on Spring Break this week. So we are just relaxing and putting up a new fence. More on that later.

Plus it’s U-pick’em season here Plant City. And I found a wonderful Organic U-pick’em. Be prepared for lots of Strawberry recipes!

Plus more babies! Our next batch goes into lockdown on Monday and we have a new set of duck eggs in the incubator. Those should be hatching the Saturday before Easter.

Photo Round Up October 2014

/ Jeanette / 5 Comments

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This month has been extremely busy. I never realized how busy it was until this year. I felt like I never got a break. Every weekend was booked with something going on or errands needing to be ran. I told Hubby that next year I am sleeping through October. Just wake me up for Halloween! Since I didn’t post much I am giving you a round up of photos.

 

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1st apple pie of the season

 

 

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My oldest 2 have been taking cake decorating classes. So now they decorate their own cakes. This was a quick version for my oldest child’s birthday. She turned 17!

 

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Took a quick trip to Epcot for the food and wine festival. We had so much fun trying new food and found quite a lot of new meal ideas.

 

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Homecoming~ Her first year going and she looked amazing!

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Pumpkin Carving

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My little Olaf!

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Dakota and I dressed as Anna and Olaf from Frozen

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2 out of 3 of my sugar skulls with Olaf.

Family Dinners

/ Jeanette / 1 Comment

Growing up, my parents were divorced and working. So instead of splitting my time between Mom and Dad, I went from one grandparents house to the other. Now most people say their grandparents were the ones that always had family dinners. Well not mine. I grew up in the age of TV dinners. You know those fantastically, nasty trays of food that you could cook in 2 minutes and eat while watching your favorite show. So most of the time that is what happened. And I have to admit, in the beginning of my Mommy years, I let my kids do the same thing.

Then one day it all changed. We just moved into a house that actually had a dining room. And so our tradition began. Every night, with a few exceptions, we eat dinner at the table as a family. I’ll admit at first it was just a way to keep my white rug looking nice. But now it has become a tradition. A moment in time where we can all sit around and talk, joke and laugh. Or in my son’s case to have the attention of everyone in the house at one time. It’s hard to get him to be quiet long enough to stick some food in his mouth. But that’s okay because we are together.

But being a homeschooling family and eating almost 3 meals a day together, we now have family breakfasts and lunches sometimes.

Sometimes I am that cool mom that says yes you can enjoy pizza with a movie.

On holidays the kids get the TV table, so the adults can talk and eat in peace, but it’s still as a family.

Very rarely is there a constant flow of people in and out of the kitchen eating.

I am hoping that my kids will pass on these little traditions to their children. Family dinners are essential to knowing about your child and what is going on. We don’t always talk sometimes we are way too tired. But being around each other is comforting. Like a blanket on a cold day. It’s knowing your family is there no matter what.

 

Our Frugal Disney Vacation

/ Jeanette / 1 Comment

One day at Disney World can be expensive for a family of 6, but 5 days can be down right ridiculous. You can read about how we save for our Annual passes and this vacation here.

We stayed at the Fort Wilderness Cabins. I chose here because I have always wanted to stay in a cabin and it also came with a kitchen. Now Disney has quite a few options for large families. There is the option of getting 2 rooms at the same hotel, but you are not guaranteed side by side rooms, though I have never had a problem getting them. But there is no kitchen and would have to go out to eat for every meal. Then there are family suites at some hotels that sleep up to 6 and have a kitchen, problem though is you hear everyone walking through the halls and talking loudly. The cabins are placed about apart from each other so you don’t hear all the footsteps and voices.  Comparing the cabin and the family suites, the cabin turned out to be much better priced. Now the cons, we are early to bed and early to rise people, so I didn’t take that into account when it came to the daily 10pm fireworks show that we could hear clearly even though it was at Magic Kingdom across the lake. The kitchen was poorly stocked as far as cookware. Let’s say it took some adjustments to cook the meals I did cook. Can you say aluminum foil cookie sheet?

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After we checked in, we headed for the nearest Publix to do some grocery shopping. I had it planned where we would have one dinner and one breakfast out and the rest at the cabin. And of course for the first night we grabbed some subs at the store. For a total of $160 which we took from our grocery budget.

Breakfast: Pancakes, french toast sticks, toaster strudels or breakfast sandwiches and then out to eat. You have to have Mickey waffles once while at Disney.

Dinners: subs, Burgers, chips and leftover potato salad, Golden Corral, Chicken Cordon bleu and tater tots.

Not the healthiest meals but better than hamburgers and french fries everyday.

Now as you can see I left lunch out because we were mostly at the parks during that time. And most of the time we didn’t eat breakfast until 9am so we weren’t hungry for a big lunch. We mostly purchased snacks. First day was fruit, second day we actually ate a big lunch, third day funnel cakes and last mickey pretzels and churros. (Don’t judge it’s a vacation from our diet too!)

Souveniers are a given when you are at a place like Disney. My older kids had earned or saved some money before the vacation. I had also earned 4 free $10 Disney giftcards with our movie rewards and then my grandmother gave each of them $5. So each had $10-15 saved, a $10 giftcard and an additional $5, once it was gone it was gone. And Mom and Dad weren’t handing out extra. This was to be spent on whatever (within reason) they wanted. We provide necessities but if you want a bag of candy, you have to buy it yourself. This worked out well for some and not so well for others. But maybe it was a lesson learned. (Hopefully?!)

In the end, we came home with over $100 still in our pocket to put towards our next vacation fund. And a lot of priceless memories!

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