25 Days of Christmas

The 25 Days of Christmas start today! This is my favorite time of year and this year is especially fun because CJ is REALLY into the holidays this year. Christmas morning is going to be such fun and I can't wait. Yesterday we made a foam gingerbread ornament together to hang on the tree. It is proudly hanging front and center, though if it's anything like the rest of the ornaments it will have a new home on the tree shortly.

I've been burning the Glade Winter collection candle in Sugarplum. I got it at Dollar General for $0.67. Totally worth full price though, it smells so yummy and really scents up the whole house.

Today we also started our Christmas countdown calender. It's a chocolate Advent calender that we found at the Christmas Shop at the beach. CJ was so excited to open up the first window and get the chocolate out of it. He wanted to open all the windows to get all the chocolate out of it though. LOL

The 25 Days of Christmas start tonight on ABC Family tonight. Even though we've already been watching Christmas movies for a couple of weeks, ok all year, I can't wait to curl up at the end of each day with my little family to watch the featured movies.

I'm anxiously planning out holiday parties and activities in my Holiday notebook and looking forward to all the family time in the weeks to come.

Last Day of November

Wow It's been a while since I've blogged huh? It's been a hectic few weeks around here. I've recently started getting back into couponing focusing on shopping at Food Lion and Dollar General. I've gotten some amazing deals like free bottles of Gain dish soap, Secret deo and Olay body wash, $1.25 bottles of Axe body wash and boxes of cereal for around $1 each just to name a few.

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving, ate lots of great food and spent time with our families. And thanks to some great co-ops, sales and Black Friday Santa is officially done with gifts for Boo. The house is decorated for Christmas, stockings hung and tree decorated. Not to mention the yummy smells of the holidays are starting to fill our home.

I'm going to start making it a point to blog a little each day so keep checking in!

Time 4 Learning Review

It's time to review our trial with T4L.

What can I say about T4L? We LOVED it. CJ asked to play on it and caught on to the games really fast. He never wanted to turn it off. I was really impressed with the quality of the games and how easy they were for him to navigate. I'm really no good at detailed reviews so take my word when I say, it's a wonderful program for kids and we really enjoyed our time with T4L.

Am I late getting my post up today or what?

Wow I am super late getting my menu plan and my 5 minutes a day post up today. Goodness. So let's just merge them into one big post today shall we?



First let's do our menu plan for this week. As usual we're doing Menu Plan Monday over at OrgJunkie.

Monday: Baked Potatoes, Salad
Tuesday: Marinated Chicken, Green Beans
Wednesday: Cheeseburgers, Fries
Thursday: Beef chuck steaks, butter beans
Friday: Meatball Sandwiches, Fries or Mac & Cheese

Breakfasts:
Pancakes
Chocolate Chip Muffins
Coffecake Muffins
Toast

Lunches:
Hot Dogs
leftovers
Teriyaki Noodles


And now 5MAD!


Today's task is to clean out your kitchen sink and wipe it down.

What we had for dinner

I've been slacking a bit with my blogging and I apologize. There hasn't been much going on to blog about. Tonight I figured I'd at least get some kind of post up so let's talk about what we had for dinner tonight. Yesterday we went to the grocery store and they had whole chickens for something like $1.39 a pound. I really should've bought more than one and I might run back and get 1 or 2 more before they go off sale. I got a while chicken for less than $3. Yes they are smaller chickens but we'll get at least 2 meals from one.

I put the chicken in the crockpot and put 2 big pats of butter under the skin and 3 small pats on top of the chicken with some herbs. I used Penzey's Bavarian Style Seasoning but any mix of herbs will work. I let it cook in the crockpot all day until cooked and tender. Man did it make my house smell good! Then for the sides I chopped up some potatoes, carrots and onions. I put them in a pot of water with some butter and some seasonings. (I used Penzey's Bouquet Garni Seasoning. And no these aren't affiliate links, I just happen to love Penzey's) I also added a cup of the juices from the chicken. I brought it up to boil, put a lid on the pot, turned it off and let it sit until we were ready to eat. They were nice and tender but all the veggies held their shape really well.

Come back tomorrow for MPM!

8/13 5 Minutes A Day

Good Morning! Here comes the weekend. Are you doing anything exciting? Well before you take off to start your weekend activities let's do a 5 minute task.

Today we're going to spend 5 minutes cleaning/decluttering a spot in your house that collects clutter.

So excited!

I’ve been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as a homeschool curriculum, for afterschool enrichment and for summer skill sharpening. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.

I am really excited to see how CJ does with the T4L website as I have heard great things about the program.