Tis The Season To Give

Christmastime...
We started off strong, with big ideas of what we wanted to do for the Holidays. We did a couple projects and had lots of fun. But somewhere in the last 2 weeks, I got to busy and had to many unbloggables to deal with and we lost our Holiday spirit. Christmas did not look like  I wanted it too. 

But we did a couple fun projects. 

We found this pinterest project that I thought would be simple, quick and fun. 

Pinterest and I do NOT MIX!!
We used modge podge and epsom salt to coat pint jars. The goal was to make them look like snow. Yea, we were highly unsuccessful. 

We did print these cute tags off pinterest that turned out nice. We laminated them, cut them out, punched holes then attached them to the pint jars.

The kids did 90% of this project and truly enjoyed it!

I made a homemade hot cocoa mix that we poured into the jars along with small marshmallows. 

The kids had a lot of fun making these and handing them out to bus drivers, teachers, therapists, and neighbors. 

We also fixed a surpise package to send to our far away cousins. The kids had so much fun, buying and wrapping up these gifts. We shipped it off with orders to be opened on Christmas Day! 

The kids had been begging to go Christmas Caroling. They really wanted to do that this year. I missed the homeschool group event.
One day in the middle of all our medical appointments, our sweet bus drivers did us a huge favor. So we decided to bake Christmas cookies especially for them. 

We had extra cookies, so the kiddoes asked if they could deliver some to our friends. A light bulb moment.. I had them take the cookies and sing for our neighbors! They had so much fun!!

Food Prep

We canned some of the  50 lbs of carrots/celery/potato mix to be used in chicken noodle soup.




In years past (prior to a having so many kiddoes) I would cook chicken and add it to my mix. I simply did not think I could manage all of that at this time. 

However, I had a large turkey in my freezer! I cooked that turkey, served some for dinner and bagged the rest for the freezer! 

Now when I want chicken noodle soup, I just dump a can of my veggie mix, a bag of my frozen turkey and some broth into my crockpot! Simple, delicious meal in minutes! We add rice or rice past in the last hour before serving it! 

50 lb of Carrots!

What do you do with with 50 lbs of carrots and a case of celery?

First we diced and and sliced a bunch of each along with some potatoes. 

It is amazing how fast we can work when everyone helps. 

We ended up with approx 20 quarts of canned veggies which are perfect for soups and casseroles. 

Then we sliced and diced some more and made fermented carrots. They were actually really yummy!! 

It takes an alot of creativity to figure out how to best use free bulk items. But oh the blessings! It makes my life so much easier to have canned/frozen prepped items!