Earlier this month my dad was reading the Big Nickel newspaper and saw that the Christmas train happened this last weekend. One day it was from Seligman, MO to Rogers, AR and I don’t remember the other day. I don’t remember because we were planning on the Saturday trip, we had plans for that Sunday. We were excited because it happened to be a Tbug weekend so we bought our tickets and made plans to ride the Christmas Train.
I really wasn’t sure what to expect and it wasn’t quite what I thought I might expect, but it was a lot of fun either day.
Every year I have the best of intentions and every year I fail when it comes to making a Ginger Bread House… until this year. Truthfully I think last year was the first year I really attempted to even try, usually I mention that we should but we run out of time. Last year I actually made the house pieces although they were horrible and we didn’t wind up putting it together so at the end of the season on clearance I bought a kit. Then I forgot I did that… sorta.
So jump forward to this year and while we were in Ft. Worth I found this really cool kit that had all the cutters and everything you’d need for making a ginger bread house (not the actual pieces, oh no, recipes to make your own!). We bought it and away I went making the dough… The dough was easy to make… SCORE! and for the most part it all worked out good. I had a few hiccups along the way, but isn’t that to be expected the first time out of the gate?
What have we been up to lately? Well decorating for Christmas. We actually had a bucket truck at our house to work on our Arena lights for my dad, so while it was there, we quickly hung lights on the front of the barn.
Yup, it was a conspiracy and I was involved. In fact, I may or may not have been the original culprit and recruited helpers. What exactly did I do? Well…. this….
Hello Thanksgiving! Truth be told my favorite time of year is between Thanksgiving and New Years. I love the food of Thanksgiving, the fun and reasons for Christmas, the joys that come over the New Year, and then bam, January hits. I’m not a huge fan of January, sorry January, nothing against you and we can still be friends 😀.
Anyway, this year after I have a new found love of decorating sugar cookies, I thought I’d take my stab at Thanksgiving Sugar Cookies. I had no idea what I was going to do with them once they were baked/decorated, but by golly that wasn’t going to stop me. I sent them with my dad to work. He said his co-workers loved them and one even took what was left at the end of the day home. Yey :). Don’t worry, I ate 1 1/2 cookies. They were good 😁.
For Thanksgiving dessert, I chose a Cherry Pie. That was my initial thought even though we don’t have any cherries from our old Cherry tree, but then I found them, Sour (aka tart) Cherries at the store. I bought 4 packages. I only needed 1 but put the other 3 in the freezer for a rainy day. And that is a turkey on the top of my pie, not a Chicken. Just clarifying!
After selling our house and moving in with my parents, I’m back to using my mom’s stove for cooking. Her stove only has 2 burners (normal ovens have 4) so I decided to make our Green Bean Casserole the night before, then just reheat it in the oven day of. We don’t normally have Green Bean Casserole but we’re kind of on a healthy kick here at my house and I thought, well we needed a vegetable and we’ve eaten a lot of green beans so I went on the hunt for a “healthy” green bean casserole to change it up a bit. The one I found didn’t let us down!!
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that all your meals turn out as fabulous as our first Thanksgiving of the season did. Holy Wow! 1st Thanksgiving what? So, the NCHA futurity is going on in Ft. Worth, Texas right now and my uncle has some horses entered. When we started discussing Thanksgiving plans last month, we weren’t sure when he’d draw to show, plus the fact that this isn’t our year to have Tbug on Thanksgiving so we just decided to celebrate Thanksgiving last weekend. It was perfect.
There are 6 of us that headed to my aunts house in southern Oklahoma and right now we only have vehicles that will haul 5 people at a time so Abug, Mom, and I loaded up first thing Friday and drove down to AC & UB’s. Hubby took the day off to try his luck at deer hunting and be ready to pick Tbug up after school, come home and have chores done, pick dad up after work, and then they headed out. I should mention that they swung by J.L’s BBQ in Pryor (which is a little out of the way…..) for dinner before heading on to AC & UB’s but that’s okay 😘.
When AC & UB were up last month for a horse show, we ran to Sam’s Club and AC bought me a Cast Iron cookbook with the “stipulation” that I had to make something out of it for Thanksgiving. I decided to make the Orange Rolls (kind of like Cinnamon Rolls) for breakfast for Saturday morning. They were a little dry, but very good.
A lot of people will have an opinion that is not favorable for the fact that we put up our Christmas tree, but that’s okay. We’re happy and we’re still very excited to celebrate Thanksgiving. And also, my big thing is to make sure that Tbug is involved with decorating our tree. I always want her to feel included and this is a way that I make it a point…. So 2 weeks ago, yes 2 weeks ago we put up our Christmas tree. No, I haven’t forgotten about Thanksgiving!
Anyway… We actually bought a new tree at the end of last year. We went out the day after Christmas and actually found this tree at Lowe’s. It’s so friggin cool. So it is prelit but there aren’t cords you have to plug in together to light it all up. Instead once you place this piece to that, the plug in is in the tree base itself. Very cool. Only bad thing is there is not an easy way to get light to our tree topper, but it doesn’t fit anyway… hit the ceiling so we left it off. I do believe it needs a topper but I’m not sure what to do just yet.
Picture overload! Jody, her kiddos, my kiddo, and I went to a trunk or treat done by a local hospital. Then there was Halloween. Abug had the best time and this is really the first time she’s gotten the concept of Halloween. She had a bucket, said Trick or Treat, and Thank you. We missed a few of our friends, for that I’m sorry, but now… picture overload :).
Since I kind of took a small hiatus during October, I’m finally getting caught up with October goings on but I still have much to chat about… like the Chili Cookoff…
The Chili Cookoff was October 22nd. The day before we went out to Deb and Grady’s house to set up everything we could for the next day. I was fighting a horrendous cold so I tried to steer clear of people so I didn’t spread it although I was on the downhill slide of it. While Jared, Hubby, Karen, Deb, and SW set up, I sat at the patio table and set up an excel worksheet with the help of text messages/emails from my friend Kalem.
