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advent calendar

This season has already been different enough to get my schedule out of whack.  My dear brother and his sweet family has move from the Iowa to here to Georgia.  And most of my spare time has been in helping them move.  The other is finding deal for Christmas. Way tight budget this year.  I always loved advent calendars.  espeically the ones you one up and find a surprise.
So when I saw a post from my favorite coupon blogger, Jenny at Southern Savers about an advent calendar she did.  Here is the link to the project.

Now she has a hand machine that cuts it all out for her.  None of which I have... but I do have a computer and a printer and scissors. I have yet to finish cutting out my boxes.  So my project is yet to be finished.  I also found another Blogger who has done advent calender and has ready made stuff about Christmas from her advent calendar which I will copy from also. Her blog is shannonmakesstuff.blogspot.com and her is her final advent calendar. And her is a link this blog posting.

And then I have a dear friend from my MOPS group who came up with a wonderful advent calender and her pockets are full of wonderful biblical stuff (for lack of better words on less than a cup of coffee.)  I spent some time yesterday copying these down.  So I'm hoping that I can finish my project soon. So I can post the final project. I found a template to make a box.  Here is that template. And I'm still working out how to make the star. Hopefully I will be able to show you the final project soon and content of boxes.
Here are a couple more links of some advent calendar. http://impressyourkids.org/advent-calendars-beyond/
and http://www.icanteachmychild.com/2010/12/advent-boxes.html and http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2010/11/advent-activities.html.  Would love to know if you have any other blogs that have advent ideas.

sweet lovely "yumo" pumpkin bread

This is a family favorite!  Caleb has declared this to be "yumo", especially the cookies.

But not only am I going to give you the recipe I use, but if you painted your pumpkins like I did mine you can cut them up and use that instead of buying the can stuff.  Most canned Pumpkin is 16 oz which equals 2 cups.

This is how you do that... cut pumpkin half, take out seed and stringy stuff, place on cookie sheet. Cook in oven at 350 for at least an hr.  (The bigger the pumpkin the longer. I had one big one that each half I cooked for 1hr 45 min.) Drain as much as the clear liquid as possible.
Place in blender or mixer until it is pureed.  A quick mixer tip.  "Place a lint free towel over your mixer and bowl to help cut down on having to clean up splatter." 

From here you can use or freeze.

side tip.  I often have batter left over and I make drop cookies from the batter.  cook for about 8-10 min at 350. 

Pumpkin Bread (from Betty Crocker's)
Pre-heat oven to 350.
1 can (16 ounces or two cups) (I use a touch more than this. probably 2 1/2 cups)
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla (my vanilla is stronger than most... add 3-4 teaspoons to equal my 2)
4 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour (or whole wheat flour) (mine uses all-purpose)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt (or less)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (or more)
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoons baking powder
optional: 1/2 cup nuts and/ or raisins.  (Mine has neither.)

I will give you their directions and mine.  Since I cook 4-6 batches I do mine so I'm out of the kitchen a bit quicker.  My bowls are not big enough to hold two batches.  This will yield around 3-4 large loaf pans.

Instructions:
1.  Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. (very important! I take out one of my racks and place it over the sink for a "dryer rack")  Heat oven to 350.  Grease bottoms of loaf pans with shortening. (I use spray canola oil.)
2.  Mix pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla, and eggs in large bowl.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Pour into pans.  (Here I differ quite a bit. I do all the dry ingredients in as many bowls as I'm doing batches.  Then as I'm mixing I add in liquid ingredients that I whip as needed.  That way raw eggs are sitting out a much less time.  You will have to mix on a higher speed for longer.  And I'm not in the kitchen that long.  It does mean more dishes, but that is what dishwashers are for.)
3.  Bake 8-inch loaves 50-60 min, 9 inch loaf 1hr10min- 1hr20min, until toothpick comes out clean. Coll 10 min in pans on wire rack.  Loosen sides of loaves from pans; removes from pans and place top side up on wire rack.  Cool completely before slicing.  Wrap tightly and store at room temperature up to 4 days, or refrigerate up to 10 days. (This is easily frozen.  Thaw in the fridge)

Baking time for mini loaves:
Amount of batter:               approximate time bake time at 350.
1/4 cup                                             15-20 min
1/3 cup                                             15-20 min
1/2 cup                                             25-35 min
3/4 cup                                             35-40 min

Food Storage

Many of you know I am a huge couponer.  In order to take advantage of the best price, I often have to "stock up".  Many people say they don't have room for this.  And as far a fresh, refrigerated, and freezer foods.  This maybe true.  I did get a half chest freezer because my little side by side did not have enough room to store much at all.  I like to freeze a lot of things. Some things that may surprise you that freeze well is cheese and liquid non dairy creamer.  Some kids yogurts freeze well, but most yogurts do not.

I found this great brochure at Publix a while back and just refound it while I was going through stuff.  I hoped that I could find it online to share with you but it looks like no one has it.  It is called   "The Food Keeper, A Consumer Guide To Food Quality And Safe Handling"  It is developed by Food Marketing Institute.   It has so much great information in one place.  If you go to Publix ask for it!  But on their website it does have a place where you can search by food product.
http://www.fmi.org/consumer/foodkeeper/
In a yellow area you can put in your food product and out pops how long and where it should be stored.
Looks like this:
To search for a specific food, enter a search word here:

Search:

 Once you have done your search it may
Like this:

Food	Refrigerator	Pantry	Freezer	Special
Dips, sour cream based	2 weeks		Do not freeze
Sour cream	7 to 21 days		Doesn't freeze well	Cover tightly. To prevent bacteria from spreading to leftover cream, don't return unused cream to original container. Keep covered.

But here are some other helpful links
Cornell University links and USDA links seem to be the most helpful.
Cornell University:
http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/chemung/nutrition/#safety

http://blogs.cce.cornell.edu/herkimer/files/2009/04/Web-Sites-for-the-Home-Preserver-20091.pdf
USDA:
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/fact_sheets/Focus_On_Freezing/index.asp#8
Food Safety.gov
http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/preparing/index.html
Fight Bac!
http://www.fightbac.org/
UGA
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html
FDA
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm093704.htm#basics

Our Jack-o-lantern House

This is the second year we have made our house look like a jack-o-lantern. I got the idea from Family Fun Magazine.  Here it is on there website.  But we executed it differently.  We used the whole house instead of two windows.
I used orange and yellow plastic table clothes (you know the kind you find at the dollar store. Behind the orange I used brown paper.  You can use either craft paper or the paper that you use to wrap packages to ship them.  Another idea is using black trash bags.  Then we just taped it all together and then on the windows. It is not the prettiest looking inside.

But it is getting the job done.  We used both duck tape and scotch tape.  Last year I just used scotch tape.  Next year I'll think ahead and get some painters tape.

Here is what it looks like during the day.  Because of using the orange and yellow you can still see it during the day.

Airshow at Dobbins this weekend

We did this a couple of years ago.  We had a blast.  They do have free parking at Whitewater.  But if it like years past waiting for the shuttle took way to long.  So we paid $5 to $10 to park across the street and walked. Pack food and snacks and water.  Bring sunglasses and sunscreen. Last time we went there were jumpys but they do cost.  There is a ton of free stuff to do and see. First Act starts at 10 am.  For more info go here.

Pedialyte Coupon

With cold and flu season already starting, this is a great coupon.  $1.50 off any pedialyte product.  They have new singles out that look like juice boxes. That means you don't have to throw way over half the bottle! Sweet! See Pedialyte's website to view all varieties and flavors.  Big Thanks to my friend Maggie for sharing.