Holiday Bites #5: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

I haven't decided if I should plan to post on the weekends or only on Monday through Friday. The decision was made for me yesterday. I was on the computer but not surfing the web or posting on my blog. I was finishing the writing and translating of the Sunday School Christmas program. We are doing music which I started practicing with the kids 2 weeks ago. However the verses and other parts needed to be typed up and printed out. Also, I am adapting The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg into a program to go with the music. Tomorrow we will pass out parts to the children who are willing and able to do more than just sing. It is a project that has been hanging over my head for quite a while but I knew would take some concentration and work. I am so glad to have it done. It really didn't take that long either once I got started.
So what task or deadline is looming over you today? Do you have any responsibilities for your church (or school) Christmas programs? Do you have a work project or project around the home that is dragging you down and making it impossible for you to spend your energy on other things? Why not sit down and finish that project and get it out of the way? Or, if it is too big to finish in one sitting, work on it for an hour and then write on your calendar how and when you plan to work on it again.

Holiday Bites #4: Time is money

I made soup yesterday for lunch. Awesome soup. Rib-sticking soup. The best I've had in a long time. I made Baked Potato Soup using this recipe as a foundation but making a few substitutions based on what I had in the house and the comments others had left on the site. (I used half milk and half chicken broth, seasoned salt for regular salt and threw some chives in for color). The best thing I did was since I didn't have fresh green onions I used up the last handful of frozen chopped onion in my freezer. A few weeks ago I was at the grocery store and saw that they sold chopped onion in small freezer bags right by the frozen peas and corn. It was less than a euro for the bag so I decided to "splurge" and try it out. Oh my word! What a time-saver! I will not allow myself to stop and figure out what I am paying in a per kilo price for those onions vs buying fresh ones and chopping them myself because "time is money". With all the extra busyness of the holidays I allow myself a few conveniences that I might not ordinarily have in the grocery cart. I think frozen chopped onions are going to be one of those. Another is what I brought home from my morning at IKEA today. Frozen Swedish Meatballs. Yes, I am paying 7 euros a kilo for the frozen ones and it is only 4.35 to buy a kilo of ground beef, but then I have to mix up the meat, form it into tiny balls,brown them, and freeze them. All that time and effort is worth more than 2.65 to me. I now have 5 bags of meatballs in the freezer and a couple packages of brown gravy mix. On busy days I know I can pull a bag out and heat it on the stove (or throw it in the crockpot early in the day) and turn it into one of several easy meal options. This Sunday it is going in the crockpot with spaghetti sauce for meatball subs. Another day they can go over rice with brown gravy. Or thrown in spaghetti sauce. Or in BBQ sauce. Get the picture? Better food than making sandwiches and a lot cheaper than a trip to McDonald's or Pizza Hut.
Today's Holiday Bite is to think of one or two convenience foods, or staple foods that you can pick up the next time you are at the store to have in your freezer or pantry. With the extra running around that goes with the Holidays it will remove some stress when you know that a home-cooked dinner can be on the table just minutes after coming home, and all the ingredients are already there waiting for you.
What is your favorite "pantry meal"? What convenience food or short cut tip do you just love?

It works!

Thanks to Charity and her link to this tutorial, my button works and the code is in the sidebar if anyone wants to grab it and add it to their blog.

Holiday Bites #3: A Place for Presents Pt. 2

Did you create (or straighten up) your place to store presents as you purchase or make them yesterday? I'm so glad to have a place to store things and I am really hoping to break my father's tradition this year. Last night I put an empty box in each of my children's rooms and encouraged them to begin the process of making way for the presents that they will certainly be getting in December. My husband is in the States right now visiting some of our supporting churches and having meetings in others. He is being flooded with gifts for the family .....clothes that we all need as well as other things. Since we barely have room to put things away as it is, we MUST PURGE SOME CLUTTER from our house. I dropped off 6 supermarket bags of clothes and misc. stuff at the second hand shop yesterday and hope to make several more trips there in the days to come. I also bit the bullet, realized that it's time to wave goodbye to short-sleeved shirts for a while and packed up all the boys' tshirts into a suitcase. Now they can get to the longsleeved tshirts in their dresser and there is space for whatever new things are coming home in Daddy's suitcases in 3 weeks.
So..... take a few minutes to make some space in your drawers or closet or perhaps clear out some space in the toy box, game closet or bookshelf. Work fast, do not think too much, and donate those items now so that others can do some thrift shopping for their Holiday gifts out of your abundance. I'm curious .... what did you get rid of today?

Holiday Bite #2 A place for the presents

We had a tradition in my family growing up. It would be time to open the presents under the tree and my Dad would suddenly get that look like the lightbulb just turned on and would jump up and run upstairs to his bedroom, or to the basement, or to the shed outside because he just remembered one more gift that he had forgotten to wrap. Unfortunately I inherited these genes from my father. I do pretty well at picking up gifts ahead of time as I see something that strikes me as just right for someone. My problem is keeping track of it once I get it home and then remembering what great hiding place I used to stash it away. Even more unfortunate is the fact that my husband is also challenged in this same area. This September we spent some frustrating hours on my son's birthday hunting the house up and down trying to find some gifts we had bought in the summer. Never did find them that day which was a bummer .... but I did find them a couple of weeks ago so I have a head start on my Christmas presents for him. :-)
Today I was working in the bedroom and decided it was time to corral the few presents that I have so far into one central location. I have a box now hidden away with the aforementioned items and a couple of stocking stuffers that have been picked up. This week I will clear out some space in the closet to store bigger items as they are purchased. If something has to be hidden somewhere else due to size I will jot a note to myself to remind me of where I put it.
Are you game to join me in this holiday bite? Do you shop for presents all through the year? Do you have a gift shelf, closet space, or other place to store these items until you wrap them and give them away? Why not take a minute or two and prepare a place to store your gifts. Just a tip ....If you are going to store things in bags make it a store shopping bag (preferable the paper kind with handles or something that will not be mistaken for trash and thrown out by mistake) and if you store things in a box you might want to make it a clear plastic box or a Rubbermade that is a different color than your other totes. The idea is that you don't want to be searching through several boxes or totes trying to find which one has the presents. Do you have a great idea for storing gifts or a great hiding place idea? Leave me a note in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.

Can anyone help????

I made this little button/banner/whatever you call it hoping that I could easily figure out how to place it in my sidebar and make it available should anyone wish to put it on their blog and make it easy for someone to find me with a mere click on the button. No such luck. Can anyone point me to a tutorial that shows me what I need to do? I have the picture created, it is uploaded to Photobucket and I also uploaded it directly to blogger in my first Holiday Bites post. That is as far as I got.

Tackling the Holiday in small bites

We've "fallen back", turning back the clock an hour, Halloween candy has been devoured (granted, we only have a little bit that we purchased for some in house trick or treating) and the fall decorations are out in the living room. We are entering one of my favorite times of the year but one that has the potential to drive me close to the point of insanity and certainly tests my sanctification. Yes, the Holidays are upon us. Or at least Christmas is a mere 51 days away. The calendar gets so full in these days and the task(s) that I need to do seem quite elephant sized. This year I have decided to apply the one bite at a time principle to my holidays the same way I attacked several large projects I had back last spring. It helped to post (almost) daily what I planned to do to break down the tasks into bite sized steps.
One thing I will do differently is to try to focus each post on one thing I am going to do that day (or already did) to help prepare for the holidays. For a couple of years I have followed along as the Flylady Cruising Through the Holidays and would read her daily missions to help be prepared for Christmas by December 1. The missions did not always fit well with my schedule. So this year I will come up with my own missions, writing down the things I come up with and sharing them with the handful of readers here, encouraging you to see if my suggestions are helpful for your own preparation. My desire is to take as much of the frantic panic out of the Holidays and pave the way for true worship, family fun, warm memories and reaching out to others in this wonderful season to come.

What's today's Holiday Bite? Think of one way you can spread out the holiday food shopping list so as not to have a huge bill all in one trip. I have started picking up one or two things each time I go to the store as I see items (like the chocolate advent calendars that the kids will start opening up on Dec 1.) There are many baking items that you know you will need either for Thanksgiving or Christmas or both. Why not start a page where-ever you keep your running shopping list (I just put a page on the fridge with a magnet) and jot down the items you pick up as you go? You will be able to tell at a glance what you have in the house and when the supplies are there, you will be able to take advantage of small blocks of time to start tackling baking. Hmmm, Holiday baking. I can hardly wait.

Would you like to join me in these little Holiday bites? Leave a comment and let me know what one thing you did today to get ready for the busiest season of the year.