More Blogging Fun & A bit of Christmas

Yesterday was full of nice surprises. Bright and early there was a knock at the door, and the dogs, very excitedly, let me know a package had been delivered. I wasn't sure what it was, but packages are always exciting. When I opened the package I was surprised to find an assortment of Golden Star Trading Products.

Quite some time ago I wrote a blog post about my favorite rice, that I always keep in stock in my Pantry, and a couple of my favorite rice recipes- Here is a link to the blog post Porcupine Meatballs & Spinach Rice Bake .

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from Golden Star thanking me for posting about their product as well as my recipes, and that they would like to send me some of their products to try. And that is what my surprise package was! Along with a kind letter, my package was filled with these Golden Star Goodies!

I look forward to trying Golden Star's brown jasmine rice, as well as the Basmati rice, and I happen to love mandarin oranges and baby corn- I think I may have to come up with a fun new recipe! What a very fun surprise this was!

Later on in the day, as I was going through my mail, and the slew of holiday catalogs that had arrived, I was in for another treat. The Tomten Christmas Catalog arrived! I learned about this company last year when I was looking for more Scandinavian ornaments, they have great books, and cute little Tomtens (little gnome type people), a super fun catalog to look through for treasures. Here is a link to their website so you can have fun browsing too :) The Tomten Catalog

Reading through all of the wonderful books The Tomten catalog has, I was reminded of one of my favorite children's authors from Sweden- Astrid Lindgren writer of one of my favorite childhood stories- Pippi Longstocking- Oh how I loved stories of Villa Villekulla and all of Pippi's adventures!

In addition to the Pippi Longstocking Stories, when my children where little I discovered she also wrote The Tomten- a cute little winter story about a little Tomten that lives on a farm, and at night he visits with all of the farm animals and talks to them in his special Tomten language and reminds them that spring will come again. Such a cute story!

Astrid Lindgren also writes The Children of Noisy Village & Christmas in Noisy Village- stories about children in a Swedish village and the customs of 6 children living on a group of three farms in the countryside. Christmas in Noisy Village has wonderful Pictures and is a great story for Christmas, and would be great if you are studying Christmas traditions of Sweden, The Children of Noisy Village is a Chapter book like Pippi, and would be wonderful for young readers enjoying their first chapter books!

Here are my Amazon Affiliate Links to some of Astrid's great Children's Books!

Astrid Lindgren's books are wonderful classics for any children's library!

My last surprise last night was a Liebster Blog Award- I had fun with this Award, and picking out some of my favorite blogs to pass along an award to. One of the bloggers I chose was Barefoot In Blue Jeans. This blog is written by the daughter of a very dear friend of mine that I have known since elementary school, I have known her daughter since she was born, both of our daughters are very close in age. I love encouraging young writers, and I really enjoy reading about her adventures, and all of her recipes. She has passed the Liebster award back to me (Thank You Courtney!!), so now I have the opportunity to pass this along to five more bloggers that I enjoy reading!

The word 'liebster' actually comes from the German word for love, friend or dearest - very sweet!

The goal of the award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are:

1. copy and paste the award on your blog
2. thank the giver and link back to them
3. reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
4. hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers

Now, choosing just 5 blogs was a challenge I must say, but here goes (in no particular order):

Verde Mama

My Simple Life

Living In The Land of Chocolate

We Bloom Here

This Cosy Life

These are all wonderful blogs that I enjoy reading, I hope you will enjoy them too :)

So that was my day of surprises, days like that are very nice. :)

Liebster Blog Award

I was very excited this evening when I got a comment from Happy Whimsical Hearts letting me know she had given me a Liebster Blog Award. What a wonderful surprise! Happy Whimsical Hearts is a wonderful blog sharing imaginative children's crafts and activities, handmade toys, outdoor fun, baking and simple living ideas.

The word 'liebster' actually comes from the German word for love, friend or dearest - very sweet!

The goal of the award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are:

1. copy and paste the award on your blog
2. thank the giver and link back to them
3. reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
4. hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers

Now, choosing just 5 blogs was a challenge I must say, but here goes (in no particular order):

The Elliot Homestead

The Handmade Homemaker

Hope & Thrift

Barefoot in Blue Jeans

Jabez Farm

Choosing 5 blogs was very difficult, I love reading so many wonderful blogs, here are the ones I have chosen, I wasn't sure on every blog that they had less than 200 followers, but these blogs are all

wonderful to read, and I hope you enjoy checking them out!

Advent, Leftover Turkey & A Frugal Christmas Tip

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I had a nice time with my Sunday school class discussing Hope- one of the themes associated with the first advent Sunday. We read a couple of verses from Isaiah 9:2 & Isaiah 9:6.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. Isaiah 9:2 (NIV)

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6 (NIV)

The star is one symbol of hope, so we glittered paper stars. Then frosted graham crackers for a fun snack. We sung the first of many Christmas Carols in service today as well, I love Christmas carols! It was a nice day at church.

Tonight for dinner, it was day four of a Turkey based meal, I had to come up with something different. We always have tons of leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, so Friday we were able to have another full turkey dinner with fixins, last night we mixed it in with pasta, tonight I wanted to try a new recipe.

I don't very often try recipes from the back of boxes, I have many homemade casserole recipes rolling around in my head, and I don't love all of the added salt in boxed mixes, but the recipe for Easy Turkey Bake on the back of a spare Stove Top Stuffing box I had in the pantry looked yummy, and an easy prep for a Sunday evening, so I decided to give it a try. Here is a link to the recipe at Kraft's recipe website- Easy Turkey Bake . This recipe was super easy to prepare, and only called for a few basic ingredients, like frozen broccoli, cheese, milk, turkey, and cream of chicken soup, along with stuffing for the topping.

Here's what it looked like before I added the topping.

Here it is with its topping.

Baked in under 40 minutes.

Ready to serve.

This was a yummy dish, and a great way to use up left over Turkey, next time, I would pre-steam the broccoli and add a little pepper. I will put this recipe in my notebook for next time I have turkey left overs!

I would also like to share a Frugal Christmas Tip, I will be sharing some of my Christmas planning tips over this next week, the first one I would like to share is how to generate extra Christmas money. This way you can avoid putting a strain on your household budget, and avoid credit card debt.

When I was a young house wife, with a very tight budget, I made Christmas money the way I had seen my Grandma make Christmas money growing up, making and selling crafts at craft bazaars. My grandma is a very talented seamstress, and was able to generate a good amount of extra Christmas money by selling beautiful doll clothing at craft bazaars every year. I loved hanging out with her at these bazaars as a child, so it was very natural for me to do the same thing when I was older, and I loved it.

Be sure you have a craft that is inexpensive to make and very well crafted, and sell at a reasonable price so you can sell enough to make it worth your effort. You may want to share a table with a friend or sibling at first to make sure you have a market for your items. One of my favorite Christmas years was when I sold my crafts at six bazaars and made every penny of my Christmas money and more. I also found some wonderful hand crafted toys and dolls from other vendors for my children's Christmas gifts that were wonderful. Now a days you can sell your crafts through Etsy and Ebay as well as going to bazaars.

The last couple of years I have made extra Christmas money by organizing my home and finding things I am no longer using or the things the children are no longer using and selling them on Ebay. This helps clear out clutter, as well as to get an idea of what type of things are not being used in the home so you can avoid buying more of the same. For example, my children are now in their teen years and have outgrown many of their toys, we save a few of the sentimental ones, and the rest can be sold on Ebay. Name brand toys in good working order, like Lego, do really well. So do video games that are in good shape. If they haven't touched them in a year, and don't have a sentimental attachment, ask if you can sell them on Ebay. When they know it is going toward this year's gifts it is motivating. Look around the house and see what you can find, I have fun doing this, and love the extra money I can generate for Christmas.

I would love to hear any of your tips for making extra Christmas money, does anyone else love to craft for Christmas Bazaars?

Thanksgiving 2011 & Deviled Ham w/ Green Olives Dip

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I enjoyed our Thanksgiving, we celebrated at home with my mother and father in-law. We normally have a full house, but this year everyone was off visiting other relatives. Although I missed seeing all of my family, it was a nice day.

I really enjoy cooking Thanksgiving dinner, we stick with a very traditional menu, Turkey with Mashed potatoes and Homemade gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and yes, we have the kitschy but tasty green bean casserole & yams covered in toasty brown yummy marshmallows. For dessert I always bake 4 pumpkin pies, that way there will be plenty for all, as well as enough to have plenty of servings of pie with tea and coffee for the next few days.

I love baking pumpkin pie, I have always had good luck with the recipe right off the can of Libby's Pumpkin. I make my own pie crust as well, but I still have more work to do perfecting my pie crust. I just cannot seem to crimp my pie crust edges properly, I have been baking pies for years and I never get it right, so I make my pie edges pretty using mini canape and cookie cutters. This year I used mini pumpkin, leaf, and acorn cutters and attach them using a little cold water.

Here's how the edges turned out.

I also like to serve a cracker spread appetizer before the meal is served, so everyone can nibble while they wait for the big meal. This year I made a very yummy Cracker Spread- Deviled ham with Green Olives.

Here's the recipe:

2 blocks of cream cheese softened

1 1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

25 chopped green olives plus 8 more chopped green olives for garnish

1 can of Deviled Ham

Mix all of the ingredients together, when combined transfer to serving dish, garnish with additional chopped olives cover and chill for a few hours or overnight. Serve with Crackers. This spread could be made vegetarian by omitting the deviled ham and Worcestershire sauce and maybe adding a little garlic powder and a handful of grated cheddar cheese. I love the flavor of green olives!

I love Thanksgiving, it is so important to remember the things we are Thankful for. I am so thankful for my family, My husband Gary and my children Sarah and Joseph, they bring me so much joy! I am thankful for our health and safety this year. We are blessed to have a nice home and good food. Our two labs Zoey and Xena add so much to our home, we all love them. I am so thankful for this blog, and how much fun I have had this year writing about my family and home, and I am thankful for all of the wonderful blogs I have read this year, I feel like I have met so many wonderful people! Most of all I am so thankful for my faith in God, and my savior Jesus, who I go to with all of my worries and who provides and cares for me and my family.

To me a holiday celebrating gratitude is the perfect way to kick off the holiday Christmas season. Thinking about all of the things we are blessed with is a nice tone to set for Christmas which can, if left unchecked, become a very materialistic holiday. I love celebrating Christmas, with all of its trappings, I am excited to share about our Christmas this year.

Today we got our Christmas lights up, we normally have them up the week of Thanksgiving, so we can light them up on Thanksgiving evening, but the rain kept us from putting them up until today. The weather was beautiful and sunshiny, and Gary and Joe got the lights up in no time, while me and Sarah worked on projects in the house to get ready to put up all of our Christmas decorations.

Here are Gary & Joseph putting up our lights.

This cute little frog hopped on by to see what was going on. He looked pretty next to the purple cabbage.

Here are the lights all lit up! I love Christmas lights, can't wait to drive through the neighborhood and see all of the decorated houses!

Lastly I would like to share a couple of wonderful Christmas DVDs that I recommend, these movies get me in the Christmas mood and ready for Winter.

Stranger in the Woods is a wonderful nature filled movie about a snowman that appears in the woods and how the wildlife reacts to it. This movie shows the forest animals like little deer investigating the snowman. Cute, peaceful little movie. We all enjoy it, this movie was a big hit when my kids were younger as well. As an adult I enjoy seeing all of the nature scenes. Just a nice happy show to put on, and wonderful for teaching about winter!

Here is my Amazon affiliate link.

The next DVD I love to watch is Rick Steves' European Christmas. I first saw this on PBS years ago. I enjoy Rick Steves' travel shows, he always visits such great places. In this DVD Rick visits with his family, Christmas in England, Norway, France, Germany, Italy and the Swiss Alps. So many wonderful traditions to see, some very pretty music, and great European scenery. I love to incorporate traditions from around Europe in our home, and I have always enjoyed learning about Christmas around the world. I can watch this movie a couple of times every year and I never get tired of it. This would also be great for teaching older children different Christmas traditions. I hope you can catch this show on your local PBS, or possibly from the library.

Here is my Amazon link for this DVD as well.

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend, and having fun getting ready for Christmas!

An Old School House

I love to plan outings for Sunday after church. Today we had the opportunity to explore an old school house built in 1920. One of the perks of my husband Gary being a real-estate broker, is getting to keep an eye on all of the interesting new properties that come available. We have seen some pretty great houses and properties over the years while searching for properties that might interest his buyers, a lot of whom are buying rural properties. We also hope one day to find a wonderful medium sized rural property for ourselves. I love the convenience of living in our small town close to the schools, but we want to eventually get back to a more rural setting.

The other evening Gary was browsing properties for his clients and came across an old school house on an acre, about half an hour from here. He knows I love old buildings like this, when I was a child I imagined how wonderful it would be to live in my old church, with all of its rooms. When I saw the pictures of the school house online, with its little auditorium stage and hardwood floors, I new I had to go take a look. So that was our Sunday outing.

We all had fun exploring this great old building, and had fun imagining how we would fix it up if we were to buy such a property.

Here are some pictures, I failed to remember my camera, but the phone cameras did a pretty good job. This is the front of the old schoolhouse, I love the nice tall entrance, and the old mossy cement stairs were great, not to mention the huge old Rhody bush in the front, which must look amazing in the spring.

The first room you enter must have been the main school room. Great hardwood floors, and best of all a little stage, we all thought it would be so fun to have a little stage in the living room. Plus all the built in cupboards would be great storage.

The main room also had this wall of windows that could be restored so beautifully.

There were other rooms, like a big attic, an nice bedroom, a huge basement that looks like it would be a great rec. room. The kitchen was interesting, with lots of little drawers, and this strange turning shelf, certainly lots of storage potential, it would be interesting to know what it was originally used for.

The property also has a wonderful shop/garage, with its own huge attic, which I only got a picture from the backyard of. Gary and I thought it would be a great building to build a wood shop in half for Gary, the other half a crafting studio for me, and the attic, Gary thought he would love for an office. This property had a little more fixing up than we thought, and only one real bedroom, otherwise we might have just been tempted. What a fun project house it would be though.

The yard was great, the kids found a climbing tree right away. A lot of the timber had been removed so there were stumps everywhere to explore. It had plenty of room for gardening and chickens and goats if the stumps were removed.

We spotted some interesting fungi in the yard, quite a bit of this beautiful orange fungus, at first I thought it was plastic, but we found it growing all over a big patch.

There were wonderful toadstools all over the yard, I'm not sure why, but I just love patches of toadstools and mushrooms, we used to get fairy rings of mushrooms on our old property that would pop up from time to time, and look really great.

More toadstools.

We also spotted these beautiful fall ferns, such amazing colors of green to amber.

We explored the house and yard one more time, wonderful old building! We headed home and had one more surprise on our drive- Camels!?!

We were driving along a winding country road and spotted two camels out among some trees in a field, we were driving, but my daughter captured a quick picture with her cell phone. Not something you see everyday. We all got a kick out of them. Perfect addition to our wonderful Sunday outing!

I also thought I would share a fun quick Thanksgiving craft that I made with my Sunday School class today. This Thanksgiving Tree is made by wrapping little squares of tissue paper around the eraser end of a pencil, dipping it in a little glue and pressing on top of a construction paper tree trunk. The kids had a fun time working on this craft. On the tree trunk we glued our thanksgiving verse that I printed out.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Psalm 106:1

This would be a fun activity to do with kids while they are on Thanksgiving break.

The turkey is thawing in the fridge, and this will be a week full of cooking and cleaning, and prepping for Thanksgiving. The weather is getting colder and colder, and I am looking forward to winter just around the corner! I hope everyone had a nice weekend!

November Projects, Books, and Snacks

I have been occupying myself with many different projects this week, all this rain and cold blustery air has me cooking and sewing, as well as cuddling up with a warm beverages, a blanket, and my labs and catching up on some of my favorite television.

I don't put out my Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving, except we string up lights on the house the week before Thanksgiving, as soon as we have a break in the rain, so we can light them up on Thanksgiving evening. I do, however, start my Christmas planning and crafting quite early in the fall.

Here are a few of my Christmas projects.

I am making owl ornaments out of wool felt.

This is how the owl ornament looks when hanging.

I want to make a few more Christmas Poinsettia Fairies.

I also decided that rather than buy the dogs pre-made dog toys I would make them out of my spare fabric. I just drew the pattern on printer paper. I hope to get a few more shapes made, and of course I have to make two of each, don't want any doggy sibling rivalry going on Christmas morning.

I have been experimenting with other ideas, and hope to make a few more decorations for Christmas.

Now for a couple of Harvest themed Children's Books.

I have wanted to purchase Christopher's Harvest Time by Elsa Beskow for quite some time, and was finally able to add it to my collection of Elsa Beskow books. Such a cute story about a boy who is outside playing with his ball, who meets a boy sprite named September. Christopher's Ball gets away from him and Christopher and September go through the garden looking for it meeting all of the Harvest folk- like the Gooseberry boys and girls, Old Man Black Current, Apple and Plum tree women, beautiful flower women and the strawberry people, as well as other plants in the garden ready to harvest. This story would probably be better read in Early fall, but I enjoyed reading it so much I just had to share about this story. As always, wonderful illustrations, I have yet to read a Beskow book that I didn't thoroughly enjoy.

Here is my Amazon affiliate link if you would like to read more about this book at Amazon.

Another of my favorite Harvest Story books- Strega Nona's Harvest by Tomie dePaola (another favorite author). This story is about Strega Nona's Garden, how she carefully plans and plants it, her helper Big Anthony also grows a garden but doesn't really plan it out very well and is left with a large harvest and no time to preserve it, so he leaves the produce at Strega Nona's door. Along with her own abundant crops, she is also dealing with the mysterious piles of veggies that show up at her door. So she shares it with her community, which, as it turns out had a bad gardening year, unlike Strega Nona who had lots of sunshine on her hill. I love this story of sharing the Harvest, Strega Nona stories always make me smile, and I love dePaola's illustrations. This would be a wonderful book to share with children for Thanksgiving week.

Here is my Amazon Affiliate link for Strega Nona's Harvest.

Lastly, some November Snacks. For my Sunday school class last Sunday I made a nice Autumn Snack Mix. I have made similar versions of this every year now for quite some time, sometimes we make it together as a class. It seems like I always have a couple of leftover bags of candy corn mix around the house after Halloween, so I add a bag of Autumn Blend Candy Corn and Pumpkins, to corn chex, pretzels, raisins and dried cranberries, and stir it all up. I love sweet and salty snacks and I love dried raisins and cranberries. This is a very easy fun snack to make with children.

I have also been wanting to experiment with Butterscotch chips, which I love. When I was a child a neighborhood mother used to make Cheerios coated in a Peanut Butter and Butterscotch chip coating, they were delicious. Peanut Butter doesn't sit well with me, so I avoid it now, but I still wanted a nice snack with that delicious Butterscotch chip flavor. Now of course my all time favorite is the Classic Oatmeal Scotchie, but I thought I would try something different, so I made a nice big batch of Butterscotch Crispy Rice Squares, and they turned out very yummy, great after school treat.

Here is the recipe for Butterscotch Crispy Rice Squares.

10 cups Crispy Rice Cereal

1 stick of butter

1 1/2 bags of mini marshmallows

1 bag of Butterscotch Chips

Melt butter in a large pan (large enough for all the ingredients to be stirred in) over medium heat, then add marshmallows and butterscotch chips and stir until melted. Then stir in 10 cups of cereal, until cereal is thoroughly coated. Then turn out mixture into a large baking pan that has been coated in cooking spray (like a 10 by 15 lasagna size pan), and press down with the back of a large spoon that has also been coated in cooking spray. Let cool, then cut into squares and enjoy.

I will leave you with another of my favorite Thankful verses.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Thanksgiving Favors Craft

We have had a very productive weekend and a busy Monday. This weekend I went to the grocery store and purchased everything except the perishable veggies for our Thanksgiving dinner, and got the freezer organized to make room for the Turkey.

This week I will be getting ready for Thanksgiving, as well as working more on my Christmas crafts and gifts.

I thought I would share with you a fun craft that I finished today- My Thanksgiving Favors to set out at each plate.

I purchased this stamp about a year ago, knowing that it would be a handy stamp pattern to have in my craft closet. I think it would make pretty cards or gift tags, and thought it would look great for my Thanksgiving favor craft.

I used dark cream colored card-stock paper cut into rectangles about 3 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches, and stamped the paper with brown ink.

I let the ink dry for about an hour, then got out my Martha Stewart glitter stamping kit, this set comes with a glue stamp pad, and quite a nice selection of stamps. You press the stamp on the glue pad, then to the center of the paper, then I sprinkled on glitter in a nice copper color called fire opal. If you already have a nice leaf stamp you could just buy a glue stamp pad or use a makeup sponge to dab glue on to your stamp.

Here is one of the papers with the glitter leaf. Let this dry for about an hour or two.

Then wrap each decorated paper around a candy bar, I chose a Hershey's Bar because I like the nice simple brown color.

I love the way these turned out, and I think this could be modified for Christmas very easily and would make a great gift topper or take away gift. I look forward to putting these out at my Thanksgiving table. :)

We also enjoyed a wonderful seasonal treat today- the beautiful Pomegranates are out in the produce department, so I bought one for the whole family to share. These aren't in season for very long, and I think they are fun for the kids to nibble away at, such an interesting fruit!

I am getting very excited for the holiday season as it quickly approaches!

Thanksgiving Burlap Bunting & Cottage Pie

I love it when the weather is foggy, a day ago we were surrounded by fog for nearly the whole day.

All of this November weather has got me in the crafting mood, so for the last couple of days I have been busy stitching away on my Christmas ornaments as well as sewing up the Thanksgiving bunting that I wanted to make. I will share my Christmas ornaments in a post next week, I am really enjoying making them. I am really happy with my first attempt at a burlap bunting. I hung it above our fireplace, to finish off my Thanksgiving mantle decor.

The bunting triangles are 7 inches across at the top and 9 inches tall at the center (roughly 8 inches after making the fold at the top to thread twine through). I printed the letters from an Alphabet Template here. I cut out the letters from various fall colored fabric scraps I had on hand from various projects over the years using pinking shears. The letters are sewn on by machine stitching around the inside border of each letter. To hang the bunting I thread jute twine through the tops of each triangle, and it was ready to hang above the fire place.

Here is a closer shot of the bunting. This was a very fun project, and I am planning on making one for Christmas as well!

Nice warm comforting foods are also essential this time of year, I thought I would share one of my family's favorite meals- Cottage Pie. Cottage Pie is simple to make, and my whole family just gobbles it up! Here is my recipe.

Cottage Pie

1 1/2 pounds hamburger

1/2 bag of frozen peas and carrots blend

1 small 8 oz. can tomato sauce

1 egg lightly beaten

1 1/2 Tablespoons Dried Chopped/Minced Onion

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

salt and pepper to taste

a few dashes of Italian seasoning

about 1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar or cheddar jack cheese

enough mashed potatoes to serve four people

dried parsley

I use a lot of dried onion in my recipes, I love the taste. I go through a lot of it, and my Mother in Law bought me this brand from Costco (Thanks Sue!). Now I am hooked, such a nice quality, anyone who has a Costco nearby should give this a try. Great item to have on hand in the pantry. Of course any brand will do for this recipe, I just thought I would share my new favorite. :)

Brown the hamburger until fully cooked and drain, then stir in tomato sauce and seasonings, then stir in beaten egg and stir until combined, then stir in frozen peas and carrots. Transfer to a casserole dish.

Top the meat mixture with 1/2 cup of shredded cheese.

Then into your cooked and prepared mashed potatoes, stir in 1 cup of shredded cheese as well as 2 teaspoons of dried parsley. Stir until cheese and parsley are thoroughly combined with mashed potatoes. Then spread on top of meat mixture.

Bake at 375 F. until top is golden brown and meat is bubbly hot about 40-45 minutes.

This makes a perfect one dish meal or can be served with a salad and bread.

I look forward to spending the weekend doing some more crafting as well as getting my Thanksgiving grocery shopping done.

In honor of Veteran's Day I would like to say a big Thank You to all of our Veterans as well as to the families of Veterans- I truly appreciate your service to our country!! God be with you and yours!