"she gives instructions with kindness"

Turkey Week

 This Thanksgiving is special for me because it will be the first Thanksgiving that I've ever hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my house and also done the legwork - meal planning, cooking, etc.

Last year I had just had my second baby and so my parents came to our house and my wonderful mother cooked everything. The year before that my in-laws were here and my wonderful mother-in-law cooked everything (I'm a lucky girl, aren't I?!)

Over the past year, though, I have really worked on my cooking and meal planning skills and so this Thanksgiving I told my parents that I would be cooking. Granted I bought jar gravy, bag stuffing, and canned pumpkin... but I will still be mixing ingredients and producing an edible (hopefully) dinner.

 

Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love endures forever.

Turkey Handprints

It was rainy this morning and the perfect weather for another Thanksgiving craft with my 2 year old. Turkey handprints are as basic as crafts get, but my son has a current obsession with tracing things so it worked out nicely.

We simply traced his hands, added beaks and feet, and colored in the "feathers." I cut our turkeys out while he painted a background paper in fall colors.

 And voila!

Creamy Beef Taquitos

Tonight I tried a new recipe: Creamy Beef Taquitos from Comfy in the Kitchen:

http://comfyinthekitchen.com/2012/03/creamy-beef-taquitos/

Thankfully, this recipe was SUPER easy, because my boys were not down with me cooking tonight. Somehow I managed to scrape everything together amidst a high level of background noise and little people tugging at my pant legs.

Although the recipe calls for ground beef, I think if I make these again I will try using shredded beef as well as a bit more cream cheese in my "Salsa Fiesta" mixture. But overall these were a hit (my toddler could even be convinced to try them... that's a win in my book!)

Breakfast Hot-Pockets

I saw this recipe for breakfast hot-pockets on a blog and they looked deeeelicious, so tonight I decided to make breakfast for dinner!

Here is the original recipe:
womenlivingwell.org/2013/11/homemade-breakfast-hot-pockets/

I couldn't find the brand of rolls that I needed and my boys were, shall we say, less than cooperative at the grocery store... so I came home with a smaller version of the same thing and ended up using two rolls worth of dough for each hot pocket.

My husband didn't seem to share my opinion that these were a dinner food so next time I will probably make a batch, freeze them, and then have a week's worth of breakfasts stashed in the freezer! These are definitely worth a try; just keep in mind that the rolls need to thaw and rise for 4-6 hours before you can make the hot pockets.