Halloween, Good or Bad?

I will start by saying, this is going to be frank and to the point. You don't have to continue reading if you don't want my strong opinion on Halloween!!

As you probably know or at least guessed, we don't participate in Halloween. Not participating means, we want nothing to do with it! I make no apology for following my convictions. If you don't agree, that is between you and God, if it offends you, take it to prayer. If you hold the Bible as your guidebook in life, ask God for understanding and peace in your heart. If you have peace with the choices you follow, than God is with you. If you don't have peace, than take it to prayer. I'm not laying judgment on anyone for their own beliefs and traditions, i'm just stating why I believe the way I do. I feel it is of the utmost importance to not just follow along, but to KNOW in your OWN heart why you believe like you do, in everything. (The underlined type means it's a link to more information)

In case your not sure what participate means, here's the definition from
www.merriam-webster.com

1: to possess some of the attributes of a person, thing, or quality

2 : to take part participate

s in class discussions> b : to have a part or share in something


The History channel has some great videos on the history of all the holidays. They are not religious based, just the facts!! I love using their videos as research. Even if you don't believe the Bible, you can see clearly where todays traditions originated.

www.history.com/topics/halloween

Here's a quick synopsis:"Halloween, celebrated each year on October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today." It's been changed to include kids in on the fun, now that those kids are grown it includes adults again. It's the second largest holiday after Christmas for sales and marketing.

Those cute kids all dressed up in innocent costumes are symbols of the wandering spirits roaming the streets on the night when the spirit world and real world are intertwined. Those "Trick or Treat"'s used to be people who went from door to door asking for a treat in exchange for saying a prayer for lost souls in purgatory.

The Pumpkins carved with lights, originated from turnips that were carved (and later pumpkins because they were easier to carve and easier to find) to scare the evil spirits away from the houses..

A simple search will pull up all the proof you need as to the origins of all the traditions surrounding Halloween.

So why do we still view it today as it originated?? Well for many reasons, mainly because it's STILL IS celebrated as it was originally. Halloween is still the most coveted days of the year for Wiccans, Neo-Pagans and Celts, it's not some ancient tradition that has no relevance now.

Here is another link to some good info
www.halloween-history.org/

I'm BAAAAACCCCCCKKKKK

Well, well....  I am BACK!!  I took some time of from blogging to do the Working Mom thing.  I learned alot from the experience, about myself and about life in general.  I am very thankful to be able to be back at home with my kids full time.  Very thankful my hubby has found a job that will allow us to pay the bills, not in an extravagant shopping spree kind of way, but in a, we can make it if we are careful kind of way.  Paying off our truck was our goal and we accomplished that, saving us over $300 a month!!  So I have time to blog again, time to share our recipes and our gardening experiences.. 

In an effort to not get to bored with being home instead of at a high energy job every night, I have made myself some goals.  One for the winter is starting some herbs indoors.  I do have many plants inside and do have a green thumb, but herbs are something I have not conquered.....so that is one goal. Another is to get this house whipped back into an organized fashion WOW, the clutter and stuff that gets forgot when mom doesn't have time to deal with it.. January's goal is my office/sewing room..  My kids rooms and kitchen are on that list as well. 

One last goal my daughter and I made together is to get involved in Relay for Life.  We have cancer in our family, it is a scary reality that we all must face and we want to do what we can to make a difference.  SO we are VERY excited to be going on Friday to sign up with a local team and finding out where that takes us..

My goal for this blog is to get on here at least Once a week and update you all on the progress, recipes we have tried and whatever else we need to share!  I am excited to be back in my kitchen again trying new recipes!  and since my hubby installs Direct TV we also can now watch FOOD NETWORK again :-) 

So come along with our journey!

Talk to you again soon, it's time to go check my granola bars in the oven!! MMMmm

Sweet Potato chips

I'm always excited to find new foods that Abigail can eat (she's got the allergies, lots of them). SO when I find one on SALE I usually have to try it.. Well here was one that we tried and I have to say, THEY ARE HORRIBLE!! As Abigail said after tasting just one "mom, these are just NAaaaassttty" They sound like a good idea, but Sweet Potato chips it turns out, are NOT... I guess we will stick with pretzels for now!!

Homemade Larabars

I was suppose to post this a few days ago, but what can I say. I'm a busy women!!

So my MIL found some really great bars at Sam's club and got excited and had to tell me about them. You see, they are all natural foods, and my daughter with all the allergies can have them. I admit, they are pretty good, but they are also pretty expensive, even at Sam's Club. So my SIL decided to do some research and found some recipes online. There are many sites about making homemade Larabars. This one is my favorite:

http://enlightenedcooking.blogspot.com/2008/02/home-made-lara-bars-energy-bars-part-3.html

The basic idea is it's all a mixture of nuts and dried fruit. You can add spices to add more flavor. The basic proportion is 1/2 c dried fruit to 1/3 c. nuts.

Of course I LOVE creative recipes, and had to experiment. I bought a variety of nuts and fruit and tried a few. The first priority was to use up some prunes I had. So I made some Mixed berry and peanut ones

5 prunes (1/4 c.)
1/4 c. Mixed berries N Cherries
1/3 c. Peanuts.

They tasted pretty good, so we chilled them for later.

The second ones I made were even BETTER (I did some tastes test with friends lol)

3 prunes (all I had left)
1/3 c cherries (basically just enough to make 1/2 c. of fruit)
2/3 c. Cinn. Roasted Almonds (I did more than the 1/3 c, since the cinn and crunchy outside took up more space than just plain almonds)

These were the favorite. They were really yummy.

I found some dried apples and am going to try some apple pie flavored ones, I will add some cinn and maybe cashews?? I'm not sure which nut. My SIL did some with peanuts and cherries and they taste JUST like PB&J.. If you can't find some dried fruit, you can always dry them yourself. That way you won't have the extra sugar they add to the store ones too. SO to make it simple, here's the steps.

1. find some dried fruits and nuts

2. In your food processor (my SIL used her meat grinder) process the fruit first. Till it's mush. Remove the clump, but don't scrap the blades or bowl. Put the fruit aside in a bowl.

3. Process the nuts, till crushed into small pieces. Add any spices you wish to the nuts.

4. Mix the two parts together

5. form into balls, or small bars.

6. Chill in the fridge or freezer. I just put them in a Ziploc bag I labeled. But you can wrap them individually if you want.

7. ENJOY!! and don't forget to write down what you did, so you can make the same ones again lol!

A few more variations we rolled around in our heads but haven't tired:

Add some choc chips or baking cocoa
roll them in powdered sugar to make them less sticky (all though they really are not that sticky)
Use some oatmeal

Don't forget to share what you've tried.

Blizzard of 2011!

YUP, in case you didn't know, we live in the Great White North lol. Well it gets whiter as you go north, we live in the Lower Peninsula, in Central Michigan. We got quite a bit of snow, but not as bad as other places. Our total by the end of it was 15" on the ground, but only 7 1/2" of it was from the storm. We only lost power for a few minutes, but one block over and most of the rest of our small town was out for about 1 1/2 hours. We all survived, it IS winter after all lol! Here are a few pictures from our adventure. We walked around the block to play in the snow with some cousins.

She was collecting snow balls to give to her aunt! lol
He just wanted to find the biggest ones.

Can you guess what happened here?? lol That little stinker tossed snow right in his face and laughed and laughed. I'm glad I was taking pictures LOL
Well after a good storm, you HAVE to go sledding, right?? So we packed up the kids and went to a local hill. Not an official sledding hill, but it worked great. It was just big enough for the gang of 9 kids. We met some friends and family there. I tried to get some good 'action' shots. But trying to not get run over was more important lol. The kids had a BLAST!!

Amber and Nichole were hungry LOL! This is BEFORE:
and AFTER (ok, so not really lol, but she did sit there munching alot of it)


You can see how deep the snow is, He could only walk in his old tracks, it was clear up to his waist.



And we HAD to warm up with Hot cocoa. Does this look like a happy face to you??

We live in Michigan and winter is in FULL swing. We are at 19 degrees right now, but last night it was 3 with a windchill of -10 brrr. But since I got a new camera a few weeks ago and am loving taking pictures, here are a few recent ones (when it was a bit warmer out lol).

Marky looking out over the Lyons Dam







Looking out towards the old water plant

It's DONE!! backroom pictures

Phew, I guess I never posted finished pictures of our backroom. I got them on facebook, but neglected my blog. I wonder how many people check out my blog that are on my facebook?? I probably shouldn't assume everyone lol.

SO here are the finished pictures of our new and improved backroom. We got it done just days before family arrived for Thanksgiving. It was a GREAT week and than in December we had MORE family over. It was a great end to the year for us.






We have been enjoying it tons! The stove is great for keeping the backroom warm with the door opening to the cold air. Our cat finds it to be quite comfy too.. This is Max! I will post more pictures in another post.