Hello everyone.  It's been so cold here this January with some snowy days.  Well, in my family we love eating soup during the winter months.  This is a hearty soup that is just perfect to take the chill off of a cold winter day.





I made this soup recently and it tasted so good and it's so easy to make.  It takes about an hour and a half to 2 hours to make.  This goes perfect with bread or rolls and butter.

I hope you enjoy this soup as much as my family does.

Enjoy!










Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you have a great week and weekend.  Don't forget to stop by our Cooking and Crafting with J & J Link Up!

Hello blogging friends.  I hope you are all having a nice week.

Many of you know that I am a member of our knit and crochet group at my church.  All throughout the year and for many years I have made crochet and knit items that I donate to our fall knit and crochet sale.  In years past I have even had my mom knit a few items to be sold at this event.

I made most of the items seen on the table above for our annual sale.  I enjoy keeping myself busy making scarves, neck warmers, pot holders, cup cozies, and coasters for this sale.

Each year we always have our fall/holiday sale the weekend before Thanksgiving.  We have many other tables in a small room filled with homemade items just like my table.  The other tables even include baby items such as sweater sets, and baby blankets.  We even had a table this year filled with items such as Christmas stockings that one of the ladies in the group made.

I thought we did a great job selling these items considering that we were practically giving everything away for a great bargain.  The person in charge thought differently and was not as happy with our sale.

I unfortunately don't think that people want homemade items like this anymore or maybe it's held at the wrong time of year?

I would love to see all of the tables decorated with a tablecloth and the room decorated maybe a little more festive but we always leave the tables bare like above.
When I first joined this group at my church my teen was a toddler and it was a great way for me to keep myself busy being creative.  Our group had about 20 ladies in it and I enjoyed going to the meetings each week.  We now have about maybe 7 ladies left in the group and pretty soon it won't be a group anymore.

We try to get new members to join our group but not everyone wants to work on these kinds of projects throughout the year and donate for them to our sale.  We have even taught some new members how to knit and crochet and then once they learn this craft they leave the group.

We have made suggestions to the person in charge to maybe change the sale to a different time of year and date.

**  There is an update since I wrote this post that we will have another sale in June.  I think that we will do ok if we sell baby items like blankets, baby sweaters, and hats.  I really don't think anyone is going to want to buy a scarf at that time of year when the weather is warm.  LOL.  I will have to crochet a baby blanket for this and that will be a new crochet project for me to work on.

So that is the situation on this knit and crochet sale and our group.  I'll see what happens with this in the future.

I now have about a half a bag full of items that I did not sell.  I will hold to these items and save them for next fall.  Until then I will still continue to make and create knit and crochet items.  Perhaps in the future I will make more items for myself?


Do you have any suggestions?  I'd love to know, so please let me know in the comments section.




Click HERE to see the great parties I will be linking up to!


Julie

Hello blog friends.  I am so behind on my blogging.  I know Christmas is over but I took some time off from blogging to spend time with my family and friends.  I am so happy I took that much needed time to really enjoy the holidays.

I spend a lot of time doing the blog party each week with Jess from Plucky's Second Thought and trying to find the time to visit blog friends and to write my own blog posts for each week.

I am back now for the new year and I look forward to visiting your blogs and being so inspired by all of you for 2018.

If you follow me on Instagram (and I would LOVE if you did) then this is where you saw me post some of these photos.

I hope you enjoy looking at these photos.  This basically sums up the month of December for me.





I enjoyed the holiday season and spent time Christmas shopping mostly online and in the local stores in my neighborhood.

I made a few last minute mason jar gifts with red and green M&Ms for friends and neighbors.  I did a post on this and if you missed it, then you can read about that HERE.

I went to a few Christmas parties and of course there was a lot of good food.

I had a birthday a few days after Christmas and enjoyed celebrating it with my friends at a local Italian restaurant in our neighborhood.  It's always fun to go out with friends and eat good food and celebrate!





My teen and I had fun baking a lot of cookies to give out to friends and family.  We also went to a holiday birthday party and we all put together and decorated gingerbread houses.  Below the last picture on the right you can see what a great job my teen did decorating her gingerbread house.







We were delightfully surprised with a few inches of snow and it made everything look like a winter wonderland for Christmas.

I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season as much as I did.  Now the holidays are over and I look forward to sharing with you in the new year.  Happy 2018 blog friends!

Hello friends.  I want to wish you all a Happy New Year!  I am now back from my blogging break.  I really enjoyed the holidays and hope you all did too.

Does it seem like each year we do so much to prepare for the holidays and Christmas and that it goes by so fast.  Well, that is what seems to happen to me every year.

I am sorry that I did not have a chance to show you any of the pictures I took of my Thanksgiving table and some of the food we ate.  It's really hard when you are the one entertaining and I just forgot to ask anyone to take more photos of the food crowded on the table.

This is what the table looked like before the food came out.  I do not do a fancy table setting as it's more on the cute side.  We had a small crowd of the family and we all enjoyed ourselves eating and catching up with each other.





I enjoyed baking the pumpkin cake and I did some preparation of cooking the food the day before Thanksgiving.  I also had a lot of help from my sister-in-law who made an awesome sweet potato casserole.  One half of the casserole was with melted marshmallows and the other half was made with a pecan topping.  Oh boy was that good.  She also made brussels sprouts with bacon, mac and cheese, and stuffed mushrooms which were all so delicious.

Sorry, but I was just so busy entertaining and enjoying myself that I forgot to take photos of the desserts.  LOL!

Below is a photo of my plate of food.  I made sure that I filled my plate with a little bit of everything.






In the upper left corner of my plate, you will see a small portion of corn pudding that I made.  This was the first time that I have ever made or heard of this dish.

Here is a close up of the corn pudding casserole.  Sorry, but I was so busy making this casserole that I forgot to get a bigger photo of it.






This is a photo of the corn pudding casserole just before I put it into the oven to bake.

Corn Pudding prepared before baking

Well, let me tell you, this corn pudding casserole was such a hit with my family and my husbands family.  We all loved this dish and it tasted so delicious.

It was so easy to make and I am so happy that I made this recipe.  I found this awesome recipe at Kitty's Kozy Kitchen and to see the recipe, you can just click here for it.

I will definitely be making this casserole next year for Thanksgiving.  Thanks so much Kitty for sharing this delicious corn pudding casserole recipe on your blog.

NOTE:  I just changed the recipe a little and left out the cayenne pepper and paprika.  I just sprinkled in a little bit of salt and pepper to the recipe.

Hello friends.  Can you believe next week is Christmas?  Are any of you ready with all of your gifts?  Well, I have a few last minute gift ideas that you might like.

I love giving mason jar gifts to my neighbors and friends in my various groups.  Mason jar gifts are fun and so easy to make.  All you need to make these gifts is a mason jar, ribbon, a tag, and chocolates or candy of your choice.


Below you will find the links to the blog posts I did on how to make last minute mason jar gifts.

Chocolates in a Mason Jar Gift

I made back in December of 2015 chocolates in a mason jar HERE and this was so easy to make.  Mason jar gifts make gift giving easy and are perfect for teachers, neighbors, and even the hostess at a holiday party.

I made some of these for the ladies in my crochet group last year and they all enjoyed this gift and the chocolates.  You could even make them look cute and use Christmas colored M&Ms inside the mason jar.  How about making homemade cookies and putting them in the mason jar?

Reindeer Droppings Mason Jar Gift

Last year I received this reindeer droppings mason jar gift from my teen's Christmas Fair held at her school.  I loved this gift idea and I enjoyed eating the raisinettes that were inside the decorated mason jar.  I thought this was such a cute idea and it really gave me a good laugh.

If you would like to make one of these reindeer dropping mason jar gifts, then you can click HERE.  If you don't want to use the raisinettes then you can use brown M&Ms.


Hope you all have fun and enjoy making these last minute mason jar gifts.


NOTE:  This will be my last post for December 2017.  I am taking a break to spend time with my family and friends.  Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I will be doing one last post on Monday December 25, 2017 to post the features from our Cooking and Crafting with J & J Link Up!  

Hello friends.  I know Christmas is almost here, but I wanted to share with you the crochet star and Christmas tree ornaments that I made a few years ago.  I really enjoyed making these and I even made some for a Christmas ornament exchange that I participated in a few years ago.

You will see below the white cotton star ornament that I made.

These crochet star ornaments are very simple to create and make a perfect last minute gift or you can even use for your own Christmas tree.

You could even use the stars on a present with a gift tag and that would look really pretty.

Crochet Christmas Star

For the pattern and details to make the crocheted star, you can click HERE.

These stars would look great made in different colors.  You could even crochet them for the summer holidays in patriotic colors.

I hope I've inspired you to create these cute stars.

Crochet Christmas Tree

I was so happy when I found the pattern to crochet these Christmas tree ornaments that I made a few years ago.  These are so easy to crochet and would look perfect on your Christmas tree.  To see the pattern and details to make the trees, you can click HERE.

I think a great idea for the trees is to make them into a banner and hang it on your mantel or somewhere in your house.

I hope you like this idea for last minute crafting and make these crocheted ornaments.



Thanks so much for stopping by and hope you all enjoy the rest of the week and weekend.

Don't forget to visit us at Cooking and Crafting with J & J Link Up.