"Eat it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or go without."
~A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood~

Pioneer Woman at Heart

One Flourishing, Frugal and Fun Family!

One family learning to live off the land, cut back on expenses, and to live a simpler and a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

49 Weeks Until Christmas 2025

I'm joining Anne in the Kitchen (blogspot - Cooking and All that Jazz ) with her Christmas countdown preparations and fun planning posts.

Preparing for the next Christmas season.  January is the best time to work on crochet Christmas gifts and/or ornaments.  My family has been overwhelmed with my gracious and over abundance of ornament making over the years.  I need to find another outlet for them now.  Maybe nursing homes?  Adult assisted living facilities?  

 We have located a non-gmo Christmas cookie sugar sprinkle for next year's cookies.  I had no idea they even made them, and our Menard's sells Watkins brands.  They make this in "green" too with no artificial dyes.


Current library book for Christmas possibilities:

Delicious Foods to Make and Give Homemade, by Judith Choate.  A good library find for holiday planning if you are doing so during these slower winter days.

It has many recipes and ideas.  However, what in the world would you use parsley jelly for ?


The book suggestion is for a glaze on poultry, fish, veal or lamb.  Honestly, I would rather dehydrate my herb garden parsley and use it that way.  Would you use the jelly?  Just wondering.  It is an odd recipe, and with sugar too.

I have printed and saved one adult game for our binder.

I have not yet tried any new recipes for the next holiday.

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Gizmo/Gadget

 

I am not an affiliate with Amazon (or other stores), but here is what we decided on for the night light in one of the bathrooms.  It is chargeable, has 4 light settings, and can be taken off the included stand, and can be used as a "flash light" if needed.




It has an on, off and auto setting, so it can be left on, turned off, or set to auto to motion detect.  When set on auto, it only turns on, when motion is detected, and only in the dark.  We love it.  I may buy one for the camper too.  I found it on Amazon, but it very well may be in stores.   We wanted something that did all these things, but was solar chargeable, and we could not find a solar chargeable one, so we settled on this gadget.



And because I wanted one, and the only place I think I would find one is a store within a flea market 3 hours away, I bought a teabag squeezer.  Some of our teabags, including home sealed bags, have no string.  These work like tongs.  Again, found it on Amazon.  Just sharing.  My husband laughed at my gizmo.  He said he's Dad just pinched his teabag with his fingers.  Ouch!

Prayer request update:

Thank you for your prayers for my cousin, her husband and cats out in the LA area.  We last heard they were boxing up anything they deemed valuable, as the city was "burning down around them" and they described it as "Armageddon."  Her last message stated a friend was at her home too, sobbing as their house burned down.  It is so unreal, scary, and devastating.  They have more friends that also lost their homes.  I cannot even imagine.