New York

Thanksgiving week, we were given some sad news. Jamie's Godfather, Big Joe, passed away. He was suffering from cancer so I know he's much better off in Heaven. It's just sad for all of us left in this world missing him. 

Jamie, Lynn, Caden and I took off after eating our Thanksgiving meal with my family and drove to Palmyra, NY. We got  there just in time to head straight to the funeral home for the calling hours Friday night. We spent Saturday at the service then at a nice luncheon for family and friends of the Suhr family. We made it back to the house to watch the Iron Bowl...I don't really want to talk about that game. (War Eagle!) 

Sunday we spent the day at Jamie's Aunt Dorann's house with the family. It was really nice to see everyone, but I wish it were under different circumstances.

My inlaws live in Nebraska now. They also made the drive to NY. My father-in-law actually preformed part of the service. We miss them so much and hadn't seen them since Caden's birthday in May. It was great to be together. Jamie's grandmother lives with them, and she has been diagnosed with cancer. It's pretty advanced so I was really glad we got a chance to see her while she was still feeling somewhat like herself. We left at 4:30 am Monday morning and drove straight home. It took us about 23 hours total!! It was quite a whirlwind trip. Here's a few photos of us with Grandma. I hope we get to see her again in this life, but she's too sick to travel now. Maybe we'll make it to Nebraska soon, but only God knows when He's going to take her home.

Thanksgiving

When I was growing up, we ALWAYS celebrated Thanksgiving with my Mom's side of the family. She is one of five children. There are thirteen grandchildren. Seven of us are married, and there are five great-grands. As the years pass it gets increasingly more difficult to get everyone together. It's been several years since we were ALL together. We were missing a few this year, but it was really nice to see everybody that could make it. The tradition in our family is to do family photos at Thanksgiving. My cousin, Carmen, is a very talented photographer. She took the pictures this year. Check her out here.

Everyone

My mom, brothers, and our families

My little family :)

 Memaw, Mom, and Me

 Silly boys...Caden and his Uncle Andrew

 Hannah and Caden....best buddies

 We may have a few nuts, but I love my family! :)

Tattoo Party

My Uncle David is a tattoo artist. He came down from South Carolina and we had a "tattoo party" at my house on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. It was a lot of work for him, but a lot of fun! I think he did eight tattoos that night! He turned around and did two more on Friday. He's a tattooing machine :) Here's a few photos from the party...

This is Jamie's. He's going to get some shading done too. We ran out of time and energy to finish it...

Slacker

I was informed by a dear friend of mine that I had been slacking on the blog lately. Does the excuse that life has been crazy lately make it better?
I have been busy making things for a local holiday craft sale in the spare time I would usually use to blog. I made some christmas ball wreaths, yarn covered wreaths, and these washer necklaces in all different colors.

When I wasn't working on that I was working on Christmas presents. I can't show you those because it may ruin someones surprise. :)

Did I mention that I adore all things Christmas. I wish I were one of those amazing decorators that can turn their house into a Christmas wonderland. Unfortunately, God did not bless me with that talent. I just put out my decorations and hope for the best. I want to keep my table set with my snowman dishes, but having only one table and a three year old make that difficult. They are still in the box, but I am getting them out tonight. The most important decoration, the tree, is up and I'm not stressing about the rest. I love to sit in the dark with just my Christmas tree lit, drink hot spiced tea, and watch a Christmas movie. Ahhh...I feel more relaxed just thinking about it. 

Before I get all carried away about Christmas, I should cover November. I'll start writing about a few of the November happenings now....more posts to come :)

Buffalo Chicken Dip

This is one of Jamie's favorite dips. It's his first request when it comes to party foods.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Ingredients:

1 large can of chicken

1 8oz cream cheese (softened)

1/2 cup wing sauce

1/2 cup ranch dressing

1/2-1 cup cheddar cheese

1/4-1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

Break up the chicken pieces with a fork. 

Mix chicken, cream cheese, ranch, and wing sauce together. Spread into the bottom of a dish. I've used an 8x8, a pie plate, and several bowls and dishes I have on hand. (9x13 is too big) 

Mix shredded cheese and bread crumbs together. I really just eyeball this part and change up the amount depending on the dish I'm using. It needs to cover the top of your chicken mixture. 

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. 

Serve with tortilla chips or corn chips. 

Nutella Crescent Rolls

This is a yummy easy breakfast or snack. I couldn't get Jamie to try nutella until I made these. He loved them! I think I've finally convinced him that nutella is amazing! :)

Nutella Crescent Rolls

Ingredients:

1 can of crescent rolls

nutella

powdered sugar

Unroll your crescent rolls and separate. Spread Nutella over them. I did mine pretty thick so it would ooze out a little bit when you bite into it.

Roll the crescent rolls up from the wide part to the smaller part like you would normally do. Spread out on a cookie sheet.

Bake according to the directions on the crescent rolls.

Sprinkle with powered sugar immediately after removing from the oven. 

Pumpkin Dip

This is a great fall dip. It's sweet, but not too sweet. I just served it in my Pampered Chef cool and serve tray, but I saw it here served in a little pumpkin. Too cute!! I actually had a pumpkin to put mine in, but I didn't get around to carving it with everything else I had going on. I think I'll make the time next time because nobody knew what it was in the tray. 

I served it with graham crackers, nilla wafers, ginger snaps, and teddy grahams.

Pumpkin Dip

Ingredients:

1 large cool whip

1 can of pumpkin 

1 box instant vanilla pudding mix

3 Tbsp powdered sugar

1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice

cinnamon

Mix everything together except cinnamon in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.

Put your dip into your pumpkin or serving dish and sprinkle cinnamon over the top. 

Peanut Butter Ball

I saw one of these on pinterest and knew I had to try it. The recipe from Nestle said not to use all natural peanut butter, but that's all I had. It worked out fine for me, but I had to add more brown sugar than the 3 tbsp it called for. I made it into two smaller balls since I had parties two nights in a row. They went over great. I think Woody liked it the most. He ate it on graham crackers. I liked it better on apple slices.

Peanut Butter Ball

Ingredients:

1 8oz package of cream cheese (room temp)

1 cup powdered sugar

3/4 cup peanut butter 

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

chocolate chips 

peanut butter chips

A big stand mixer would be ideal for this recipe, but I don't have one. I almost burnt up my hand mixer with this recipe so I think I'll just use a spoon and some elbow grease next time.....there will be a next time!

Mix together cream cheese, peanut butter, brown sugar, and powdered sugar.

Spoon onto plastic wrap. Tie together forming a ball...or two :)

Freeze....the original instructions say for an hour and a half. I had a full day scheduled so mine were in for about 4 hours. They did fine. 

Place chocolate and peanut butter chips onto a flat surface.

Remove PB balls from freezer and roll in chips to cover. Rolling didn't really work for me...maybe because I left them in the freezer longer? So I ended up taking handfuls and pressing them into the ball. It was a little messy, but it got the job done. 

Cover and freeze for at least two hours before serving. I wrapped them back up in the plastic wrap and then put both balls into a ziplock bag. One stayed in the freezer overnight. It was just as good as the one we ate on the day of preparation. If you freeze overnight, be sure to take it out of the freezer about 30 minutes prior to your party. It will need to defrost. 

Enjoy!!

Halloween Party

We don't celebrate Halloween....never have. I've never been trick-or-treating, and I turned out okay. We just don't believe that Halloween and what it stands for is something to be celebrated. I do however LOVE fall and pumpkins and I think that's something to celebrate. I don't want Caden to miss out on the fun of the season so we do fall festivals and I let him dress up. We just don't do anything scary and "halloweenish". He was a cowboy this year. I want him to participate as much as possible so that he's not alienated, without compromising our beliefs. I understand that most people don't have the same convictions we do.

One of the things we are trying to figure out is how much to explain to a three year old. I don't want him to know about ghosts and witches and demonic things. I want him to be innocent and carefree for as long as possible. I believe that those things really do exist and I don't think it's all fun and games. So for now we just don't talk about Halloween; we just talk about fall and the fun of the season. When anything that we don't participate in comes up, I just tell him that we don't play that because it's not very nice.That's okay right now, but I'm sure we'll have to explain a little more about why we believe the way we do next year. He's getting very inquisitive....

I took him to his daycare for their halloween party. We took slimy wormy jello cups for the party and gave out robots for the favors. I took home all of his goody bags filled with halloween treats and just trashed all the things I didn't want him to have. He's still young enough that I can get away with that. Here's a few photos from his class:

This is Caden's pumpkin. All of the kids help decorate pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns at school the week of Halloween. They are so sweet to help Caden decorate his pumpkin with something he loves so he doesn't get left out of the fun.

Slimy Wormy Jello Cups

Caden and I made jello cups to take to his school party. I wanted to do something different and I figured they would have way too many cookies and cupcakes anyway. It helps that Caden loves jello!

Slimy Wormy Jello Cups

Ingredients:

2 boxes of different color jello

water

gummy worms

small clear containers 

We used plastic punch cups and got seven cups out of this recipe. We made two batches since there are 11 kids in his class at day care. 

Make one box of jello according to package directions. Pour into cups evenly. Get your little helper to add a gummy worm into each cup. 

The worm will fall the the bottom.

Refrigerate according to package directions. We refrigerated overnight and finished them the next day.

After the bottom layer of jello is set, mix up the other box of jello and distribute among the cups. Add worms. I draped some over the sides of the cups too...that really added to the cuteness of the snack :)

Weekend Recap

I was running....all weekend!
We have been working for the past week getting our bonus room into a livable space. It used to be Jamie's man room. Then it was Grandma's bedroom when she lived with us, but it has steadily become a junk room. We have way too much junk in our house!! It's quite an ordeal to weed out though....especially for a pack rat like me. We filled a truck full for Goodwill and put a ton a stuff on the street for the trash men. I think we did pretty well. I would show you photos, but the before was so embarrassing I would never photograph it. I'll get some photos of the new space once I get my side finished. Our bonus room now has some great leather furniture on loan from my in laws (Thanks y'all!), a tv and Jamie's sports memorabilia on one side of the room completing his new man cave. The other side is going to be my craft room. Right now everything is in boxes on my side. It looks a million times better than it did though!
I worked a little Saturday morning, then went to watch some city league football. After the game, I started food for the parties and finished cleaning up. Then Lynn and I took Caden to the Jr Bullriders rodeo that afternoon. Jamie and a couple of his friends were delivering stuff to Goodwill and getting the furniture for the man cave while we were having fun. :)
Caden decided he wanted to be a cowboy this year for Halloween. It was great because he went all decked out in his attire to the rodeo. Caden rode Charlie, his stick horse, over to our neighbors' house before we left for the rodeo. They fussed over how handsome he was and we had a little photo shoot :)

He had SO much fun at the rodeo! We got to see bull riding, pole bending, and even some little ones riding sheep. Caden wanted to get in on the action, but he settled for riding the pretend bull. I wish I had a picture of him riding it with his little hand up in the air, but my phone died and I didn't' take my camera. I only got one photo, but I think it's a pretty good one.

We had some of Jamie's work friends and some family over to watch some football and UFC Saturday night. All of Jamie's hard work paid off because most everybody sat in the bonus room. Caden loved having "new friends" come over.  Thank God for the playroom! All in all it was a good party. I made lots of snacks so recipes will be coming soon.

Sunday night we had a costume party for the youth group at our house. Good times! I was a lady bug, Jamie was a coach, and Caden was of course a cowboy. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of us together. Here's some photos of the night....

The Pumpkin Shirt

This morning I found myself longing for the days before Caden could talk.....I did not want him to have an opinion unless it agreed with mine! I admit, it was not my finest hour.
All I wanted was for Caden to wear the pumpkin shirt that I made him last year to school today. We talked about it all week and set the shirt (it's long-sleeved) out for today since it was supposed to be getting cold. He LOVED wearing the shirts I appliqued for him last year, but apparently they aren't cool anymore. Or he just didn't want to wear it to school today, I'm not sure. He told me that he could wear it on "Mommy/Caden day".
For those of you wondering what Mommy/Caden day is, it's Monday.
I'm off so Caden gets to stay home or do whatever I'm doing. It's just the two of us, hence the name "Mommy/Caden day". Anyway, I told him that he was wearing the pumpkin shirt, that he got to pick his clothes every day and Mommy wanted to have a turn today. That didn't work! He started crying big tears and I got mad. I'm slamming around the kitchen fuming to myself while fixing my coffee, and he's laying on the couch crying. I eventually yell at him to stop and dry it up. Then I'm even more mad because now not only am I mad at him, I'm mad at myself. Please tell me I'm not the only one who's done this!? Anyone?
I mumbled to myself, "It's just a stupid shirt! Give me a break and just wear the d*** thing!" And then I felt shamed. Yes, it is just a stupid shirt and he's three! Get over yourself, Arsella and put on your big girl panties!  I was being convicted. Okay Lord...
So I called him into the kitchen apologized for yelling and then made him a deal. He had to let me take some pictures of him in the pumpkin shirt to show everyone and then he could take it off and pick another shirt for school. So here he is, my sweet albeit rotten boy in his pumpkin shirt...and his dog, "Slimy".

Robot party favors

Caden has a halloween party at his day care on Monday. Everyone has to sign up to bring something for the party. I'm making slimy wormy jello cups....more on that later.
This time last year I learned that most of the kids brought little goodie bags or something to send home with each kid in the class after holiday parities. I was pretty upset when I realized that. I didn't make anything for Caden to give out because I didn't know I was supposed to. I felt like a horrible mom. Caden was two; he didn't know that he was the only one without goodie bags, but that didn't happen again! After several holidays, I realized that I really don't like the average goodie bag. It usually includes cheap toys that break or don't get played with and too much candy. Lots of times it's bad candy at that. Okay some of the candy is good, but it almost always has stuff in it that I don't let Caden have like gum or hard candies.
I decided that this year I wanted to do something different, something neat. I want to be the cool mom...the "gosh she's so creative" mom. Sometimes I succeed in living up to my inner crafty genius, but usually I don't. However this year, at least for Caden's school party, you can just call me "Martha". :)
Here's the robots I made for Caden to give to his friends instead of the average goodie bag.

 Adorable, right? Caden is very proud and ready to take these to school. Too bad he has to wait until Monday. :) 

They were actually really easy to make. Here's the breakdown: : 2 "googaly eyes", 2 Hershey's Nuggets, juice box, 2 airheads, 4 starbursts. Hot glue together. 

PS. If you are a teacher at Nana's house, or if your child in the "big kid class" please pretend that you didn't' see this post until after the party, okay? Thanks!