5 Days of Preparing for the Holidays {cooking}

It's Day 2 of blog hopping about preparing for the holidays and today is all about the food! One of my favorite parts of the holidays. There are just so many wonderful food memories associated with the holidays.

In fact, I am pretty excited to be hosting my family for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. This is a first for me. We usually have Thanksgiving at my parents' house and I have only hosted Thanksgiving once before, for my in-laws. I have hosted Christmas before and I always enjoy that.

So as you can imagine I have been planning my Thanksgiving menu already (not Christmas' just yet, but soon). I am working in as many make-ahead dishes as I can and also plan to put my crockpot into good use (for the best dressing recipe!) and I am borrowing my mom's electric roaster (for the turkey). That should leave plenty of oven space for the rest of the dishes.

Some of our other favorite holiday recipes are:

I have lots more of our family favorites listed on the sidebar to your left and would love for you to check them out if you like.

Each year I try to add a new recipe or two just to shake things up. Some of those new recipes have become standards for us. Such as:

This year I'm sharing a new recipe with my family that I have just made a couple of times but absolutely love: Butternut Squash Soup. I am planning to serve our Thanksgiving meal in courses (usually we're not that formal) and wanted to do a soup course. This is the perfect soup for this time of the year! I hope they like it:)

Of course, there will be lots of baking going on through the holidays, too. We love cookies around here! One of our favorite family traditions is making sugar cookies with our holiday cookie cutters. The kids love it~and so do I! Yes, it makes a big mess, but it cleans up easily and the memories make it all worth it.

I would love to hear about your favorite holiday food~leave me a comment, or better yet a link to your recipe!

And while you're out blog hopping drop by some of the blogs linked below to see what they're cooking up for the holidays.

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The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Fun With 4th of July Crafts: Part 3

I love my new patriotic front door wreath!! I had fun putting this together, although I must admit this is more of an adult craft than one for kiddos. I was inspired by this article in Family Fun magazine. I didn't have quite everything I needed for this one, but all I had to purchase was a few sheets of scrapbook paper and some double-sided tape. Then all I had to gather up were some scissors, regular Scotch tape, a ruler and some cardboard. First I cut four (5"x 6") pieces of each paper. Then by placing a piece of double-sided tape on one of the short ends of the papers, I rolled them into cones, pressing the seams together well. Then I cut a 10" circle out of cardboard and began to stick the cones on it. I used another piece of double-sided tape to stick the cones on, arranging them in a circular pattern. Next I used regular Scotch tape to attach them on the back to the back of the cardboard. After getting all the cones on, I was ready for my centerpiece. He...

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