Delicious Recipes to Keep my Family of Four Happy and Full
Easy Christmas cookies are always something I am on the hunt for. I love holiday baking but don’t have a lot of time to commit and, honestly, I’m not that great of a baker. This oatmeal scotchie recipe saves the day as a tasty and easy cookie that will be at the top of your holiday baking list year after year.
…
Just follow these simple rules:
Since this is an email subscription blog hop, your blog must have a place for people to subscribe to your email. If there isn’t an email subscribe option, your link will be removed from the linky without warning.
Every Friday we will put up a new Feed Me Friday linky, so be sure to stop by and add your blog. Each week we will typically have a featured blogger, if you’d like to be our featured blogger next week, link up below. We’ll use Random.org to select one!
Ashley is a work at home mom to two beautiful girls; 3 and 1, providing childcare in her home. She gets to spend her days playing and having fun, what could be better? Ashley blogs about the fun stuff that she does with her children and those in her home as well as sharing some yummy (sometimes healthy) recipes. Thanks so much for linking up with this this week. If you’re a new participant, please be sure to leave a comment below!
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Christmas time is my favorite time of year. It is also a super hectic time of year with parties to attend, gifts to buy and houses to decorate. It definitely has me daydreaming about taking a vacation to relax after all the hectic activities.
Gogobot makes it easy to plan the perfect vacation virtually! 
Never heard of it? It is a social travel site that started in 2010. It also has the prestige of being named one of Time’s top sites of 2011 and winner of the 2010 Crunchie award for Best Design.
I’ll be traveling to Chicago next year for a mini-vacation/blog conference. I figured now is a great time to start checking out places to eat and things to do while visiting the city. I started by visiting the Gogobot Chicago Travel Guide page.
Of course, the first thing I looked for was a place a to stay. The top rated hotel, out of the 193 hotels listed on the Chicago hotel guide was the InterContinental Chicago. One of the really neat things about GogoBot is that readers share real photos of places around the city along with their reviews. This view of the city sold me on the hotel I was looking at.
With a place to sleep selected, I clicked over to search for some delicious food on the restaurants page.
This amazing dish, from the Purple Pig page, made it top on my list of places to visit.
Of course, a trip to Chicago isn’t complete without a deep dish pizza!
I started making a list of must see places and things to do but it just kept growing. So, I bookmarked the Things to Do page on GogoBot.
So, are you ready for a vacation? Tell me where you’d go if you could pick anywhere.
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
I hope everyone had a restful and blessing filled day last Thursday for Thanksgiving! I had a great time spending the day with family and topping it off with some Black Friday shopping.
Let’s take a look at some of the fabulous things you all linked up last week!
Cassie, from The Sweet Life of an Environmental Engineer’s Wife, shared some great DIY projects she is eyeing on Pinterest list this body scrub.
Sew-licious Home shared this really neat and delicious looking fudge wreath. 
Over at Practically Functional, Jesse shared these adorable chalkboard signs she made for her first anniversary pictures.
I am loving these gilded pine cone holiday place card holders from Small Home Love.
I need to transform some of my binders like The Pin Junkie did for her Fabric Covered Notebooks.
And the most viewed food link was the cranberry katsup from Kathe with an E
The most viewed “everything else” link was this no sew ribbon tree skirt from The D.I.Y. Dreamer.
Don’t forget to come back tomorrow and link up to the Pinworthy Projects Party!
Oh, and I am still waiting for some giveaway winners to claim their prizes. Be sure to click here to see if you are one of them. This will be the last chance before they go to someone else 🙂
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Spaghetti is a family favorite for a lot of people. It can get a little boring though with regular sauce and pasta. We like to change up the traditional spaghetti with baked spaghetti from time to time.
…
Hey everyone! It is another exciting week where one of you great readers gets to share your ideas for What to Cook Wednesday. Today, Helen is here to share some delicious ideas.
*******************************
Hello everyone! I’m Helen from Random Bits and I’m thrilled to be bringing you some tasty after-holiday dishes this week.
Sunday- This Spicy Penne with Turkey is a very tasty dish to use up some of that leftover turkey. My husband loves to make this dish and looks forward to it every winter. If you don’t like spicy dishes, either leave the chipotle chilies out, or cut way back on them.
Wednesday– BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad is a nice change of pace for the middle of the week.
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
December 1st is just around the corner so it is time to break out the advent calendar! I am super excited about the one we made this year so, without further ado, here is my 2012 Advent Calendar.
I started with 25 little mittens I cut using my Cameo out of shimmery blue scrapbook paper.
I decorated the mittens using a combination of scrapbook paper and washi tape.
I found some adorable little mini clothespins in the Target dollar spot and picked up 25 of them for my calendar.
On black Friday, I grabbed an 18×24 frame that I removed the glass and backing from. Then, I spray painted it white.
I hot glued red ribbon to the back and clipped on my mittens.
The countdown is on {or at least it will be come December 1st!}
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Frosty the Snowman was a jolly, happy soul…Well, as jolly and happy as one can be when someone puts your eyes and nose in the oven! 🙂
…
It is no secret that we’ve been spending a lot of time and energy finishing our basement recently. It is almost done and we are down to adding final touches. This includes putting in light bulbs. I did a little research before heading to the store and GE Energy Savings light bulbs offer a tremendous dollar savings and savings for the planet. Calculate your savings!
After seeing how much I could save in just the basement alone, I went off to the store to get some new light bulbs for the space and to replace my the current ones on our main level.
I found a huge selection including ones for the flood light.
I decided to buy some school supplies with the money I was saving to donate to H’s classroom. With the holidays coming up, they are doing a ton of projects and the teacher said they are running low on supplies already! I chose Elmer’s glue because I know the kids use a bunch of it. I really like the #GlueNGlitter so I picked some of that too.
 |
| See more from my shopping trip in my Google+ Album. |
Once home, we created a board to illustrate our savings using the thing my kids understand most: candy!
Our school supplies went into a cute little stocking to be taken to H’s class as a donation.
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Do you get so busy with the shopping and prepping for Christmas that things start to fall through the cracks? Or maybe you want a good way to keep track of what to buy, when it is bought and given?
Each year, I create a spreadsheet where I list all of the people I buy gifts for and the budget for the gifts. Once they are purchased, they are assigned a receipt number and I track when they have been wrapped. It helps bring me peace of mine that all the gifts are purchased and make it under the tree.
Assigning a receipt number makes it easy to find the receipt in case an exchange is needed since I am pretty terrible at remembering to get gift receipts.
I’ve shared this handy little sheet with you in case you want to start using a similar system. Enjoy!
Christmas Shopping List Printable
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.