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Yea!! I did it! I “hosted” our li’l Black Friday Thanksgiving dinner. We had one friend over and had a blast! It turned out to be an Alton Brown Thanksgiving because he brought Alton Brown’s Macaroni and Cheese. I think I will have to make this next time we head out to the grandparents and they want me to bring something. The turkey was delicious! The only thing I think did wrong was I put the thermometer in the wrong location. I couldn’t get to the computer to see where it was suppose to go because Li’l Princess was playing Strawberry Shortcake and Prince Charming was playing on the iPad. That left my cell phone but I couldn’t really see where Alton was putting the thermometer (and I was running out of time) so I just stuck it where I thought it should go. It was the wrong place. The breast was done to perfection BUT the brown meat … well, lets just say thank goodness it is going in casseroles, etc. because it needs to be baked more!!

I am a slow knitter. I admit that. But I enjoy all my knitting moments, whenever I can grab them. Recently I had the overwhelming feeling I should go to the little yarn shop and see if they had another skein of the Debbie Bliss yarn I was using for Li’l Princess’s scarf. They only had one left, upping my count to three skeins. The sales lady tried to convince me that just one skein makes a scarf and I sensed her disdain about my needing three skeins. Oh well, we will see when I get to the final product, right?

So I recently started on my second skein of yarn and I am approximately 1/3 of the length I want. I don’t think I will have any leftover to knit a Bitty Baby scarf. I may need to find something similar or use the KnitPicks Dishie yarn that I didn’t think was appropriate or soft enough for a preschooler to wear.

I did it! I went out and purchased my first turkey!! Yippee!! Well, I am really nervous. That sucker is HUGE and it was one of the smaller ones out there! I guess I am going to have to figure out leftovers, right? I went with a frozen Publix turkey because of a couple of factors. My first choice would have been an organic, local, non GMO, free-range heritage turkey but until I have about $80 to spend on a small turkey I will have to wait about that one. I shopped at Kroger’s on Sunday night while the Little Princess was in children’s choir and was floored by the prices of turkeys. It was going to be around $1.49 or $1.29 per pound. The average cost I saw was right around $20 a turkey, give or take a few dollars. That is why I went to Publix. Their turkeys were $0.69 a pound making mine cost less than a pound of the local, organic, non GMO ground beef we purchase. Which made me hesitate to purchase a pound of the ground beef for hamburgers tonight.

So here is my turkey, quietly sitting in the fridge, slowly thawing, doing everything it should do. I am getting everything ready for Alton Brown’s brining recipe. Oh, if you need candied or crystalized ginger you can find it in the fruitcake fixin’s section. Just a hint for all y’all who are frantically searching through the supermarket looking for the one last elusive ingredient.

Mr. McGregor informed me, with much hemming and hawing and hesitation, that he wants me to fix Thanksgiving dinner for just the four of us and a few friends if they show up. He said he wanted an edible Thanksgiving dinner. Sorry, Mom, your dressing has been a bit wild since I got married.

After researching I decide that my first attempt to bake a turkey will be with Alton Brown’s recipe, complete with brining the turkey. Mr. McGregor has his doubts but we will try and see how it bakes. I informed him that he has to brush up on carving. 😉

So after searching high and low for a food-grade bucket I find one at Lowes and leave $6 poorer but with a turkey brining bucket and hopefully I can sterilize it to store food stuff in it until next year’s Thanksgiving. The only thing I didn’t really like is that the bucket and the lid are sold separately and that Lowes charges for both. Well, so does TruPrep.com as well as other prep places. Dag nab it! I should have asked my friend at Publix about a used but empty icing bucket. Hmmm …. if I go in there again between now and Thanksgiving I just might do that!

These brownies are so good they should be outlawed. In fact they are in my house. I love to make them and they are so decadent I could eat the whole dish. That is why they are outlawed. They are a sure-fire diet buster! I hope you enjoy them as much as we do! Mr. McGregor requests them periodically so I give in and make them but I have to make sure he takes most of them to work.

Halloween is over! Gotta do something with all those li’l sugar pumpkins that are so great for decorating! So after baking and pureeing one of the pumpkins I tried this pinterest recipe. It is delicious but I don’t think I would try it again. It just didn’t really hit me as a recipe to repeat. Don’t get me wrong – it is a good recipe. If I saw someone else had made it at a pot luck dinner I would get one. I just wouldn’t bake it myself unless someone specifically asked for it.

So here is the recipe for Pumpkin Spice Donut Holes – Enjoy!!

For years I have wanted to learn how to knit. Well, the knitting bug has really hit hard. I decided to finally sit down and learn how to knit. I chose to do a MKAL (mystery knit a long) as my first project. Needless to say, the majority of my project has yet to be knitted but it was a great springboard to learn how to knit and learn different stitches. The MKAL was with Rowan Yarns and it was the Martin Storey MKAL. It is a pretty afghan although I wish I had actually stuck with one color instead of trying to do multiple colors. I saw it in a solid and it was pretty!!

So I have been receiving several hints and requests from My Little Princess that she wants something knitted just for her. I started a scarf with Knit Pick’s Dishie Thread in variegated thistle.It was not the right yarn for the job! So I went to a local independent yarn shop and purchased a couple of skeins of yarn. I still don’t know how to gauge how much yarn is needed for a project. So after I started one scarf, decided it was too many different steps to remember, I created my own dinky pattern. I then realized I didn’t really like my dinky little pattern so I searched a bit more. What I saw was “The Snowman Cometh” scarf. I like the simplicity and the detail. It is perfect for the yarn I got – the Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed from Kilcar, Ireland. I was lucky – it was on sale!  🙂

So here is a photo of Little Princess’s scarf before I ripped out and started on The Snowman Cometh pattern.  🙂 I am excited about this! The color is more purple than the actual yarn. I took the photo in poor lighting. I will get a better photo once I start the “corrected” version of her scarf.

Since I am a homeschool graduate I know many homeschoolers out there. I know some who wouldn’t homeschool their kids unless it was at the point of a death threat. I know others who might or might not homeschool depending on their kids’ temperaments. I know others who homeschool and it was their choice and they love it! So I sent out a Facebook poll asking what curriculum was used, what they liked or didn’t like, I even asked about a couple of local homeschool hybrid schools (where kids go to school for 2 or 3 days and the rest of the school was at home with their parents). I am still looking into a couple of the homeschool hybrid schools.

One of the curriculums that was recommended to me was My Father’s World and it was recommended with great flourish and gushiness. So with a highly recommended curriculum I made sure to go to their website right away and order a catalog. I walked from the mailbox with great anticipation 4 or 5 days later with the catalog in hand. Great things will happen because the program is so highly recommended, right? Wrong. Within minutes I knew that the curiculum was not right for me and my family. Why, you may ask? Well, simply put, I know my limitations, my strengths, my weaknesses, and my aptitude. While I know that homeschool families hop from one curriculum to the next (and I grew up with that experience as well) I knew I wanted continuity for my children. I don’t want to go with one curriculum just to switch the next year and I have a feeling that with My Father’s World I would be switching after the first year.

The curriculum has a cylinder approach to teaching. Meaning that one year you lightly teach a subject, the next year you go deeper, and the following year you go more in depth. While that is a great idea (and typically how children learn) I wanted a more structured approach to teaching.

What I liked about the curriculum is that it comes with  a pre-planned teacher’s guide. To me that is important. I know that with being a stay at home mom as well as a homeschool teacher I wouldn’t really have the time to spend developing my own curriculum as I would like.

What I didn’t like. With the price of curriculum (that was one of the things my friends liked) was not inclusive after the 1st grade. After the 1st grade math, language arts, and further up the school grades I would also have to add science. To me that was not appealing.

What I do like – My Father’s World supports the translation of the Bible into different languages.

I also like the Christ-centeredness of the curriculum. I just wish it was a better fit for me. I will keep the catalog but it will go to the bottom of the stack for now. It may be a good fit for you and your family though. Check out their website at My Father’s World.

Mr. McGregor was looking at finances and he dropped the “h” word. No, not the 4-letter word, the 10-letter word. It caused mild panic in me. I had somewhat considered it but he always thought it was a bad idea. Until recently. What made the difference? All the research I had been doing and the way our checkbook currently looks.

What is the “h” word? It is homeschool. No, it isn’t a bad word but when I spent all spring watching my homeschool umbrella program and a lot of what I believed in being portrayed as a very horrific train wreck that I couldn’t take my eyes off of, well, homeschooling the Little Princess and Prince Charming were the furthest from my mind. I was even looking forward to driving them to private school and being able to spend my days cleaning, cooking, exercising, writing, pursuing art, volunteering, dropping by the school at odd hours just so the teachers wouldn’t know when to expect me (that way if something were amiss I could see it first hand). That all went down the drain with the “h” word.

I have seen so many of my peers crying and hurting because they didn’t receive the education they should have. Their parents just weren’t dedicated enough to teach their own children at home. Or they didn’t know how. Or they didn’t want to do anything.

What scares me the most is that the parents had good intentions of giving their children a Godly education and they ended up here.  I am not totally blaming the parents because after all, they lived in a scary world and wanted the best for their children. However they went in with a hands-off, turn a blind eye type approach. I see that now but a child totally trusts their parents. My children look up to me and trust me to make the best decisions possible for them. We live in a scary world. A world where teachers have the final say, whether they are teaching homosexuality, free sex, that Islam is right and all other religions are wrong, or the common core and “new math” that the College Board is pushing. From what I have heard about the common core math program it is scary. The College Board made it so that parents would not be able to help their children with math homework. I believe I heard that on NPR one day.

So why is private school out? Because it will be a minimum of $24,000.00  per year for both of our wee ones until they get to middle school and then the price goes up. It is just out of our reach right now with our finances. So I am off to research home school programs, catalogs, and curriculums. I have a little time to compare, research, and pray about each one and see what would be a good fit for our family.

Fun times ahead!  🙂

So this is a dual post. Part of the Boatload of Meat purchase and part of the Pinterest Challenge. Are you ready? Chicken Parmesan a la Crockpot. Is it delicious or not? Will it pass the Mr. McGregor test?

Ok, so don’t trust all those lucious mouthwatering photos that you see of picture perfect items coming out of the crock pot. Those, for me at least, are a crock because my meat gets so tender it falls apart as I am removing it from the dish and placing it on the plate. Needless to say the Crockpot Chicken Parmesan is a definite repeat!! Yea!! Mr. McGregor loved it and so did the Little Princess.

Since I bake sourdough bread I make my own breadcrumbs. It is super easy and I recently found out that one of my loaves of bread can make a 24 ounce container of breadcrumbs. I keep the breadcrumbs plain and if I need to season it (Italian or otherwise) I can add the seasoning mix when I pour out the breadcrumbs for the recipe.

I found this recipe at Mostly Homemade Mom via Pinterest. I will definitely be repeating this one!!