Last Year's Christmas Letter

Here it is December 1, 2009 and my Christmas cactus is blooming right on schedule as it does every year. It’s amazing to me how it knows that its Christmas time. I don’t tell it to bloom. They say you need to talk to your plants. Can you see me talking to my plants? Oh I don’t need to scare Johnny anymore than I already have.


As Sam the snowman would say, “Ahhh I love this time of year!”Everyone seems more kinder and gentler. Tis The season to have HOPE. Hope is one of the best feelings you can have. I guess that’s why I start celebrating Christmas a little early. {I have to confess, I have been listening to Christmas music since the middle of November.} Don’t get me wrong the feeling of HOPE never leaves me, it just becomes stronger as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Isn’t it crazy how easy it is to forget why we celebrate Christmas. My younger two seem to want everything that pops up on a commercial. My older two don’t do toys anymore, unless it’s electronic. I’m trying to find a gift that serves dual purpose. No questions please my brain has been straining enough! And Charlie Brown says “My own dog has gone commercial!! Is this what Christmas is all about?” Well I’m here to tell you, no it’s not! It’s easy to get caught up in Christmas wish lists and the things I have to do before Christmas lists.

Here are some things to ponder… Do you know the legend of the Christmas Tree, or the Candy Cane? Do you know why we put a star at the top of the tree? Why we give gifts? Who were the ones that brought gifts before Santa ever came into the picture? {Answers to follow for those of you who are not sure.}

It’s very obvious we have gone commercial and have been for many, many years. Now slow down take a moment and you will notice that the traditions we have carried down through the years points to that little babe in the manger. “And that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.” Somehow that little babe who came to give a gift so precious, seems to get pushed aside at Christmas time.

Ya know I’ve been thinking….{sometimes that gets me into trouble} just like my blooming Christmas cactus, Christmas still comes. Even if you don’t have a tree, lights, presents, or a winter wonder land in your front yard. Christmas comes without ribbons, it comes without tags, it comes without packages, boxes or bags. Although it is nice to get gifts like a Roomba 3000 that vacuums the whole house while you are out shopping! {hint,hint…Johnny are you listening?} With all joking aside…

The very first Christmas came over 2000 years ago, and He came without ribbons, tags, packages, boxes or bags. He came wrapped in swaddling clothes and was laid in a manger for the whole world to receive. If we accept this gift we receive eternal life in heaven with Him, Jesus Christ! Now that’s a gift that keeps on giving! And the Grinch’s heart grew 3 sizes plus one that day!

Merry Christmas from The Jenkins! We pray you are all Blessed with the true meaning of Christmas this year! P.S. Those Classic Christmas Movies Just never get old for me!

Pepperoni Pizza Chili

My husband doesn't get involved in the kitchen too much, but when I asked if he had a blow torch I could borrow he didn't hesitate to offer his services!

To make this dish all you do is prepare your chili as you normally would. Then add lots of pepperoni. When it's through cooking top it with cheese and some more pepperoni. I usually put my pot in the oven and turn the broiler on to brown the cheese. But this time my pot was too large for my oven, so that was the reason for the blow torch.

And the boys got to cook in the kitchen! Now if I can only get them to do dishes............

The Kitchen, My Favorite Place To Be!

I've had this deep heart shaped dish for years and never used it until this past weekend.

It made a wonderful deep dish Apple Crumb pie!
All I do is peel, core and slice my apples. put them in a pot with a little water cook until warm all the way through. I add a cup of sugar and a tsp. of apple pie spice. Thicken with corn startch and pour in my pie shell. Last but not least I sprinkle with a brown sugar topping. I used about 8 to 10 large apples for this one.

With the extra dough from the pie crust I make cinnamon sticks just like my Mama use to. All you do is roll the dough out thin and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top. Put it in the oven @ 350 for about 12 to 15 minutes. They are yummy and they bring back wonderful memories of my Mama in the kitchen.

Curry Chicken & Broccoli

1 Large bag of frozen broccoli
1 whole chicken or 4 large chicken breasts cut up and cooked
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken
1 cup of mayo
1 tsp of lemon juice
1 tsp curry powder
1 cup of shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
Optional Topping: Bread crumbs and melted butter

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and put in a prepared large casserole dish. Put in the oven @ 350 for about 1 hour and 1/2 . I covered mine with tin foil and at the last 20 minutes or so I take off the foil to brown the bread crumbs.

More recipes to follow. Right now we have to start school. Happy Baking Everyone!

Another Bucket With A Bow

 This is a gift basket I had made over the weekend for a good friend. It was her Father's Birthday present.

 The basket was filled with homemade Raspberry Jam, Peach Butter, Corn Relish, Bread n Butter Pickles, and Apple Butter. Among other tasty goodies.

If your interested in a one of kind gift for a friend or family member, Just let me know. I enjoy putting these Buckets together. Prices vary.......You just need to give me an idea of about how much you want to spend.

You can e-mail me at jkhcb5@aol.com

Sausage, Rice and Fried Potatoes

This is an easy dish:
Smoked Sausage
2 Boxes Uncle Ben's Rice
4 Cups water
1/4 cup brown Sugar
1 onion
1 Pepper
2 ribs of celery
2 zucchini
6 Potatoes
2 cans diced tomatoes
garlic salt to taste

 Cut your potatoes and put them on a griddle and let them cook on low heat. while your potatoes are frying, you cook your smoked, spicy sausage, onions, peppers and celery in a large pot. Then you add 2 cans of diced tomatoes, 4 cups water, 2 boxes of uncle Ben's original recipe rice, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and garlic salt to taste. Cook until rice is done and potatoes are golden brown. Add your zucchini at the last minute to heat through. Place on a large platter.

This is a large recipe for our big family! But it would be easy to cut in 1/2.

Lewis & Clark Nature Journals

The kids and I are learning about Lewis and Clark in history. So I wanted to show you the nature journal replicas that we made.

 We made them out of chamois, two pieces of card board, parchment paper, hot glue and embroidery thread.

 The kids were so excited when they were finished, they immediately went out to find things to draw!

 My little man has almost completely filled every page in his journal. And we made them yesterday!

It's a pretty easy project! We are using Time Travelers, by http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com/ It's a great hands on History Study!

It's The Great Pumpkin

This has to be one of my all time favorite recipes ever!

Pumpkin Bread, Pumpkin Muffins, Pumpkin Cake with Cream cheese frosting

This recipe is very versatile it does really well all three ways!

3 1/3 C flour
3 C sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 can 15 ounce pumpkin
1 c vegetable oil
4 eggs
2/3 c water
Preheat oven to 350
Put all ingredients in a large bowl and mix very well. This is where you have to make a decision... you can either prepare a cookie sheet and make a sheet cake with cream cheese frosting, prepare a large muffin tin and make large yummy muffins or you can prepare 2 loaf pans and make pumkin bread. Bake untill tooth pick comes out clean. It is absolutely wonderful and moist all three ways! You will not be dissapointed with this one!

Butternut Apple Butter

 I'm always looking for different ways to use my apples. I had a butternut squash sitting on my counter and was wondering what I should do with it. So after some thought I decided to make Butternut Apple Butter. I have always made Pumpkin Apple Butter, so why not? It's the same concept.

 So here it is Butternut Apple Butter! Yum! Yum!

You cook your apples down like you would for apple sauce. Add your spices, cinnamon, allspice, ground cloves, nutmeg, ginger. What ever you prefer. Add your sugar. I use brown sugar. While your apples are simmering cut your squash in half and bake it in the oven for about an hour. Remove squash from skin and put it in your apple mixture. You can puree the squash first if you want to. I've done it both ways and either way is good.
Ladel it in your jars and process in hot water bath.

We put it on toast, I use it as baby food, And my husband likes to put it on cottage cheese. We have even been known to heat it up and put it on vanilla ice cream! Mmmmmmmm...........GOOD!

Happy Birthday!!!

My Man had another birthday last night. So I had to spoil him a little more than I usually do. For the Birthday menu, main entree` we had Spinach Stuffed pork loin. You take your pork loin cut it in half and fill it with this mixture~

 Ricotta cheese, seasoned stuffing mix, 1 box of frozen spinach defrosted. Mix well and spread on one half of pork loin cover with the other half just like you are making a sandwhich. Tie it up with kitchen string.

 put in a roaster with a little bit of water, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan. wrap with tin foil. Put in the oven starting at 425 for 25 min. then cut it down to 350 for 2 hours.

Add some of his favorite sides and you have a meal fit for a King!

Johnny loves anything with coffee in it. coffee ice cream, iced coffee drinks, but he doesn't drink coffee. {Strange I know} So I made him his favorite oatmeal fudge coffee bars for the birthday cake.

Even though he really don't like to celebrate birthdays that much anymore, the kids love it! They made gifts all day long, Paper air planes, cotton ball snow men, {they were trying to think cool thoughts} refridgerator magnets, homemade cards and hand drawn pictures. And we wrapped them up in comic strips because we had no wrapping paper. They thought it was a funny way to wrap gifts. Don't tell Johnny this, but I think deep down inside of that ruff exterior there is still a little birthday boy at heart! Any way they made him smile and they had big smiles all night long just showing him how much they love him!!!

Is the Grass Always Greener?

For all you homeschoolers out there, I just want to share a little something that's been on my mind. Something I learned a long time ago. And I thought of this while I was feeding the goats and ducks.

I know you all have heard that old saying "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." Well I'm here to tell you that's just not true.

The Goats have a great big fenced in area and they can eat to their hearts content. They are also allowed to come in the shed where the ducks are. I was picking green things for the ducks to nibble on when I was bombarded by all 5 goats. They wanted what I had in my hand and they were trying to knock me down to get it. Even though they had a smorgasboard of green things out back.

Do you see where I'm headed with this? We tend to do this with our Homeschool. We tend to think that "their kids" have it better, they are smarter, more talented And "their Mother" must be a wonderful, patient, loving teacher. And you want what they have in their hands.

GET OVER IT!!!!

Your kids are where they are suppose to be. God placed them with you. They have different talents. My Kids are not Einsteins by no means, but nor are they dummies. They have talents and skills that a lot of other kids don't have. Just like a lot of other kids have talents that mine don't have.

If there is one thing that you need to come to grips with, it would be this........Don't, or if you already are, quit comparing your family to someone else's. Stop trying to measure up to someone else's standards. It will surely damage the foundation of your homeschool And your Family!  It's God's standards that you have to live by. So if you want to compare, Go To HIM.  Read His Word. Come to think of it, I need to counsel with Him a little more than I do. Go to my other blog "Living for Today" to find out what I mean. http://www.homemakingmomma.blogspot.com/

By the way, the goats?.......I sent them out to pasture.

Cleaning out the Laundry Room

WARNING!  This is not for the already organized neat freaks out there!

Ok I know this is a no brainer for everyone, but I just had to share. I've been wanting to do this for a long, long time, but never got around to it. It got done only because I passed the torch of doing most of the laundry to my oldest daughter. And She finally had enough of being bombarded with mountains of clothes. Which we call Mt. Never Rest. Where I would just put up with it and grumble and moan while I was sorting out everyone's mess. Everyone always stayed clear when I was in there.

Are ya looking at the floor? No Clothes! Yay! Before, there were clothes piled every where. We set a new rule that everyone must bring their dirty laundry in and sort it out in each basket. This is to be done every day. Guess what, it works!! Now that my daughter is up in NY visiting her Grandparents and I'm left with doing the laundry alone, it has been such a blessing! Thank you Shiney! Your a doll !!!

And by the way I forgot to take meat out of the freezer last night. Goulash is my best friend on nights like this. I just pull out already cooked hamburger from the freezer. Defrost in the microwave, and there you have it! It's an easy one pot meal!

Quack, Quack!

Did I ever mention that we raise ducks, goats, and peacocks.....well we do. And we are having trouble with a predator getting our ducks. We once had 18 now we are down to seven. So this morning when I had discovered that we had lost another one, I stormed back home to go put my work boots on. Johnny said " what's the matter?" It's not gonna happen again! I said. We are not going to lose another duck. He smiles that sheepish grin, "and what are you going to do about it?" I'm gonna move them!

So off I went, on a mission to save the world from evil predators. Remember I said we had goats, and they are little trouble makers all their own. So the first thing I had to do was to baracade them out of the whole area using 3 large cinder blocks and a large board. Franny Nanny almost escaped, let me tell ya when you have those shiny little horns pointing at you the last thing you want to do is make her mad! Well that was done. All 5 goats locked out. And I was already panting.

The next thing I had to do was to separate the peacocks into the smaller pen, that wasn't so bad.

Now on to the ducks and geese. Did I mention geese, yes we have 3 geese. I wanna tell ya this was  not an easy mission. How to catch 7 duck and 3 geese all by myself?  I have to say I'm pretty proud of my self. This almost 40 year old heavy, over weight champion can waddle and quack with the best of them! After numerous times of running around in circles under rope that was tied across the pen {to keep birds of prey out.} coming close to clothes lining myself, being splattered by mud, tripping over the feeders all while the goats were peering in through the baracade bleeting and blatting at me. Or should I say Giggling and laughing at me. I finally caught every last duck!

Now onto the geese.....while I was chasing the ducks the geese had managed to get out in the larger fenced in area. Did ya ever wonder why that say a goose honks. Well I can verify, they do HONK! Ya have to picture me with my hair pulled back, my work boots on and carrying a very large stick to try and coral them back into their pen. So now I'm ready for what I think is going to be a big fight and they pretty much called it quits, they let me catch them. I was so relieved. While I was chasing the geese, burp, one of our miniature goats got into the goose pen. { I won't tell you what the other mini goat's name is, let's just say it's another bodily function.} I coaxed her out, that was pretty easy.

After all that I have to say I'm whooped and it was at least 9oo degrees in the shade.
Slim in 6 you are nothing compared to doing the Quack, quack ,waddle, waddle!

The lighter side of me

I decided to blog about my homemaking life. It's called Buckets and Bows for two reasons.
Reason #1: I make gift baskets and that's what I call them Buckets with Bows.

Reason #2: I am not afraid to carry a bucket and I've been known to get dressed up a time or two, but without the bow, I'm not a bow kind of girl.
So this blog will be about baking, homeschooling, creating, laughing, and just plain having fun!

So with that out of the way. Tonight I am making a deep dish pizza.

Pizza Dough:
7 cups flour
1 packet active dry yeast
1Tb. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. oil
2 cups warm water

In a large bowl add 2 cups of the flour, yeast, sugar, salt, oil, and water mix well. Then add the rest of the flour to the mixture. Stir until it forms into a ball. Then knead, not very much though you don't want to over work your dough. Let it rise for an hour in a bowl.

Then you take your dough and spread it out. Load up your toppings starting with sauce. Then do it all over again ending with the cheese. Fold your dough into the center, just like your making a bowl. Bake in the oven @ 425 for about 25 min.

I added a bowl of chopped fresh garden veggies tossed with Italian dressing. ooooo LaLa. We usaully have pizza on a Saturday night because my hubby grew up having it on that day. And it really upsets his apple cart when we have it on another night. Ha! I felt like disturbing his apple cart tonight, just for fun.