Thanksgiving Preparations

Hi all, I have got to get better about posting so sorry:)
So my Thanksgiving preparations are underway as well as I am sure many of yours are. A friend at church needed someone to care for her 2 boys this week as well so I am squeezing in preparations to my afternoons as they get here at 4:45am and stay till 2:30-3 today I am going to make either my bread rolls or my pies maybe both. The boys are good kids however I need to closely supervise the interactions to maintain age appropriateness and appropriateness for my house so some of my time I would normally work into cleaning and baking during our mornings is taken by supervision. I think I probably shelter my kiddos but I am ok with that! Im the mom they are mine and I CAN~! LOL.... ya know what I mean!
Also we were fully going to do school Mon-Wed however we are going to just do a thanksgiving craft and study the origin of thanksgiving and Pilgrims today and tomorrow :)

My menu for the big day is:
Roast Turkey (got a 24 lb turkey yesterday hope its defrosted by thursday morn)
Stuffing maybe with apples in it havent decided yet
Sweet Potatoes with brown sugar and a splash of oj on them before baking
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Homemade Cranberry sauce
Homemade rolls( I hope) I do have some storebought backups if I run low on time
Pumpking Pie with homemade whip cream
Apple pie with the same
Strawberry jello with banana's in it (this is abnormal for my menu but my fathers favorite and since my mother father and grandfather are joining us I will ablige my dad:)

Going to make appetizer plate that consists of homemade feta cheese balls with sundried tomatoes and greek seasoning with Cracker variations
Celery with spray cheese(i know its not good for ya but I love it and so do my parents lol)
Crackers
Carrot sticks
Artichoke Dip bread bowl with baquette slices

Well thats my Menu plan and today I start some of the prepping as well as on todays to do list is :
all laundry fold put away
Kitchen cleanup
Make bread
Sweep and mop
Vacuum living room and dining area
Dust

Tomorrow's to do list:
Kids room Straighten up, Dust, change sheets, Vacuum (all together make pretty for grandparents:)
Pick up my room and vacuum
Wipe up bathrooms ( I do a cleaning on these every couple days so they dont take long at all)
Make the appetizer plates up and make cheese balls do whatever baking I dont get to today I may make the potatoes and put in microwaveable dishes to reheat on thursday thinking I may not have the oven to work with since it will be full of turkey


Thursday:
Get up early get Turkey Prepped Make stuffing get in oven
final cleanups wipedowns before parents arrive set out appetizers and enjoy the day with all the family:)

Have a blessed day and I will take pics of my pies and such as I make them and try to post them online:)

Where have I been?

I have been not on the bloggy sphere as my computer was just running so slowly that we couldnt do anything! In a big surprise hubby had been going to give me a new one for Christmas so he gave it to me early. I had a hint of it when he really didnt want me to get a new one as he had said we may get a new one this year but then was really adamant about me not going and buying one on my own lol. This all started last week when I was trying to post my videos of my bread and it wouldnt upload the last videos as my hard drive was full...for those out there with computer knowledge ( I dont have much but a little lol) I had a 2006 that only had 80GB of total hard drive space between the two drives the new one is a Gateway with 500GB hard drive and a Duo processor. I have plenty of space for all my photos, videos and my bible study stuff which I discovered was hogging 19GB of space lol..i really need to watch the videos and study what I have downloaded so I can decide to keep or discard lol.. need more hours in my day So for today's post I have posted the bread I made last week and now it is time to make more bread today lol.
Here is my recipe for my whole wheat yeast bread with oatmeal the original recipe is for 6 loaves which my mixer just cant do all at once so if I cut it in half and that actually makes 2 of my big loaves since I have bigger than usual bread pans so this recipe makes 2 big loaves in 10X4 pans or 3 of a regular loaf pans
1/4 cup warm water
1.5 packs of yeast that are .25 of an ounce or if you have a jar of yeast like I do then i go a bit over a .25 oz on my measuring spoon
1/8 cup wheat flour
1/2 Tablespoon white sugar
1 cup oatmeal quick or regular (I use regular)
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/4 cups warm water
3/4 tablespoon salt ( I use sea salt)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup unsalted sweet cream butter (very soft)
5 cups white flour
2 tablespoons or a bit more Flaxseed Meal (Optional)
1-2 Tablespoons of Pure Maple Syrup (optional)

In your mixing bowlstir together the first 4 ingredients let grow for about 5 min
while growing I measure out my other ingredients and chop my oatmeal to a finer consistency Does not need to be perfectly fine just chopped to your liking
Add oatmeal, Water, whole wheat flour, salt, brown sugar, softened butter to mixer/ or mixing bowl stir together well
begin adding white flour 1 cup at a time and completely mixing in dough will be slightly sticky when finished if using a Kitchen aid mixer set timer for 2 min and let it kneed this mixture together for 2 min
Place dough into oiled bowl (I use butter on my bowl and my bread pans) turn to coat cover with clean cloth place in warm spot
let rise 1 hour
Punch down, kneed for a min or 2 by hand divide into 2-3 balls kneed by hand a couple min then form ball place into bread pan punch down into pan then flip to coat other side and leave ugly side down Let rise in warm place again for 1 hour covered with clean cloth
When fully Risen bake at 350 degrees F ( 175C) for about 35 min until tops are golden brown let cool for 10 min in pans then turn out onto wire cooling rack Let cool completely before slicing.
I place these loaves in large 2 gal ziploc bags with a paper towel in the bag to absorb the small amount of sweating they produce the first night when they are fresh,.
Enjoy:)

UPDATE: YOU MAY NEED TO LET IT RISE LONGER DEPENDING ON THE TEMP OF YOUR HOUSE MY HOUSE WAS COOL YESTERDAY AND I HAD TO LET IT RISE ON THE SECOND RISE FOR ALMOST 2 HOURS I PUT IT ON TOP OF THE OVEN IN THE PANS WITH A TOWEL UNDER THE PANS SO THE BOTTOM DOESNT GET TOO HOT AND I COVER LIGHTLY AND HAVE THE OVEN ON TO KEEP THE AREA AND AIR AROUND THE BREAD WARM WHEN YOU CAN PUSH YOUR FINGER IN AND IT DOESNT SPRING BACK OR FILL IN THE SPOT IT IS RISEN...

Do you have a scheduled week?

Yesterday I accomplished much of what I set out to do! It was awesome. Homeschool actually got put mostly on hold however as Little Prince had been sick since last thursday it started out mild then hit hard over the weekend Sunday and Yesterday being the worst he was feeling better last night so hopefully we can get back on track today with schooling. I have our homeschool block time planned out and chores worked into the schedule so hopefully we can have another productive day around here. Today I have much to do in the kitchen it is Bread making day and I may post a video. I have to sit down and do a schedule for Wednesdays and Thursdays as these 2 days I leave the house for scheduled things so I need to revamp the schedule to fit these days. So nothing much exciting here when I get my schedules actually running smoothly for more than one day in a row lol, I will share them with you all as I know I love to see other mom's schedules...why is that?? I think we all enjoy seeing other moms days to glean ideas maybe I know thats why I enjoy it I like to see how others plan out their days and sometimes I have gleaned the best ideas from others. Thats what Titus 2 is all about right teaching other women from our examples:) I am far from being a mentor type I have a long way to go but I do hope that I can encourage other moms/wives along my journey to be the women God planned for them. Well I am off Have a blessed day and I will post my bread hopefully later today along with photos of the lapbooks I talked about last week:)

Do you have a schedule already in place? Post a link to your schedule page so I can share on here if you like:) God Bless


UPDATE: Little Prince just woke up and he is feeling just awful this morning still so we will have to see how today goes Thank the Lord he is not running a fever just all congested and feeling crummy. Light day again today for schooling probably he just cant focus on retention if he feels crummy. Please pray he will fully recover soon And the rest of us will not get what he has had.

What a great weekend

Today will be spent recovering from a very long but wonderful weekend:) Saturday my husband was blessed while deer hunting so we will have meat this winter! Praise the Lord! Then I went to set up for the Luau which I was Coordinating at our Church yesterday after service We set up on Saturday afternoon. Next on Saturday evening we went out hunting again in an attempt to fill my tag but no such luck:( thats ok though I feel fortunate to get one in the family so that will be a blessing. I would have liked to have gotten a Buck finally this year but Maybe during Late season. Then yesterday I had to be at the church at 6:45 to finish preparations for the Luau. We had some wonderful visitors for the day and I hope they felt the Lord's amazing Love while they visited. We played some fun games and had a whole church volleyball turney where the adults and everyone took on the High School Youth Group What fun we had! Then everyone pitched in for cleanup and we were done in I think 45 min! That was amazing I keep saying we should rotate houses and clean as a team LOL!
The only sad event over the weekend is we are fairly sure my little princess's kitten has dissappeared which she is very saddened by. Ruby has been missing for 3 days she has done this once before and came back in 2 days so pleasse pray with us that Ruby will return today or tomorrow as it is breaking my heart! We birthed the kittens here and they are 6 months old. I was apparently very attached as well as I seem to keep tearing up at the thought of her being gone:( I keep praying she will return everytime I open the front door.
Today I am going to make a bread video after I clean the kitchen over the weekend with all the activity we let the kitchen duty go and boy can I tell today. So this morning I will whip it back into shape then get some school work done then get to baking and Laundry. I hope to get the video up this evening however may be morning we shall see how the day goes. Until later my friends:) Have a blessed day!