Thank God I'm a Country Boy...

One of the ornaments for the giveaway

Save on Shaving Cream

Don’t you love the ease of shaving with your favorite shaving cream or lotion? Well, you can get that simple time saver for less!

When your shaving cream or lotion runs out, don’t replace it. Instead use olive oil! Olive oil is a bit thicker than other oils, but also provides essential moisture to your skin. Rub it on your leg and shave as usual. If this seems like the end of this frugal practice, hold on, because you will also save on your moisturizing lotion. When you use olive oil in place of shaving cream, you won’t need to moisturize your skin afterwards. DOUBLE SAVINGS!

This tip works with men as well, and since olive oil doesn’t have an odor, no purchasing of separate products. Now that is a simply frugal savings!

These are my thoughts.

Leslie Valeska

~Contributing Writer~

Leslie Valeska is the lucky wife of Thomas.  With children ranging in ages from 4-16, she has had a lot of time to learn and experience much of the fine art of homemaking. She is a writer, speaker, and vintage seamstress. For FREE daily tips and a FREE E-zine on simple and frugal living visit her blog Journey to Simplicity. Need a source of encouragement, inspiration, and support on your journey to Godly womanhood? Visit Simple Journey Ministries (she has a FREE E-zine too!) Of course, don’t forget to visit the Simple Journey Bookstore!

Absent...

My apologies for not being on as much. I've been having a mix of medical issues lately and thus have had quite a bit of insomnia.

I'm hoping this and other issues change in the upcoming months, as I work toward a healthier lifestyle. In the meantime, I'll be visiting when I can, but am focusing on one day at a time until I get my energy back.

Blessings to you all!

Exciting News and a giveaway for you.

Today's Tips --- Fruitcakes (start them now)

Today's Tips:

• If you plan to make fruitcakes for Christmas, you need to make them now, this week, because most fruitcakes have to "season" for at least a month and are even better if you can let them set longer.
  
  
• I know some of you would love to give them as gifts, but I suggest starting small until you have some success with them. The ingredients for fruitcakes can be expensive. If you buy a ton of ingredients and make several batches that subsequently flop you can be out a lot of money.
  
  
• Be sure to allow you fruitcake to age for at least a month before you put it in the freezer. Freezing stops the aging (or seasoning) process.
  
  
• Always bake at low temperatures: 250 - 300 degrees is best, but some recipes do go a little higher depending on their ingredients.
  
  
• Because they take so long to bake, line the pan with 1-3 layers of brown paper (you can use a brown paper sack) to prevent them from getting too brown and drying out. Make sure the paper comes up a couple of inches past the top of the pan.
  
  
• Fill the pan only 2/3 full with batter.
  
  
• To help prevent the fruitcake from drying out, place a pan of hot water on a lower rack in the oven while it is baking.
  
  
• To test whether it is done, insert a toothpick. If it comes out moist but not gooey, it is done.
  
  
• Let fruitcakes cool on a cooling rack before taking them out of the pan. When cool, dump them out of the pan and peel off the paper.
  
  
• You can bake in muffin pans or mini loaf pans, but be sure to adjust the baking time. It will be shorter.
  
  
• Don't store in a plastic container. The fruitcake will absorb old flavors that have been left behind in the plastic. Wrap in plastic wrap; then foil. Do not wrap with the foil touching the fruitcake because in some cases it can cause a chemical reaction.
  
  
• You can take any basic recipe and change what you put in it as far as the fruits and nuts are concerned. Just be sure you use the same amounts. For example if it calls for one cup of dried pineapple, you can replace it with mango as long as you use one cup.
  
  
• Always mix the fruit and nuts with some or all of the flour for the recipe before you put it in. This keeps all these things from sinking to the bottom. Do this with any recipe that calls for fruit or nuts.
  
  
• As with any recipe, read it from start to finish before you begin!
  

Today's Recipes:

Here are 4 fruitcake recipes that you might try. The first is not your usual fruitcake, but I thought it was perfect for our web site (Poor mans fruitcake ;-) ) and the second is a more traditional one. Number 3 is a no bake and the fourth, (No Fail fruitcake) I dedicate it to all the first timers.

Poor man's Fruitcake

1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten well
4 cups flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. each cloves, nutmeg and salt
1 1/2 cup applesauce
1 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. hot water
1 tsp. vanilla
16 oz. gum drops, no black ones
3 cups raisins
1 cup pecans

Preheat oven to 325°. Grease and line two 9x5 loaf pans with brown paper. Sift flour, and spices. Cut gum drops into fourths, and mix those, the raisins and nuts with part of flour mix. Cream together butter, sugars and eggs. Alternately, add the flour mix and applesauce. Add soda to hot water and mix it into the batter. Then add the vanilla. Add gumdrops, raisins, and nuts mixture. Bake for 2 hours. If you use a tube pan instead of loaf pans bake 30-40 minutes longer.

Christmas Wreath Fruitcake

(Don't forget that you can take out anything like the dates or fruits and replace them with equal amounts of something you prefer.)

1 1/2 cup raisins
1 cup red and green cherries
3/4 cup dates, pitted and chopped
3/4 cup candied pineapple, diced
1/2 cup coconut
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup butter
1 1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp.  lemon zest
4 eggs
2 tsp. lemon juice

Preheat oven to 300°. Mix first 8 ingredients. In separate bowl cream butter, sugar and add lemon zest, eggs and lemon juice. Mix into flour mixture. Bake for 2 hours.

No Bake Fruitcake

14 oz. sweetened condensed milk
2 cups raisins
2 cups mini marshmallows
2 cups candied pineapple chunks
2 cups dates, pitted and chopped
1 cup dried currants
1 cup walnuts, chopped
2 cups almonds, chopped
1/4 cup candies cherries
1/2 tsp. each nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, salt
4 cups graham cracker crumbs

Grease a 9x13 loaf pan. Mix everything well and pour into the pan. Cover and let stand in a cool place for 1 week to age.

Never Fail Fruitcake

This is a big recipe but you can easily half it. Using half, you can make 22 cupcakes but, if you do, only bake them for 40 minutes.

1 lb. candied cherries, chopped
1 lb. dates, pitted and chopped
1 lb. candied pineapple, chopped
1 lb. pecans, chopped
4 (8oz.) pkgs. coconut
3 Tbsp. flour
2 (14 oz.) cans of sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 300°. Grease two 9x13 pans and line with brown paper or parchment paper.  Mix everything very well and press into pans. Bake 1 1/2 hours. Cool and remove from pan.

This was all taken from my newsletter:

Living On A Dime

Plans for the day

I've been sick since last Thursday with some kind of crud.  I think I'm feeling good now.  So much has been neglected around here so I've got a busy day.

Do the dishes

Pay bills

Do a load of laundry

Make a batch of soap

Make some milk bath teas

Make some lotions

(got a large order from our Vo-Tech School - they're having a Holiday Open House in the horticulture dept and wanted Made in Oklahoma stuff to be in the shop!!!!, that'll be money for Christmas gifts!!)

Baby Steps

Christmas "get to know you"

1.) Wrapping paper or gift bags?  I have to say that every year I try and do something different in that department. One year I wrapped everything in brown mailing paper. Used raffia for ribbons, it was really pretty.

2.) Real tree or artificial? Most of the time it's artificial but this year I might get a real one.

3.) When do you put up the tree? A few days after Thanksgiving, around the weekend after.

4.)When do you take the tree down? The day after Christmas.

5.) Do you like eggnog? OH yes, but I can't have too much of it.

6.) Favorite gift recieved as a child? My Easy Bake Oven. It prepared me for my life as a mom, LOL.

7.)Hardest person to buy for? My husband, he is by far the hardest. He never tells me what he wants and then whatever I do get him, he always looks depressed.

8.)Easiest person to buy for? I would have to say that would be my wonderful daughter, Kristy. She loves anything that she didn't have to buy herself. LOL She loves old vintage things, so last year all she wanted was garage sale and thriftstore items. I had a blast shopping for her and she had a blast opening her gifts.

9.)Do you have a nativity scene? Yes a few small ones, but I would really love a nice one that I could set up on top of my entertainment center.

10.) Mail or e-mail christmas cards? Mail, with pretty Christmas stamps.

11.) Worst christmas gift you ever recieved? I would have to say a tread mill that my dh gave me one year. It was one of those manual ones. Lets just say it went back to the store. lol

12.) Favorite christmas movie? A Christmas Story. The "B B Gun Boy" as we call him, is  in my top five movies of all time.

13.) When do you start shopping for christmas? Early November, sometimes sooner.

14.) Have you ever recycled a christmas present? Probably so.

15.) Favorite thing to eat at christmas? Cornbread dressing and turkey.

16.) Lights on the tree?  Most years yes.

17.) Favorite christmas song? I'll Be Home for Christmas

18.) Travel at christmas or stay home? Always stay home, everyone comes to me.

19.) Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Yes I can.

20.) Angel on top of tree or star? Old fashion quilted star.

21.) Open presents christmas eve or morning?  Christmas Eve at the inlaws and Christmas morning at home.

22.) Most annoying thing about this time of year?  The crowds.

23.) Favorite thing about this time of year? Baking goodies and the cooler weather.

24.) Favorite ornament theme or color? When my dad died 26 years ago, I made an ornament with his picture in it, so that would have to be my favorite one.

25.) Favorite food for christmas dinner?  Same as #15.

26.) Favorite christmas tradition? Putting up the tree and drinking egg nog while listening to holiday music.

27.) What do you want for christmas this year. My family around me.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Abe Lincoln, Thanksgiving and Divine Intervention

Here's something I found and thought it would be a great lesson for our children with Thanksgiving coming... {KW<><}...

In the White House, Abe Lincoln was pacing the floor of his office.  He felt more troubeld than he had ever felt before.  The fate of the Union was at stake.  He felt as if he were almost alone in his concern for the outcome.  Friends and aides appeared to be almost panic-stricken.  Abe felt that this was the most critical hour of the [Civil] war, perhaps the most critical hour in the entire history of the United States.

In desperation he left his office, went into this room and locked the door.  There he fell before a chair.  With his head in his hands, he wept and prayed.

Now, more than at any other time in his life he turned to God.  In deep anguish he told God that he had done all he could.  He pleaded for help.  There was nothing more that he could do.  He must leave the result of the battle in the hands of God.  He now knew that if his country was to be saved, it would be only because God willed it.

It was a heartbreaking hour of prayer.

When he unlocked the door and came out of his room he felt that a great burden had suddenly been rolled off his shoulders.  His intense anxiety and torturing concern had been relieved.  He felt a quiet and calm trustfullness...

On his desk was a copy of the Thanksgiving Proclamation.  He had proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day of national Thanksgiving.  The nation had never before had such an annual Thanksgiving Day and he had decided that it was time the nation remembered in a special day what God had done.

Now he read slowly the proclamation:

We have been the recipients of the choistest bounties of heaven; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God.

We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

We have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

Tears slipped down his cheeks as he read these words, for he believed in them deeply.  It was because of this belief that he ordered the Treasury Department to engrave the words, In God We Trust, on American coins.

As he was sitting at his desk, thinking about these things, an aide rushed in and excitedly exclaimed, "There's good news from the battle at Gettysburg, Sir..."

But in spite of this great victory, his days were filled, dealing with generals, listening to the problems of many citizens, and handling endless administrative details.  For help he turned to God through the Bible and in prayer.

Almost daily now, he felt the need to go to his room to pray.  More and more, he became conscious of the work of God in the affairs of men.

Writing to a friend, Byron Sutherland, one day, he said,

I believe we are all agents and instruments of Divine Providence.  I hold myself in my present position and with the authority invested in me, as an instrument of Providence.  I am conscious every moment that all I am and all that I have are subject to the control of a higher power, and that power can use me or not use me in any manner and at any time as in His wisdom might be pleasing to Him.

One day, Mr. Chittenden, the register of the Treasury, asked him if he believed that God actually directed national affairs.  With a deep feeling of emotion, he replied,

The the Almighty does make use of human agencies, and directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the plainest statements of the Bible...I have many evidences of His direction, many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannont doubt that this power comes from above.

~~~Reprinted from Honest Abe by Harry J. Albus.

A Tarte of Beans.......From Vintage Recipes Yahoo Group