Caring for My Chaos

Happy Thanksgiving from Caring for my Chaos! I hope all of you are full of turkey and surrounded by your loved ones tonight!

It's November 1!!! You know what that means, right? It's officially the holiday season! This is my hands down favorite time of the year. I live for Christmas. I have been scouring Goodwills all year for Christmas decorations, I have my Pinterest full of recipe ideas. I am that person. I have no shame in it either. I just hung up my Thanksgiving flag outside and I got all the fixins from the dollar store to do my holiday wreath. I think Hubby is sick of me coming up with present ideas already. Who's with me on this? Do you wait all year for November 1? When do you put your decorations up? We usually wait until the Friday after Thanksgiving but some years, I can't wait that long. And with our new house this year, I'll get to go all out like I wanted to last year but didn't have time. Note to self, never move at Thanksgiving again. I would not recommend it to anyone. I have so many plans this year. I can't wait!!!

I hope each and every one of you have an absolutely fabulous Thanksgiving and that you eat your weight in wonderful food! We will be bouncing from house to house tomorrow so I am sending my greetings today! Hug all your loved ones close and be thankful for everything that God has blessed us with. Because it is an enormous amount of blessings! Be safe and have a wonderful day!

I know I've posted this recipe before, but with Thanksgiving coming up, I figured it would be good to have a refresher.

With all the moving craziness, I actually almost forgot that we have to plan for Thanksgiving! And we have so much to be thankful for!

I don't know about you, but the holidays are hectic. Yes, it is my favorite time of the year, but for us moms, it's crazy! Well, SC Johnson wants to help you clean up all those messes that we know are coming! If you go here and take  their Thanksgiving quiz to see what kind of Thanksgiving your family may have, you can also sign up for their newsletter and get a chance to win a giftcard! Plus, you can download coupons and if you purchase 20$ of SC Johnson products and upload your receipt, you will receive a 5$ MasterCard reward card! Who doesn't like that?

I know Thanksgiving is tomorrow, but my baking day is today and my brother got into town last night, so with all the activities, I figured I would tell everyone Happy Thanksgiving now and then you won't hear from me until Friday! I hope everyone has a wonderful day with their families and everyone keep safe. I am so thankful for my readers and that you keep coming back to my little spot on the internet! Thank you so much! Enjoy your turkey!

Since I just finished up shopping for Thanksgiving dinner, I figured I would share what we are going to be having!

Update: I wanted to let you know this is NOT a foolproof recipe. I learned that all chocolate chips are not created equal and that you can NOT substitute the milk chocolate kind for the semi sweet in this. You MUST use the semi sweet. I don't know why, but I used the milk chocolate and it didn't firm up. It was just chocolate blobs. It was terrible. It tasted good, but you couldn't really hold it. So, lesson learned.  A little history here. I can not make fudge. I have tried. I had 1 successful attempt about 15 years ago back at the beginning of my marriage. Since then, no matter what I did, it would not set up. We would have thick chocolate syrup to eat and that's it. But I was trying to make fudge the old fashioned way by cooking it and getting it to the right temperature, etc. Well, my mom in law asked for fudge this year. I told her again how I can't make it and she said that was ok, it was just a thought. Well, I was determined. So, I started looking onlin...

Or is Thanksgiving exhausting?

I'm thankful for many things, as always, my children, our health, our God, etc, but I think this year I am most thankful for this man. I've said it before and I'm sure you all are sick of hearing about it, but he is amazing! This year has been hard since he took his new job and we are trying to get used to having him gone more. But, to know that he is sacrificing to make sure that his family has everything that we need means so much to me. He is such a good provider for our family and a playful, loving father and wonderful husband. And I really don't know how I got so lucky, especially to find him so early in life. (We've been together since we were in high school.) So, honey, today I'm thankful the most for you! I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and is safe. Enjoy your families and give everyone an extra hug today!

This may not look like much, but in a few hours, this will be a pumpkin pie, an apple pie and sugar cookies!

So, my sister in law and I were coordinating our menu for Thanksgiving yesterday. I love to bake, I prefer it to cooking actually, so I was figuring out desserts.

I was looking for new recipes for the leftovers since we have enough to feed about 30 people and I came across this recipe from  Oprah.com. I think the only thing I would do is omit the green beans though. The rest sounds really good. I know any other kind of hash my family just loves. And then I'll use the rest of the turkey for soup! Ingredients 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil 1 small red onion, chopped 1 1/2 cups roast turkey, finely chopped 1 cup cooked string beans, cut into 1/4" pieces 3 cups mashed potatoes 1/4 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper Fresh parsley (to garnish) Directions Active time: 20 minutes Total time: 30 minutes In a nonstick skillet, heat 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil over medium heat. Add red onion and cook until soft, about 4 minutes. Transfer to a bowl with roast turkey, string beans and mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper and form mixture into 8 patties. Heat 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Cook patties until golden, flipping onc...

This was my most prized purchase of the day. My sister in law and I went shopping Thanksgiving night with Doodle and then we got up and went shopping at 6 am on Friday. We had just left Toys R Us and I had looked at this and was shocked at the 45$ tag on it. We went across the parking lot to Ollie's and were just kind of perusing the store when I spotted it and I did the happy dance in the store because it was only 20$! If you don't know what Ollie's is, it's a discount closeout store where they have stuff from other stores that they got rid of and usually the prices there are wonderful! Even the cashier laughed at me because I was so excited! I was really impressed with Black Friday this year. Last year, I didn't find hardly anything, but this year I did. I would list all of the finds, but my teenage daughters may sneak a peek so I am just listing the best ones I got for Bubby who doesn't read this blog! At Target, my sister in law got one of the comforters ...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday and everyone eats till they pop! I will be quiet tomorrow since we are going to be enjoying our family. So I wanted to make sure to wish everyone Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for? This year I have a new thing to add to the list of things I am-my readers! When I started this blog, I didn't think anyone would want to read my ramblings but this blog has been growing in leaps and bounds and I have to say thank you to all of you! So go enjoy your families, your turkeys and your pies! I will be back Friday with news of what I snatch up! I want to hear what you all grab on Black Friday too!

While planning the Thanksgiving dinner, me and my sister in law were talking desserts. We take our desserts seriously. Maybe not as seriously as the turkey, but close. Well, instead of 2 pies I asked if she would like pound cake because I know my kids love it. She about lost it. I didn't realize how much people love pound cake. I hadn't made one, but I have made just about every other kind of cake with success, so I made it yesterday. I made pound cake, a tea ring, (even though this stupid storm is keeping my brother in NY! Very sad about that.) and fudge! (Which I will post about in a minute.) Today is pie and cheese ball. But the pound cake. I used Paula Deen's recipe, because since it is a high butter cake, who better to get the recipe from than the Butter Queen? I love all her recipes. I found this one on Food Network and it came out beautifully! Ingredients 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, plus more for pan 1/2 cup vegetable shortening 3 cups sugar 5...

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Netflix for SocialSpark . All opinions are 100% mine. For those who don't know, Netflix is a movie service. You sign up with them and they have a variety of plans that you can choose from. You can choose the streaming only, movies in the mail only, or you can have both. They have different prices to fit every budget. You get to watch your favorite movies where and when you want. You can be watching on an Ipad in the kitchen while you're cooking! And the kids could be in the living room at the same time watching a movie. It's a great service for families! We love their original series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black but we also like catching up on our other favorites like the Walking Dead. They have great kids' movies too. Bubby loves watching The Lorax and The Hunger Games. I especially love watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while I'm baking Christmas cookies! That movie is ...

So, today I am making up my grocery list and it has all the Thanksgiving goodies on it! We are having dinner at my in laws house and then going for dessert at my dad's. So I don't have to cook the entire dinner, which is nice. My sister in law is cooking sides and a dessert and my mom in law is making some stuff. So here's what I am making- turkey (my favorite part of the entire dinner!), deviled eggs (you can read the story behind those here.), pumpkin pie, and we decided on a pound cake because Doodle is addicted to it! I am thinking of doing mashed potatoes too. And I know we need to get green beans because my niece is addicted to those! And I found an easy fudge recipe that I may make an attempt at for my mother in law. I have tried to make fudge in the past with recipes where you cook it in a double boiler and it just never turns out good. For some reason, it never hardens. But the easy recipe I found on Very Best Baking you only have to melt the chocolate chips, no...

Ahhh, my favorite time of the year. The leaves are all officially colored, the weather is getting cooler, and now that we are through Doodle's birthday and Halloween, my thoughts can officially turn to decorating and getting ready for Christmas! I love cooking for Thanksgiving. Especially PIE! We always put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving after I get home from shopping. And then I continually add decorations all through until I take it down! I just haven't convinced Hubby to decorate outside with lights. I would do it myself but I would need help with the electricity part of it. So I just decorate with regular decorations. I will be posting more recipes and decorating ideas. Get ready! I'm so excited!