Foto Friday

Easy Peasy Cheesy Lasagna

This is my mom's recipe for lasagna. I made it the other night and thought I would share. It was super easy to make and super yummy. I added a box of frozen (thawed and drained) spinach to the meat mixture and made it with all lowfat cheeses and extra lean meat. It turned out great and my family loved it!

1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
2 cloves garlic
6 ounces tomato paste
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. pepper
1 tbsp. oregano
8 oz. lasagna noodles
1 lb. container of cottage cheese
3/4 lb. mozzarella cheese
3/4 lb. grated parm. cheese
8 oz. cheddar cheese

Cook ground beef in skillet. Drain liquid. Add garlic, tomato paste, (add 1 cup water)tomatoes, salt, pepper & oregano. Simmer on low heat for about 20-30 minutes.

Cook noodles in water and drain.

Add all cheese in a bowl and mix well.

Layer in pyrex dish starting with meat, noodles - then cheese.

Repeat.

Cook 45 minutes to 1 hour @ 350 degrees.


(I covered with foil and took off the last 15 min to let brown.)

So much to be thankful for!

We had such a fun and wonderful Christmas this year! My girls being 5 and almost 3 were so much fun to watch. They were so grateful and so sweet! Notice the blue stocking on the far right. It's an extra one we already had monogrammed and hung in anticipation of having our little guy home with us next year! Santa even left him a few things in it:) We spent Christmas Eve and all day Christmas visiting family in 3 different places. We are so blessed with a large family and lots and lots of little ones all around the same age. SO MUCH FUN!
Another cool thing that happened to us is that me and the girls were at the mall and Habitat for Humanity was there selling fundraiser raffle tickets for a playhouse. Me and Alyssa decided we would try our luck at winning and make a donation to support such an awesome organization. As we were getting ready to leave Alyssa says..."mom, I really want that playhouse." I told her let's pray that we will win, and just said the simple prayer..."Lord, it sure would be fun if we would win this. Amen" And we went on our merry way. Well, I was sitting home one night and went to check my phone and had a message from a lady saying..."I am calling on behalf of Habitat for Humnaity to let you know you won the little blue playhouse!" Oh my goodness...it was so exciting! I felt like God had given us a little Christmas present. We got it delivered to our house 2 days before Christmas and surprised our girls with it. When they saw it, Alyssa just froze her eyes big and smiled at me and asked..."did we win?" I was jumping up and down saying "yes, yes, we won!" And Aubrey ran to it right away yelling " my house, my house." It was such a nice blessing! I was thanking God to myself and I felt like He whispered to me...'Stace, if I can answer your prayers and provide for your girls a playhouse, I will surely answer your prayers and provide for this adoption and bring your son home.' So simple and so sweet! It was a great Christmas indeed!

(We hung blinking lights on it after we finally got it in the backyard :)

Merry Christmas!!!!

From our family to yours....wishing you the peace of Christ this Christmas! May we all be thankful for the sweet and life changing gift of Jesus, and the precious gift of family this season!

Baked French Toast recipe and some news

Here is a recipe I got from my friend Jenn. I made it this past weekend and it was delicious so I thought I would share. This would be a good Christmas morning breakfast! We sprinkled the tops of ours with pecans (before baking) and powdered sugar ( before serving)...YUMMY!
Also, I wanted to share that we got our fingerprint appointments in the mail!!!! I started crying when we got them...tears of joy of course! We are well on our way to the wait list!!!!

Ingredients
1 (1 pound) loaf French bread, cut diagonally in 1 inch slices 6 eggs 1 cup milk 1 1/2 cups half-and-half cream 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 3/4 cup butter 1 1/2 cups brown sugar 3 tablespoons light corn syrup
Directions
Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish. Arrange the slices of bread in the bottom. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, milk, cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Pour over bread slices, cover, and refrigerate overnight.
The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). In a small saucepan, combine butter, brown sugar and corn syrup; heat until bubbling. Pour over bread and egg mixture.
Bake in preheated oven, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

T-Shirts are in!!!!!

Hey Everyone,
We got more women's t shirts in (Brown)! We now have sizes S, M, L, and XL. The men's version(green) is still available as well. This is just in time for Christmas, so be sure and place your order quickly so it can make it to you on time!!!!!

It's Christmas time

Oh how I love Christmas! The cold crisp air, fuzzy warm socks, fireplace roaring,stockings hung, hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows with a peppermint stick dipped in it, snuggling with loved ones, elf on the shelf, Christmas movies 24/7 on the Hallmark channel, and driving around and looking at all the beautiful Christmas lights, while listening to Christmas songs! It makes my heart so happy! It makes me feel like a kid all over again! I could go on.... waking up Christmas morning and watching my children enjoy opening gifts, making a special breakfast afterwards and traveling here and there to spend time with all of our family and friends. All of this stuff is so great! But that's not what Christmas is all about, is it? Somewhere in the Santa shuffle, we tend to lose site of why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. The signs that people hang up that says "Keep Christ in Christmas." I have to embarrassingly confess that it kind of got on my nerves, because I saw how people that weren't followers of Jesus reacted to it when they saw it. I thought, to an unbeliever, this could give them an excuse to roll their eyes at us religious folk because we were being too religious about it. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the meaning of the saying. I just was concerned that to an unbeliever it would seem just "religious" and not really impactful to them. This was until something was said to me. I was at a Christmas parade, and someone said to me..."what does that mean...Keep Christ in Christmas?" I totally brushed it off, trying not to be too religious, and didn't really respond to it. The Lord brought immediate conviction. Oh my heart! I could feel that I had grieved God's heart. Christmas is about Him! It is our Lord and Savior's birthday. It is that moment in time that God came to earth in the form of a baby to live as we did. It is the absolute most miraculous thing that has ever happened on this earth! It's not just an inspiring story of something that happened long ago. It was the moment that changed our future. Without this moment we wouldn't have Easter and Jesus dying on the cross for our sins....the whole reason we will be able to spend eternity in Heaven. Because of this moment, I am able to be forgiven and live a changed life for His glory! Without this moment, Aaron and I wouldn't be adopting a baby from across the world. You see almost 11 years ago, God changed my life. He came into my heart and changed me. And in that moment, He gave me His heart! Thank goodness, because I can say that without Him, this heart of mine would not be a pretty one :)
So towards the end of the parade, Santa drove past on his float, and as I was enjoying watching Santa and all the kids getting so excited, (which is fun to watch) with God's grace and gentle conviction, I became reminded of how glorious Jesus is and just how much He deserves being acknowledged on the day of his birth! I wanted to be excited about Him, like these children were excited about Santa. He, also in His very gentle way showed me His heart for Christmas and for those that don't have what we get to experience on Christmas day. Living in America we are beyond blessed. It is a blessing to be able to enjoy all these things. We are blessed so that we can bless others that aren't as fortunate. We have to be God's hands and feet. He is relying on us to be that helping hand to someone in need. He needs us to grasp His heart so that we can show others how great He is, and how much He loves them and cares about their needs. It's not about us doing something nice for someone else, it's about us having the heart of a great a glorious God and it hurting so much to see others in need, that we go and be Christ to them! I just want to inspire my readers to keep Christ in Christmas this year. Worship Him and celebrate His first coming to Earth, and ask Him what He wants you to do this year for someone in need...whether that be for a child all across the other side of the world, or for a family that lives right down the road from you, go and be Jesus to them. Go impact one life! And while being Santa is fun, don't let him upstage our King!