Yummy Meat Sauce on a Cold day!

This will be a first for me on this blog. I am just posting a recipe for you guys tonight! It's the best, yummiest
meat sauce EVER! I just really need to share it because it will make your life easier! My mom thinks her
sauce is the best but this is better! And since she does not read my blog she will never see this!
And if you tell her I said that I will most certainly deny it! And now am going to share this wondrous recipe with you! And you will thank me for making your day easier
AND for all the compliments you will get from your family!

First let me tell you what I love most about it. I was done cooking dinner at noon! I use the crock pot for this recipe which I love. And the house smelled wonderful on this cold, winter day as I went about cleaning after
the "festivus of un-decorating" that happened the 2 previous days (more on that later!).

Here is what my house looked like as I pulled in from driving my son to swim practice:

 It was just starting to snow here! As I write this it is completely white out!
On to the good stuff now!

Yummiest Meat Sauce:

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
7 garlic cloves
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
3 14-ounce cans of chopped or diced tomatoes (I prefer the fire roasted)
1 15 ounce can of tomato sauce
1/4 cup sugar
3 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon crushed red peppers
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Brown the beef with the onion and garlic in a skillet. add into crock pot with all the other ingredients.
Cook on low 8 hours or medium 5 hours.
Enjoy!

Here is what was left of my second bowl! Yup. I had two serving. Clearly low carb diet starts tomorrow!

I hope you try it and I hope you love it as much as I do.

My Crazed, Not-Perfectly-Planned Christmas Tree!

Soooooooo… I have really been enjoying all the holiday posts by other bloggers (read: real - "I write on my
blog consistently" - bloggers!). I love to see all the fun and creative ways they decorate their homes. All perfectly
color-coordinated and precisely planned. Right down to their amazing trees that are themed and amazingly
matched to the rooms they sit in!

Then we have my Christmas tree. Ah, yes. It is adorned with the most chaotic, tacky, odd selection of
ornaments you have ever seen! It pretty much looks like a blind and drunk orangutan decorated it!

We have a very wide variety of baubles adorning our tree:
Lets start with a couple of our many versions of Santa doing various things! Santa in a car:

And Santa riding a cat:

Santa napping in a chair. "Born to snooze"? Uh… okay…?

Not so strange. Lets move on to 13 years of hand made ornaments from my children. 

I am pretty sure this looks JUST like a snowflake… or a "F" project?! Pretty stingy with the glitter I'd say!

Gingerbread Man… with a tracheotomy?

 Teachers can fashion a handprint into ANYthing. Apparently...

 Keep in mind that I have 3 boys so I have all these lovely ornaments in sets of 3! My mother also decided I needed ornaments with pictures for each boy every Christmas. 3 boys + 16 Christmases = TOO MANY! Uncle!

 And onward to randomness - a football helmet ornament for the hubs:

 And I am sure you all have a Christmas whale on your tree! Right?

  Pink elephants? Actually this one is a personal favorite!

And Christmas Dinosaurs:

And ornaments for the dogs of course (of course!).

That just a whole lotta' everything on that tree, right? Sadly it represents our family SO well I just can't change a thing. It's really just best viewed from afar though...

Hope you all had a great holiday! Happy New Year!

Christmas Decorating Morphing Out of Control

Well, I do it every year. I say I am going to keep it all simple. It starts out that way. I do just the mantle.
Then the tree. And the staircase. Then the buffet and the tree in the kitchen. That is plenty I tell myself!
Less is more! Sparse is sophisticated. Then I start adding. And adding. Then our holiday party is looming.
Then I panic and really get things going! I just can't help myself.

I will, of course, be cursing myself on January 1 when I just want it all down and put away!

Lets just get right into some pictures…

 We have a LOT of ornaments on our tree. They don't match. There is no fabulous, perfectly planned color scheme
like those other "professional" bloggers do. We have pretty, tacky, homemade, hand-me-down, photos,
and just plain odd… There is actually a Christmas spiderweb ornament in there somewhere!
I will do a separate post on them! Some are just hideous but I keep putting them on year after year
because, well... sadly, it really represents our family well!

View from the hall (yup, I did not even bother to move the dog beds!)

I changed the colors in the family room last summer so I made a new wreath to incorporate the blue.
Now I just need to bring the new colors into the mantle as well!

 Here is the sign I printed out on old book pages last year.

 I made a bunch of these cute christmas tree carting cars after seeing them at ALL the barn sales! So cute!

 I have a lot of random Santa figurines I have been gifted over the years. They just get stuck in among
my usual accessories on shelves and wherever I feel like putting them!

 Then there is the fun of trying to disguise the DirecTv box. Those things are so a-nnoy-ing!

 I am still working on these Ball jar votives to put outside on the walkway during my party...

And more of my boys old matchbox cars with trees...

 Things get really out of hand in the dining room. I really LOVE decorating my buffet!

 Is that too much? It might be to much…?

 Aren't those trees the cutest!? I bought those at the Chicks Picks sale. If you live in the Northern VA area
you really have to check out her sales. Hillary sells the cutest jewelry, accessories and home decor
out of her house once a month! It is crazy the amount of stuff she crams in there!

Birch wood, greens and old wine bottles! Re-use, re-use, re-use!

Thant's it for now!

Once I get everything finished and the house cleaned up I will do a nice cohesive post room to room!
Until then, well… I have just a few more things I need to do! Really. Just one or two...

Happy decorating to you!