working-on-it wednesday {Thanksgiving Eve}

We are starting off Thanksgiving Eve with a bang! We are enjoying every buttery crumb of these this morning:

My mom introduced me to these amazing biscuits a few months ago. They are Mary B's homestyle biscuits and you can find them in the frozen section at Walmart. If you like southern biscuits, you will LOVE them. They are the best biscuits I've ever had. Seriously. Yum.

Thanksgiving Eve is what we consider the first "holiday" at our house, and I'm so excited about it! We are hosting lunch tomorrow at our house, so we have lots of prep going on all day long! :D

Here's my to-do list for today:

1. finish another blog article
2. exercise
3. run quick errands in town
4. prep kitchen for massive amounts of food {clear table, find pans, arrange ingredients in them to get ready to cook, clean out refrigerator} ;)
5. start cooking
6. do two special projects with the kiddos: car painting and decorating placemats of brown paper {while I'm cooking} I found these little cars at Wal-Mart for a dollar:

They were so eager to start in on painting their cars right away this morning:

After they get done with those, we plan to cut out squares for placemats and paint them for our guests.

Speaking of which, I'm hoping some of the people we invited to share our feast will come, but we haven't gotten a for-sure yes from any of my invites yet.

Here's what I'm making for Thanksgiving this year {thankfully less than normal- my sister-in-law is cooking up a bunch so I don't have to do it all! Sweet sister!}:

today:

• sugar-free no-bake cream cheese apple pie {I'm making this up for my dad. LOL. We'll see how it goes! luckily he's a good sport when it comes to experiments!}
• rice crispy treats
• low-fat vanilla pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing
• cheesy quinoa bake
• make cornbread for dressing tomorrow

tomorrow:

• turkey- {thaw today, remove disgusting inner parts that are probably still too frozen, inject with marinade}- cook early in the morning 
• dressing- prepare and bake
• rolls {I went with store bought frozen dough this year after learning my lesson! Every time I try to bake them from scratch on a holiday they fail. Too much else going on to babysit homemade rolls, I guess. :)}
• easy mac and cheese- not doing the baked version again this year. I'm going to make noodles and sauce and that is going to be that. :)}

This weekend I have a fun little giveaway package for you all! It will be perfect for Christmas presents and getting organized for next year. So keep your eyes out! I'm excited. :)

{And here's a peek of what I've been working on to show you next week! Eeek!}

What are you working on today? :)

thrifty thursday: hot Target deals {nov.15, 2012}

As much as I love thrifting, sometimes the thrift stores just can't beat my favorite clearance deals at Target. :D Target is one of my favorite places to find new Christmas gifts at bargain prices.

I found a few deals I'm in love with right now:

This adorable two-tier server is only $6.22 {perfect to give someone a Christmas fruit basket this year!}:

And I'm imagining cookies and mixes in this sweet medium vintage-style basket for just $4.02:

I so love this simple farmhouse caddy for $3.48:

It's perfect for holding silverware for the holidays and then for pencil/craft organization through the year. You could even fill it with two canned cokes, a movie, and a bag of popcorn or candy for a Christmas gift! :D

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of the Target debit card- you save 5% and get free shipping all the time at Target.com.  You can also check out this article to get a few more online creative gift ideas this year!

p.s. here is what my closet looked like from yesterday's project:

It needs a good dusting now, but it's clutter-free! Hallelujah! :D

working-on-it wednesday {office closet reorganization}

It seems like there are always two closets in my house that refuse to stay organized. {Before you get impressed, we only have three small closets in our 1895 home so that’s actually a very bad ratio of clean to awful. ;)}

Honestly, I would love to build a few more closet spaces into our rooms, because I love to stuff things behind closed doors and pretend they don’t exist. Just ask my mom about 1988. I was an expert junk stuffer, even when I was 6.

So it’s probably a good thing that we only have three small closets in the house. I can only shove so much stuff in them that way. It basically forces me to keep down the clutter. ;)

We have this office closet that is consistently messy, and here’s what it looks like right now:

There’s no room left to stuff anything, so we have to do something. ;)

The overflow might be even worse:

Luckily most of those are empty boxes, and the full boxes contain the second round of Mandy’s Closet {hopefully coming soon!}, so I don’t have to go through all of them. I just have to find a place to put them. ;)

And that’s what I’m working on this Wednesday. I hope it doesn’t take the entire day to do it, but it just might! I’m planning to post pictures later tonight of the finished closet {assuming it does get finished, ha!}.

What are you working on? Snap a pic and upload it to your comment if you want to join in having a little accountability for your project this week! {just click the tiny picture icon on the far bottom left to upload a pic from your computer!}

 

p.s. thank you, sweet friends, for all your kind words in response to this post yesterday. I love you guys so so much! Thank you for your encouragement!