With Heart From the Home

I often don't feel qualified to give advice on paying off debt since we're still in the process ourselves. We are, however, over a year into our journey and have used Ramsey principles for several years. Since the beginning of our journey has long passed, I feel like I have some good and helpful information to encourage someone to begin paying off debt. First of all, we couldn't start our journey well without a plan. The plan we put into place was pulled from Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. We were able to check out a copy of the book at our library. After reading Total Money Makeover cover to cover, the first 'baby step' was to get $1000 into an emergency savings fund. This amount obviously won't pay for a drastic emergency, but it's enough to tap into if you're actively paying off debt and something out of the ordinary comes along.  If you do have to pull anything out of your emergency savings fund while paying off debt, it's important to stop...

 I don’t mean for most of my posts to be recipes, but I do love that I am getting them all in one place! We thought we would put together a recipe book eventually to share with family so having them here means printing and putting them in a binder eventually. Most of the work is getting done! I know I've already shared a sugar cookie recipe, but today my daughter and I made dough and used some baking supplies her grandma sent her. She had been asking to make cookies and to use her unicorn and heart cookie cutters, so I decided to do that with her today.  The recipe I found came from  Life Love and Sugar and it worked out great! I will be revisiting this recipe with a great buttercream frosting come the holiday season. I did sneak in a few gingerbread men and snowflakes since my daughter wanted to play with the other cutters! I was happy that they only spread a slight bit. Definitely a winner to keep around.  See the recipe below! Ingredients: 1/2 cup  unsalted ...

 My mom asked me last week if I wanted her phone since she planned to upgrade to the next phone. I'm not technologically savvy by any means, but I've seen the photo quality on her 'old' phone and it's excellent. So I took her up on the offer and should have it this weekend. It's lit a fire under me to delete duplicate photos, videos that aren't meaningful or too long for their own good and sort through images on my phone and place them into separate folders. I've created folders for pregnancy/baby shower, newlyweds (AKA anything on my phone from before Leighton came along), Leighton Year 1 (which includes birth til first birthday), Leighton year 2 (After 1st til 2nd birthday party) and Leighton year 3 (after 2nd birthday til now). I also have a recipe folder and a crochet pattern folder. I was able to dwindle the number of photos on my phone down to 2000 which is a huge accomplish seeing as how it once was at 8000. I took the amount of videos down from a...

It is entirely appropriate to label this 'The Best' Banana Pudding Recipe. I made this once, decided to enter it into the cook off at our former church, won the best dessert award and it was requested at every get together post cook off. Even those who weren't partial to banana pudding said this changed their minds. The recipe originally came from Paula Deen and you can find it HERE . I use her recipe as a guide, but use Aldi items to make it. And I've altered the amounts of some ingredients. Find the recipe below! Ingredients: 1 12oz container frozen whipped topping thawed 1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk 1 8oz package cream cheese softened (make sure it's softened or there will be chunks in your pudding) 2 cups milk 1 5oz box instant French vanilla pudding mix (It's important to get vanilla and not banana!) 6 bananas, sliced. 1 box Nilla Wafers (or off brand if you shop at Aldi) Recipe: Line bottom of 13x9 dish (or foil dish) with half bag of Nilla Wafers a...

 A favorite in the Smith household is hamburger potato casserole. I found this super simple recipe by Eating On A Dime  when collecting recipes our family might like on Pinterest. We like to keep meals simple and then 'doctor them up' a bit to fit our taste or make them a bit more hearty so we have leftovers. This recipe is super simple, easy and very filling! Oh, and delicious. It does take a lot of time in the oven so I know when it's on the meal plan that I need to start making it at 3pm to have it in the oven by 3:30 to have it ready to go by 5:15 when my husband gets home from work. So if you do make this meal, just know it takes awhile but is well worth it! See the recipe below! Ingredients: 2 lbs ground beef 5 medium potatoes 1 onion, chopped 2 cans cream of mushroom 1 cup milk 1 cup cheddar cheese salt and pepper *Optional*  Baby Bella mushrooms, chopped Recipe: Brown hamburger with onion and drain, return to pan. Mix canned cream of mushroom with milk and add sal...

I love organizing my daughters clothing, shoes and accessories. I always have for the most part, but have gotten a bit better at knowing what works for us when it comes to storing clothing. When her clothes were tiny, we mostly folded them and hung long pajamas, dresses, etc. But as she's grown I've divided up clothing by type and quality. The most helpful thing I've implemented in organizing her things has been creating an 'every day' drawer of clothing. It holds tops, pants and short sleeve pajamas that she can wear daily at home or playing outside because they are stained or very worn. Her daddy really appreciates this because if he's the one getting her ready, he can pick a top and bottom without worry that he's putting her in church clothes or a nicer outfit.  Also, I store all outgrown clothing that I decided to not donate in storage bins in her closet. They are each labeled with the size or sizes that are inside, and if we have another baby girl in th...

 This simple energy bite recipe has been a staple in our weekly meal planning for a couple years now. It saves me from reaching for something less filling and unhealthy. My daughter loves them. I break them up in small pieces for her and she scoops them up with a spoon.  A few things I’ve learned when making them is make sure your PB/ honey are the exact amount listed! I’ve used less PB due to being short some and they don’t come together without the right amount of PB and Honey. Sure, you can still eat it but it takes away how simple it is to just grab and go! Also, mixing by hand has been the best method of mixing for me. I’ve tried a large spoon but to really bring the ingredients together I use my hands.  See recipe below! Recipe inspired by Gimme Some Oven . Ingredients: 1 cup old fashioned oats 1/2 cup creamy PB 1/2 cup ground flaxseed 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips 1/3 cup honey 1 tsp vanilla extract Recipe: Add all ingredients to large bowl. Mix by hand and pl...

 This recipe was inspired by The Recipe Critic . We love to try out recipes that look like something we'd like and then make changes over time to fit our taste a bit better. It's a common theme in the recipes I share here! We have this meal often and Josh typically makes it as it always turns out better when he fixes it for us. We have certain recipes each of us just make taste a bit better and this is one of his.  We like to make this meal over white rice (About 2 cups worth) and add roasted broccoli on the side. We preheat oven to 400 for the broccoli, cut it up and place it on a baking sheet. Add salt, pepper and garlic powder and let bake for 20 min. For the Korean Ground Beef recipe, see below! Ingredients: 1lb ground beef. 3 garlic cloves minced. 1/4 cup brown sugar. 1/4 cup soy sauce. 2 tsp sesame seed oil. 1/4 tsp ground ginger. 1/4 tsp pepper. Recipe: Brown Ground beef with garlic and drain. Return to pan. In a small bowl mix together brown sugar, sesame seed oil, soy...

 Early in parenting we learn that toddlers like simple, practical items in their play time. My daughter is no exception and would rather toss around asparagus stems than her plastic food while I cook to mimic what she's seeing. Sometimes we don't have spare food to toss in a bin for our kids but they need stimulation. I often complicate this instead of focusing on simple items that will do the trick.  I keep a bin of items that can promote independent play when it's not time for screen time and she's chomping at the bit to do something other than play with her usual toys. So here is the list of items I would suggest to keep in a bin to pull out for these times. Most are cheap and found at the Dollar Tree and some you might already have in your pantry or cupboard. 1.Brown Paper Sacks. You can find a large bulk of these at the dollar store and we've transformed many into holiday appropriate crafts. She also likes to color on them and place her favorite toys and figuri...

 I have a habit of finding really great baking recipes and raving over them & then forgetting to save the recipe. I've done this more times than I can count, and when I look for the one I used to remake them later on I'm lost and left to guess which one it was! I've had to try and try again many times in order to find what I once used and this recipe falls into that category. I first tried this sugar cookie recipe when we invited friends over to have a cookie decorating party. I knew I had things in my cupboard to create sugar cookies, I just wanted one that didn't require chilling time. So I tried this recipe and WOW they were amazing. Add funfetti icing on top & it's practically addicting.  But alas...I forgot to save it. So I made a couple other recipes and just knew they weren't it. Until I recently found it again and made another batch. One bite & I knew! This was it.  Recipe credit for these wonderful cookies goes to LifeLoveandSugar  She has r...

 Our sweet girl is still under the weather. She has chest cough and a bit of a runny nose, but her energy is good and no fever, so yay! We opted out of church service today for obvious reasons, and are missing our second membership class. We're not sure if we will be sent the material to look over or if we'll have to repeat the classes altogether, but we'll just do whatever is needed. Sweet girl has watched several episodes of Daniel Tiger today and then I could tell she was needing more stimulation. I set up 'animal parade' for her but the basket of craft supplies I had yet to put away caught her attention and once I did put them away a fit ensued. Josh saved the moment by asking her to make a smoothie with him and calling her 'sous chef'. She loves creative/realistic play time so when he put her little apron that my mom made on her and set out the supplies on her table she was so happy. I believe a few happy hops happened.  Leighton added bunches of spinac...

I discovered the ease of an enchilada stack a few years ago when I had all the ingredients for enchiladas but wanted something more simple. In the beginning I would use enchilada sauce and various other ingredients but have simplified it even more to cut cost and maintain the simplicity of the recipe! After trying several versions of the beef mixture, I've found one that stuck and I'm sharing it today. See our delicious and simple enchilada stack recipe below! First, I have to give Aldi a shoutout (as usual). I purchase their 3lb ground beef roll for $7.95 most weeks unless we're ahead on beef, but every now and then their 5lb beef roll will be on a special for that price. So I like to keep an eye out for that deal and freeze the extra for another week of meals. It cuts our cost way down when there isn't a need for much meat!  This particular week we have 3 ground beef meals on the plan, so I was able to freeze a good amount for another 1 or 2 meals next week. Now for t...