Our holiday

Once again it has been several busy weeks since I lasted blogged anything. The month was filled with work, occupational therapy appointments, and lots of holiday fun and shopping. Christmas expenses were kept to a reasonable minimum. Our tradition has been three gifts per person. My gentleman friend and I share the expense and this year we chose to keep gifts to under $30 per gift. The only gift we purchased that exceeded this limit was one that was given to both my son and daughterinlaw so in essence it met our limit goal. Decorations were ones I have used for years, the tree was an expense since we cut down our own but well worth it and budgeted for. This year we did not do Christmas cards but agreed that next year we will go back to this tradition and split the cost.
Food expenses were worked into the shopping trip I made at the beginning of December and I have been able to avoid any further grocery store shopping since that trip. I baked homemade cookies
   and we have a ton leftover so treats for the next couple of weeks are taken care of. I even made a holiday tin full of santa hat pretzels as a gift for my youngest son's girlfriend's parents.

My contribution to Christmas Day dinner was a 23 lb. turkey gifted to me at Thanksgiving by my single neighbor who does not cook and the 18 lb whole bone in ham he received at Christmas time from his company. We sent him two large plates of food from our dinner and I will send over soup that I will make from the turkey carcass and the ham bone.

The day after the holiday I divided up the turkey carcass and half went into a big pot with carrots, onion, garlic , celery, and black pepper


 which after I made a batch of homemade noodles became a big pot of Turkey-Noodle soup.  The remainder of the carcass I wrapped up and put in the freezer along with ham bone from yesterday's ham. I also brought home a sizeable baggie of ham that I will dice up and add to Ham and Cheese Bowtie casserole for Thursday night's dinner.  We will end up with several dinners and probably at least one or two lunches from these leftovers! A wonderful holiday and lots of frugal leftovers to extend our food budget, so a gift to myself!