I’m sure you have all seen all of the disturbing stuff coming out about human sex trafficking. Y’all, it shakes me to my core. It is sickening and just weighs on my heart more than I can ever begin to write.
I almost wish I didn’t know. I almost wish I could bury my head and pretend like this weren’t a real thing. But it is. I have learned so much about what is going on under our very noses and I can’t unlearn it.
So, I was soooo excited when my friend Ashley at Savvi Sister’s Closet sent me this awesome shirt to try this month!
This shirt is so super buttery soft, is long enough to cover my bootie when I wear leggings, and is raising money to stop this madness! What do y’all think? I think it is so cute and so powerful all at the same time. Win, win!
Every bit of the proceeds for the sale of these shirts is being given to Operation Underground Railroad in a huge effort to save these children. The shirt is a great price for a great cause! Y’all go order one ASAP!
I’ll past the description and additional photos below so you can check it out yourself!
In efforts to help to our part to end human trafficking, ALL profit directly from these tees are being donated directly to Operation Underground Railroad.
ALL TEES are professionally screen printed. Please allow 10-12 business days for printing and processing.
🔸️To order comment with email, size, ship or porch pick-up (Vilonia, AR).🔸️
My sweet hubby loves all things lemon! I whipped these cookies up last week and he and the kiddos went nuts over them! They’re delicious with or without the lemon frosting!
Delicious!
For the Cookies:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 stick of salted butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 egg
Zest of 1 lemon
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Lemon essential oil (I dipped a toothpick in the oil and swirled into batter and that was enough) or you can use 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract
For the icing:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line baking sheets with parchment paper or cookie paper.
In stand mixer (I use one like this), beat softened butter and cream cheese for about a minute or until well incorporated and creamy.
Add sugar and continue mixing until it gets fluffy. Usually after 2-3 minutes.
Add in egg and lemon zest.
Stir baking powder and flour together and slowly add to mixer.
Add lemon juice.
Dip a toothpick into lemon essential oil and swirl into batter, or if you prefer, use 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract.
Mix until well blended.
Using a small cookie scoop, drop dough onto cookie sheets, leaving plenty of room between cookies.
Spray a measuring cup with cooking spray and dip into sugar, as shown, and gently press cookies to flatten the tops.
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Cool cookies on wire racks.
While cookies are cooling, mix together with a whisk or fork the powdered sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. Drizzle over cooled cookies.
This is a light and cold dessert that is perfect for those hot summer days! Whip this up ahead of time for summer parties, weekend dinners, or just because! You can make this pie in the graham cracker crust described below, or you can use my Mamaw’s Pie Crust recipe here. Both are perfect and I have made this both ways, depending on my mood!
Ingredients:
For the crust:
1 sleeve graham crackers
1 stick of butter, melted
3 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
For the filling:
1 quart fresh strawberries, sliced
1 small package strawberry gelatin
1 small package vanilla pudding and pie filling
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 cups water
8 ounces whipped topping
Instructions:
For the crust, combine all dry ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse until fine crumbs. Add in melted butter and pulse until combined.
Dump into pie plate and use hands or a greased measuring cup to press into the bottom and up the sides of a glass pie plate. (Affiliate link: if you purchase items from these links, I will receive a small portion of the sale at no additional cost to you! Thank you for supporting my blog!)
Place in refrigerator to cool while prepping the pie filling.
Slice fresh strawberries and line graham cracker crust sides and bottom as shown.
Yum!
Place crust with berries back in refrigerator.
In medium sauce pan, whisk together gelatin, pudding, lemon juice and water until it begins to thicken.
Pie filling mixture
Set aside and allow filling mixture to totally cool.
Pour mixture over berries and refrigerate until the filling begins to set up.
Cover in cool whip and garnish with additional fresh berries or however you choose!
Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 13×9 glass baking pan. (This is the one I have.)
Slice strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and refrigerate.
Combine cake mix, gelatin, oil, water and eggs until well mixed and pour into greased pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Strawberry cake is baking!
While cake is baking, prepare the lemonade cream cheese filling by beating cream cheese in a bowl alone for 2-3 minutes or until creamy, then add the lemonade concentrate until fully combined.
In a separate bowl, mix evaporated milk and lemon pudding until fully incorporated, and then add pudding mixture into cream cheese mixture.
Lemonade Cream Cheese filling!
Scrape a handful of the cream cheese lemonade mix into a ziplock bag, and cut a small hole in the corner in order to pipe into the cake.
When the cake is done, remove from oven and immediately poke holes with a wooden spoon.
Holes have been poked!
Once the cake has fully cooled, use the ziplock filled with cream filling and fill each hole as shown.
Filling the holes!
Spoon remaining cream cheese mixture over top of the cake and spread. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
Top cream cheese layer with sliced strawberries.
Spread cool whip over the top of the strawberry layer. If desired, use strawberry slices, lemon slices, or garnishes of your choosing.
I love my chickens! I already have five human children, but my little hens are like my five feathered children!
Each of my chickens are different colors, sizes, and most definitely different personalities! I love interacting with them and watching how they interact with one another. Some are bossy, some are laid back, and one is a loner. She loves to be off to herself when the others all tend to stay together.
Aside from personality differences and appearance differences, my hens are also very different in their egg laying habits.
Lucy, our Rhode Island Red, is a “mother hen”. She lays an egg at the same time every single day like clockwork. She also lays on everyone else’s eggs! She was our first hen to lay and she seems to tend to everyone else’s eggs as well.
Our other hens don’t lay quite as often. We have 5 hens, but we average 3-4 eggs a day. That’s usually about 2 dozen a week! That’s a lot of eggs, even for a family of our size.
In order to keep up with the eggs, I date my cartons on the days that I begin filling them, and I fill them from left to right so we know which eggs to use first. I have made a little chart that I’ll include to help you know the shelf life of your fresh eggs!
Egg Storage Guidelines
Let me know what you think. Is the chart helpful? Is there other information you could use to help keep up with your fresh eggs? Comment below and let me know how I can help!
I’ve been doing some deep cleaning this week and I want to share with you my top 5 cleaning hacks that really work and save time and effort!
My schedule is always full of appointments and kids’ activities and running here, there and everywhere, but my sanity can’t handle a dirty house! So, over the years I have created a schedule of deep cleaning tasks that I spread around throughout the month and do one or two things at a time. This keeps the chores done without taking an entire day to do everything! Let’s be honest. If cleaning my house took an entire day, the house would never be clean and my family would have to check me into the loony bin!
Here are my favorite tips to keep things cleaner longer!
1. Baseboards:
I clean my baseboards with this lavender scented cleaner on a microfiber cloth. Once they’re dry, I wipe with a dryer sheet to keep them cleaner longer! The dryer sheet keeps dust from sticking to the surface and it buys me more time between cleanings! (This trick also works wonders on wood blinds!)
This stuff leaves my house smelling clean for days!
2. Stained showers and tubs:
Last year we bought a house that is 15 years old. That means 15 year old tubs and 15 years worth of stains! It drove me crazy! I used every cleaner from the store that I could find and I also tried all kinds of homemade concoctions. They would get the shower a little cleaner and smelling nice, but the stains wouldn’t go away. This week, I have found the answer! Bleach gel!
I added this stuff to my “subscribe and save” order so I get a little discount, and I always have it on hand. I use it in my toilets, but I have found when I use it in the tub and shower, it eliminates all stains! It also works great to clean light colored tile grout!
(In the photo below, I just squirted it on and let it run and soak. I wanted to be able to show you the difference before and after just one use! What I did to clean the whole shower was squirt it all over and used a scrub brush to smear it around. Then let that set for a while and rinsed. Easy!
This is after no scrubbing! Just squirted and let it run, the rinsed after a few minutes so you could see before and after results!
3. DIY Carpet Cleaner
My rugs get a LOT of wear and tear. Lots of spills and lots of messes! I use a regular fabric and upholstery cleaning spray from the grocery store for spot cleaning, but sometimes it needs a deep clean.
I prefer to shampoo the rugs ever so often but my shampooer recently played out, so I have found a new way to deep clean them!
This combo will leave your carpets clean and smelling fresh!
The borax and baking soda sanitize and deodorize, the oxy clean helps with any stains, and the scent boosters make it smell so good for a few days after I clean them this way!
I sprinkle the entire rug with the detergent and I use plain white vinegar in a spray bottle to dampen the rug.
I let this set for an hour or so. (I have to do this during nap time to keep little feet off the rugs!)
The I use my Dyson vacuum cleaner and vacuum the entire area a couple of times to make sure I got all of the detergent up. It smells and looks great!
4. Shower maintenance:
Once I get the stains out of the shower, I keep them out by using a scrubber like this.
I keep one of these in each shower for easy maintenance!
I keep the scrubber filled with the lavender cleaner mentioned above in my shower, and each day when I’m getting out of the shower, I will scrub around the edges and any dirty spots and rinse. This keeps any dirt and stains from setting in and keeps things nice and clean!
5. Microwave
With kids who use the microwave often and don’t cover their food, we have splatters and messes often!
Cleanup is a breeze! I fill a bowl with half water and half white vinegar and microwave for 60 seconds.
I order this from Dollar Tree for only $1! I love cleaning with vinegar!
I then wipe clean with a microfiber cloth.
Easy peasy!
What are your easy cleaning tips?!
Share in the comments below!
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I’m getting ready to thaw a batch of my Mamaw’s Homemade Vegetable Soup for dinner tonight, but I cannot have soup without cornbread!
And, of course, I have to cook this awesome southern staple in my Mamaw’s cast iron skillet!
Y’all, this skillet means more to me than most any other material belonging I have! It was handed down to me from my great grandmother and she has had it since the early ‘40’s. Ever so often, it needs a good scrubbing and reseasoning, and it holds up just as well as it did for my Mamaw for all those years! (This is a great cast iron skillet that reminds me of the one I use!)
This homemade cornbread is so delicious! It has that crispy outer crust, that yummy moist center, and is perfect with soup, chili, peas, beans….even a glass of milk! Yum!
This recipe is so easy!
I preheat my oven to 400 with my oiled skillet already inside.
By preheating the pan with the oven, that oil and the pan get super hot and helps make that crispy crust on the outside!
While the preheating takes place, I measure out my dry ingredients in a bowl and stir with a whisk.
I then add the wet ingredients and gently stir, just to incorporate. Don’t over mix this, or your cornbread will be too dense. A few lumps won’t hurt!
Batter is ready!
Note: if you don’t have any buttermilk, you can use regular milk and a little vinegar! Just pour your milk into a glass and stir in about a tablespoon of white vinegar and let it sit while you prepare your other ingredients. The vinegar causes the milk to sour and turns it to buttermilk!
Carefully pull your super hot skillet out of the oven and pour your batter in.
Ready for the oven!
Place back in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the top is golden and the edges look crispy.
Let cool and enjoy with butter or with your favorite meal!
Ingredients:
1/2 cup flour
1 cup white corn meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
Do you like homemade cornbread? Some people even add sugar to make it sweeter. Comment below and let me know!
(This post contains Amazon affiliate links to help you find items that I find useful and helpful in our home. When you purchase using these links, it helps fund this site at no additional cost to you!)
I don’t know about you, but there are days full of chasing kids, working, cleaning, errands…never ending lists of to-do’s and dinner is the last thing on my mind until everyone is starving and I have nothing prepared!
What do you do?
Drive through another fast food place and spend way too much money filling your kids up on junk?
Order pizza again?
I have a better idea!
With a few bucks and an hour or so, I can prepare a few casseroles that can sit in my fridge and be popped in the oven and ready in 20 minutes, or even frozen for later use!
This last weekend, I decided to do a big meal prepping session! I spent about 3 hours in the kitchen and ended up with 12 casseroles, 3 full sized chicken pot pies, 3 mini chicken pot pies, 4 pear pies (I shared with my neighbors so they’re not all pictured!), two bags of frozen vegetable beef soup, and pear pie filling for future fried pies!
Our freezer is full and so will our bellies be when we thaw and serve these amazing meals!
Meal prepping can be done in small batches or in one big batch like I did this time.
When I’m doing casseroles, it saves me tons of time and work when I cook all of my meats at the same time. Regardless of how many casseroles I’m making with taco meat, I cook it all together and divide out as equally as possible. The measurements aren’t exact, but that’s ok! These dishes come out perfect anyway!
I will cook my chicken in the instant pot because, well, let’s be honest…I never remember to thaw it in time, and it can be cooked from frozen in the instant pot and takes very little time.
I also save a lot of time and work by shredding my chicken in my stand mixer. I can’t imagine how long it would take me to hand shred or dice enough chicken for a dozen casseroles! This method is super easy. Simply put your cooked chicken breasts in the stand mixer bowl with the dough hook attachment, and turn on low until the meat is all broken up like this! Fast and easy!
Shredding chicken in the mixer saves so much time!
It’s great for pulled pork, too!
I also use my mixer to combine my casserole ingredients, dump into the aluminum pan, cover with cheese, label and place the lid on top, and freeze. It’s super quick and easy!
Here are a few of my family’s favorite meals to freeze. Full recipes and tips coming soon!
I’m so glad you’re here! My name is Jessica Lawson and I am here to share my life hacks with you!
I am a mompreneur, who loves Jesus, my amazing husband and my five kids who range in ages from 1-15.
We have a tiny little homestead where we raise a garden, chickens and kids!
I love to share recipes, prep meals for easy access on busy nights, and many other tips for babies, cleaning, organizing, and just life as a work from home mom.
Please contact me and let me know if my posts are helpful to you and share ideas or questions any time!
Jessica Lawson
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you. My referral helps you to easily find the products you need, and it helps finance the publishing of these helpful tools and tricks for you!
