It is the time of year to start thinking about holiday plans!  The prospect of hosting a holiday dinner can be a bit overwhelming if I don't make a plan and prepare ahead of time.  I have actually had dinners that left me exhausted and not feeling like I was able to savor the moments with my family and I have hosted dinners where everything fell into place and I felt put together and had the most enjoyable time.  

What makes the difference?  Preparation ahead of time!  That is the key to having a Thanksgiving dinner that leaves the hostess with a warm fuzzy feeling as soon as the last guest has walked out the door as opposed to feeling like she has been sucked up in a tornado and thrown out onto the plains of Kansas!  

If you are the host or hostess of the great feast this year, you need to check out my guide to a "Stress-Free Thanksgiving Dinner" and print off my free checklist so that you, too can tackle the most show-cased dinner of the year with very little stress.

As always, inspiring you to have a "Well-Lived" home,

Julie Atkins

We all have our favorite meals that we fall back on when we are short on time.  Some keep cans of beans in their cabinet so they can muster up a quick pot of chili just for this time of year and so do I!  However, I have another favorite that is warm, spicy, easy to prepare and very inexpensive.....Coconut curry vegetables over rice!  My family loves it!  My recipe is listed below.  Try it once and it will be your favorite as well!

Coconut Curry Vegetables with Rice

1 Head Cauliflower, chopped into 1 inch pieces

1 Green Bell Pepper, diced

1 Red Bell Pepper, diced

1 Orange or Yellow Bell Pepper, diced

1 Red Onion, diced

2 Carrots, peeled and shaved

2 tablespoons minced Garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste

3 Tablespoons Olive Oil

1 Jar Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste

2 Cans Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk

Red Pepper Flakes

Saute Diced veggies, garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil until almost crisp tender. Add 3 Tablespoons of Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste to veggies stir enough to coat the vegetables.  Add both cans of Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk, salt and pepper to taste, stirring coconut milk throughout vegetables .  Serve over prepared rice of your choice.  My favorite is Lundberg California White Jasmine Rice as it has such a wonderful aromatic flavor that pairs well with the curry.  So simple!  Enjoy!

Inspiring the Well-Lived home,

Julie Atkins

Milkweed Farms

 Milkweed Farms(J2 International) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

There really is not better time of the year for making some awesome family memories!  One of my most cherished memories as a little girl was when my grandpa loaded up the entire family in a box that he had on the back of his old red tractor and took us all for a drive on the farm just to look at the beautiful trees.  It was such a simple thing when I look back but it had such an impact on me.  I remember anticipating the changing of the leaves just for that reason alone.  He always took time to point out an eagle's nest or some little treasure that he had found in the woods.  We would usually end the evening with a bonfire and some stories and laughter.  

I hope that you will get some inspiration from a few of the ideas that I have shared with you below and make some special family memories of your own.  Also, don't forget to snap a few pictures along the way!

1)  Have everyone in your family pick out some bulbs and plant them in the yard for spring.  This is the memory that keeps on giving!  It is always such a pleasant surprise when the bulbs pop up in the springtime!

2)  Go camping.  This could even be a local camp ground if you have really small kiddos.  Just getting out and breathing the cool air and huddling around a campfire before bed and telling stories will make some great memories!

3)  Go to a local orchard to pick apples.  We used to do this at my grandparents farm each fall.  We usually made a day of it and had lots of fun planning what we would make out of our apples!

4)  Go to a Fall fun festival, pumpkin patch, or cider mill.  There is usually some entertainment there along with activities for all ages.  We have a cider mill not far from us and I am putting it on my list for this fall!

5)  Make a scarecrow out of outgrown clothes or clothes from the thrift store.  Kids can get quite creative when designing their scarecrow look alike.  A family of scarecrows makes a nice family decoration for outside your front door or in the garden.  

6)  Go on a hike to collect pine cones to soak in cinnamon oil for Christmas.  They are fun to collect and are much nicer than the ones sold by the big box stores at Christmas!

7)  Bake an autumn inspired desert and share with a neighbor or an elderly person.  There are some beautiful Autumn inspired cookie cutters (here on Amazon), or consider one of the many pumpkin recipes floating around the internet.

8)  Have a bonfire and invite some neighbors.  If you have teenagers this is a great way to get them to gather at your house for fun and s'mores!

I hope that you will use this as a spring board to start making some Autumn memories with your family.  Be sure to share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section!

Inspiring the well-lived home,

Julie Atkins

Milkweed Farms(J2 International) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

If you are like me, you are always looking for a way to eek out an extra moment of time to do something that you enjoy!  While I could really use some more free time, I am pretty particular about keeping my house in order and cringe if unexpected company stops in and things aren't up to par.  There are a few tips that I have found that really help me to keep my house sparkly with minimal effort on my part.  I hope that you will check them out and give them a try.

• Keep a bottle of your favorite cleaner and a roll of paper towels under your sink as well as each vanity.  It doesn't take but a second to wipe down the sink after use and kids can get in on this too!  I like to make my own natural cleaner for the kitchen and bath.  If you want to check out the bottles that I use, I will include the link below.
• Use lemon Pledge to keep soap scum from building up on your shower walls.  Make sure that the walls are completely clean before applying the Pledge.  Simply spray it down and then polish!  The wax makes a nice barrier that will keep soap scum from sticking for weeks!
• Keep a "catch-all" bin in high traffic rooms.  Anything that is sitting around that belongs in another room such as books, shoes, clothes, etc. can be placed in this bin and retrieved by each member of the family.  Cute bins are a plus and can be decorative as well as functional!
• Throw a "Magic Eraser" in the tank of your toilet.  Each time that you flush, the cleaner in the sponge will help to keep your toilet sparkling clean. 
• Reduce clutter and be sure that everything has a place.  While this makes cleaning faster, more importantly, it eliminates stress and promotes a "Well-Lived" home.

Here are my cute little cleaning bottles that I have made available on Amazon!

 Happy cleaning!

Julie Atkins

Milkweed Farms

Although this garden space is somewhat small, it packs a big punch!  I came across this lovely little plan a few months back and wanted to share it with you.  If the space is available, this garden bed can be repeated in the backyard for a larger growing space, however, even one of these allows a garden the space to grow a variety of herbs and veggies!  Whether your fetish is cucumbers or flowers, the arbor in this plan gives you 128 square feet of climbing room for trellising plants!  That is alot of growing space for such a compact bed! 

 In order to be more cost effective, when we recreated this garden, we used Pine boards and coated them with raw linseed oil in order to make them more durable.  Please note that it is important that the linseed oil is raw as opposed to boiled, as boiled can leach toxic chemicals into your soil.  This particular bed was built using 4-2 x 10  and 4-2 x 4 Pine boards.  We used 8 T posts to stake the 2 4 x 8 ft. cattle panels the make the trellis between the two beds, securing them to the T posts with zip ties.  After searching to find the most cost effective way to fill the beds, we used composted horse manure from a local stables.  Many big box stores will sell torn bags of soil at a major discount, so always keep your eyes open for deals.  We prefer to keep ours as organic as possible.

I hope that you will consider building this little beauty in your back yard.  You will get years of growing enjoyment out of it! 

As always, we like to hear from you so please leave your ideas and comments below!