Families With Grace

Helping Christian moms create homes filled with grace, love & faith

Month: November 2019

The only pumpkin bread recipe you need

Posted on by Stacey A. Shannon

Once you make this pumpkin bread recipe, you’ll never make another one!

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The weather has definitely cooled off here in the Midwest, which often puts me in a baking mood. One of my favorite things to make this time of  year (and really year-round) is pumpkin bread. Does anything taste more autumnal than pumpkin, nutmeg and cinnamon? Nope!

My husband is a fan of many pumpkin treats. I can usually take or leave them, but pumpkin bread is the exception. It is my favorite sweet bread, hands down. I found a recipe for pumpkin bread made from scratch quite a few years ago and did a small amount of tweaking to make it just a tad healthier. It is definitely in regular rotation for my family.

I’ve made it as muffins, and it made lots of them. I’ve also made some mini loaves, but most often I make it into full-sized bread loaves. Even though it’s a from-scratch recipe, it’s super easy! When my daughter was in kindergarten, I helped a group of kindergarteners make this bread. So you can, too!

You’re going to need a large bowl for this. I used a large plastic bowl that I also use for serving potato chips when we have a family cookout. Everything mixes in that one bowl so it’s the only one you need to use — and clean!

First, stir together the dry ingredients: both flours, sugar, baking soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Measure them out, pour them in and stir them together. Also, I use part wheat flour for this recipe just to cut down on white flour, but you can use all white flour if you want. I’ve not tried it with all wheat flour.

You mix all the dry ingredients together first, including the sugar.

Next, get ready to add the wet ingredients. Make sure that you’re using canned pumpkin and NOT pumpkin pie filling. 

I usually buy the store brand of pumpkin. This particular one is from Walmart.

Add in the 15-ounce can of pumpkin, water, vegetable oil and eggs. Give it a really good stir. More often than not, I stir by hand with a spoon, but you can you a handheld mixer if that’s easier. You want to get everything mixed together well, and it’s a pretty full bowl.

Once it’s all stirred together, it will look like this.

Then it’s all ready to go into pans that have been greased and lightly floured. I usually use cooking spray. I sprinkle a very tiny amount of flour and am not sure that’s even needed now that I have these awesome Rachael Ray loaf pans. I’m loving her line of bakeware because it really is good at being nonstick! I loved the one loaf pan that came with my set so much that I ordered a second one, in fact. My mom fell in love with my Rachael Ray bakeware when she tried it. She got a set of her own, and she doesn’t even bake as much as I do!

The batter divides equally between the two pans. I don’t measure it and just eyeball it.

Slide those pans into the oven and bake for an hour to hour and 10 minutes. I check mine around an hour and go from there. The loaves go side-by-side (not touching) on the same rack in the oven. I use the toothpick test to see if it’s finished. You know, the fancy method of sticking a toothpick down the center and seeing if it comes back clean (done!) or gooey with batter still stuck to it (needs to bake longer).

This deliciousness is what comes out of your oven. The top crust is a bit crunchy while warm, and the inside is moist!

This pumpkin bread so incredibly good! I store mine in either a gallon-sized zip-top bag or wrapped in Glad Press ‘n Seal (love that stuff!). It is good for at least a week. I’m not sure how it freezes, because my family eats it too quickly for me to have a chance to freeze it.

And just to show you what I mean about the Rachael Ray loaf pans, this is mine after I dumped the cooled loaves of pumpkin bread. I had prepped them with a light spritz of non-stick cooking spray and a tiny amount of flour.

Nothing sticks to these pans and they clean so easily! I’m in love with the whole set of them and have even bought the muffin and mini muffin pans as well.

Pumpkin bread

Print Recipe

Ingredients
  

  • 1-1/2 cups white flour
  • 1-3/4 cups wheat flour If you don't have wheat flour, just use 3-1/4 cups of white flour
  • 2-1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1-1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 can 15 oz. packed pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
  • 2/3 cup water
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 4 eggs

Instructions
 

  • Grease and flour two 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.5-inch pans. (You can also use three 7 x 3-inch pans; just bake 10 minutes less.)
  • Preheat oven to 350-degrees.
  • Combine flours, sugar, baking soda, salt and spices into a very large bowl. Stir well to blend.
  • Add pumpkin, water, vegetable oil and eggs.
  • Beat until well combined.
  • Pour into prepared pans and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  • Cool for 10 to 15 minutes before cutting. Enjoy!

6 tips for protecting your teens on social media

Posted on by Stacey A. Shannon

Ivana Davies, from Find Your Mom Tribe, has some practical ideas for keeping kids safe online.

This guest post is part of the Families with Grace’s Social Media Savvy series that covers a commonsense approach to handling social media as a parent.

Social media has its positives, but like pretty much anything else online, it also has dangers. Scammers and predators are always on the prowl, and online bullying has risen significantly in recent years. Teens are constantly bombarded with ads, threats, frauds and general bad influences.

If you’re a parent, you’re probably familiar with the little gnaw of worry whenever you think about the darker corners of the web. How do I keep my child safe? What can I do to protect them without smothering them?

You aren’t alone. Many parents have these concerns, but a few tips and tricks can help keep your teen safe online.

1. Get familiar with social networks.

Most teenagers don’t use Facebook. Studies have shown that it’s less popular than sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Snapchat. Teens also do most of their browsing on their phones rather than traditional computers or laptops.

Knowing these things are important if you want to understand what your child is doing on social media. You don’t have to be a technological genius, but you should have a working knowledge of the problem if you want your actions or advice to carry any weight.

To put it another way, your child isn’t going to let you deal with Snapchat bullies if you don’t know about or can’t even operate Snapchat. Your first step in becoming a social media warrior is learning what the battlefield looks like.

2. Protect their identity.

We live in a world where our GPS-enabled smartphones can track and analyze our locations. Our social media accounts are full of names, addresses, schools, workplaces and family pictures. Most people don’t even think twice about letting an app announce who they are or where they’re going. They might even help with things like vlogs and livestreams!

Make sure your child understands the danger of giving out too much information on the web. For example, they might complain about a late ride, but they shouldn’t share street names or broadcast the fact that they’re a stranded minor at a particular location without any adults around. Don’t let them ask their followers for a lift or accept any offers from accounts they don’t know.

You should also warn them against divulging personal information just because people ask for it. You might be stunned to realize how easily teenagers are willing to share their bank information just because someone claims to need it to resell them some concert tickets.

“Could a weirdo use this against me?” is the golden rule of posting things on social media. Tell your child to memorize it and ask it of themselves before they post anything. A little diligence today can save them a lot of trouble tomorrow.

3. Remember the internet is forever.

People don’t always understand the permanency of things posted online. While this applies to both kids and adults, impulsive, short-sighted teenagers are particularly vulnerable to it.

If they make a questionable post that gets taken out of context and publicly shamed, they could be haunted by the screenshots for years to come. If they share racy selfies that get passed around, both sender and receiver could be in trouble under child pornography laws.

The “delete” button is pretty much useless on the Internet. Make sure your child understands this. If necessary, remind them of all of the silly or embarrassing things that they might’ve posted before, and ask if they would still want to be known for these things five years down the line. Remind them that whatever they post today will have to pass the five-year test someday.

4. Watch out for stranger danger.

Unfortunately, lots of predators are on the web. Some are scammers or identity thieves; others have more nefarious purposes, especially for young people.

The simple truth is you can’t protect your teenager from every creep on the Internet. You can, however, teach them how to recognize the signs of one, and make sure they’re comfortable coming to you if they suspect someone is trying to take advantage of them.

Here are a few danger signs:

  • Anyone who offers to send them money or buy them things
  • Deals that are too good to be true
  • Deals that require them to give personal or financial information to strangers
  • Weird links, ads, promos or direct messages

You should also teach your kids to never trust a profile of someone they don’t know. It’s way too easy for a 40-year-old man to pretend to be a 16-year-old girl! It’s called catfishing, and people do it for money, power, influence, sexual gratification or personal amusement.

If your child doesn’t understand the dangers of catfishing, try registering for a fake account yourself to show them how little effort it takes to lie on the Internet.

5. Install controls and blockers.

Lots of parental control software is on the market and doesn’t have to be a bad thing that your child rails against.

For example, your teen might not appreciate any programs that monitor his web activity or limits her screen time, but he or she shouldn’t be bothered by adblockers or virus blockers. As long as you’re not butting into their conversations, they probably won’t care if you know who’s on their friends list.

Content filters are usually the biggest argument. Teenagers don’t want to be restricted from seeing “inappropriate” content like they’re little kids being denied access to an R-rated movie. Try sitting down with them and seeing if you can agree on reasonable content filters for things like violence, pornography and hate speech. R-rated sites might be okay for older teenagers, but you can draw the line at X-rated.

You should probably stay away from things like keyloggers. Unless your child is being punished, that level of scrutiny is only going to foster resentment.

6. Always be willing to listen.

At the end of the day, there’s only so much that you can do to protect your child on social media.

Your best bet at staying “in the know” is to keep an open line of communication with them. Emphasize that you’re always available if they want to chat, discuss, whine, rant or ask questions about something that they’ve seen. Even if it’s just complaining about spam accounts or a bad website design, it’ll build trust between the two of you, and they’ll be more likely to seek you out if and when they have a real problem.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. You won’t have a rapport with your child after a single conversation. Just like parenting classes would tell you, it takes consistent, everyday effort to maintain an open and honest relationship about their online activity, but it can definitely be done.

About the author:
Ivana Davies is an educator turned stay-at-home mom to a beautiful 7-year-old girl and a playful 5-year-old boy. She found so much parenting information online that she started her own blog, Find Your Mom Tribe, to share her experiences and struggles as a mom. You can connect with her on Facebook and Pinterest.

This post is part of Families with Grace’s Social Media Savvy series that covers a commonsense approach to handling social media as a parent. Check out these other posts from the series:

How to decide which holiday traditions to keep

Posted on by Stacey A. Shannon

Holiday traditions should be about making good memories and not be stressful and over-complicated.

The holidays are fast approaching. I’ve been thinking of things like getting my kids dress clothes for their programs at school, what cookies I’m going to bake this year and what gifts I need to order to cover everyone on my list. But, I also don’t want to overlook the good parts of the holiday season.

I’m a person who likes holiday traditions. In fact, last November, I told you all about 8 simple Christmas traditions that will bring your family closer. In that post, I included two free printables of traditions my family does yearly: an Advent calendar and a daily Bible verse that leads us through the Christmas story.

We will maintain those holiday traditions this year along with other things like unwrapping a Christmas book each evening Dec. 1 through 24, having a cookies for breakfast on Christmas Eve and driving around to look at Christmas lights.

Through the years I’ve learned to evaluate traditions and whether we should continue them or let them pass on by. Sometimes figuring out which traditions to keep and which to let go can be challenging.

Why it’s hard to let traditions go

Traditions in and of themselves are things we have come to count on. Some traditions we’ve done for most of our lives, so we have feelings strongly attached to them. And if those traditions are associated with family members who are no longer with us, it gets even more intense.

Traditions carry so much emotional baggage that they can be very hard to let go. We feel like we are betraying our loved ones if we stop carrying on their traditions. Or we feel like our kids are deprived because we’re not continuing traditions we started or we did ourselves as children.

Plus we often think we HAVE to do something because it’s ALWAYS been done. We can treat traditions like if we don’t do them, the world will come crashing to a halt and all will be ruined. We can take them very seriously.

And then traditions can also be hard to let go because we are creatures of habit who typically don’t like change. Change can be hard, especially for some of us (raising my hand high!).

How to evaluate traditions

Nearly every year is a good time to evaluate holiday traditions. For example, my family’s tradition of unwrapping a Christmas book every night Dec. 1 through 24 has been something my kids have enjoyed. However, I am also aware that the year will come when neither of them get excited to open a picture book to read each evening. This isn’t that year; it will be bittersweet when that time comes.

As we head into the holiday season, we need to think about the traditions we do and evaluate whether they are still important to our family. If they aren’t, then it’s time to let them go.

We also need to consider how much stress a tradition is causing us. Sometimes traditions can be stressful. For a few years while my kids were toddlers and preschoolers, we would bake sugar cookies and have our parents over to help us decorate the cookies all together. We’d order pizza and make an evening of it.

Last year, that didn’t happen. Because this tradition relies on baked goods to be fresh, it added too much stress into our lives at Christmastime. This year it may work out to do or it may not, but I’ve realized that either way we’ll have a good holiday season. Letting go of one thing won’t ruin the holiday. In fact, trying to do too much and stressing myself out ruins the season.

And sometimes we let go of a tradition for even just a year or a season. The Christmas I was pregnant with my youngest child, I was on modified bedrest for intense pain. I had to let some traditions go because I physically couldn’t do them. Some years are just like that.

In evaluating holiday traditions, we also should consider how our family feels. Talk with them and see what they think about certain traditions. What’s important to them? What do they most look forward to each year? If your kids are old enough, ask their opinions. Have them pick their top three traditions they love. Prioritize those!

Remember that Christmas Eve cookie breakfast I told you about? That’s one of those traditions. It was a small thing that I had done with my daughter and didn’t think much of it. It has become something she looks forward to every year. I’m glad I asked her to know what she liked most. And the best part is that it’s a small, easy tradition to maintain!

Consider tweaking a tradition or creating a new tradition

While sometimes just letting go of old traditions is best for us and our families, other times changing them can work well. Maybe nobody is so interested in driving around to see Christmas lights, but instead they’d love a Christmas movie night in with hot chocolate and PJs.

Thanksgiving Day has brought one such tradition for me. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved watching the “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.” As an adult, I continued doing so. I have a photo of my 3-year-old daughter and me watching the parade together the Thanksgiving I was pregnant with her baby brother. It was a tradition I was excited to share with my kids.

However, getting to actually watch the parade on Thanksgiving can sometimes be challenging. Last Thanksgiving was particularly out of sorts. My husband was gone on a trip to help hurricane victims in Florida, and my kids spent the night with my in-laws to help get everything ready for Thanksgiving dinner. I was alone on Thanksgiving morning and during the parade. I decided that instead of moping, I’d record it and we’d watch it later.

So Thanksgiving evening, the kids and I had snacks and watched the parade together. We fast-forwarded through some of the performances we weren’t interested in. My mom stopped by. We tweaked a tradition with great results.

This Thanksgiving my husband will be here. But I’m guessing that parade watching on Thanksgiving evening will stick with us. It’s just easier for us right now.

And easy is what any new holiday tradition should be. Traditions that are easy to do are easier to maintain. The most simple traditions are often the most memorable ones because they are low-stress and easy to do. The less stressed you are, the more you enjoy them and so does the rest of your family!

Focus on what’s important

Overall, traditions should highlight what is important to your family. You need to decide at the holidays what you most want to remember and focus on. What are the things you’ll remember most in 10 years?

I want to make sure that we focus on things like being thankful at Thanksgiving and remembering the gift of Jesus at Christmas. I also want to make sure that we have fun together. Those things are most important to me. If any of our traditions don’t fall into one or both of those categories, then I’m fine to let them go.

If we’re deciding to change a tradition or add a new one, I evaluate it with the same criteria as well.

Traditions really should be all about making good memories. They shouldn’t cause unnecessary stress and be overly complicated.

This post is part of The Blogvember Challenge on Forever Beloved!

Looking for more Christmas ideas? Check out these posts!

Families With Grace
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