I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was lovely. My mom made the ham and turkey, and my sister-in-law and I handled the rest. But I'm afraid my biggest contribution didn't turn out quite the way I had planned.

I got this great recipe for crock pot mac & cheese from a girl I work with. This stuff is amazing, and very simple, although definitely not quick to make. The recipe calls for a can of evaporated milk. So Wednesday night, in a hurry and among the madness of our local grocery store the night before the biggest meal of the year, I picked up the ingredients. With one exception - instead of evaporated milk, I grabbed sweetened condensed milk.

So I got up early yesterday morning and put everything together. Three hours later, I opened the crock pot to taste my creation and found that it was decidedly...sweet. Not bad, necessarily, just not what you expect from mac & cheese. Of course by this point it was too late to start over, so we took it to my mom's as it was. It wasn't exactly a hit, but quite a bit of it got eaten. Oh well, live and learn.

I'm off today, although sadly not shopping. Money's tight right now, as it always seems to be around Christmas. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday, although it saddens me that it brings so much stress these days. I know that the economy has hit everyone hard, and I really wish everyone would just agree to buy gifts for the kids and not worry about the adults. I did try to suggest that, but both Nick's family and mine insist on buying for us too, and it just seems ungrateful not to reciprocate. I managed to get Nick's dad to agree to a $10 per person/$20 per couple limit, but from the gifts they're talking about, this isn't being honored.

That's not to say that our families are materialistic - they're not. They just love us and want to show that with Christmas gifts. I just wish I could make them understand that we would feel just as loved if we could just spend the day together and focus on the real reason for the day.

So anyway, enough of the bah-humbug stuff. There are some really fun things in stores right now at very cheap prices. Wal-Mart has this shirt for about $5.00.

They also have a really cute cosmetic bag for $3.00 with the word Naughty on it, as well as one that says Angel. Unfortunately I couldn't find pictures of those.

Target has these items:

($10.00)

($3.00)

and

($1.00)

Now, for that mac & cheese recipe!

CROCK POT MAC AND CHEESE

8 oz box macaroni (boil first for about 5 min)

4 cups shredded sharp cheddar (save one cup for top)

2 eggs

13 oz. can EVAPORATED (NOT condensed sweetened!!!) milk

1 1/2 cups milk

2 teaspoons butter

Mix 3 cups of cheese with all other ingredients in crock pot. Top with extra cup of cheese. Cook on high for 3 hours. DO NOT OPEN CROCK POT before 3 hours is up. After cooking, stir and serve.