July 4th Recipe Roundup

Do you ever have one of those dishes that you just have to have at certain holidays or occasions?  For me it is this sausage and egg casserole.  Every Christmas morning we make this casserole. The tradition started with my parents.  On Christmas morning all of us girls and our families would come together at their house, eat breakfast, and open up all our presents.  Now that my parents are no longer with us we do things a little differently than before. We still have a special breakfast, but it is with our kids.  After breakfast and spending time with our kids, we gather together with family for dinner and presents.  This recipe is so easy to prepare and so good that its great for dinner any night of the week. For some reason breakfast foods always taste so much better when you eat them for dinner.   This is a very versatile dish to play with.   You can change the ingredients and make it something totally different. With the two

This post may contain affiliate links We had our family vacation which was long overdue to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  This was a much needed vacation for many, many reasons.  It had been 5 years since we actually were able to go anywhere and the first one my daughter remembers.  She absolutely loved the beach.   We had a wonderful time and had beautiful weather the entire week.  Listening to the waves wash up on the shore was so relaxing for me.  I definitely was able to clear my head, absolute paradise in my opinion.  I saw smiles on my family's faces that had all but disappeared.  I can not put into words the joy that vacation brought our family.  Those memories will be cherished for years to come. This is my favorite picture I took on vacation.   Once we returned things went a little crazy.  We live in northeast Virginia and had our first earthquake.  I was at work talking on the phone to my husband who was in the nex

Fall is my favorite time of year.  Growing up we would make the biggest pile of leaves and just run and jump in. We had the best time and this would entertain us for hours. We would then do it all over again the next day.  Full of laughter and smiles, that is how I remember my childhood!  Do you have a favorite childhood memory of the fall season? Have you ever made a dump cake before? I know the name doesn't sound appealing but basically it gets its name by just dumping all the ingredients together and topping with a cake mix.  Up until this recipe, I had never made a dump cake. I admit, I was a little skeptical. This Apple Cobbler Dump Cake was the easiest dump cake recipe I could start off with.  I really don't know why I was so skeptical, this turned out amazing and it couldn't have been any easier!  And what is cobbler without some ice cream on top? Serve it warm with a good scoop of cool and creamy vanilla ice cream on to

When both of my kids were babies I started singing them a bedtime song. They each have their own song that is special to them. The song I sang to my son was "You are my Sunshine"  For many, many, many years that song was sung at bedtime to my little boy. Y'all, he just turned 21!! How in the world did that happen? Mind you, I have not one bit of vocal ability but it meant the world to my kids and that was all that mattered.  I took a little time recently to step back from cooking and baking. On January 2nd my world came crashing down. My father, who fought a long and hard battle with Parkinson's Disease finally lost his battle. I knew when that time came it was totally going to break me but I had no idea just how broken I would be. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. During my grieving process I had no desire to get back in the kitchen at all.  It did take me quite a few weeks to get myself