Welcome to our last party of 2021! My goodness this year has flown by and we are moving right into 2022, so happy you are here with us today! We are busy here at the cottage putting away Christmas decorations and leaving some of the decorations for the New Years Open House. Are you making plans for the new year? I think about setting some goals and will be making a decision as to the ones I want to pursue in the new year. We have some awesome post from last weeks party, hope you will enjoy the post from these awesome bloggers! I look forward, as always to see what you will be sharing with us at the party today! Thanks so much for coming today and being a part of this community. All of you make this a great party every week, and I appreciate each and everyone of you. Hope to see you again each Thursday in 2022 as we will continue this journey together just one more year!

I always love coming to this post at the end of the year and looking at your 10 favorite recipes for this past year. We all have different cultures and cuisines, of course when I post a new recipe we love the recipe here at the cottage and are just hoping that you will like it to. I always know what you think of the recipe by the number of times that you visit the recipe, did you post it on Pinterest or maybe Facebook. It gives me so much pleasure to present your favorite recipes for this past year. Thanks so much for supporting us here at the cottage, you are a very important part of our community! We are wishing you the very best in 2022 and the Lord willing we will continue this journey together!

We love to entertain here at the cottage, sometimes we pack the rooms out and other times we have just a few close friends. If it is a large or small crowd we love to have folks over to enjoy a holiday, special game or just a fellowship with each other. One of the important things that make a get together successful is some of the food that our guest enjoy. I always like to plan some snacks and appetizers that are simple and will allow me to spend more time with my guest. I am sharing with you today some of the most popular snacks and appetizer's that we serve here at the cottage. Most of these are some of the favorites of the guest who frequent the cottage, according to a recent poll. Whatever kind of party you are having don't forget to enjoy it yourself!

  I sure hope that you and your family had a great Christmas celebration with lots of great food and fellowship. We had a great Christmas and now we are looking forward to the new year. We have some very traditional foods that we enjoy the week after Christmas and around the new years celebration. I will be sticking to most of our traditional recipes for the meal plan this week, most of which I love and am already hungry for. It is time for us to close another year together and I am so grateful to be here to do that. I want to thank all of you who come here each week to share our meal plans, and general cottage happenings. You are so important to us and I want to thank you for being a part of this community!

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and our special Christmas Edition! I know that each of you are so busy getting ready for your celebrations in your own homes and perhaps some are even traveling to a special destination. I am so happy that you are able to stop by our party today and share some of your talent with us. I can't wait to see you at the party today and enjoy what you will be sharing with us.  I am remembering each of you precious readers and participants today and on Christmas, you are so dear to me, Merry Christmas!

  I love this Cherry Cookie Cups recipe, it is so easy to make and it will go anywhere. If it is appetizer desserts for a friends party or special treats for the family this is a great go to recipe, and they look so pretty. This special treat has a spicy cookie cup and then it is filled with spicy cherry yum. We top it off with a great white glaze drizzled on top. Part of this recipe will be going to my neighbor and my husband has laid claim to the rest, I am pretty sure he loves these cookie cups!

  It just seems like yesterday we were preparing for the Christmas week meal plan last year. I always get so excited about Christmas and all the wonderful food and festivities of the season. I am very grateful to spend this time with all of you each week and hopefully present to you some ideas and inspirations that you might be able to use in your own meal planning. Our cottage is all ready for Christmas week and we look forward to sharing it all with you!  I want to take a minute to remember all of our readers and blogger friends in the path of destruction during the recent tornado's. Our heart and prayers go out to all of you. Our church has sent provisions and man-power to assist with your immediate needs. God bless each of you.

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, I am so excited to see you today. Only 8 more days until Christmas! We have some great features from last weeks party and I sure hope that you will stop by theses talented bloggers site to say hello. We are having so much fun here at the cottage, I just had one of my annual parties last night , it was so much fun to be able to entertain our friends, it is really nice to be able to get together with everyone this year. I can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us for the party today. Thanks so much for coming to the party today and hope you are enjoying this holiday season!

  Slow Cooker Cranberry Meatballs are very popular here at the cottage. We serve these delicious appetizers for game day parties, gatherings for friends, and they have gone to many a party when we are asked to bring something. These meatballs are great all by themselves without the amazing sauce, Add the sauce and they are real winners every time. I have yet to bring just 1 meatball home, they are always all gone. If you want left overs, you need to make a double batch!

I love this Orange Cake recipe any time of the year, but it is especially good around the holidays. It has a delicious orange flavor, a soft crumb center and a wonderful orange glaze on the top. This cake is perfect for a special family gathering, a pot luck dinner or a nice slice with a cup of tea. My husband is right over my shoulder today, waiting for a slice of this cake, it's one of his favorites.

I am actually sitting on the screen porch to write our meal plan for this week. We are having unseasonable temperatures, but I have to say it is really nice. It is a very busy time of the year so I am grateful to relax with this meal plan for just a bit. Not only do I have a meal plan to write, but also a couple of parties to be planned. I love this time of the year with all the parties and festivities. I am heading to the winter garden to see what I can use in the plan for this week, fresh vegetables sound so good! What is on your meal plan this week?

  Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, it is so good to see you today! Come on find a nice warm spot by the fire, enjoy a cup of  Retro Holiday Punch  and join in the fun! We have some great features from last weeks party that I sure hope you will enjoy, we have some awesome talent in our Full Plate Thursday community. We are busy at the cottage, our decorating complete and now we are beginning to entertain, let the fun begin! I can't wait to see what you will be sharing with us today and thanks so much for joining us!

Cranberry Pie with Marshmallow Topping is a great holiday recipe that our family really enjoys. The recipe is so easy to put together with some warm cozy spices and topping it off with a creamy topping. This is a great pie for a special dinner or a pot luck dinner, it can be causal or elegant. The flavors are unexpected so make sure you have enough slices because they will come back for seconds!

  What a wonderful season to give some personal gifts from your kitchen, to a special person. One of my favorite gifts to give each year are the gifts that my husband and I work on all through the year. We grow many products in our garden and then they are harvested and preserved. Many of those products are produced especially for our Christmas giving. Each year we give our gifts from the kitchen, we reflect back on the labor of love that has gone into each personal gift. This year we are even giving some of our fresh vegetable's from our winter garden. I wish that it was possible to share a gift from this collection with each of you, but please know that it is in my heart and I am passing along all that love to you!

We are so excited that December is here! We have been so busy here at the cottage finishing our Christmas decorations inside and out, we even have a little wreath hanging on the barn door. It has been so nice to have family near by to help us out with the decorating. Meal planning will play a really big part in our life in December through the first part of January. It can get to be a fast paced roller coaster ride from this point, so staying organized is a real game changer for me. One of the most important elements of being organized going into this season is my meal plans and party plans for the events that I will be hosting. I am off to do my inventories of pantry, freezer and garden, need to get this meal plan underway!

I sure hope that all of you had as good a Thanksgiving as we did. We had lots of family and friends delicious food and great fellowship! We had some great blogger's at the party last week and we are featuring some of their post today. I hope you will be able to stop by and enjoy their post. We have been really busy the last few days to put finishing touches on the cottage, it's starting to look a lot like Christmas here! I am looking forward to seeing you at the party today and what you will be bringing to share with us.