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Holiday Contest

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Holiday Contest 2024…All about the Grandmothers!

Posted on December 2, 2024

Do you have your tree up yet?  It’s time to get the stockings hung again. I hope you can make The Colley House a part of your gift giving this year.

We, at The Colley House, would like to be the givers, each Christmas, too! Four lucky winners will receive $25.00 gift cards in your email on December 16th. Here’s how you enter:

Write, in 200 words or less, what special grandmother holiday memory you have. It can be about some special memory with your grandmother from your own childhood…OR…it can be a memory you, as a grandmother are currently making or have made with your grandkids. It can even be some happy idea you’ve learned from another grandmother. It can be about her tree, the smell of her cookies or your own baking traditions with your grands. It can be about the holiday traditions that are between your mama and your kids. Just two things are essential: Your writing has to include something about a grandmother AND it has to include something about the Christmas holidays.  It can include a recipe, a poem, a song, or a photo with caption (and none of those addendums will count in the 200 word limitation.)

Winner will be chosen on December 13th and gift cards will be emailed that weekend, so you can get your free item(s) back in time for holiday giving. Only submissions emailed to byhcontest@gmail.com will be considered. By submitting, you give permission for your submission to be printed on The Colley House site.

We hope you all have the best of holidays and that your new year is filled with HIS abundance. We are excited about a couple of new products we will be completing (three, actually and prayerfully) in 2025, so stay tuned.

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Winner #5–Carol Laney

Posted on December 20, 2022

The final winner of the TCH holiday contest this year is Carol Laney. She wants to give her Colley House gift certificate to the originator of this recipe for mac and cheese. Macaroni and  cheese is a family-gathering-staple at our house.  What better time for a southern girl to overdose on dairy and starches than just before her New Year’s resolutions are made? (Yes, there’s a sad, but usually true implication about resolutions there!) Just click on this worn copy and you’ll have one more kid-pleaser for your holiday dinner! Congrat’s Carol and Marva!

From Carol:

Thank you for offering this contest! 
My recipe is the “BEST EVER Macaroni and Cheese”. If I win please gift the gift card to Sister Marva Johnson because it’s her recipe. She attends the LaFayette church of Christ in LaFayette GA. She is precious and I’ve used this recipe many times (as you can tell by the paper) with grand reviews and lots of lip smacking. I always “grade” my recipes after I make them so when I want to make something I know which recipe has been cooked, tasted and approved (not just by me but others)! 
Carol Laney
Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Winner #4: Tracy Parsons

Posted on December 15, 2022
My sweet husband loves to cook and when he surprises us with his amazing homemade rolls, the whole room lights up. The warm, buttery rolls bring us comfort on these cold, dark nights. It’s a reminder to always be thankful for your blessings. God is so good to us!
Yeast Rolls

1 stick of salted butter

Melt the butter to liquid

Stir in 1.5 tbsp of sugar and 2 tsp of salt 

In a separate glass mason jar add 2 cups of hot water and stir in 1 tbsp of rapid rise yeast. 

Add water and yeast mixture to sugar and salt in bowl. Mix in 3 cups of King Arthur all purpose flour, proof for 30 mins. After dough has risen, lightly dust the dough in the bowl with flour to make it workable with your hands. Roll it onto a floured baking mat, cut out individual sized rolls (we use a small mason jar for perfect circles).

Bake at 350 approximately 10 minutes and enjoy! 

Happy Holidays,

Tracy Parsons 🎄

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Winner #3: Erica Grieves

Posted on December 13, 2022

Sometimes, keepers at home (and others, too) can evoke the most palatable and tangible memory of a loved one through the textures and tastes and smells of a kitchen. Erica’s submission is about that. I love it. She submitted it in photos and just a few words:

This is a comfort to my family even though it isn’t a “comfort” food:  Found in the pages of a cookbook that survived a house fire before I joined the family is the hard candy recipe I remember from my mother-in-laws each year at Christmas. We lost her too young over 4 years ago, and this is a simple way to bring Big Mama back to us each year. 

(I think it IS a comfort food. What a blessing in the reminiscing. Also, I think this would be one of those magical, fun recipes for kids!)

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Recipe Winner #2…Marsha York

Posted on December 10, 2022

           (the brew on my counter)

Here’s the second winning recipe.  I have this one brewing right now in a mini-crockpot in my kitchen. If this won’t put you in the Christmas spirit, you are a scrooge-grinch! It’s from Marsha York. She writes:

Here’s a great “recipe” to keep your home smelling great all holiday season. This also makes a great gift for a hostess. 

1 orange quarter
1 cup fresh cranberries
5 whole cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon of cloves
Place all ingredients in a pot and add two cups of water. Heat to a simmer. Keep a careful eye on the water level. As it evaporates, add more water.  The ingredients will turn darker as days pass but no worries it will continue to smell wonderful. It should last though the holiday season.
(I sense that a few of your cents will be spent for these amazing scents.)
Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Drumroll, Please!…

Posted on December 7, 2022

The lucky winners of the Holiday Contest at the Colley House are: 

Sareena Morrow

Carol Laney

Marsha York

Erica Grieves

Tracy Parsons

Congratulations! Watch your inbox for your digital gift card!

Each of these five ladies will receive via email, a gift certificate containing a code to be used at our online store here: www.thecolleyhouse.org/store. They can be used toward the purchase of any item(s) in the store. Best of all, I will share, in the next few days, the recipes and their stories. I love God’s women and I love how the keepers at home command (Titus 2:3-5) is so interwoven with our spiritual lives in Him. I’ll share a couple of “honorable mentions”, too!

Here’s the first winning recipe from Sareena Morrow: 

Chicken and Dumplins

You will need:

1 whole chicken

Flour

Water

Salt

Pepper

Boil chicken in a large soup pot. Remove chicken and set aside when fully cooked. Keep broth.

In a large bowl, mix some flour and water, making a dough. If too sticky add more flour. Roll out dough flat on a floured surface, cut into squares, if too thick you can flatten more to make bigger dumpling squares. Make more dough as needed. Once you have a good amount of dumplings, get the broth cooking again and slowly drop in dumplings. The broth will thicken the more you add. Stir occasionally. Cut chicken into bite size pieces and add in with the dumplings. Add some salt and pepper. Serve hot. Salt and pepper more to taste.

This is a special food of comfort to me because it reminds me of my Granny Lucy. She used to make this probably every week before she got sick. She was also a member of the Lord’s church. I’m looking forward to seeing her again in heaven one day.