Meal Planning

Meal Planning 101 - I wish!  I'm not sure if because I love to cook that I struggle with meal planning OR I struggle with meal planning because I love to cook.   I hear people say that they only buy what is on sale AND they have a coupon for but, it makes me wonder, what do they eat?  A can of beans with a pork chop?

I came across a blog recently that is based on the concept of cooking 1 hour and making 5 meals for the week.  Wow.  I love it already.  So, I take out one hour on Saturday, prepare the basics for 5 meals, and than Sun-Thurs, my meals are almost ready before the day begins.  It got me thinking.  I spend hours planning the weeks menu, looking through the ad, finding coupons (which I recently joined SavingsAngel.com on a trial basis for two weeks just to see how it goes . . I'll post more on that when my two weeks are up!), and, of course, getting lost in new recipe ideas.  In my many years of experience (hahaha) I've learned that for every one GREAT new recipe, there area bout 15 ok, not so great, and just plain awful recipes out there.  See, the new recipe thing came from the fact that we were in a rut when both of us worked full time - often working 50-60 hours a week; than we had kids and I worked 40 hours a week but add in the time of running to and from day care, that added another hour or more to my day.  So the rut was : Spaghetti on Monday, Beef Strogenoff on Tuesdays, Tacos on Wednesday, Chicken on Thursday and out on Friday, Saturday and Sunday because I was too tired to care!!  Seriously, we had taco's EVERY SINGLE Wednesday for about 4 months and even I started to not like tacos. 

I'm trying to balance my desire to not be in a rut with the need to stop trying new recipes and wasting money on things we don't like :-(  So, I've created a simple spreadsheet (actually a word document with a table . . .) of our top favorite recipes in all basic categories.  I than created February's menu.  Yes, you read that right - F.E.B.R.U.A.R.Y.'s menu - a whole month!!  Well, it isn't quite complete - I plugged in 5 favorites each week.  That leaves two days open - to try a new recipe, for grabbing something quick, for eating appetizers for dinner, etc.  This makes me breathe a sigh of relief.  Half of my work is over.  Now, as I come across recipes I REALLY want to try, I can plug them in over the course of the month.  I miss some of our old "ruts" - so, I'll try this for a month and see how it goes :-)

Back to that 5 recipes in an hour concept - I like it more and more; I'm trying a few of her recipes this week; requested a free 1 week menu (yes, there is a fee for a three month membership) and am now looking at my own recipes in a new light.  I'm asking myself - how can I make these one hour prep recipes each week.  Just reading some of her ideas (click on the button above to go check it out!) helps me think outside the box for food prep. 

If you would like check out my current February Menu - just click here (ok, not quite yet - I wanted to post this but will update it as soon as I finish up that Menu; hopefully tonight).  You'll see blanks - those are for those new recipes and unexpected things - I'll fill those in weekly.  This should also help with grocery shopping because I can actually see other things I'm planning on making and buy things when they are on sale!!

Date Idea Book

As I mention often, one of my favorite craft sites is Oopsey-daisy.  This craft idea I stole borrowed from Allison! 

The first thing that I did was to print the cards that Allison so graciously made available.  You can click here to access her post that gives the link to the printables or can you be creative and make your own!.  I chose to just use hers; I'm one of those "why re-create the wheel" kind of people.  I printed the cards on cardstock.

 Once, printed, I cut them all out.

 I went back and forth about laminating them, thinking at first, we would throw them away but the more I thought about it, the more I like the idea of keeping them and once we have done them all, we can start over.  Yes, there are a few that we will more than likely not do - but that is ok!

 Once laminated, I cut them out again and punched a whole in the corner of each card.

 Once "punched" I slid them all on a key ring and I'm going to hang them on my bulletin board.  When we need a date night idea, we can just grab the deck of cards and pick something new. 

A lot of the ideas are family friendly so the boys will come with us but there are some that are just for the two of us and we'll have to grab a sitter :-) 

As always, make sure and check out :

I Spy - Quilt Swap

New is good, right?  I've seen something called a "Quilt Swap" on a few blogs and it caught my attention.  I am by no means this fantastic quilter.  (I'm just finishing up my first quilt) but I've taken an interest in the rag top quilts- they seem a little more my style (for sewing at least - Have I mentioned that my mom makes heirloom quality quilts????)  I've also seen great ideas for "I spy" items like these :

 First, Obsessivelystitching shows these great story telling blocks.

 Than, Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy  gives one great idea for place mats . . . .

 And, Child of Mine gives another idea for place mats.

 Obsessivelystitching also gives a tutorial for making an ABC book - use I-Spy fabric to increase the use of the book!

And, of course, Oopsey Daisy shows how to make these great bags!

All great ideas but I'm, opting for the quilt first.  So today, I started the process:

 I picked up 10 different "boy themed" fabrics.  Technically you only need 1/4 yard of each but, this being my first one, I went ahead and got 1/2 yard of each.  (good thing - I REALLY messed up my cutting on the first one and almost didn't have enough!)

Than, once it all came back to me, I made quick work of all that fabric and here is my stack. 

So, what is next?  I have to ship these off on Monday to the person "in charge" of this one and than wait for my 200 blocks to return!!  I'm excited. 

I plan on using this quilt more for learning - I like to keep quilts in the living room for the boys that have distinct things on them (they have a space one and a dinosaur one my mom made - both with buttons - we call out colors and count the buttons!)  This one, we can use to find things, colors, for counting, and more. 

When I get my fabric, I promise to share :-)

Check out the following blog to learn more or just see her other great ideas!

Happenings in this House

It's that time of week again - time to share the Happenings in this House!  It's been a busy week - my sister-in-law had major surgery to have a portion of her lung removed due to cancer, the boys and I made a trip to the "city" to meet my husband for dinner, and we just seemed to have needy kids this week :-)  I still managed to snap a few shots of our week!



Josh loves to play with his trains :-)  He lays the track and just plays for hours.



Nate is going through the seperation anxiety stage and just likes to be cuddled for a bit inbetween playing.

And than out came the bean bags - as you can see from the next few pictures - the boys had fun!

See that little car?  That was one of Josh's favorites - he chose not to crawl for a long time but he would use this car to get around - he would sit on it and scoot all over.  He is FINALLY allowing Nate to sit on it LOL  When we brought it back out for Nate, Josh took it back over.  So cute!

My parents came by on Friday to pick up their car and we snapped these pictures

Josh adores his Papa - during dinner, he had to move his plate so he could sit next to Papa - and he carried on a full conversation with him.  Than, he took Papa to his room where they played trains.  It was so cute!

So, there are the basics from our week :-)

Organization Challenge

Yes!  I am still working on this 21 days of getting Organized Challenge - still making up a lot of my own days!  You can click here and here to see the first 13 days of the challenge

So, day 14 at A Bowl Full of Lemons was Under the Bathroom Sink.  My bathroom sink was already organized for one main reason, there is very little room under there!  I just keep the toilet paper and personal items under there and that's it.  So instead I tackled this bin:

 This bin held a bunch of misc scrapbooking projects that I had taken out of my desk and moved downstairs.  So, I took some bins I got at the dollar store and sorted each project into a bin.


 So my bin now looks (or looked!) like this - nice and empty.  I just realized I forgot to snap a picture of the bins - I'll have to do that in another post.

These two Creative Memory boxes I made part of this project too - notice one is empty?  I combined all the pictures left into one box and can now use the other memory manager box to store current pages.  I'm so excited that this is done!

Day 15 was Medicine/Vitamin Organization.  I actually really like what she has done - storing it high above the microwave in some really great storage containers.  Right now mine is stored in the bathroom in a basket on a high shelf.  And yes, it is already organized.  So I did the shelf in our bedroom instead.

 The before shot - this area had just gotten so messed up due to rearranging some things - I needed to just take 10 minutes and organize this so it looked neat.

And this is the finished project.  I used some pretty bins I got at the Dollar tree to store my body sprays and current purses; I removed the scrapbooking paper file and moved it down in my "craft" area and the laundry basket once again has a home.  The bottom shelf holds some current scrapbooking projects.  I like when this looks neat :-)

Day 16 is the Fridge.  Honestly, I clean my fridge every week (it's a Flylady thing!) So this is also done.  I can show my work in progress - my files:

 I forgot to take a complete before picture - but this is the drawer with half the files in it.

 The other half are already in this once empty bin :-)

And here are all the files - waiting to be sorted and re-organized.  One of the things I struggle with is sorting space so I decided to make this my project bin - I now have a home for any project I'm in the middle of!!  I can work on one file at a time, sort on the table but, when it's time to stop, I can stack the items neatly in this bin and move it to my bedroom to store behind my mirror.  I'm slowly figuring out solutions for living in tight quarters while keeping things neat and clean!  This project is still in the process - I'll show the finished project when I'm done!

Day's 17 and 18 I have not completed yet but wanted to share links to the posts on A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Day 17 is Mail.  She gives a great solution for keeping up with mail.  I am working on a smaller version of this and Hope to get it done soon. 

Day 18 is Keepsakes.  I love, love LOVE the idea that she shares for keepsakes.  I scrapbook pictures galore but have wondered what to do with all of those special projects/pictures the kids make.  Well, I will be creating these binders for each of the boys as soon as I can get a chance.  The nice thing is that right now, I don't have any of these papers laying around  - Josh is just starting to get more into art so I'm sure I'll have some soon!!

So, hopefully this weekend, I can finish up my filing, finish up my mail solution, and I have a bathroom cabinet to clean up for Day 18. 

I'll post those once I finish!

Homemade Playdough

My sister-in-law made Josh some homemade play dough a month or so ago and gave me the recipe.  I had been thinking about making some as it is another teaching idea I've see alot on blog land.  So, here's an easy recipe! (I know there are about a million differant recipes out there - they all seem to have the same basic ingredients, the measurments just change slightly . .)

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 teaspoons cream of tarter
1 Tablespoon oil
food coloring or 1 packet unsweeted kool-aid
Flavoring (peppermint, almond, lemon, ect)

Mix everything together and heat on medium until the play dough pulls away from the sides

This is what it looks like mixed up.  Because we are doing a winter unit - I wanted white play dough so I did not add any coloring.  Instead, I added some silver glitter.

Do not walk away from this - it pulled away from the sides in about 2 minutes.

After letting it cool enough to handle, knead it a little and store it in an air tight container

And here are some pictures of us playing with it this week :-)

Josh was not a fan of the texture of the playdough - I had to "smoosh" it out for him.

He liked to take the cookie cutters and place them on top of the already cut out shape.

Notice the one figure technique?  That is so he wouldn't touch the play dough!

 I want to share one other learning game we play right now and it is :

Yep, Wheel of Fortune!  It comes on at the start of Bath time so we pause the TV.  See, the other night, Josh and I were watching it and every time a letter was turned he would say "T", or "R" - reading the letters.  So now, we practice our letter sounds while watching this game show.  How fun is that???  Darryl and I commented how we both watched this growing up (along with Jeopardy) and now, we are back to watching it again.  And yes, we do watch Jeopardy too!

And one more fun learning idea :

That's right, folks, Tater Tots!  I saw these a few weeks ago while grocery shopping and since I had planned fries to go with lunch one day, I bought these instead.  (My boys LOVE Tater Tots anyway!)  We used them to practice letters before eating them.  Eventually we will do things like spell out their names, and write other words too!  How fun - eating and learning :-)

Mexican Lasagna

Ok, the other night, I made dinner for my parents while they were here and it was awful.  We ended up getting KFC because the roast I used for French Dips was so tough I couldn't cut it let alone shred it.  I wish I would have made THIS meal when they were here because it was fantastic. (But I don't know if my dad would actually like it and my mom would pick out the black beans I think LOL) 

This is Mexican Lasagna and it is a recipe from Rachael Ray but I also found it at What Megans Making. 

(Sorry, I forgot to take a picture before we started eating LOL)

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (Because I used beef, I did not use oil in the pan)
• 2 pounds ground chicken breast, available in the packaged meats case (I used ground beef )
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 red onion, chopped (I just used a regular onion)
• 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained
• 1 cup medium heat taco sauce or 1 (14-oz) can stewed or fire roasted tomatoes (I used mild taco sauce because of the kids - I did learn that one bottle of taco sauce does not a cup make! I need more!!)
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels (I used a can of corn)
• Salt
• 8 (8 inch) spinach flour tortillas, available on dairy aisle of market (I used 9 regular taco shells)
• 2 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar or shredded pepper jack
• 2 scallions, finely chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Preheat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil - twice around the pan. Add chicken and season with chili powder, cumin, and red onion. Brown the meat, 5 minutes. Add taco sauce or stewed or fire roasted tomatoes. Add black beans and corn. Heat the mixture through, 2 to 3 minutes then season with salt, to your taste.
Coat a shallow baking dish with remaining extra-virgin olive oil, about 1 tablespoon oil. Cut the tortillas in half or quarters to make them easy to layer with. Build lasagna in layers of meat and beans, then tortillas, then cheese. Repeat: meat, tortilla, cheese again. Bake lasagna 12 to 15 minutes until cheese is brown and bubbly. Top with the scallions and serve.

My Notes:
I listed my changes in the ingredients above in italics - we don't really eat ground chicken or turkey; we are beef people :-)  I will say that this recipe could easily be cut in half.  We, as a family of 4, ate 1/2 of a 9x13 pan.  I served chips and salsa and a salad with it.  You could add another vegetable to the meal or even some really good Spanish rice and stretch the lasagna further. 

This was so good I told Darryl I might make it every night for dinner for a month because I'm tired of recipes not turning out LOL

Sorry Mom and Dad that you got the meal that was terrible!! :-(