Weekly Menu

Happy Halloween!!!!!

This week I tried to plan my lunches and also prep the stuff I needed. I also picked something for breakfast and snacks.  It wasn't a total success but it did help me have healthier stuff to eat.

What is on the plan for this coming week?

Friday -My husband has a doctor appointment at 4:00 "in town" that we all will go to (since he can't drive) so we will grab something after that mostly likely. 

Saturday - The boys and I will be going to a Harvest Party with the Homeschool Co-Op.  I'm supposed to take something for the potluck table . . .and so far I'm stumped.  At first I was thinking it should be totally kid friendly but the more I thought about it the more I realized that kids won't eat much - it's the parents that come for the food!!.  I might do my old standby of Taco Salad since I have taco meat in the freezer already :-)

Sunday - Chicken and Dumplings - I plan on prepping the chicken on Saturday and then dumping it all in the crock pot to cook during church; then transfer it to a pot to make the dumplings :-)  Yum!

Monday - Chicken Noodle Soup with the left overs from Sunday

Tuesday - Balsamic Pork Loin, Crash Potatoes and green beans (We did not have this last week)

Wednesday - Waffles and Sausage

Thursday - Ham and Potato Soup/w bread.  My mom cooked a ham last week when she was here so I boiled the bone to get all of the wonderful meat off of it; I'll use that meat to make the soup and, there was enough left that I threw some in the freezer for a meal for next week . . Scalloped Potatoes with Ham!

A month of Thanks

I'm an over thinker. Plains anadromous simple.  This hit me square in the eyes recently when Nate said to me that we needed a skeleton, some bats and just one witch hung up on the windows.  I looked up ideas of things to make and scoured some stores for things. . . . I made great plans.  He reminded me on Monday that we STILL needed things for Halloween after asking Three weeks ago!  While in the store Monday afternoon I saw a cute little "pin the smile on the skeleton" game and snatched it up,  do you have any idea how excited Nate was when he saw that cheap paper skeleton?  That's when it hit me that simple little things is all it takes too add something fun to house.  I plan on picking up a few more of those skeletons to put in the Halloween bin for next year,

With the start of November upon us, I wanted to find a couple simple things to help show thankfulness with our family.  The idea is from Women Living Well and is a thanksgiving journal. I love ideas that build year after year.  I want to talk about want "being thankful" is with the boys and the. Have them make a thankful turkey to add to our family thanksgiving book.

Because the boys, especially Nate, likes actual decorations, I thought that adding the things we are thankful for to the leaves to make a Thanksgiving banner would be fun too.  The post gives free printables too :-)

 How will you show thankfulness this month?  Feel free to share your ideas in the comments or links to blog posts as well. I'd love to share your ideas in future posts as well!

My New Best Friend

If you have read this blog at all, you know that I love lists, calendars and planning.  Well, I came across a blog called Magenta and Lime and was reading about 15 days to a Simpler Home.  Low and behold she talked about something called Google Calendars and it almost blew my mind. 

I'm able to plug in my daily chores, monthly chores and even the quarterly chores and have them self-populate so I only have to do it once.  I actually have several calendars including a blog calendar, financial calendar, Homeschool calendar and a monthly menu.  I can look at the entire month or bring it back to the day and then fill in the hourly schedule AND print it!  It is so awesome.  One of the main things that I love is the fact that I can have everything in one place as a master calendar then make my lists needed. 

I'm still "dissecting" Magenta and Lime's full concept on having a more simplified home but for now this calendar concept is fantastic!

Homeschool Corner

I think I changed the name again; I'm not sure HA!  To keep it real, we haven't done much schooling lately.  With my husband off work right now it seems hard to get into the mix added to that has been birthdays, doctors appointments  and nice weather.  I have a few fun Halloween crafts I want to get done this week and I'd like to get some lessons in but, again, this week we have a CAT scan scheduled on Tuesday, Haircuts, Halloween, Friday school, and a doctor's appointment all this week.  So, right now, I'm hoping to hit school hard the first week of November and do 6 strong weeks which will take us into Mid December when we can take a break again until after the first of the year. 

So .. . no photos this week!

Look Who's Five!

 We had a small party for Josh on Saturday, the 19th, with Papa and Nana and three cousins - Breadon, Seth and Kate.  I let Josh pick what he wanted for dinner and he picked Tacos!  I added Bean Dip and Finger Jell-O.  

 Gifts are always such a big deal!  Josh loved his gifts . . .and so did Nate :-)

 I put together a fun little Halloween Cake - Josh Loved the eyeballs :-) 

Then, on the 22nd, Josh's actual birthday, We had a fun day with just the family.

 The boys made paper Cupcakes.

 And played Pin the tail on the Donkey.

 And decorated cookies.

 And gave me a HUGE smile :-)

 Then came the gifts!!!

And we ended the day with cupcakes!

Things my Kids Say

* At Josh's birthday party, Nate got all excited when he saw Josh's gifts.  I told him that they were for his brother for his birthday . . .to which Josh replied, "Mom, I will share my gifts with Nate because I love him. I love him SOOOO much!".  How cute is that?

* One morning I asked Josh if he wanted a poptart for breakfast (He had actually gotten out his own cup of chocolate milk).  He said, "No, I already ate breakfast."  I asked him what he ate . .. he pointed to the candy pumpkin and said, "I just ate one of the treats."  Guess what?  He did.  Only one treat - that was his breakfast HA!

* We recently purchased Nate a new carseat.  In doing so, I'm putting the straps back into his old one to use with the princess I babysit.  Nate pulled the straps out of the bag and said, "Look mom, this is my wiener seatbelt."  So, of course, I asked, "What is a wiener seatbelt?" .  He proceeded to tell me that it is the seatbelt part that comes up between his legs to hook the rest of the pieces too, "You know mom, the one that comes in front of my wiener." hahahaha  That kid never stops thinking!

Food Friday - Without the Food

I haven't been doing any real cooking lately.  Due to my husband's back injury, his appitite is pretty slim or he just wants really mild foods due to the injury making him feel sick all of the time.  So, cooking is really not a lot of fun since I'm the only one that heats most of it.  Josh eats it but only the amount a 5 year old eats, which isn't much, and Nate only eats the bread.  Instead I'm picking stuff that I know the kids love - Mac and Cheese, Hot Dogs and grabbing a $5.00 pizza.  Obviously, because of that I haven't been trying anything new or even cooking old recipes that I haven't posted!  I do have one new recipe on board for lunch next week and actually, a couple for my breakfast and lunch so hopefully I'll have some new things to share, assuming those recipes are good! 

I thought I would take care of business in this post instead.  1) I recently cleaned up my blog lists - the lists of blogs I read - and the buttons on the side of the page.  I've found the buttons do me no good so instead I added the ones I read all of the time into the correct list and deleted most of the buttons.  I also removed any blog on my reader list that was older than about a month (well all but one because I'm keeping it for teaching ideas) and also a bunch that I've added over the year that I just never read.  Some I had found through pinterest and thought they had great ideas on them but then . . well, the fizzled.  2) I'm trying to update the recipe section on the blog.  There are more tabs on the top of the blog - I'm trying to divide the recipes I post into the right category so you can easily chose what you need.  I'm also continuing to clean out the recipes by not re-posting the ones we have never tried again OR tried again and didn't like :-) 

That's about it around here.  It's hard to believe we are going into the last week of October.  We actually had some light snow showers here on Thursday and more are expected.  My husband finally caved in and turned on the eat one night after I had gone to bed HA  I'm hoping for one 60 degree day mid-November so I can hang up Christmas lights but otherwise, I'm ready for a good solid winter!!