Happy Monday! Here is my meal plan for the week. Apparently I was having one of those weeks where I am sick of all our good ol' stand by recipes and needed to try something new because I ended up with 3 that I have never done before! The new ones are marked with an * and the ones in the Crock Pot are marked with a cp.
Monday - Crock Pot Pheasant (cp)
Tuesday - Mexican Tortilla Pizza
Wednesday - Garden Veggie Linguine with Cilantro Pesto (*)
Thursday - Navy Bean Bacon Chowder (*,cp)
Friday - Easy Broiled Chicken Fajitas (*)
Saturday - Matt's Chili
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
All In The Family
It wasn't anyone's real birthday on this particular morning, but in our house we LOVE all forms of music and we will hum, whistle or sing anything that happens to strike our fancy at the moment whether it matches the occasion or not. On this day the occasion was breakfast, and the song that fit his momentary fancy was "Happy Birthday". :-)
Friday, August 19, 2011
Routines, schedules and school lunches, OH MY!
Bre starts kindergarten on the 7th of September, just 18 short days away! *insert barely contained sobs*
Aside from trying to figure out how she got old enough to go to school in the first place, I have been thinking about getting her (and me) back into the routine of morning and bedtime schedules. Once summer time (FINALLY) hits MN I just can't bring myself to stick to any kind of a regular schedule, sleeping, waking or otherwise. It feels like cheating on the spontaneity of the season somehow. I LOVE to have last minute picnics or trips to the pool or BBQs at a friend's house or Dairy Queen treats and these types of things just don't seem to hold the same joy if they are planned out to far in advance. :-) However, this carefree, fly by the seat of my pants, lovable quality I posses does not lend itself very well to the need for my children to be fully rested and mentally capable at a much to early time (in my night owl opinion) of the am hours. So, as the far to short summer months of the north regretfully begin to come to a close, I realize once again that I must surrender a large portion of my party loving personality to the cold, hard, task master of set bedtime and morning routines for the sake of my daughter's academic success and physical well being.
Now, even though I do so love an impromptu get together (I think I must get this from my mother, people would always say "Sonja will throw a party at the drop of a hat...and she'll even drop the hat! lol) I also LOVE check lists and charts. I think I have come to love these organizational tools so dearly because they allow me to keep a lot of clutter out of my brain so I have more room for the creativity and productivity to come through. I can easily see (I am a super visual learner) what needs to be done next and when I get it done, I get the instant gratification of checking it off (I am also a very tactile learner). So, when I began thinking about how to help Bre and I get and stay on track with our much needed am & pm routines I decided that what we needed were some charts. :-)
I poked around online for already made charts that I could just print off, laminate and reuse, but I was not very happy with what I found. So, I decided to make my own. I had already made a list (I told you I love lists) of the things she would need to do for each of these separate routines. I let her sit with me at the computer and look at a free clip art website and choose which pictures she wanted for each of the individual tasks. For the most part, if the picture had purple on it, that was the one that she wanted. :-) Anyway, here is what I came up with:
Before School Chart
She hasn't seem them yet and I know she will love them because all afternoon while she and Wes were playing in the backyard I heard her talking to him about "the chart for school that Mommy made for me and I got to pick out the pictures!" We will print them off, laminate them and be able to use them all year long. Maybe this won't be so bad. :-)
Aside from trying to figure out how she got old enough to go to school in the first place, I have been thinking about getting her (and me) back into the routine of morning and bedtime schedules. Once summer time (FINALLY) hits MN I just can't bring myself to stick to any kind of a regular schedule, sleeping, waking or otherwise. It feels like cheating on the spontaneity of the season somehow. I LOVE to have last minute picnics or trips to the pool or BBQs at a friend's house or Dairy Queen treats and these types of things just don't seem to hold the same joy if they are planned out to far in advance. :-) However, this carefree, fly by the seat of my pants, lovable quality I posses does not lend itself very well to the need for my children to be fully rested and mentally capable at a much to early time (in my night owl opinion) of the am hours. So, as the far to short summer months of the north regretfully begin to come to a close, I realize once again that I must surrender a large portion of my party loving personality to the cold, hard, task master of set bedtime and morning routines for the sake of my daughter's academic success and physical well being.
Now, even though I do so love an impromptu get together (I think I must get this from my mother, people would always say "Sonja will throw a party at the drop of a hat...and she'll even drop the hat! lol) I also LOVE check lists and charts. I think I have come to love these organizational tools so dearly because they allow me to keep a lot of clutter out of my brain so I have more room for the creativity and productivity to come through. I can easily see (I am a super visual learner) what needs to be done next and when I get it done, I get the instant gratification of checking it off (I am also a very tactile learner). So, when I began thinking about how to help Bre and I get and stay on track with our much needed am & pm routines I decided that what we needed were some charts. :-)
I poked around online for already made charts that I could just print off, laminate and reuse, but I was not very happy with what I found. So, I decided to make my own. I had already made a list (I told you I love lists) of the things she would need to do for each of these separate routines. I let her sit with me at the computer and look at a free clip art website and choose which pictures she wanted for each of the individual tasks. For the most part, if the picture had purple on it, that was the one that she wanted. :-) Anyway, here is what I came up with:
Before School Chart
She hasn't seem them yet and I know she will love them because all afternoon while she and Wes were playing in the backyard I heard her talking to him about "the chart for school that Mommy made for me and I got to pick out the pictures!" We will print them off, laminate them and be able to use them all year long. Maybe this won't be so bad. :-)
Thursday, August 18, 2011
I "heart" Meal Plans
So, here is what I do to save my conscience, our budget, and our waistlines.
1st tip - I try and do my planning while my kiddos are napping/resting because it is easier if I don't keep getting interrupted.
2nd tip - I usually do it on Friday afternoons because we go grocery shopping on Saturday mornings and I need to have my list ready to go by then.
I plan my meals from Sunday-Saturday and I start by sitting down with my calendar for the next week. Before I choose any meals I need to figure out what our schedule is going to look like. If we are really super busy throughout a particular day I know I need to stick with super quick and easy-to-throw-together stuff, or crock pot meals. I also take into consideration how long I will be home right before supper and whether I could be using the oven or if I need to make something earlier in the day that will just be ready to heat up on the stove-top when we walk in the door.
As an example, on Mondays I teach a Zumba class from 5:30-6:30 pm in the evenings. The kids and I have to leave the house by 4:50 pm to get there on time and we don't get back to the house till about 7:15 pm, and we are all famished by that time. My hubby gets home @ 6:00 pm and likes to eat right away. By knowing our schedule for the day I know that I need to make something for supper that can be heated up quickly, or served hot out of the crock pot because my hubby doesn't want to wait 20-30 minutes for the oven to heat up his food and neither do the kids and I. It needs to be quick, which means I am cooking soups and stews and stir fry's, stove top stuff. I should also add that even though we own a microwave we really prefer NOT to use it. I honestly only ever use it to quickly melt butter when I am baking cause I mean...it's butter. I don't think a microwave can really make butter any less nutritious than it already is.
Now on the days that we are not so busy, I get to choose meals that take a little more right-before-you-sit-down-to-eat-it babysitting, like meatloaf's or lasagna or cooking on the grill, or even trying a new recipe. I love new recipes! When our schedule permits me to, I try a new one about once a week, but I HATE feeling rushed with a recipe that I am not familiar with. A new recipe always takes me much longer the first time than it ever will again because I don't know what's coming next like I do with my tried and trues. So, I like to give myself plenty of time to work with those newbies.
Once I have our schedule in front of me then comes the fun part, I grab my recipe file and start choosing. I keep a file of recipes that are in our permanent rotation, a file of ones that I would like to try and also a file of recipes I would like to try again before deciding for sure if they deserve a permanent spot in my box. I laminate the ones we love because I hate nothing more than accidentally setting my recipe paper in a wet spot on the counter. Ugh! When I am choosing which recipes to use I also take into consideration the ingredients that I already have on hand that need to get used up. For instance, this week I had a whole head of cabbage that needed some attention so I chose 2 recipes that use cabbage and will probably make Cole Slaw as one of our side dishes as well.
Here is what I ended up choosing for this week:
Monday - Dirty Rice With Smoked Sausage
Tuesday - Spicy Cabbage-Beef Soup (This was my new recipe to try this week)
Wednesday - Zuppa Toscana
Thursday - Crockpot Pheasant with cole slaw & fresh corn
Friday - Mexican Tortilla Pizza (I add seasoned ground beef to this recipe because my hubby is extremely anti-meatless lol)
Saturday - Lunch - Out / Dinner - Ham & Potato Soup (hubby's recipe)
Sunday - Lunch - Leftovers / Supper - Out/Pizza or Sandwiches
Monday, August 15, 2011
B is for...
A couple of days ago I went to tell Bre that she could come out of her room because nap/quiet time was done for the day and this is what I saw.
Now, apparently my imagination works a little to efficiently on the negative side of things because my first thought was "Did the dolls misbehave and they are now being punished on some mid-evil dungeon device?" (picture those things they would strap prisoners to and then stretch them in opposite directions from the ankles and wrists).
So, needing to have my curiosity satiated I asked her what was going on with her dolls and without hardly blinking her big beautiful eyelashes at me she said, quite matter of factly, "They're pretending to be bats Mom." "In the context of a 5 year old's playful imagination THAT make so much more sense Stephanie" I thought to myself, laughing out loud as I swept her up in my arms for a hug.
Moral of today's blog? Clearly, when dealing with my young children's world of play, I need to think less in terms of Braveheart and more in terms of Barney. Bats! Ok, I get it now. :-)
Friday, August 12, 2011
I am lovely?
I am going to follow the Fly Lady's advice this morning and start where I am at and not worry about trying to catch up. :-)
So, here we go, both feet ready and JUMP!
I came across something while I was having my quiet time this morning that impacted my heart so intensely that it brought me to tears. It is really not all that uncommon for me to cry over something I read, I have a very tender heart, but I immediately wanted to share it with someone, ANYONE because surely to Pete I am not the only one who would be so strongly impacted by this statement.
You know how you can read something a million times and think you understand what it's saying and then one day you read it again and it kind of feels like you've been reading in the dark and someone turns the light switch on for you and all of a sudden your entire body goes , "Oh! Wow, how did I not see that before?"? Oprah refers to this as an "Ah Ha!" moment. I like these because they tend to be very focus altering for me, in a good way, like finally taking the time to clean your glasses, or windows. It can make a BIG difference. Well, that is exactly what happened to me this morning.
I have been reading Beth Moore's book "So Long Insecurity" . It is a wonderful study and I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever had their a** kicked by their own insecurities, which I am pretty sure would be the population of the entire planet at one time or another. Here is what I read:
This is a verse from the bible that comes from Psalm 84:1 and yes I have probably read or heard this verse at least a million times over the course of my 31 years. I have always imagined this verse to be descriptive of a church, or a temple or heaven. Most certainly anywhere God would choose to be would be lovely indeed, I mean...he's God! We wouldn't expect the president of the United States to live in a Motel 6, so of course God, the creator of the earth and skies, wouldn't live anywhere that wasn't infinitely more exquisite than the white house, right? BUT what if I view this verse in the understanding of God living or dwelling in me??? *crickets chirping* Then.....that would mean....I....am lovely? How lovely I am, O Lord Almighty! I am lovely!?! *cue steady stream of tears*
According to 1st Corinthians 3:16 that is an entirely accurate way to read that scripture (if you believe that the bible confirms itself, which I do).
I have always believed that God lives in me and loves me and finds worth in me even when I can't seem to find it in myself, but I had never read THIS verse (Psalm 84:1) through the lens of THAT (1st Corinthians 3:16) understanding before and as soon as I did, the light switch was flipped on in my heart and I don't think I will ever be the same again. What a powerful weapon against the negative tapes that seem to play in my head, against my will and out of the blue.
So, here we go, both feet ready and JUMP!
I came across something while I was having my quiet time this morning that impacted my heart so intensely that it brought me to tears. It is really not all that uncommon for me to cry over something I read, I have a very tender heart, but I immediately wanted to share it with someone, ANYONE because surely to Pete I am not the only one who would be so strongly impacted by this statement.
You know how you can read something a million times and think you understand what it's saying and then one day you read it again and it kind of feels like you've been reading in the dark and someone turns the light switch on for you and all of a sudden your entire body goes , "Oh! Wow, how did I not see that before?"? Oprah refers to this as an "Ah Ha!" moment. I like these because they tend to be very focus altering for me, in a good way, like finally taking the time to clean your glasses, or windows. It can make a BIG difference. Well, that is exactly what happened to me this morning.
I have been reading Beth Moore's book "So Long Insecurity" . It is a wonderful study and I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever had their a** kicked by their own insecurities, which I am pretty sure would be the population of the entire planet at one time or another. Here is what I read:
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty!
This is a verse from the bible that comes from Psalm 84:1 and yes I have probably read or heard this verse at least a million times over the course of my 31 years. I have always imagined this verse to be descriptive of a church, or a temple or heaven. Most certainly anywhere God would choose to be would be lovely indeed, I mean...he's God! We wouldn't expect the president of the United States to live in a Motel 6, so of course God, the creator of the earth and skies, wouldn't live anywhere that wasn't infinitely more exquisite than the white house, right? BUT what if I view this verse in the understanding of God living or dwelling in me??? *crickets chirping* Then.....that would mean....I....am lovely? How lovely I am, O Lord Almighty! I am lovely!?! *cue steady stream of tears*
According to 1st Corinthians 3:16 that is an entirely accurate way to read that scripture (if you believe that the bible confirms itself, which I do).
You realize, don't you, that YOU are the temple of God, and God himself is present in YOU? (The Message paraphrase bible, emphasis mine)
I have always believed that God lives in me and loves me and finds worth in me even when I can't seem to find it in myself, but I had never read THIS verse (Psalm 84:1) through the lens of THAT (1st Corinthians 3:16) understanding before and as soon as I did, the light switch was flipped on in my heart and I don't think I will ever be the same again. What a powerful weapon against the negative tapes that seem to play in my head, against my will and out of the blue.
I wish my hair was like "hers" - No, I am lovely!
My thighs are to big - No, I am lovely!
My chest is to small - No, I am lovely!
I have to be THE best in order to matter - No, I am lovely!
I have no original thoughts, so why bother trying to write anything - No, I am lovely!
I will probably fail so why even try - No, I am lovely!
I am forgettable, no one will remember me - No, I am lovely!
I am not enough of what I think people want me to be - No, I am lovely!
My thighs are to big - No, I am lovely!
My chest is to small - No, I am lovely!
I have to be THE best in order to matter - No, I am lovely!
I have no original thoughts, so why bother trying to write anything - No, I am lovely!
I will probably fail so why even try - No, I am lovely!
I am forgettable, no one will remember me - No, I am lovely!
I am not enough of what I think people want me to be - No, I am lovely!
I am to much of what I think people don't want me to be - No, I am lovely!
I am lovely!
Wow, that is some powerful stuff.
I am lovely!
Wow, that is some powerful stuff.
I have not bore my soul through the details of this post in hopes of receiving affirming words of my worth from anyone (although words of encouragement ARE my primary love language and speak VERY strongly to my heart). My purpose in sharing was out of the hope and desire to pass along this new lens for self-viewing to someone else, anyone else, who might need it as desperately as I did/do. I guess I should also add that I don't take this mew mantra as license for pride or resistance against bettering the things in me that truly need to be changed for the better, but when a heart and soul are wounded and dying a slow miserable death, the realization and regular repetition of the fact that "I AM LOVELY!" is a cool sip of water to my parched psyche, a soothing ointment to my crippled self-worth and a warm & gentle embrace to my frightened inner child. I am lovely...and you are too.
Hugs & Hope,
Stephanie
Hugs & Hope,
Stephanie
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