Wordless Wednesday–Peek-a-Boo!

This child of mine is funny. He likes to play peek-a-boo upside down through his legs. I think it’s just practice for standing up unassisted, but it’s still funny!

~S

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Monthly Menu Plan – March

So, I had questions from some friends how I come up with my monthly plan. As in, what are the steps that I use, how long does it take, how is it working for us, etc. So, here is a step by step on how I do my monthly meal plan:

Step 1: Come up with a theme for each day of the week. For example, right now mine looks like this: Monday – Mexican or Chinese, Tuesday – Something new, Wednesday – Crockpot meal, Thursday – Less than 30 minutes, Friday – Leftovers, Saturday – Family Favorite, Sunday – Italian.

Step 2: Make a permanent list of 5-10 (or more) recipes for each theme. Make sure you have recipes (or know the recipe) for each one. Nothing worse than thinking you’re going to make something, and then not being able to find the recipe.

Step 3: Print out a calendar for the month. I print out a blank one and then add in other events, like fellowship team, date night, weekend activities, etc, that will affect dinner time or my ability to cook dinner that night. I like to do this step on a separate calendar so it’s not cluttered with *everything* that I have scheduled. Also, if it’s not on my regular calendar, it’s easier to cross things out and rearrange as I go to the next steps.

Step 4: After you’ve filled out your other events, count how many of each theme you need to come up with.

Step 5: Referring to the list you already made, pick the number of recipes you need for each theme. I usually write them down on a scratch piece of paper.

Step 6: Plug your choices into the monthly calendar, taking into account how much time each recipe takes and how much money each one costs. For example, I’m not going to plan three expensive recipes in a week, nor am I going to plan three time intensive recipes. I try to balance out one time intensive and one expensive recipe per week (obviously, sometimes these are the same meal, but sometimes not. Noodles are cheap to make, but take for.ev.er.)

Step 7: Gather your recipes and make a grocery list. I still go once a week, even though I plan the whole month’s meals. This is mostly because of fresh food. I figure I’ll have to go to the store every week anyway for vegetables and milk, so I might as well just plan one week’s groceries at a time. I use two resources for planning my shopping trip. The first is this plan sheet that is organized based on how my grocery store is laid out. I just write down each item under the appropriate heading and then it’s all in order when I get to the store. For extra things, sale things, or finding coupons, I use Bargain Blessings. She’s local to me and she runs a great website that is all free. I also go to CostCo once a month, usually after I’ve made the monthly meal plan so that I can get the things that I know I will need.

That’s it! Does it work? Absolutely! There are so many things that I like about doing it this way. We don’t end up having spaghetti every night when I can’t think of anything else. We get to eat the other meals that I was forgetting about when I was just doing it weekly. AND one of the best parts, it really doesn’t take me that long!! I would say it now takes me less than 30 minutes to do, more if I spend a bunch of time looking for new recipes. (stumped for recipes? Try Our Best Bites or Food Network Magazine)

Okay, so here’s the plan for March:

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
3	4 Teriyaki Burgers	5 Orange Chicken Stir Fry	6 Chili Colorado Burritos	7 Texas Roadhouse for Date Night	8 YOYO	9 Chicken Couscous
10 Dinner with Dad & Stepmom	11 Tortilla Casserole	12 Garlic-Lemon  Stuffed Chicken	13 Cheesy Ham & Potatoes	14 Parmesan Ranch Chicken	15 Hubby’s Birthday! Pizza & Lemon Cake	16 YOYO
17 Basic Casserole	18 Sweet & Sour Meatballs	19 Honey Orange Pork Tenderloin	20 Chicken Chili	21 Rice-a-roni Deluxe Date Night	22 YOYO	23 Cheater Pot Pie
24 Tortellini Spinach Bake	25 Tacos	26 Green Beans, Potatoes, and Chicken	27 Parmesan Chicken	28 Bob’s Red Mill Vegi Stew	29  YOYO	30 Spaghetti and Meatballs

One more note: do not become a slave to “the plan”…if you need to make something else that night, do it! I would say I stick to the plan about 6 nights out of 7, and usually it’s just to shuffle something around. Hope this helps! Happy planning! :-) And please, if you have any questions, I’d be happy to try and help!!

~S

Wordless Wednesday–Waffles

During the snow storm we had on Sunday, I made waffles. Lots of waffles. A double batch of Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Waffles. I used this recipe, but I used cinnamon and vanilla as stated in the recipe instead of orange extract and pure lemon. I put chocolate chips on top of the batter before I closed the waffle maker, and ta-da! Chocolate Chip Waffles! I ended up with three gallon bags full of frozen waffles. I’m hoping they last more than a week, but with my kids (and hubby), you never know…Shane alone can eat almost a whole one for breakfast!

Yum!

~S

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Tot School–”The Red Carpet”

Nathanael is currently 44 months.

We’re plugging along with tot school and life in general around here. This week, we did a delightful book called Red Carpet by Rex Parkin. Can I just pause to say that I love my library? We have an awesome network of libraries that I have access to, all from the comfort of my home. I can request any book they have and it magically appears at the library a short time later :-)

Anyway, back to our unit. We did a lot of activities from Homeschool Creations (both from her Red Carpet pack and her unit on police) and the file that was on Homeschool Share (They’ve decided to pull it for now, hopefully it will be back soon!)

Here are a few pictures from our studies:

 Drawing a red line through the city.

What is Red? mini-book

Rolling a red ribbon through the living room, just like the red carpet rolled through the town.

Creating a stop light.

How many fingerprints? mini-book

Fruit roll up for a snack :)

Some of our finished pages for our notebook.

We also made soft pretzels today, which tied in to the story as well (and they were super-tasty!)

I’ve also been having Nate do busy bags a few times a week. Some times, he loves them. Other times, not so much. It’s still such a struggle for him to work independently. I know that he’s a three-year-old boy, so hopefully this will get better with age! Anyway, here are a few he enjoyed this week:

Measuring. There are three sizes of things, with three different rulers. Sort the ribbons, etc, by size.

Clothesline. He was actually able to do the clothespins by himself, which was great, and an improvement over last week!

So, what are you doing with your tot this week? We’ll be doing “Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?” Fun!

~S

Wordless Wednesday–Fort Collins Museum of Discovery

Our first and definitely not our last visit to the newly opened Fort Collins Museum of Discovery Science Center. I feel like we just scratched the surface of what we can do there!

~S

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PJammin’ Party–International Childhood Cancer Day is TODAY!

In honor of International Childhood Cancer Day, and as a tribute to Esther, we held a PJammin’ party last night with a few friends.

We colored pictures to send to our representatives, ate pizza, and watched Paul and the Dragon.

The kids had a good time. They were looking forward to our pajama party all week. They wanted to stay in their pajamas all day instead of just getting dressed in them for dinner and the party.

To find out more about the reason for the coloring pages, go visit Sam’s blog. To just print off the picture, etc, keep reading!

1. Download a coloring page at the bottom of this post.  There is one with flowers and one with a wagon.  Feel free to encourage your dudes to draw their own rocket blasters on that wagon...boys like to color things if they have fire :).  
2. There is a space for the kids to write the name of their Representative or Senator and a place for them to sign their name.  
3. Mail a copy to your members of congress.  You can find all the contact information for your Representatives here and your Senators here.  
4. The deadline is fast approaching, make sure they arrive by March 1st. 

Esther Coloring Page Flowers by slalvarado

~S

Monthly Menu Plan–February

Hey, look at that! It’s the beginning of February and I have the menu done already! Ooo, and I’m even blogging about it, amazing :-)

Here’s the plan for the month:

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
3	4 Freezer Meal	5 Baked Garlic & Brown Sugar Chicken	6 White Chicken Chili	7 Bob’s Red Mill Vegi Stew	8 Polish Pierogis	9 Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup
10 Dinner with Dad & Stepmom	11 Tacos	12 Dad’s choice	13 Healthy Mama Chicken	14 Parmesan Ranch Chicken	15 YOYO	16 Pizza
17 Spaghetti & Meat Sauce	18 Sweet & Sour Meatballs	19 Island Chicken	20 Southwest Chicken Burritos	21 Date Night	22 YOYO	23 Teriyaki Burgers
24 Guiltless Fettuccini Alfredo	25 Creamy Chicken Taquitos	26 Beyond Easy Pulled Pork	27 Family Night with Fellowship Team	28 Date Night	1 YOYO	2 Orange Chicken Stir Fry

 

This past week, we pretty much just ate leftovers from Shane’s party last Sunday. I made a bit too much food, oops. Better too much than not enough! (At least in my opinion) And I still didn’t get to those pierogis, so maybe this Friday.

The freezer to crockpot meals that I mentioned last time are going well, there were several that we absolutely loved and none that were inedible. This month, I’m going to try a few more new ones and probably double the few that I’m repeating to stock up the freezer a bit.

So, what are you having for dinner?

~S