My plans for this site

So I kind of want more readers on this site... but that means I need to do the work to get you here and keep you here. I haven't done that. I think I will change the title. I haven't been doing too much digiscrapping lately. I need to do some. I will still post scrap pages when I do them... I have been learning to use my sewing machine lately though. Hmmm... I like to do everything. So I will post a little of everything here. Toddler activities (we're going to make those ghost footprints tomorrow :)), recipes we like, menu plans, crafts, scrapbooking... just whatever we do that is fun and creative. I'll menu plan on Tuesday after we get our store ads. So that will probably be a wednesday post. Maybe I will make something up for each day of the week to post about... Monday Mommy Craft day, Tuesday menu plan review day, Wednesday menu plan, Thursday Recipe day, Friday Week in Review day, Saturday Family Craft or Activity, and Sunday Insight day. They don't rhyme or have assonance or whatever... but they will get us by. Anything you would rather read about? I'll take suggestions... I'll start tomorrow with a play by play of Family craft day. Well and I will post my menu plan now so I have it in my head too...
So this is extra long menu planning because I made a big shopping trip this week and I can't go shopping for another two weeks except for milk and fresh veggies.

Menu Plan
Fri.- Flatlander chili from allrecipes.com - I am leaving out the green pepper and celery and substituting onion powder because hubby is picky
Sat.- Pumpkin Gorgonzola pasta from Pots and Pins ...something with hamburger for lunch- tacos or mac n cheese
Sun.- Cafe Rio Pork salad well I will use this dressing recipe but for the pork I will just stick it in the crockpot with one cup of salsa and one cup of brown sugar. YUMMY!
Mon.- Tri Tip with this seasoning - maybe in the crockpot?
Tues.- Leftovers
Wednesday- Thai peanut chicken with rice noodles- using packet seasoning and instructions
Thursday- Quesadillas
Friday- Bacon hamburger roll-up- hamburger(seasoned with montreal steak seasoning and worcestshire sauce), bacon, and velveeta spread out on pizza dough and then rolled up so the dough swirls through the hamburger and bacon. Cook in the oven at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Get the dough as thin as possible so it cooks in the middle.
Sat- Sweet and Sour Chicken
Sun. - Chicken over rice(DH's recipe- he will make this)
Mon.- Leftovers
Tues.- find a tri tip recipe
Wednesday- find a pork recipe
Thursday- Mac n Cheese
Friday- Curry Chicken and Broccoli casserole- basically this recipe except I cook it in the oven at 350 for 45 min. and I use more cheese and I might use more curry?

Ok..two weeks of planning- I will update as things may change (especially if I get lazy or we need to have more leftover days.) Suggestions for pork tenderloin and tri-tip recipes are welcome. I got some on sale this week and have frozen a lot. Thanks! Hope you enjoy my blog makeover. I hope to use it to make me more accountable for some goals that I have. So at least it will serve my own purposes even if no one else looks at it. :)

Menu Plan Monday!

What a slacker am I! Sorry that I have been neglecting my scrapping and this blog. I am less than two weeks from my due date and my energy is sapped. I want to make a new header for this blog. That will be my next scrapping project...when I get the energy and time. :) Anyway ... I made all of the meals on my list last week and made my husband very happy! I would make all of the recipes again especially the Chinese Chicken Salad. I guess the only change I would make is that I would use a different kind of dough - not crescent- for the roll-ups. Crescent rolls have a flavor we don't like as much. It's good with the chicken roll-ups but otherwise it's not our favorite. I might use pizza dough or more of a roll dough instead. So for this week...

Monday- Corned Beef Brisket, Mashed potatoes, Chicken Caesar salad I have never made Brisket or corned beef before sooooo.. we will see how it goes...
Tuesday- Corned Beef Noodle Casserole with Spinach and Cheese-
New recipe that I will try with leftovers
Wednesday- Bratwurst, salad, corn
Thursday- Barbecue Corned beef sandwiches, french fries, peas
Friday- Sweet and Sour Chicken, rice, Gyoza- I have a recipe for this if you want it... it's from the Help! My Apartment has a Kitchen! cookbook. It's a great cookbook for college students and for making meals for 2. I alter this recipe a fair amount - mainly increasing the amount of sauce and using chicken instead of pork. It's one of our family favorites though. Let me know if you want the recipe.
Sat- Eat out/make your own
Sunday- Leftovers?/ Broccoli Curry Chicken casserole

Menu Plan Monday!

So I thought I would do this again since I have been slacking lately and we have been eating too much Little Caesars and In N Out. I did cook over the weekend some so we will start out with Leftovers
Monday: Left over homemade Pizza or Enchiladas and Salad
Tuesday: I saw this on Laura's blog and we may try it... Cake for dinner
Wednesday: Crockpot Lasagna
we have tried this recipe before and my husband loves it. I think the key is the no boil noodles and we had it in the crockpot for about 5 hours. I season the beef with a little Worcester sauce and montreal steak seasoning too.
Thursday: gyoza (Potstickers) and Rice and Chinese Chicken Salad
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: Eat out for one meal/ Leftovers
Sunday: Ham and cheese crescent rolls and French fries- I have some pillsbury crescent rolls that I will stuff according to what people like- In mine I will probably have ranch, mozzarella cheese, ham, and broccoli- My hubbies will be ham and cheddar or ham, mozzarella and tomoato sauce. I'll probably make a variety since everything that we put in is already prepared it's easy to make them to individual tastes. :)

mmm.. The week is shaping up nicely. I need to go pick up a few things at the grocery store for the chicken salad and maybe some things like Jello for the cake for dinner. But not a ton of shopping is required. :)

menu plan

Monday- we went to Yolanda's- a delicious mexican restaurant. Kaden was really well behaved and chowed down on the rice and beans.

Tuesday we had Chicken Crescent rolls - recipe courtesy of April-

Chicken Crescent Rolls

1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese

1 Tbsp pimientos, chopped (optional)

2 Tbsp butter, melted

1 (8 oz) can refrigerated crescent rolls

2 cups chicken, cubed and cooked

1 Tbsp butter, melted

¼ tsp salt

¼ cup croutons, seasoned & crushed

1/8 tsp pepper

3 Tbsp milk

1 Tbsp chives, chopped

Blend cream cheese and melted butter. Add chicken, salt, pepper, milk, chives and pimientos; mix well. Separate crescent dough into 8 triangles, as marked. Spoon ¼ cup meat mixture near base of triangle and roll up, crescent style. Brush each roll with melted butter; dip in croutons or dressing crumbs. Place on ungreased baking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot with any favorite cream sauce (or cream of chicken or mushroom soup, diluted with about ½ can of milk).

I added a little season salt to the chicken before adding it to the mix. I also used Montreal steak seasoning instead of salt and pepper.

Wednesday- Beef stroganoff- unless DH objects- then I'll switch it up with a different meal...

Thursday- sweet and sour meatballs

Friday- homemade pizza (Kaden's 2nd b-day!!!)

Saturday- enchiladas

Sunday- leftovers and Cake and Ice cream for Kaden's b-day!

new LO using Karla Marano's Cupid's crush, Heritage Harvest, and Heartfelts...

Menu plan Monday!

I am going to change it to Menu plan tuesday because that is when the ads come out. This way I can more easily coordinate sales and coupons . I will do my grocery shopping onWednesday after music class with Kaden armed with coupons and the current sales. I will do my shopping at Ralph's because it is on the way home and they are the only store in town that does double coupons.

That being said I will be making up my menu this week based on what we have in the fridge. I may go and get some produce. A new grocery store opened last week called Fresh and Easy. It is supposed to be good for cooking for small families. It's supposed to be kind of a Whole Foods but less expensive. I have not been impressed with the produce at our Vons and Albertsons. I like Costco produce and it is usually cheaper or the same price as our non bulk grocery stores but we just can't eat that much produce and I hate to waste it. So I want to check out Fresh and Easy and see how Fresh and expensive it is. :) I may have gestational diabetes so I need to get some more veggies for us to eat anyway.

I won't post a menu this week- I will kind of play it by ear but we have plenty of easy stuff to make so I should be able to stick to my plan of minimal shopping and not eating out. I finally am feeling better and have more energy again! Woohoo! Feels good!

If I need ideas I will go to this website for recipes based on the ingredients I already have:
http://www.recipematcher.com/

Menu Plan Monday!

Last week was the strangest eating week because I could not smell and therefore I could not taste very well either. I'm glad that we did all the easy costco stuff. I was wiped out all week. I still am.
This week is another easy continuation of last week. On Sat. we did our grocery shopping- meaning we bought snack food for the superbowl. We spent our grocery bdget for the week on snack food! We did not eat it all or even cook it all so this week will consist of the leftovers. It will not be a totally healthy week but it will be fast and easy and not entirely lacking in nutrition.

So in no particular order we will have...

1. Sweet and sour meatballs/ salad/ chips

2. Sloppy Joes/ french fries

3. Beef Nachos/ beans/chips/salsa

4. Buffalo chicken nuggets/ salad/corn/fries or chips

5. Taquitos/ bean dip/ chips

6. Chicken alfredo/ broccoli/ rolls

7. cheap eat out- ie costco pizza or maybe we will use coupons at McDonald's again (yes, we ate at McD's with a coupon this weekend. Saved us three bucks. Though it would have probably cost us the same to eat off of the dollar menu- and just as good... Lessons learned...) or Pizza Pockets and bites we'll see....

Funny story- my son asked me to color the letters for him. I drew the Alphabet and for M, I said M for Mommy. He pointed to the M and said French Fries. It was one of his first words too. So sad. We only get them maybe twice a month I swear! :) He recognizes the sign though and has for months now!

Menu Plan Monday!

Last week went pretty well though I tend to find that I have way too many leftovers. I think I need to build in more leftover days- at least 2 instead of just one anyway.

We LOVED the Cafe Rio salad. The pork was delicious and sweet and contrasted perfectly with the cilantro lime dressing. If I didn't explain it well enough in my last post it is a layered salad of romaine lettuce, black beans, cilantro rice (link to recipe in my previous post), shredded pork(recipe in previous Monday post), and cilantro lime ranch dressing(recipe link in previous Monday post). The hardest part was chopping veggies - so obviously it was pretty easy. The pork was especially easy and tasty. We will make this again. Maybe next week since I still have the dressing made.
The bacon cheeseburger rollups were also a hit. They are basically what they sound like. crumbled bacon, hamburger, velveeta(or 2 cups of shredded cheese), spread over pizza dough and rolled up spiral style then cooked for 25 minutes. I also added Montreal steak seasoning and Worcestershire sauce to the hamburger when I was cooking it. My hubby definitely wants this one again.
I added too many potatoes to the Carne Guisada. It was good but it just ended up tasting like steak and potatoes to me. I added carrots to it too. Tasty but a pretty basic recipe really. If you are in the mood for steak and potatoes it is a good one. I couldn't find all of the sofrito ingredients so maybe that's why it wasn't more amazing. I think I would add more sofrito next time. It's got a yummy salsa flavor that we love and would make it less boring. It was still flavorful- just boring.
Pizza was a hit too of course. DH had boring pepperoni and bacon on his half and I had pepperoni, bacon, red and green peppers, tomatoes and onions on my half (definitely the better half). It is so easy. I love homemade pizza. Trader Joes has a great Pizza dough for 99 cents too.

So this week we will be having :

Monday- Chicken Stirfry (I have an Iron Chef Garlic chicken sauce I will use with the chicken) and the stirfry I got in a bag at Costco

Tuesday- flautas w/beans and salsa (Costco flautas... yummy)

Wednesday- leftovers

Thursday- Chinese Chicken Salad and Gyoza(potstickers) (Got the Chinese Chicken Salad at Costco too- the dressing is awesome!- the Potstickers are LingLing also from Costco)

Friday- Chicken Tikka (from a jar)

Saturday- eat out or leftovers

Sunday- Meatloaf(still haven't gotten around to making this...)

Can you tell I went to Costco on Saturday? :) I love that place. This will be an easy prep week. But I have a bad cold so I need an easy food week. I put in two leftovers days- depending on the amount of food we have we may increase it to 3... Anyway... Enough about food.

Got to see baby Asher this morning. I had an ultrasound. I am now 30 weeks and the belly is getting in the way. :) Asher is weighing approximately 2 pounds 12 ounces. I'm not sure where all the other 23 pounds I've gained have gone! I guess the belly isn't all baby. :) Everything looks good so far- though they have the tech do the ultrasound and someone else reads it- I'll get the reading later. He is a flexible little guy. He had his foot up touching his forehead. He liked to poke back at the ultrasound tech. He looks a lot like Kaden did in unltrasound pics. Seems to have a similar nose. He must know that I am talking about him because he just started squirming around. :) Smart boy! I'm excited to take pictures of him in person and see how Kaden reacts to him. Fun stuff.

Here's a LO that goes back to the carefree kidless days. It's our Recipe for Love- appropriate for Menu plan Monday. :) I used Karla's Cupid's Crush for it and her Vintage Valentine frames. I also used a free template by Bianca Guimarães Team to cut the red heart paper.

Menu Plan Monday!

So last week- I cooked a lot but not every night...which is ok since we still didn't have to buy anything at the grocery store except milk. Matt had to work a lot of late nights so he ate at work. Kaden and I kept it simple on those nights.
The tacos were great.
The slow cooker roast was excellent though we ate it more as leftovers rather than the day I made it.
The chicken curry casserole is still a family fave.
The dreamy creamy casserole is very tasty. I will post the recipe for it later.

This weeks menu... I did the grocery shopping this morning- got most of it done... a few things were not available so I will have to try another store later.

Monday- Cafe Rio Pork salad and rice. The pork recipe I used is :
Cafe Rio Pork
Sweet Pork:

* 1 (3-5 pound) pork roast-boneless pork loin recommended
* 1 cup salsa-use Pace or one similar, not the fresh salsas
* 1 cup brown sugar, packed

Place ingredients in a greased slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW heat for 8-10 hours. Shred pork with a fork or potato masher before serving. Keep lid off after shredding for about 15 minutes so juice will thicken. Use meat in burritos, tacos, or salads. If freezing, keep juice and freeze with meat.

Tuesday- Bacon Cheeseburger Rollups. We had these at my sis-in-laws over christmas and she put the recipe in my cook book. They are yummy. I will post the recipe later.

Wednesday- Meatloaf

Thursday- Carne Guisada with Sofrito

Friday-leftovers

Saturday- Pizza- homemade(well I bought the parts to it- Trader Joes has yummy pizza dough for 99 cents :) )

Sunday- Chicken Enchiladas

I've got the pork in the crockpot- so we are off to a good start today. ..

Menu Plan Monday!

A new goal to help meet our budget. We need to tighten things up so that we can afford a new vehicle. My husband's commuter car is about to become more expensive to maintain than it is worth. So he will most likely switch to my car and we will get a mini-van for me. If you know anyone interested in selling one... let us know. This week I want to make recipes that we already have ingredients for. I have one package of beef and several of chicken and one roast. So....

Monday - Tostadas and Tacos- using leftover taco meat and refried beans from tonight. :) So basically this meal is already done. :)

Tuesday- Slow cooker Roast- I actually don't think I have any onion soup so I will improvise with steak seasoning and onion powder instead. I did it once before and it turned out well. I'll serve this over rice with Corn on the cob on the side.

Wednesday- Cheesy Meat loaf- This is a recipe that my sister-in-law gave me for Christmas. She gave me an awesome book. I am excited to try all of the recipes. We'll eat it with french fries and salad.

Thursday- Chicken Broccoli Curry Casserole- This too is a family favorite and also is included in the cookbook my sis-in-law gave me.

3-4 Chicken Breasts Preheat oven to 375

1 bag frozen Broccoli florets mix everything but the croutons and butter

2 cans cream of chicken soup in a 9x13 pan. Save some cheese to sprinkle on

1 cup mayonnaise top.

1 1/2 tsp curry powder crush the croutons in a bag with a rolling pin

2 T lemon juice mix with butter and sprinkle over top

Grated Cheddar cheese Cook for 45 min. or until Chicken is cooked

1 cup croutons Serve over Rice

2 T butter, melted

My sis-inlaws recipe calls for cooking and shredding the chicken first but my family always just cooks it in the casserole. If you use chicken tenderloins you don't even have to defrost it first. :)

Friday- Enchilada Casserole- I cook one can of enchilada sauce with two chicken breasts in the crockpot on low all day. I throw the chicken in frozen so it is super easy. I shred the chicken about half way through the cooking time so that it soaks up the sauce better. I layer the chicken, corn tortillas and cheese in a pan and cook it in the oven for about 20 minutes to melt the cheese. This is a family favorite and very easy.

Saturday- Leftovers - though this night may rotate to a different one earlier in the week if I get too tired.

Sunday- Creamy Dreamy chicken and Spirals casserole- another recipe from my new cookbook.

Woohoo- don't have to go grocery shopping this week. :) Gotta love that!