Menu Monday

Hello Lovelies,

I know that I have gotten so sporadic  ok almost non existant on posting, but after looking at all the lovely blogs out there that are doing spring cleaning and spring projects  I got the fever! I normally "summer clean" since here in Deep South Hell, Gulf Coast, Texas, it is too hot to do anything outside after, oh lets say 6 am I usually keep the short (maybe 6 wks if we are lucky) Spring season to do all my outside goodies. But that's what I get for gorging on blogs and pinterest, LOL!

So I bought 11 ferns, 7 veggies plants and called my spring planting done with so I could get the Spring cleaning and project itch outta the way. It has been so nice too, my brain is not near as cluttered either. i'm allowing myself to have some MUCH needed breaks from EVERYTHING too, if i WANT and CAN do it I will but if not I've not worried myself to death about who, what, where, when etc. and for me and my OCD and anxiety issues is a major milestone. i tell you its been really nice. anywho thats been it in a nutshell around our Hacienda.

I'll show y'all later on what I did with the 11 ferns, and why only 7 veggie plants - i didn't want a huge garden to tend to and there is only 3 in our little family right now and no matter how much i try to get Buckaroo to eat veggies it is only a few pieces each night. And the mothers day present i made for my momma (and myself - lol) prolly next week or maybe the end of the week.

Here's the Menu:
Monday - glazed chicken, mac-n-cheese, corn
Tuesday - Big Daddy will be outta town and its sewing club night, so that means he fends for himself and I only have to worry about a side dish.
Wednesday - church and our church has weekly meals to eat as a church family and we are going to be eating dinner there so no cooking for momma! we've been feeling a little discontected from chruch and are hoping that this helps restore that contectedness we crave.
Thursday - deer steak, roasted potatoes, carrots
Friday - hotdogs/hamburgers, chips & deviled eggs
Saturday - not too sure tbh
Sunday - bean & beef taco/tostados

You might notice I've not done the best with freezer cooking - and to be honest - i hate it. There I said it, simple and plain, I thought it would be something that I would grow to be ok with, maybe even like but it's not. I don't really care to cook to begin with and then when you had extra time onto that cooking i REALLY don't like it. Plus we aren't really soup people. Buckaroo is but I always feel like there's not enuff sustanance there for me (yes just one more of my weird issues - hang around long and you might feel like thats ALL i got!). Chicken and steaks end up being too dry (to me and Hubster), plus I have NO problem paying extra for steamable bags, anything that might help make dinner under 30 mins. I got to finding out that I was spending the same amount of time warming up freezer meals as it took me to make a meal. I'm a 30 mins or under gal, if it cant be cooked and ready to eat in 30 mins - find a restuarant that cooks it and we'll eat there! We found that we don't really notice a difference or prefer a taste of Ragu over my homemade speghati sauce, canned Mamwich sauce over the homade one, etc. So we (mainly me) decided that the only freezer cooking I'm doing is frying up a bunch of hamburger meat at one time and dividing it up, which I've always done.

I hope everyone is having an amazing Spring so far and it continues. I'll be doing one more post this week, prolly about the ferns.

Luvs,
Michelle

Menu Menu Monday

Hello Lovies!

How is everyone? I, for one, am uber tired! I want Spring Break back, where I could snuggle with Buckeroo until WE decided we wanted to wake up. Yes, Buckeroo still climbs in bed with us or I lay down with him to get him to sleep. And no, we honestly don't mind. It's really the only time he will calm down enough to truely talk with us, plus he's a great snuggle bug without feeling like a got a 100# weight on me, lol!

Anywho, I enjoyed the time off, and we are 'Back to our Regularly Scheduled Program' today.

My weekly Menu Monday:

MONDAY:Spagheti w/salad (freezer food)
TUESDAY:Sloppy joes w/fries & carrots (freezer food)
WEDNESDAY:Frozen pizza w/salad (church night)
THURSDAY:Beef tips & rice w/green beans & corn (x2 for freezer cooking)
FRIDAY:Meatballs w/butter noodles & carrots (x2 for freezer cooking)
SATURDAY:Beefy cheesey bean tostadas w/ queso/chips & fruit medley
SUNDAY:Fried chicken tenders w/mashed potatoes & sweet peas

I never list breakfast or lunch simply because we aren't really breakfast people and Buckeroo eats breakfast at school (every child gets it wether they eat it or not) plus it's later in the morning and he's more likely to eat it. If I do eat breakfast (I know I know) it's instant oatmeal that we always have on hand. Lunches are simple leftovers or sandwiches, sometimes Buckeroo will buy his lunch if it sounds like something he likes.

GOALS:

*You saw the freezer cooking above (fingers crossed)
*Be deliberately kinder in my speaking when I'm aggrevated
*Finish bookshelves in office
*Plant vegtable garden this weekend

What do y'all have planned for this week for meals? I'm having to do alot of research to keep from cooking the same thing over and over. What big plans do you have for this week in general? I really hope to have great news next Monday on my goals.

In His Luv & Wisdom,
Michelle

A Menu & An Appetizer & An Update

Good morning friends, I hope everyone had a great weekend. And yay if you Prezzy's day off! Man child is off from school and Poppa and Momma decided to make a family day and take off work. I felt like this:

Yes I've been needing a break from work.

What did you do this weekend? Did you accomplish any of the projects that yoou wanted to? Or did you have a restful easy weekend?

Ours was a restful but very productive. I got two upholstery jobs done, just tufting left on one but I wanna get some blang blang buttons (hello look at the name of the blog i gotta have it!). One bookcase fabric backed, and one lampside 3/4 ways done (I ran out of glue sticks for the trim). Come back on Friday for the BIG HUGE furniture reveals (all THREE of them) when I link up over at

and

http://missmustardseed.com/

for her Furniture Friday

Let's just say that it included psray adhesive that is still attached to my fingers, burnt fingertips from a hot glue gun, 2 slices on my hand from a razor, and lots of sweat (no worries I ain't in any of the pix, lol)!

Already on to my post for today.

My menu for this week:

Monday - Speghetti, bread and salad (I'm thinking of trying speghetti squash - anyone tried it as noodles - let me know what you think. Hubby has diabetes and trying to think of healthier ways for noodles).

Tuesday - Lemon pepper chicken, broccoli and beans.I want to try to freezer cook chicken BUT it always comes out dry after defrosting if you got some tips I would absolutely appreciate them.

Wednesday - Pizza and salad (church night so it's always simple!)

Thursday - Beans and Meat and corn.

Friday - Shake N Bake pork chops, carrots & oven roasted garlic potatoes.

My updates on my goals & this weeks plan:

1) Craft room - all the furniture redo's are for the craft room so some progress. Finish the bookshelf and load 'er up.

2) Taekowndo - ummm....nope! Hubster said he would take Buckeroo so that I could work on my stuff and he would get one on one time with Buckeroo. Thruth be told I don't mind him missing so much as it gives us more family time, but I want him to be able to decide later if he wants to continue or not. Not just stop because he never went and therefore didn't learn much, ya know?

3) A load of laundry a day - keeping it real folks, I fell off the bandwagon this week on this one. Getting back in the saddle again tomorrow!

4) Menu cooking and freezer batching - No and no.I got it all planned out, we'll see but again NOT eatting out like before.

5) Meeting with Jesus at least 3x's a week - yes, and  we have added at night too as a family. We are reading Jesus Calling ( I highly recommend it) the night before for the next day and talk about it. Going to add in what Cor is learning in Sunday School throughout the week too.

6) 15 min nightly clean up - YES! and a praise to go with it, before little man would just lay his stuff down anywhere and walk right past trash, now he puts stuff up right when/where he is supposed to and whenever he walks past something that needs to be picked up (trash, dirty cup, etc) he will take it to the right spot!Praise Jesus! We've prayed about this, I know some say thats trivial, but "in all things seek God" and that's what I do, and He answers ALL big or small doesn't matter to Him. Just continue to build on this.

What about you guys? What are your menu plans? I'd luv to see some furniture turnabouts, etc. I hope y'all come back ya hear??

Tuesday is gonna be recipes and some great finds last week.

Wednesday is WIWW link up.

Thursday uummm....I'll get back with ya on that ;D

Friday the HUGE furniture reveal!

In His  Luv & Wisdom,

Michelle



brrrrr it's cold up in HERA!!! what do you do with 12.5 #'s of ground meat

hello luvies!!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful, blessed, full-o-luv Valentine's Day. In our home we used to say, Happy <insert drawn heart here> Day! Before Cor could read I would write 'Happy <insert drawn heart here> Day' and I would read "happy", he would energentically shout "HEART", and then I would say Day. I had forgotten about that until this afternoon when a coworker and I were talking. So what did everyone get? I got Cor a "dig your dino out and be an archeologist" with some candy, I got Jeff a big ole bubba mug and filled it with candle and attached cracker jax to it (cracker jax are a favorite of ours around here). I got the "best gift of all, me momma" courtesy of my little man himself! I asked him how did he get so smart, he said, 'Momma, I AM your son," I stiffled a giggle and asked, 'Well, how do you know that I luv so very much?' He promptly answered, "I'm your hunny bunny." Don't you just love those wonderful daily conversations with your littles that warm your heart so much that makes you say to yourself, "Self you ARE doing something right here!"
Here is the card i got Hubster:

Since most of y'all here know Jeff and me and our last name you totally get the I laughed so hard in the walmart card aisle that people started walking on the far side of the aisle with worried glances toward me. LOL! For those of y'all that don't ~ people call us Bubba and Bubbette, AND our last name is Wimp, nope I did not misspell our name!

Already back on track, freezer cooking. I didn't keep to my planned meals last week and therefore wasn't able to freezer batch cook as I was regular cooking. But I wanted to make sure that I did do some freezer cooking, so I ended up with this:

add in 12.5 lbs of this:

ground deer meat courtesy of the wonderful hubster

equals this:

I got six quarts of speghatti, three quarts of sloppy joe mix (it would have been four but we had sloppy joes that night), two quarts of taco meat, and two sandwich baggies of plain meat. I made the freezer portions bigger than we would normally eat, but it allows Buckeroo and me to take lunch leftovers if we want (sandwiches get old) and regular leftovers. All the recipes are homemade compliments of Moi, I'm going to do another post with the recipes next week. I'm really going to try hard to stick to my planned meals because while I like the outcome I didn;t particularly like the several hour process. I really think that if I stick with the planned meals it would be so much easier to do with just tripling the amount I could of a meal or two.

So have any of y'all done freezer cooking? Do you have any helpful tips or ideas? Have any recipes you'd like to share?

In His Luv & Wisdom,

michelle

Monday Musings 2-13-2012

Top O' Monday Morning to you!! I hope y'all had a fabulous weekend, we did. We finished some projects around here, we are supposed to be getting our fence installed today or Wednesday. I pray it's today, I'm ready to have a fenced back yard it's only been 6 yrs since I've wanted one BUT we are paying C-A-S-H for it. whoot whoot, just in case you were wondering yes i am total footloose dancing about that. I will be posting pix of that as it progresses.

I decided this week I would break down the Monday Musings post, since they are kinda really long and didn't want to loose you guys like i do (ohh, shiney stuff.....) myself.

Well guys here's a recap of my goals last week, lets see how I measured up (don't be too harse k? - yes I'm talking to myself)

1) Finish my dining room turned craft room- i got nothing, nada, zilch, zero done on this, but strangely enuff I was totally ok with that, I suppose it's because I kept the house cleaned up everynight and that made me feel so accomplished!
2) Get Cor to taekowndo two times - umm, that was a no go, Tuesday night we had Math night at his school and book fair. Thursday night well we just didn't go, Friday night our church had PNO  from 6-10 for $15 (yes you read that right $15 and the more kids you got the cheaper it gets!) we call it kids night in so cor wants to go and play with his friends since we live in a different town than the where our church is located. Once he gets there he forgets about us completely.
3) Do a load of laundry a day  "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" yes i did do a load a day!! i can't believe that I did this - well i didn't get the clothes put away, they are folded and all but i still count it
4) ACTUALLY cook the ALL the meals that I plan out (altho we are doing better it's sandwiches, frozen pizza or something from the freezer but not eating out) - i did this too! i didn't cook all the planned meals but i did cook a meal every night.
5) Do one of those meals as a freezer batch cooking - yes to the freezer cooking no to how I did it, i did a huge freezer cooking batch on Sunday and to be honest not sure if I will do it again that way, it just seems like alot of work (and it was I know the payoff will be later) BUT i know this had to do with the fact that i did NOT follow my scheduled meals. If I had it would have been so much more pleasant and easier.
6) At least 3 days of Jesus & me time in the morning - only got two, but again this was me i spent some morning time i had on the computer reading blogs and pinning on pinterest.
7) Do 15 min clean up before bed each night - yes, YES, YES let me tell you sistas this was such a wonderful thing that i am trying my hardest to really make a habit. it helps things run so much more smoothly furing the whole week all day! even when i'm at work i'm not worrying about what i haven't gotten done at home!

So my goals are kinda the same, just more building on the ones that i'm getting down and hopefully get the others down.
1) I just hope to get a little quadrant of this room done this week. I won't be home Monday night hubster's outta town and that mean a slumber party at my Momma and Daddy's whoot whoot!
2) I still want to try to get cor there at least once a week, i mean we are paying for it even if we don't use it. It's just hard with everything we have during the week. so i've decided that i will shoot for once a week, and then try to build on that once i get that down.
3) I'm so never stopping this! I'm just going to try to add putting away the laundry instead of it being folded in the laundry basket.
4) I'm going to try to work on sticking with my planned meals just because I think it would help with making the freezer meal batches automatic not another step I have to do (#5).
5) I know that it would have been a ton easier if I had stuck to my meal plans than to have to do a huge extra step Sunday. I won't be doing any this week (most likely) just because there is so much food from my batch Sunday that I don't think I will have freezer room for much else!
6) This is going to be my #1 priority this week, my soul craves this! I have to have this, it really isn't an option. I just have to retrain myself, I used to have it at night after everyone has gone to bed. But I don't want to be up really late anymore since I have to be on the road to Cor's school no later than 7:30 am.
7)This one I just need to continue, there isn't much I think I need to add to.

Well ladies that's it for the goals this week. What are your goals? I want to help with being an accountability partner, like I want you guys to be with me. I still haven't figure out linky parties, but just post them in comments or a link to your blog post if you have one in the comments also and I'll check it out.

Faith Musings I'm thinking sometime a little later in the week, so I have some time to chew and mull over what I read in the week, study at church, etc.

In His Luv & Wisdom,
Michelle