11/14/12 Meal Plan

Wednesday - Chicken with Quinoa and Veggies *
Thursday - Chicken Fingers, brown rice, green beans
Friday - date night!
Saturday - Tilapia, Pioneer Woman's Pasta with Pesto Cream Sauce, salad
Sunday - Pioneer Woman's Steak Bites, baked potatoes, broccoli
Monday -  Chili with Pioneer Woman's Cornbread with Pecans and Cranberries * and Healthy Chocolate Chip Deep Dish Pie* for dessert
Tuesday - Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup *
Wednesday - Tastefully Simple's Artichoke and Spinach Chicken
Thursday - Happy Thanksgiving!
Friday - leftovers
Saturday - Giada's Turkey Tetrazzini
Sunday - Slow Cooker Beef Carnitas Tacos * with Chipotle's Cilantro Lime Rice

* These are new recipes - I'll give my reviews next week

Getting my Act Together for the Rest of 2012

I need to hit the "reset" button on my life. I am SO longing to get back to a place of organization and intentionality! In the last year or two, I've fallen off the wagon with meal planning, couponing, exercising, and preparing my to-do lists with three "most important tasks" in mind for the next day.

My life isn't falling apart or anything, I'm just not used to living in a just-in-time world. It all happened gradually as Jason became more destructive mobile, then I began my Tastefully Simple business, doing lots of parties and building a team, then homeschooling took over last year.  These are  all good things, but all the more reason to get my ducks in a row so life runs more smoothly.

Don't get me wrong...it's not complete chaos around here. I realize I sound super busy, but I've embraced a much calmer pace with slower, lazy days. That might be part of the problem...when I was go-go-go, I just kept going until everything got done. But now, when the kids decide to all go play outside, instead of popping in a workout video, I open a book or magazine. It's been nice, but I'm kind of over it. I need to be ahead of the 8 ball once again.

I hate throwing something together for dinner at 5:15pm. I hate arriving at the grocery store without my coupons (because they're in a pile waiting to be clipped) randomly grabbing items for our weekly menu. I hate discovering that I have all but ONE ingredient for a great recipe. I hate finding a pocket of time that I could be productive and not remembering what needs to be done, so I plop down in front of Facebook or Pinterest. I hate feeling overwhelmed by insignificant tasks like finding a gift for a birthday party. I hate that on the days that I skip the gym, our homeschool routine flows flawlessly, so I convince myself not to exercise.

These would all be excellent New Years Resolutions, but I'm ready to get ahead of the game before the excitement and busy-ness of Christmas takes over my house. I'm done. Today.

First, I'm starting with a meal plan. I have a house full of food, so I just need to figure out how to throw it altogether into a dinner recipe...or seven. From now through the end of the year, I'm going to spend 20 minutes on Sundays planning our meals for the upcoming week.  That alone will be SO helpful! If I have time, I'll clip coupons and make my grocery list too. 

At night, before zoning out in front of the t.v. or the computer or a book, I'll put together my to-do list for the following day, prioritizing the top 3 items so that if I do NOTHING else that day, I can feel at least a little productive and not guilty when I veg out.

I will spend 5 minutes picking up the main areas of the house before heading to bed.

I will schedule times to exercise through the week like they are an appointment that cannot be broken.

On Sundays, I'll continue to plan the kids' lessons for school for the week. Including craft ideas from Pinterest so I can cram in all of the Christmasy ideas before December gets away from me.

I already feel better. I'm a natural planner and this willy-nilly attitude I've developed lately is becoming extremely uncomfortable.

I'm off to create our menu through Thanksgiving!!!

Cinnamon Pumpkin Muffin Melts

When I turned on my computer this morning, I intended to search for something fun for Mike's birthday breakfast. I was so grateful that this recipe was sitting in my email from the Simple Homeschool blog! The smell of pumpkin had filled the house by the time Mike returned from the gym.

Make these very, very soon. You'll thank me!

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar (I used agave nectar and reduced the milk to 1/4 cup...you could also use maple syrup)

1 egg

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cinnamon

For topping:

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 cup sugar mixed with 2 Tbsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a mini muffin pan with cooking spray.

2. Mix together milk and pumpkin. Set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the softened butter and sugar/agave/maple syrup until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue mixing.

4. In a smaller bowl, mix the milk and pumpkin.

5. Whisk together the rest of the dry ingredients. Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet mixture, alternating with the pumpkin/milk mixture.

6. Fill prepared muffin cups 3/4 full. Reduce oven to 325 degrees and bake 20 minutes.

7. Cool muffins in the pan for a few minutes, then remove to a plate or cooling rack. When cool enough to handle, dip the top of each muffin in melted butter, then roll in cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Yields 30 mini muffins.

 

All-Day Halloween Fun

I mentioned last week that Ryan really wanted this full-coverage Darth Vader helmet, right?  We decided to come up with a list of chores that would help him earn the money (details on that later) but that wasn't getting him the cash fast enough, so he had a lemonade stand (with Kaylin and his neighbor friend) on Monday night. $.50 per cup and he earned the final $6 that he needed for his Darth Vader helmet.

On Tuesday night, we ventured out to buy his beloved helmet. After dumping mostly change on the counter, I was shocked that he had exactly $.40 leftover after tax.  He used it to buy a piece of candy.

Then, on Wednesday, we spent the whole day doing crafts, science experiments and making Halloween treats...

We made Frankenstein pudding cups

and Jack-o-Lantern peach cups

We created a lava lamp/chemical reaction with oil, water and Alka-Seltzer

We made spider handprints, Q-tip skeletons and resist painting over crayons (Ryan creatively drew a skeleton with a crayon, then painted clothes on top)

Our morning snack consisted of popcorn and candy corn gloves

...while the afternoon snack was candy corn shaped Rice Krispie treats (Next time, I'll add more food coloring, but in the proper light, they were white, yellow and orange stripes.  There's a how-to video if you follow the link!)

We made fake blood with gelatin, water and food coloring

We whipped up some clearanced $.99 Nestle sugar cookies from Target to bring to our neighbors' front yard BBQ

Then it was finally time to trick or treat!

Curious Jason George 

Ryan Vader (PS - this mask didn't last 1 minute after dark...he couldn't see a thing.  What a waste!)

My butterfly fairy (with the matching hot pink treat bucket)

Jason spent most of the night in the wagon, licking a lollipop. Come to find out later that his shoes were too small and gave him huge blisters.  Poor little monkey!

After sorting the kids' candy, Ryan proceeded to form his into a perfect square, grouping like candies together. Is he my kid or what?!?

We got so much candy that I wanted to just throw it all away. Seriously. Instead, I pulled all of the M&Ms and Hershey bars for baking, the Whoppers and candy corns for Oreo turkeys, rainbow colored candy (Skittles, Smarties, DOTS, Nerds, Mike & Ikes) for our Christmas gingerbread houses, plus I pulled all of Mike's favorites to stick in his lunch every day. Once all of that was gone, the buckets weren't overflowing quite so much. Bring on the month-long sugar rush!

Are my kids going to be weird because they homeschool?

This question has lingered in my mind lately: Will my kids be weird because they homeschool? After giving this some thought, I've come to conclusion and the short answer is...yes. 

I'm okay with this. Wanna know why? Because all kids are weird. The difference with (some) homeschooled kids is that their parents allow them to be weird and don't judge, mock or condemn them for their weirdness the way a classroom full of peers might. Or a bully at recess. Or older kids on the bus. Or kids at the lunchtable.

Kids are immature, goofy and quirky. They tell jokes that don't make sense, make odd annoying noises, laugh at ridiculous nonsense words and they love disgusting bodily functions.

All kids are weird. Seriously, think about that for a minute. Except the overly mature, those who are naturally quiet or shy, or the overly insecure kids who are so afraid of being made fun of that they don't do anything outside the "norm". I truly believe those kids are still weird on the inside, they just don't show it to the rest of the world.

Many kids have an over-confidence; like they are the center of the universe and that everyone should die laughing at everything they say. Who stifles this confidence or brings it under control? We do. Other kids do. Teachers and coaches do. There are class clowns who will keep upping the anty to get attention, but for the most part, there comes a certain age where most kids reel in their sillies and begin acting more...civilized. More socialized. Less "weird".

My kids will not get as many opportunities for those maturing kids to look at them with a furrowed brow or roll their eyes at their antics. And I'm okay with that.

I predict that this will result in some hard conversations and some broken hearts along the way, but I'm prepared. Well, not prepared in a practical sense, more in an emotional sense, because I have absolutely no idea what I will say. But I'm ready for those moments of confused sadness and I'm hoping that because they're home 24/7 that I will be available (and they will be willing) to talk about getting snubbed by kids at the park. Or at sports practice. Or at Cub Scouts. Or playing in the neighborhood.

All of this has had me thinking recently as Ryan interacts with friends on his football team. He had a pair of brothers spend the night last night and to be honest, I was a little worried for him. Without the forced social norming of a daily classroom setting, would these boys relate to Ryan's...um...sillyness? Would he be too immature for them?

The answer was, "no." More accurately, "not yet." These boys (7 and 8) were just as goofy and wild as Ryan is. They told seemingly odd stories that made no sense (to me) and said silly things to make each other laugh. Ryan fit right in.

I anticipate the shift will begin sometime over the next year or two. As kids get into 4th and 5th grade, they aren't friends with everyone in class anymore. Cliques begin to solidify (some intentionally, some accidentally) and groups of kids begin turning their nose up at certain other groups of kids for being different. Weird, if you will. "Those kids think they know everything," or "That girl can't afford new shoes," or "That kid cries when he doesn't know the answer," or "Her mom isn't friends with our moms." Unfortunately, this is the way it is in most schools, big and small. You dealt with it, I dealt with it. It stinks, but it's reality.

I'm just hoping that we can consciously NOT be the family that becomes a little clique of our own, turning our noses up at others for being different. And I'm hoping that I can stand firm as I deal with the reality that my kids will be the different ones, not necessarily because they homeschool, but because I don't force them into a mold that others might if they were away from me at school all day long.

It's funny because it seems like most kids come out of their shell and get weird again in college. Finally out of their high school setting, they're no longer labled as a jock or a princess or a partier or a Jesus freak or a geek or a drama queen. Some continue with those rolls, yet others "find themselves" and develop a new sense of self-confidence. I find this intriguing.

Years ago, we went to a marriage conference called, "Love and Respect." The speaker used a tagline to help the husbands and wives in the audience change their perspective on the opposite gender: "They're not weird, just different."

I will continue to allow my kids to be themselves in our safe(r) home setting. And sometimes the things they do might seem weird. Well, not weird, just different.

Jason's 3rd Birthday - Airplanes!

Our adorable Jason is turning three. And to celebrate, I paired two of his favorite things for his party: airplanes and the color orange. (Every night at dinner, he ends his prayer with "...and thank you, God, that I get to go on an airplane someday.")

The Evite read...
Arrival: 10:28am
Departure: 12:04pm
Gate: The Park
Fly on over and join us to celebrate Jason turning THREE!  Consider this your online boarding pass for a party of outdoor fun.  Passengers are allowed to carry on parents and siblings. In flight lunch and cake will be served. Your reservation may be subject to cancellation if you do not respond to your booking agent by 10/15/12 to confirm travel.

We arrived early at the park to set up...the weather was beautiful!

"The Drink Cart" - Hi-C orange drink boxes for the kids, Crush and V8 Splash for the grown ups. Orange, orange and more orange.

I got this idea from this site. So adorable and not nearly as difficult as they seem. The dads were the most impressed by these little creations. 

"In Flight Service" = trail mix. I was going to do just peanuts, but raisins and M&Ms add a little something extra.

"Baggage Claim" - Party favors were giant bubbles, wooden airplanes and whirly birds.

Airplane-shaped PB&J and boring triangle ham & cheese (because I wasn't going to torture myself further by attempting to shape the ham sandwiches into planes. See this post for details from that fiasco) Our orange food included: Doritos, carrot sticks and cheese puffs. I skipped out on the orange slices because sticky hands + sandy playground = a mess!

We had some outdoor games, footballs and nerf guns to play with. We also had a paper airplane making station that I forgot to take pictures of. The dads had fun comparing their flight creations.

But who needs organized games when you have "race down the hill 1,000 times"?

Jason did unusually well opening gifts in front of the crowd.  I made Ryan open his gifts after his 3rd birthday party, expecting overstimulation and meltdowns. Jason even opened the cards and showed the crowd of kids the picture on the front and inside, like he was reading a story. Too cute!

Ryan asked to spray his hair blue to go with the orange and blue theme. We had some leftover from crazy hair day a couple years back. Notice his orange mustache...that won't come off for days, I'm sure.

The party was a success! Since Jason doesn't have many little buddies of his own, it was just a great excuse to invite our closest friends to hang out, have lunch and sing Happy Birthday to our big boy. A fun time was had by all!

Behind the Scenes of a Theme Party: What Other Mothers Won't Tell You.

I could be quick in my description of Jason's to-be airplane birthday party in the morning, but the story of the process is much more entertaining.  Got a minute?  Okay, let's go.

On Monday night, it hit me like a ton of bricks: "OHMYGOSH! Jason's birthday party is THIS Saturday!" Weeks ago, I had pinned some Lego birthday party ideas, then we switched to an airplane theme with lots of orange and some royal blue. (his two newest obsessions are airplanes and the color orange)  Pinning ideas is great, but {most of the time} if you expect to use any of these ideas, it's best to peek at your Birthday Party Board more than 5 days in advance. 

Just sayin'.

One of the cutest ideas I saw were little airplane-shaped sandwiches tied with little bows. I had planned on looking for an airplane cookie cutter, but clearly forgot.  So, at 10pm on Monday night, I Googled.  Sure enough, I found one for only $1, but to assure it would arrive by Friday, I had to pay $8+ shipping. That was painful, but as I pictured myself driving to different craft stores all over town, hauling all three kids in and out, in and out, in and out of the car, I decided that the time value of money was worth the expense. (See, Jess?  I actually listen when you speak!!!)

Glad that something was checked off my to do list, I posted a status on Facebook: "Today I had a moment of, 'Um, I think Jason's birthday party is this weekend,' realizing that pinning ideas on Pinterest doesn't count for *actual work* the week of a birthday party.  I totally just paid $8 to expedite shipping of a $1 airplane cookie cutter. I'm a little appalled at myself right now." Within minutes, I had comments from people saying, "I have an airplane cookie cutter you could have borrowed!" Curses.

I quickly emailed the company and asked them to cancel my order. I immediately halted my Etsy search for an orange shirt with an airplane on it. Because I'd learned my lesson!  I posted a plea on Facebook asking if anyone had an orange or blue shirt with an airplane.  Sure enough, I got some positive feedback.  Yay!

But not before I emailed a few Etsy ladies about their shirts. Most required an additional $20 to express ship, after racing to complete my inconsiderate rush order in a timely manner.  But there was one. ONE who insisted that she could whip up the shirt and send it, regular mail, for me to have by Friday. I didn't believe her, but I paid anyway.  

Back to the cookie cutter. The next morning, I got an email confirmation that my order had been shipped. NO! I responded asking if they'd gotten my cancellation email? They had not. Whatever, liars. They do, however, have a "very generous" 30 day money back guarantee.  "On the $8 shipping?" I asked. "No, on the cost of the product," they responded leaving out the "BAHAHAHAHAHA, I don't think so, lady." (*sigh*) 

We left the house bright and early and ventured to Target to start collecting orange and royal blue party stuff. Thank goodness Halloween is so close!  We got tons of fun, color-coordinated goodies. Later that afternoon, I printed out some cute food labels and some fun covers for the party favors that were purchased before the color theme was decided on. (Gasp! They won't match?!?!?! Oh well, I'll survive.)

Fast forward to Thursday. A friend brought over the slate blue airplane shirt she promised, which I originally wasn't too excited about because the party is more of a royal blue hue. (yes, I realize how stupid I sound) But when she arrived, she whipped out an outfit that she'd forgotten about that is PERFECT. Blue and orange plaid shorts with a great airplane matching blue shirt. Yay! Except I just paid $17 for that other custom, orange shirt. Bummer. Oh well, we're borrowing the outfit, he'll wear it at the party, then he'll wear his orange shirt on his actual birthday...and probably every other day after that because he's so obsessed with orange and it will give him variety from the ONE orange shirt that he currently has, not that it matters because we rarely leave the house anymore anyway and no one realizes he wears this particular shirt at least three times a week. (exhale)

Thursday afternoon guess what arrived in the mail? The $9+ cookie cutter AND the orange shirt. Man, those people are fast!

This morning, I pulled out everything to assembly line the airplane sandwiches for the party tomorrow. I went to cut the first one and it tore apart! No. No! NOOOOO!!!  Not my $9 cookie cutter!!!!  I played around a little and landed (no pun intended) on freezing the bread first, then filling the sandwich, then putting it all together. Which I should be doing right now instead of blogging, but I'm procrastinating that piece of the party until the morning.

This afternoon, I assembled the coolest 3-year old birthday cake EVER. I mean seriously, tell me this isn't awesome!!!!  The only thing that would have made it more perfect is if I'd spent the money to get all orange M&Ms or even enough bags to pull out just the orange and blue ones.  But I'd just spent $9 on a cookie cutter that wasn't doing it's job and $17 on a custom shirt that he's not going to wear at his party, so buying extra M&Ms just didn't sound like a good financial decision at this point.

How genius is this?  Another Pinterest find.  Two bundt cakes, cut and shaped into a 3. I bought a giant bag (2 lb? 3 lb?) of M&Ms and it was more than plenty. Kaylin sorted the colors for me and I put them in stripes. It didn't take too long doing it together, but the M&Ms are already starting to soften, so I probably should have waited until the day-of to decorate.

I was putting everything together today thinking, "Why does everything look so perfect on Pinterest?  Why am I the ONLY ONE who seems to admit when things go wrong during the party planning process?" (please refer to the cake pop fiasco from Kaylin's Hello Kitty party last year) Or am I the only one stupid enough to try to attempt these types of over-the-top ideas that other "I should have been a party planner" women are casually tossing out there like they're no work at all. Because I never wanted to be a party planner, I just like hosting fun parties with cute themed details. Is that so wrong??? 

To sum up the solutions for the things that went wrong during preparations for this party:

1. Plan ahead, but not too far ahead that you think you're on top of it then forget about it for weeks until it's too late and you end up throwing everything together at the last minute.

2. If you're going to cut sandwiches with a $1 cookie cutter that ends up costing $9, freeze. the. bread. first.

3. As you're assembling your cake, do not agree to let someone come look at clothes that you posted on Craigslist. The frosting (ahem, your GLUE) will dry and the M&Ms will fall right off.  Thankfully, you can apply more fresh frosting to help them adhere, but the better scenario is to push off the Craigslist lady until tomorrow.

4. Do not spend the evening before the party blogging. Blow up balloons, assemble food, do something productive. Then go to bed early, not at 11pm.

Fall crafts, part 1

I have been busy putting fall Pinterest craft and recipe ideas to use and thought I would share a few that were fun and easy. There still dozens of pins on my "fall" board, so I'll have to start doubling up if I want to get through them all before the Christmas crafts take over!  My kids beg to do crafts, so it's really more about me getting my act together and planning them, pulling out supplies and being prepared for the school room destruction.

This hot mess was something I made up as I went along. We collected different shaped leaves at the park, the kids cut out a "tree trunk" and pasted them on. Cute? Not so much. Cheap, easy craft? Absolutely.

Footprint witches...Ryan (far right) didn't want his witch to have 5 feet (his toes from the footprint) so he connected them to look like bent knees on her broom. Clever!  Too bad his witch is riding her broom backward...!

This was supposed to a brown hand/wrist print that was the branches of a tree, then the kids could decorate each tree for each season. But their hands were too big, so there was no trunk, it was all tree. I rarely buy supplies, so we used some gold paint I had instead of brown. And yet I wonder why our crafts never look as nice as the pictures on Pinterest...???

Pile o' Bones snack

Prepping the apples for our homemade apple sauce. (I could not survive without my apple corer/peeler/slicer - it is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets!)

The finished product was a brown pile of goo, so I'm showing you the before picture.  Much prettier!  The recipe was simply 8 apples (peeled and sliced/chopped), 1 cup water, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Cook on high for 2-3 hours in your crock pot, then turn it to low for 2-3 hours. Pulse in food processor or blender till smooth.  Easy, sugarless and DELISH!

pumpkin pretzels

Homemade caramel popcorn

These were supposed to be castles (using empty toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls) - you can kind of the see the "top" of Kaylin's pizza box turned castle. The kids made Lego creations with them. 

Hand-held Apple Pie dessert

"Witches Brooms" - obviously just pretzel sticks jammed into upside down, mini Reece's PB cups

candy airplanes (totally unrelated to fall, but we made them for Jason's airplane birthday party this weekend)

Ingredients for the next delicious, easy-assembly project...

...voila - edible acorns!