2013 Goals

Happy New Years!  Hope you all had a safe and fun NYE.  Our family headed out to some new friends house.  Of course the women were all upstairs in the kitchen and the men were downstairs watching some sort of sports.  The kids, they played and played and played!  There was a mix from ages 6months to 17years old.  All the kids 5 and up were outside most of the night. It was freezing, but there were also fireworks involved so it helps!

Now, the goals I have made.  I usually have the same NYR as everyone. Lose weight, get healthier, etc.  This year I actually came up with a list of goals for different areas of my life.

Goals for 2012

Personal:
Read through the Bible in a year.
Read through the 24 books on my list. (To be posted soon)
Run/walk in at least one 5K race.
Tackle 12 DIY projects

Marriage:
Go on one Marriage Retreat (overnight trips sans children).
Have monthly date nights.
Read 2 books together.
Read at least 2 books on marriage.

Children:
Continue regular dates/outings with each of the children individually.
Go on at least one family vacation.
Read aloud 12 books.

Ministry/Friendships/:
Write at least two handwritten notes every month to encourage someone.
Find a church. We just moved and the pickings are SLIM around here.
Attend a bible study group.

Blogging:
Blog at least 3 times a week.
Plan blog posts out.
Write and schedule blog posts.

Health:

Continue to eat healthy and set an example for my children.

Financial:
Tithe 10% of our income.
Pay off hubs school loan (this is our big audacious goal)

Pay cash for a family vacation AND a mom and dad only vacation.

These are just a few of my goals I have for the year 2013. Obviously I didn’t share all of them, but this is a start!  What are your 2013 goals?  Stay tuned for my DIY projects and Books Lists!

Blog Update

Hello out there!!!  You may have notice a bit of a change to the blog. A little uplift of sorts.  Brown was getting a bit boring for my taste. 

I wanted to give you all a heads up.  I am going to try and be MUCH better at this whole blogging thing starting up again in January.  I have a few ideas to keep the blog updated with and hope you will find it to be entertaining or if nothing else a 5 minute break from life. 

A few things to look forward to:

Booking it: Sharing my 2013 book list with you all. I plan to read 2 books a month and share about them on here. Feel free to join me!

Pinterest Reviews: We've all been on Pinterest for a long time now, and we probably all have about a billion "pins" that need to be tried out.  My goal is to do one idea a week, whether that be a kid activity, a recipe, a DIY project, or a workout

One last possibility is my weight loss journey.  Gotta lose that last bit of baby fat! :)  I've already been doing Jillian Michaels revolution so I plan on restarting that from the beginning as well. I am currently in the the first month, but keep going back and forth with the different workouts, not really following how it should be done. Now whether or not I keep you updated on that sort of depends. I'm not planning on going all out and doing weigh in's and such, but posting new healthy recipes and workouts I'm doing will be a big part of it.

Product Reviews: I plan on reviewing products that I have or end up buying. If you have anything you want me to review before you purchase it, let me know! :)

That's about it for now. The things I used to do will be kept up such as Monday Menu Planning, sharing recipes, and being the normal dork you all know and love!

Until next time....

English Muffin Bread

Another recipe I wanted to try this week was an English muffin bread recipe I had found.  While I love English muffins, especially with peanut butter, I was a little nervous to make these puppies.  The recipe I followed was enough for FOUR loaves.  I cut it in half for 2.  I also used a combo of white whole wheat flour and regular bread flour.  I bought the WW a while back thinking I would use it, but really don't.  I'm not a fan of the taste as much as my kids are.  So I have about 5 pounds left then can't say I will ever buy it again. 

So how did they turn out?  They look good.  I ended up doing the dough in my bread machine. No, I'm not lazy I'm pregnant and why not?!  :)  Anyway, they really are VERY sticky.  I had a hard time digging it all out of the machine then getting it to stay in the pan and not on my hands.

I haven't tried them yet as they are cooling.  I'm hoping for breakfast the kiddo's will gobble up a piece with their raspberry sauce and a German mini pancake. Me? I will be smothering mine in either peanut butter or almond butter.  The hubs thinks once I have this baby I will not even be able to look at peanut butter. We will see. 

Will definitely update on the taste!

Here is a picture also taken from onegoodthingbyjillee because my camera is broke. :(

 I will leave you with that yummy looking thing!  For the recipe go HERE.  While you are there take a look around because she seriously has some fabulous recipes on there.

WOWZA! These are a must try!

I love food.  Seriously, LOVE it.  I can make and recreate things and totally screw it up, but still love it.  Tonight I tried a German Pancake recipe.  They were Mini's, but thought that would be perfect for the kids.  Now, when I read that title, I went to tasting pancakes in my mouth.  The hubs said to him they are someone like crepes, only better! Definitely more of an eggy type meal, but still delicious.

I used the picture from the ladies blog as my camera is broken? Not sure what is wrong.

They look much bigger in the picture then they actually are, but they are still just as delicious. 
For the recipe go HERE.  You won't regret it I promise.  For the sauce, instead of her triple berry sauce, I used her Simple Raspberry sauce.  I had a package in the freezer I knew I would never use, so used it tonight.  Pretty much everyone loved it!  The hubs asked for strawberry sauce next time.

One more tid bit of advice.  I did not do these in a blender like the recipe calls for.  I used a whisk.  They did turn out just fine, but think next time I will try the blender as I couldn't quite get all the flour chunks out.  Not that they were noticeable, but you could see it in the batter. 

Meal Plan

Meal Planning Time!!!

I did not include breakfast as we plan on doing a combo of cereal, pancakes, waffles, and fruit.  The kids NEVER pick the same breakfast and the hubs is happy to oblige with what they choose.

Lunches:
Fundraiser
Sandwiches/chips/fruit
Egg Salad
BBQ bf Pizza
L/O x4 (making enough from supper to have for lunches)

Suppers:
Spaghetti with homemade bread, Salad
Mini German Cakes w/ Berry topping
Calzones (freezer) with Salad
BBQ Bf Sandwiches w/ corn on the cob
L/O
Best Ever Burgers (freezer) with corn on the cob/fruit
Smoked Mozz. Meatloaf
Apples/Cheese/Popcorn (Fathers day meal.. hubs used to do this when he was younger w/ his dad)

If the recipes that we are trying are good I will be sure to post them!  Now I will leave you with a recipe that is really good and sure to please!

Monster Cookie Bars:  These are sooooo good that I seriously could have eaten all the dough before baking it.  Yeah yeah, raw eggs, but whatever it is good.  I also used crunch peanut butter, not bad but, highly discourage it ;)

Eating out AGAIN!

So. After our no eating out challenge we did pretty well the following week staying home.  We didn't eat out a ton, maybe twice.  The next week, more times then I care to admit.  We went out of town for a few days and got to basically eat out for every meal.  I brought food for breakfast, so mostly just lunch/supper were eat outs.  Once we got home I got lazy.  Actually having to meal plan, shop, and cook seriously!?!?! 

I've been using the excuse well, I'm 9 month pregnant and I'm tired.  Hubs won't help, blah blah blah.  Anyway, not only have we all been feeling a little yucky lately the hubs has started getting grumpier. :)  We all have really.  Eating out is more then just "fast food."  It makes you feel grumpy, slug-ish, and just plain crappy!  Our kids have been MONSTERS and I seriously think that is a big part of the reason.

So last night I mentioned at our random supper.  Should we do the not eating out challenge again!? Crazy enough the KIDS were the ones who started cheering.  The hubs and I were happy to oblige. So starting TODAY no eating out until the hubs gets paid.  That is 12 days.  We do have a few things we will be out of town for and again aren't going to beat ourselves up if we don't take sandwiches.  However, we are going to make a conscious effort to eat at home.

When making our meal plan for the next 12 days, I decided since we are moving we also need to clean out our pantry/freezer.  So the only things on our grocery list will be staples that we go through often.  (ie: milk, eggs, fresh produce, ect)  So there ya have it.  We are trying again!

I will keep you update, maybe not as completely as I did before, but will still post meal plans and recipes.

Recipes we are trying: 

 Mini German Cakes with Berry Topping(homemade)

 Best Ever Burgers

 Smoked Mozz Meatloaf 

Stay tuned for a meal plan for the next few days! :) 

Meal Planning/Trying New Things

So I feel like all I post is our menu plan.  I do have a few challenges in mind however, can't do them until AFTER babe is born.  So if you have any that I can do before then let me know!

Monday: Grilled Chicken, Corn on Cob, fruit

Tuesday: Leftovers: I have some left overs in the fridge. Tball games!

Wednesday: Calzones (from freezer) Softball game!

Thursday: Sushi (Yes, I'm trying my hand at making CA rolls... any advice is GREATLY appreciated!)

Friday: Spaghetti - Homemade bread sticks

Saturday: Left overs/Eat Out

Sunday: Chef's Choice (which really means whatever I can get my hubs to cook, because I'm not doing it!)

*****

A cool thing I AM doing this week is having a freezer cooking party through wild-tree.   If you hadn't noticed our menu is a bit easy/cheap looking. Well, that is because I bought enough meat for about 10 meals that ALL contain meat! I will be honest, I'm going to try and stretch that meat into 15 or more meals.  Our kids aren't HUGE meat fans, plus we only ever use about 1/2 of the recommended amount anyway!  So I tried to make this week's budget stretch by using up some stuff we already had.

Have you even done a freezer cooking party? There will be about 9 of us doing this! Should be fun AND we will have 15 meals to go ready in our freezer for the last 2 weeks of pregnancy PLUS for after babe comes. :)  VERY EXCITED!