Menu Plan Monday

I've been slacking on the blog. Along with blog slacking, I totally skipped last week's menu plan. And the week before, I only cooked a couple of meals. But I'm back on schedule for this week, both for blogging and meal planning.



Monday - Basil chicken with risotto, asparagus

Tuesday - Breakfast for dinner

Wednesday - Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn

Thursday -leftovers

Friday - Slow Cooker 40 Clove Chicken, a potato dish yet-to-be-decided, lima beans

Saturday - pizza

Sunday - Chicken and dumplings, green beans

Hello, crowdSPRING.

crowdSPRING, hire Kelly Purkey for your new community marketing manager!

Ten on Tuesday Wednesday

1. Obviously I'm a day late on this.
2. I got my shutterfly order today. This is what 679 4x6s looks like. Plus 5 5x7s. The OSU glass is there so you can see just how tall the stack is. It's a lot of pictures. They go back to June. When I told Michael, he asked "Why do we need 600 pictures?" "Does your mom print 600 pictures?" "Does your sister?" I pointed out that my sister rarely takes any pictures so she doesn't count. And my mom doesn't do digital, so she doesn't count. Then I told him that my fellow scrapbooks are picture taking fanatics would understand ordering that many pictures. And you do, right?



3. I'm painting our downstairs bathroom today. Very excited. It hasn't been touched in the three years we've been here. It's style is currently "builder's special" and I'm so very glad to be changing it.

4. We went to see Michael at school last Friday. Emma loves the smart board.


5. We just discovered Laurie Berkner and love her. Emma is especially fond of "We Are The Dinosaurs."

6. Emma and Mackenzie collided today and Emma now has a bruise under her right eye and Mackenzie has not a spot on her. Thank goodness. As we're getting her 1-year-pictures taken tomorrow, and I've already moved it back a week due to one bruise, don't want to move it back another.

7. I made my mom's spaghetti sauce last night. Pretty good for my first try, although not thick enough and I ran out of garlic.

8. Bones is on tonight. I love Bones.

9. Have you seen this Jennie-O commerical yet? I laugh so hard every time I see it. I could watch it over and over.


10. Lain Ehmann has a new book coming out!

Snippets: Mostly True Tales from the Lighter Side of Scrapbooking is not your ordinary scrapbooking book. There are no layouts, no product lists, and no projects. What it does have is cover-to-cover laughs!

Snippets is a collection of short essays about scrapbooking
and all the crazy things this hobby makes us do. Hybrid,
shabby chic, artistic, traditional, digital. all of us are,
deep down, doing the same thing - documenting our lives. I
wrote Snippets with the intent that it would help bring
scrappers together. I'm hoping people will have as much
fun reading it as I had writing it!

You can pre-order the book
here and read a sneak peek here

Simple is having a release party for Lain's book tomorrow, Thursday the 20th, on their site so check it out!

Menu Plan Monday

Monday - Pierogies, broccoli

Tuesday - Spaghetti and meatballs (my mom's recipe, hopefully I don't screw it up) We were supposed have this Sunday but we other leftovers to eat.

Wednesday - leftovers

Thursday - Baked basil chicken, risotto, and a veggie I haven't decided on yet. I'm still looking for a risotto recipe, I've never made it before. If anyone has one they could share, that'd be great!

Friday - Chopped steak, fried potatoes with onions and peppers

Saturday - I'll be gone all day scrapbooking, they'll probably have pizza

Sunday - Italian Breaded Pork Chops, mashed potatoes, corn

She's a climber

Good news is, she can get back down by herself.


(Up on the fireplace. She sits there and plays and laughs and watches us.)


(Table in the play area. She was loving the crayons.)


(The bench. The girls fight over this bench. Emma always wants to lay on it and then Mackenzie gets mad because there's no room for her. I've lost track of how many times I've said "Emma, you have to share the bench.")

(Table at my mom's. She was quite proud of herself for this one. I just love the look on her face.)

In the last week, she's gotten really good and going backwards down the stairs too. We have to keep a gate on the stairs all the time because if she can get to them, she's going up them. (Memo to self: take some pictures of her going up and down the stairs.)

Happy Friday!

Ten on Tuesday

1. We were at my mom's last Thursday and the girls were playing next door with 4-year-old Sophia. Sophia has a cute little jeep and apparently, Mackenzie thinks she's big enough to drive it.


2. I tried to get some cute pictures of Mackenzie in her "1" shirt. This is what I got. Cute, just not what I was going for.


3. My mom. In Mackenzie's hat. Stylish, isn't she?


4. Election Day. It was gorgeous. 70 degrees. (Today, not so much. It's 39 degrees. We're all still in our pajamas.) So we played outside and went for a walk. Emma rode her tricycle some, she can actually pedal it. And Mackenzie just tried to keep up.


5. This is from November 2nd. Mackenzie at church. She always gets so excited when she sees us. Emma too. It's funny, because they couldn't care less when we drop them off. It's "See ya, mom! I've got to go play now." But they're always happy when we pick them up.


6. So, has anyone ever had a glass baking dish explode/shatter/break apart while it was cooking in the oven? That happened to me the other week. It's a mess. I was really annoyed. Not only did I have a giant mess to clean up, but the dinner I'd spent time making was ruined. All these tiny little shards of glass fell down the holes in the front into this catch space (for lack of a better term) that's above the drawer but beneath the oven bottom. And we didn't know how to get to them. And Maytag was no help. They wanted to send a repairman out. No thank you. Michael eventually figured out how to get the oven bottom out and he vacuumed it all out. I am attempting this recipe again tonight, but I will be using a cookie sheet instead.

7. Speaking of cooking mishaps. Whenever I make a pot roast or the like, I use my dutch oven. My sister and I were discussing this and she mentioned how she uses her Rachel Ray oval pan that we both got for Christmas two years ago from our mom. It's made for either stove top or oven use. I've just never done that because I didn't need to. But then I made a new recipe last week. One that called for the chicken to be cooked on the stove top then go in the oven. So I used it. All was going well. Then it was done. I put on my pot holders, took it out and set it on the stove. I took off my pot holders. Do you see where this is going? I needed to turn it because the handle was sticking out so I grabbed it with my bare hand. Brilliant. In the 3.7 seconds from taking it out of the oven and needing to move it, I forgot it'd been in the oven. Seriously forgot. Because, remember, I never use it in the oven! Oh my goodness, that hurt. I ate dinner with my left hand in a container of cold water. Kept it there for 30 minutes. By about 9:30, it stopped hurting and I could use my hand again. Where is my brain? Sometimes I think it's missing. Ask my husband, he'll agree.

8. Speaking of my missing brain. The next night (same day as those first pictures), me and the girls are out to dinner with my mom, sister and niece. I order Emma chicken tenders. Then I order my meal. When it comes it's a chicken philly. (I'm a beef girl. I don't hate chicken, but it's not my first choice. It's healthy and you can't eat beef every day, well you could but that's definitely not healthy. I cook it because Michael and the girls really like it. But if I have to choose, I'm choosing steak, burgers, etc.) I swear I ordered the steak philly. As I'm staring at it in confusion, Tara tells me that's what I ordered. I guess I ordered chicken tenders then chicken philly because I had chicken tenders on the brain - my missing brain. My sister even said she thought it was weird I ordered it - again, because I never order chicken out - but she didn't say anything. I then explained that for the record, if I ever order chicken again to please stop me. I took a couple bites but it just wasn't good. So I had french fries. And a couple bites of chicken tenders (because I do enjoy those) and when I got home two waffles. That was my dinner.

9. I should probably post some Halloween pictures, since it's getting awfully close to Thanksgiving.

Emma could hardly hold still for this picture. She was all about trick-or-treating and didn't want to stop for anything, especially pictures; Emma and Bree, I love how they're holding hands; Caroline, Bree and Emma.


My little pumpkin, sitting on our neighbor's driveway. Emma and Ava (Bree's sister).

Me and Mackenzie; Michael and Tim taking the girls trick-or-treating; Mackenzie with her first piece of candy -a tootsie roll. We were a ways down the street when I realized Mackenzie had chewed through the paper and was sucking on the actual tootsie roll. Oops.

10. I can't stop eating the Halloween candy.

Menu Plan Monday

Look at this! I've got it up before dinner time. :)


Orgjunkie.com

Monday - Brunswick stew

Tuesday - Flaked Baked Chicken (lLast time I made this we never got to eat it due to a shattered baking dish while it was cooking. Thought I'd try again.) with Creamy Au Gratin Potatoes and asparagus

Wednesday - Chicken Muffins with corn

Thursday - Baked Potato soup

Friday - Pot roast with mashed potatoes

Saturday - leftover pot roast or pizza if there's no leftovers left

Sunday - spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic toast

Have some cake

So, I realize that while I think this is the cutest and funniest video of a one-year-old eating cake ever, I'm a bit biased. Watch for when she starts bouncing in her seat. She's started dancing. So when she hears music or gets excited she bounces up and down. Again, very cute. :)



Since I'm sharing one, might as well share two. This video was actually taken before the other one, she wasn't quite as covered in cake yet.

For my scrapbooking friends

First, take a look at these.



Examples by Elizabeth Dillow

I know, it's not your traditional scrapbook album. It's photo album scrapbooking and it's great. Seriously. You should try it. Simple Scrapbooks has a new special issue coming out November 11th on this very topic. It's called Quick and Easy Photo Albums and it's all about using different types of photo albums as scrapbooks. I have an album in it that enabled me to scrapbook a ton of photos that had been sitting in an envelope for years. I hadn't done much with them because there were too many and I kept getting overwhelmed by the stories that needed to be told. Turns out they were perfect for this project. :) So of course, now I need to do another one. I attended Fan Fair in Nashville back in 1995. I have at least 150 photos. From the concerts and meet and greets we attended to downtown Nashville and Dollywood. (Yes, I went to Dollywood.)They've just been sitting in a box being ignored for 13 years. (I think I see a trend starting.)

I really do think you should pick up this issue when it goes on sale, you won't regret it. Think of the relief you'll feel when you complete a really cute, quick and easy album and your stack of photos to be scrapped goes from 1,246 to 1,171. Okay, so it won't take it down to zero, BUT you'll have 75 (or 36 or 102 or 164) photos in a really cute, quick and easy album. And if you don't want to wait another second, because really you shouldn't, you can get started right away by heading over to the Simple Studio blog where Tina Cockburn is hosting a challenge this week.

Ten on Tuesday - First Birthday edition

1. 8:07 am, November 1st, 2008. Exactly one year after she was born. (She'd been sleeping in the swing since around 5am. Three teeth coming in at the same time makes for some rough nights.)

Good morning birthday girl!


2. Mary and Hannah came over to see Mackenzie Saturday morning since they couldn't make it to the party. As a preview to the party, Emma was all about Mackenzie's present. I'm pretty sure she opened it for her. The girls are so cute.

3. Playing in the leaves with Emma next door at our neighbors. First she hated them (didn't post that picture), then they were okay (first and second pictures), then she hated them again (see last picture).




4. Opening presents. At first she was sort of into it. She pulled some tissue paper out of a bag, ripped some paper.


5. But new toys, and the cheerios her Aunt Patti had turned out to be much more interesting

6. Here comes the cake. She doesn't look very excited, does she?


7. Emma blew out the candles.


8. She loved the cake. Way more than opening presents.



9. Riding her new pony.


10. With Mommy. I didn't do too good on the picture taking. No picture of her with Michael, nor did I get a family picture.


11. Good night, my big girl.



PS, I've got all the pictures from last week in the album. There are a lot more from her party on there if you'd like to see them. You don't have to look at all 174 pictures from the week, feel free to skip ahead to the really cute cake-eating ones. ;)

Menu Plan Monday

Next week, I'll try to get this up before it's almost Tuesday.



Monday - breakfast (waffles and scrambled eggs)
Tuesday - fajitas
Wednesday - pan roasted chicken and vegetables
Thursday - night off for me, dinner at Mom's. :)
Friday - oven roast (subject to change if I find something different to go with the rice and zucchini), ranch rice, zucchini