Form vs Function

This posting could also be entitled Thankful Thursday.

I wanted to take a moment to be grateful (especially after reading friends' blogs about the hardships they are going through) that my biggest complaints this week are:

• a slight sore throat today.
• a clever little monkey that has learned from her big sister that chairs can be moved over to whatever she wants to get into. No surface is safe. I might have to start actually watching my kids.

(case in point...)

• Having to see my Chick wear the same white dress every day (or having to tell her NO! every morning)
• & a form vs function difference with HH. He is totally about function. It doesn't matter what it looks like as long as it's still useful. I, on the other hand, find it draining on my psyche to have to look at things that aren't aesthically pleasing (and I'm here all the time, not just for a couple of hours in the evening before bed). [The good news is that he's somewhat reasonable, and I got to give away an entire truckbed-load of totally ugly junk to some "lucky" craigslister].

But really, what insignificant irritations! So I'm taking a moment to appreciate that I have so little to complain about (before the other shoe falls).

Freezer Cooking Adventures: Part 3

Ok, I'm "done" (though I am toying with the idea of doing a mega batch of chocolate chip cookies tomorrow.... And I still need to do the Puerto Rican Beans tomorrow.) I have everything in the freezer and the kitchen is almost completely back to normal (it actually really bothered me to have the kitchen a mess...what has Flylady done to me?!).

Here's a picture of everything that I did (except for what we've already eaten).

Here it is in the freezer (It fits surprisingly well! Tomorrow's dinner was in a casserole dish, though, so I put it in the fridge to save freezer space).

Some of you asked about our freezer situation. We have an extra freezer downstairs, which has some extra bread, juice, peaches, ice cream, and HH's boxed meals. I'm not sure what is on the top shelf, actually, because it's almost completely frosted up. one of these days.... Anyhow, it's a standup freezer. There is also a chest freezer down there, but we unplugged it (it's old, I'm sure it uses a ton of electricity).

Most of what I made in the past week is in the upstairs fridge freezer, though. Most of it went into freezer bags and could be stacked up.

The exciting news is that I won one of the prizes from Once a Month Mom's Cookoff! I won a OAMM apron, and a 2-knife Cutco set! Yay!

Ok, and here's a review of some of the food we've eaten thus far:

• We've tried all of the muffins & I don't care for the stuffed pancake ones, but the other two kinds are great.
• I didn't like the meatballs/meatloaf, but no one else complained. I'm going to stick with my family recipe next time.
• The beef enchiladas were quite tasty & everyone ate them well. They aren't healthy, though.
• Today I made baked potatoes and used some of my extra cooked chicken mixed with bbq sauce as a topping. Quite yummy!
• The butterhorn rolls are delicious...we had them with Artichoke Chicken Casserole last night. As for the casserole, lets just say that next time I'll make it all for me, and we'll all be happy. Everyone liked the rolls.
• HH said the burritos were a little dry, but he might have gotten one of the last ones I did--the ones that sat for several days waiting for more tortillas to appear (my homemade ones didn't turn out...that's what I get for actually following a recipe for them!) He said that the burritos tasted good, though...they just needed more cheese or something.
• And today I made the Baked Veggie Wontons, which are YUM-MY. I ate 4...you know, for quality control purposes. Anyhow, I don't know how they'll be after freezing, because they aren't from a recipe meant for that.

Freezer Cooking Adventures: Part 2

I'll take any baking volunteers...no discriminating based on age : )

On Friday I had a wonderfully productive & QUIET few hours of solitude after everyone else went to bed. It was heavenly. Sometimes I'm not sure if it's worth losing sleep to get things done...but this wasn't one of those times. Totally worth losing sleep.

Saturday I was working on layout & barely got any cooking done.

Sunday was church & family time, and I didn't do anything. We did EAT from the stash, though. yum.

Today I've done some, but still have the Baked Wontons & the Puerto Rican beans to cook up, as well as mushrooms to slice & freeze. I'm excited to take a final tally picture, but since I'm not entirely done I'll wait and post a "part 3."

Here's a picture of my menu sheet & notes. We spent about $170 (we already had some things, and have a lot of left over ingredients -- ie about 40 pounds of a 50 pound bag of flour) and I've made about 52 meals (plus rolls & smoothie ingredients, which I didn't count). So my final tally is $3.27 per meal, and $.82 per person. It's actually lower, because I have a lot of extra ingredients that I froze (like cooked ground beef that doesn't have a purpose right now, but can be part of a meal later). But that's my best estimate.

It's wonderful to have so much food stashed away. I do think that it's been harder than necessary having it spread out over so many days. I'll probably do more freezer cooking before the baby comes, but from now on it'll be smaller-scale batch-style cooking (like just chicken recipes at one time, rather than chicken AND beef AND tofu AND sausage). But JUST WAIT until part 3 when you see all the food that I have ready to eat!!

Freezer Cooking Adventures

I decided to do the freezer cooking. I've written about doing it before (I definitely like stocking up on meals and such before I have a baby), but I haven't done an entire month's worth in quite a while (not since I was expecting Chick).

I haven't done it all in one day, and I'm not finished yet, but I thought I'd post about it midway. I've been taking breaks between tasks & not really economizing on my time much because, well, I'm now in my third trimester & have two busy little creatures about & decided too last minute to find someone to do it with me. So I rest a lot.

Anyhow, on Wednesday night I spent about 3 hours prepping: beef in the crock pot overnight, chicken baking in the oven, and me chopping veggies galore. I started too late to do everything that I wanted to get done that night, but at least I was started. HH did the monster grocery shopping trip for me : )

On Thursday I made:

• Sour Cream Banana Bread Muffins (mmmm, delicious!)
• Black Bean Soup (we had one portion for dinner & everyone approved, though it could be thicker)
• Chicken Topping mixes for Chicken Ranch Pizzas
• Curried Chicken Tidbits (oh my, these are SO GOOD! HH wasn't home yet, but the girls & I had samples and we all loved it...and it's so easy! I don't know how it is after freezing, but it was great just when mixed together!!)
• Black bean salsa chicken
• Sauce for one of my favorite meals: Hawaiian Haystacks
• Enchilada sauce
• Brown bag Burrito stuff

Today I've made:

• Bisquick mix
• Stuffed Pancake cups (not so wild about these...hopefully HH will be)
• I assembled the Brown Bag Burritos
• Meatloaf muffins & meatballs (again, not so wild about these, but the muffin-sized ones are for HH's lunches...in hopes of replacing the overpackaged, undernourished, overpriced, and undertasty frozen meals that he buys at the store & clogs up my freezer space with. whew. I dare you to diagram that "sentence.")
• Easy Taco Bake

Still to do:

• Bacon, Egg, & Cheese Cups
• Sloppy Janes
• Cook up some tofu for vegetarian chili soup
• Pizza dough
• Beef Enchiladas
• Baked Wontons
• Puerto Rican Beans (for rice and beans)
• Butterhorn Rolls
• Tortillas

Though I definitely need the breaks, I'm really enjoying myself. It's always fun to try new recipes, and mixing them with some of my usual favorites + seeing my freezer fill up with yummy easy-to-reheat meals makes me super happy! Thanks, Once a Month Mom!

recipes taped up...

some of the prepped food (makes me feel like a food show star to just grab a scoop of whatever I need)...

what I do with the girls while I'm busy cooking. Just kidding....

**UPDATE: I've posted a part 2 here. Part 3 (with a picture of all of my frozen goodness gathered together!) is still to come.

In the past few days...

On Thursday/Friday I went out on the Penninsula for a visit with Lia. She taught me free-motion quilting. I didn't get around to taking many pictures...just this one: Annika giving Chick a violin lesson (so sweet!). Chick is also wearing one of their dresses, because she can't resist fancy dresses.

Here's a picture of what I did while I was there--one or two of these may become pot holders...they are just little practice squares. The figure 8 was the hardest for me. Clearly this is a skill that will take some practice, but it was really exciting to learn anyhow. Thanks, Lia!

On Saturday I put my new knowledge to use and started my first real project (for one of my promised giveaway items). I got it all quilted that day, but haven't finished the binding yet. Since it's a gift, I can't show it to you, but here's a little sample section. The quilting is hard to see--making it a little difficult to quilt it because I could hardly see where I'd already quilted, but it was still really good practice at stippling & was kind of an adrenaline rush to be able to do : )

After I finished that, I went shopping. By myself. Without feeling guilty. ok, a little guilty. but not too much. I went to the thrift store, and the fabric store, and got myself some french fries & a smoothie. And I went grocery shopping, which was the "reason" for me to go out in the first place. Anyhow, at the thrift store I got some cute kid's spoons--regular ole' stainless steel spoons like normal, but they're smaller & are the perfect size for my little munchkins. I also got a basket, which was one of the things that I was specifically looking for...I'll put pictures on later: it's going to have a makeover : ) I also got a lazy susan, which may prove to be useful, but so far is best for HH & Chick to play with (HH: "Lets see how fast we need to spin it to make this fall over" etc). That will also get a makeover, and I'll be posting a poll later to help me decide on color selection.

At the fabric store I got new sewing scissors, as well as some supplies for upcoming projects. The scissors I've been using were cheap ones that I've had for 10 years or so, and which I avoided using because they were so dull. I bought a nice Gingher pair, which work like a dream.

I came home, fixed dinner, and worked on finishing my ribbon spooling project while I watched movies.

The next day was church, and then we had our friends, the Hebers, over for dinner. I made Lettuce Wraps from this recipe. Not the best idea: I've only made them one other time, a couple of years ago. I forgot how long they take to make--lots and LOTS of mincing. Thankfully HH was a good sport about being a sous chef, so we weren't tooo late in getting to the table. But honestly, I think I'll add them to my monthly repertoire, they are SO GOOD, SO GOOD YOU SEE. The recipe says that it's for one person, so I pretty much quadrupled it and we had enough left over for dinner tonight & I'll have more for lunch tomorrow! (good thing I like them).

Today I was tired. I hate that...I slept on the couch while the girls played. But Chick informed me that it was Monday, so we needed to do Muffin Tin Monday. Huh, I didn't know she knew the days of the week? Anyhow, there wasn't a theme today, so they got: cheese, tangerines, carrot sticks, crackers with cottage cheese, hard boiled egg, and a beverage (soy milk for Monkey, juice for Chickadee).

In my unproductivity, I blog-browsed & came across Once a Month Mom...a freezer cooking blog that does a lot of the organizational work for you (menus & prep timeline provided). They're doing a cookoff, and I think I'll do it. It's due by March 8th, so I'll need to decide and get it done pretty quickly.....

I guess that's it.

Here's a little familial felicity.

From the Mending Crate

One of my February "things to do" was to catch up on mending. I had a milk crate full of mending...some which had languished there for a REALLY long time.

Yesterday I finished catching up!! So the jammies that I made for the girls for Christmas now have the buttonholes done (!). Anyhow, mostly it was run-of-the-mill mending, but these were the last two projects and are little refashions, so I'm sharing them with you (all supplies from my stash).

This first dress was bought on our cruise. Chick wore it to church a couple of weeks ago and two of the buttons came off, one of them lost completely. So for the new buttons I decided to use a coordinating fabric rather than white.

Before...

After...

This dress was from the thrift store (or possibly free? It's been in my "to do" pile for so long I can't even remember!). I bought it despite the very obvious & unremovable blue stains in the front, figuring that I could cover it easily enough...I totally love the fabric & sweet little style. I just never got around to it. When Chick had grown into it, I tried it on her and found that the top of the shirring gapped open in the front and back and the tags in the back rolled out to the outside.

Before...

After... (I tacked down the tags, took in a little on each side of the top of the shirring to tighten it up, and added fabric flowers in coordinating fabric. I also made an additional green flower with purple button center & sewed it onto a clippy barrette as a matching accessory). It's short, but looks DARLING on Chick with jeans underneath. I'm sure you'll see pictures of her in it one of these days.

Other projects: I have all of the fabric amassed for Chick's zig zag quilt, and I'll be cutting the pieces in the next week or so : )

Thanks for the feedback on the picture frame configuration. This morning I spent some time deciding approximately what to put in each frame, which to use matting in, etc.

Closet doors are still out in HH's truck. LOL.

Oh, and we had our first estimate on cabinet refacing last night. Well, he took the measurements, I don't have the actual estimate yet. Another company is coming to give an estimate on Monday. So exciting. Honey-colored shaker-style cabinets, here we come!!!!

Opinions needed

I'm trying to FINALLY get picture frames hung on the blank wall opposite my bed. Frames will all be black, some with white matting, possibly one (in the last picture below) with red canvas rather than matting. The largest picture (in the aforementioned & belowpictured frame) will be of HH and me. Not sure about the others...but I want it to be about us, so maybe a wedding picture or two, etc.

Anyhow, what do you think of this layout?ps--I bought the closet doors today! Yup, after a year and a half, we are finally getting closet doors up! Of course, they have to be painted & get the hardware put in...so it'll probably be another 1/2 year before they are REALLY up.....

pps--I'm a slightly penitent wife: Yesterday HH went to work when he was still sick. That is where he redeems himself...he RARELY misses work.

Finally Finished! and other news

After having it sit on my counter for 2 weeks, I finally finished the love swag! I didn't do it exactly like the tutorial, because I wanted it to be a stash-buster. So I used beads to put the hearts together, and a little metal heart for the center of the O. The letters are chipboards that I had, spray painted red with little red beady things & clear coat on top. The beaded strand above the LOVE is attached at the ends & was from a beaded lampshade that was getting thrown away & I took the bead strand off...for just such an occasion.

I also started reorganizing my ribbon onto clothespins a la this tutorial. I got about 2/3 of the way done, and had spent probably 2 hours doing it. Then I ran out of clothespins so I went to bed. When I got up, this is what I found...
Yes, Chick thought the new organizing system was too tempting to resist, and unrolled most of them. Thankfully she did put the ribbons, straightpins, and clothespins all back into the jar so they weren't all over the table or floor. I guess it's the price I pay to sleep in a little bit.

Tonight for dinner we tried this recipe for Asian Wonton Salad, which my SIL posted about on her blog here. It was indeed delicious--I wasn't as excited about the wontons as I was about the dressing...but Chick (who eats as much as an actual chick these days) loved the wontons AND the dressing and ate FOUR helpings! She just kept dishing it up! Everything except the tomato, at least (which she always forgets & calls a potato). (oh, I left out the onion...I don't do raw onions.)

Speaking of Chick: last night she offered me a pretend muffin or cupcake from her play muffin tin. I pretended to take one, and pretended to eat it, and told her that it was delicious & thanked her. She looked at me funny and said, "There wasn't anything in that one." ROFL.

Also speaking of Chick: she's really starting to get creative. She found two "Hercules Hooks" in the closet and brought them out and said that if we glued them together they'd make a heart.

Speaking of Hearts: HH has been sick all weekend. In bed until noon yesterday, and then laying on the couch for the rest of the day. Today he was a little better better, but he said that Monkey's cereal breath made him want to vomit & he stayed home from church (I left Monkey with him). He went to bed at 7:30. (Will you think less of me if I admit to being a bit resentful that he can just essentially stop living when he's sick? Seriously, I had a sore throat for a few days this week & didn't get to take to my bed. Men.)

Speaking of Monkey: she had her hand under the running water while I was changing her diaper the other day. At first the water wasn't hot, but then it started heating up more than she liked & pulled her hand back and signed "hot" and said "haaa!" She also signed potty for the first time today. She also signs "please" a lot, but the funny thing is that she doesn't sign what it is she's asking for, so we can't always help her. She also is super fast at going down the stairs--she does that trick where you just lay on the tops of the stairs & scoot down without touching the flat part of the stairs. Such a clever little Monkey. We're all crazy about her.

Speaking of: Have you ever played the "Speaking of" game? Probably not, since an old roommate and I made it up. But anyhow, someone says something, and whatever they ended with is the new topic. Someone else has to say, "speaking of ____, blah blah blah" and then whatever that statement ended with is the next sentence. It makes for a funny dinner conversation. You can do it when you have guests over for dinner & not tell them and they think you have really strange conversation skills.

example of the game:
"I worked out in the garden today raking up leaves."
"Speaking of leaves, did you hear that Steven is leaving to go to Kentucky?"
"Speaking of Kentucky, this fried chicken is delicious! I'd love the recipe."
"Speaking of recipes, ..." etc

Speaking of super cool people who happen to be pregnant: Here's me a week ago (at 25.5 wks).

Tinkerbell-ish

Chick has another birthday party to go to today, and I decided to make the gift again.

The little girl likes Tinkerbell, so I did a bracelet, headband, and bag set in Tinkerbell colors.

I've never sewn a bag like this (never sewn a bag ever?) and I love how it turned out. I used stash items for some of it & bought the green fabric & purple flowers.

The Week in Review

This past week I had Layout, Pregnancy (feeling it for the first time, really....), Yuen Lui pics, Quarterly Activity, Talks (went well), and Valentine's Day.

Here are some pictures.

Making watercolor, laced valentines. I didn't get a picture of the end product, but here are pics of the process & here's the blog that had the idea in the first place....

.

I started several projects...cute valentine ideas that I rationalized could be used as decorations at the primary activity yesterday. One or two got finished, but mostly I just have to clean up half-done projects now. Here's a picture of one that's half done (here's what it looks like finished), and here's a link to another that's cut out but not glued & assembled.

Some projects had to get done. These coloring booklets were for my station at the activity. I also did a slideshow. The slideshow had a few things that needed tweaking, but it was still cute...it was my first time doing a slideshow, so it was good to figure out how to do it (because I have to do another one later this year).

Door signs for the primary activity.This is one project that did get done, but I'm not thrilled with it. It's a hybrid of THIS project and THIS project, and somehow it just didn't turn out that cute. But it does brighted a doorway, so maybe I'll stash them for next V-day.... or maybe I'll retire them. I'm undecided.

So we don't really do anything for Valentine's Day. Once in a while we go out to dinner, but it's always a low-key thing. Sometimes cards, that's about it. But because "I'm in charge of celebrations" and the girls are old enough to be excited by special holiday decor, I do put up some decorations and I do fix special foods.

This V-day we had heart-shaped scones & red (but really ended up purple) smoothies for breakfast, and red heart-shaped jigglers with heart-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner (healthy, I know. We also had carrot sticks, but that doesn't redeem the meal in the least. All I can say is it was EASY. AND THAT WAS ALL I CARED ABOUT!) Anyhow, for dessert we had heart-shaped pudding pie, which wasn't all that great & I'll probably be throwing away 1/2 of it.

The breakfast was the best part--the food was good, and it felt really special and valentines-y.

So that's my week. Honestly, I'm glad it's over. This week has nothing but visiting family and friends, a birthday party, and a midwife appt. Nice and relaxed. Maybe I'll even find time to finish the blasted projects that I started this past week. bah.