Checking In

Thank you all for your kind responses to my last post "Honestly" via Facebook, Blogspot and even text messages. I hope that you never get the wrong picture of my real life based on what I show on social media. I want to be as real on here as I am in real life. I have some things that I've been itching to show you, but have been waiting for an "unreal" moment of tidy shelves etc. If I wait for that to happen, I might not ever show you and so...

• David ingeniously created two work stations for us in our living area when we needed to re-claim our third room from an office/craft room back to a bedroom for Hannah. We have little space to work with and my main concern was how to keep our littles (mostly Micah right now), from wreaking havoc with the computer or my craft supplies. We loved the concept of all in one office cabinets, but we were not loving the price tag that came with them and so, with our limited budget, David came up with an amazing solution. I give you our version of the all-in-one office and the all-in-one craft station!

• The office is a generic pantry type cabinet with a keyboard tray installed and the shelving arranged in such a way as to accommodate the space needs of our computer. The cords are run through the back of the cupboard or behind the shelves. It works quite slick. I found all these cloth bins at the local dollar store and they work quite nicely for all the supplies we need handy.

• David ingeniously made them locking cabinets! My favourite feature! Have you seen these magnetic child locks? Well, by adding some washers to one door in order to interlock the doors and the child lock on the other, these are completely secure from the prying hands of my toddlers.

• My sewing station is mostly to hold and not to work out of, but it's organized in such a way that I know exactly where everything is and I can grab what I need and take it to the kitchen table to work.

• Here's how it looks in my living room. I wanted to clean up my bookshelves and the tops of the cupboards before I blogged about this, but in reality the clutter is pretty much constant these days and so here's my real life.

• I have a few small "stolen" moment sewing projects to share. I whipped up a camera strap and lens cover case for our camera. This was a project that I've been wanting to do since we got our camera (2 Christmases ago).

• I sewed an open wide zipper pouch for my make-up and it's been very handy. Tutorial here.

• I also whipped up this zipper pouch. I was mostly experimenting with the fancy vinyl. It's fun.

• I bought the vinyl for a bag pattern that I have to make. When time permits. David bought me fabric for Mother's day and I'm itching to cut into it. I didn't make my traditional new baby new bag and I think it's time for a new one. 
• I organized a little lunch station in my cupboard. I know that school is almost out for this year, but I'm sure I'll make some picnic lunches before fall when I have more than one box lunch to do a week.

This box has sprinkles, edible eyes, cookie cutters, sandwich cutter, silicone baking cups (I use those as food dividers), Pez dispensers (we're aware that candy is not encouraged, but our summer picnics will include Pez) and toothpicks with washi tape to make flag skewers. Most of these items have been collected over a long time from the dollar store and grocery stores.

The accessories box in the cupboard with the lunch boxes and lunch bag.  Bento inspired lunches do not work if you don't keep them upright, so I need to fix the lunch bag with a handle on top instead of the side. That will do it for now, but I will sew Abby a lunch bag for the fall that allows her to carry her lunch upright.

• Random story: We've been teaching Abigail about using words instead of physical force (i.e. ask your brother for the toy back, rather than grabbing it). Well, Abby misunderstood or misheard what I said, so now she says things like, "I'm sorry for using musical force, Mommy."
• Hairstyling has been fun these last few weeks. I do Abby's hair and sometimes she plays with mine. Well, we've put together a little hair dressing kit and in it is a small pair of scissors for cutting out her tiny hair elastics. You can imagine where this is going. Well, I'm sending an email at the computer, holding Hannah in one arm and Abby is doing my hair. Suddenly I hear that sickening sound of hair being cut right behind me. Thankfully is was only a tiny piece of my hair, but boy did she get an earful! It was not my best mommy moment for sure. What is it with children and scissors and hair?! Really, I should've know better.

Freezer Cooking - Month One

I say "month one", because I am completely sold! I haven't cooked in two weeks and I'm LOVING it! There are a whole bunch of blogs with step by step tutorials for freezer cooking, so I won't bother to go into that much detail, but I'll give you my basic run-down of what we did. Did you see that "we"? That's because my David was a HUGE part of the whole process. So, here's what we did...

• I mentioned that I joined a freezer meal co-op. Basically a friend emailed me and a few other ladies linking this site and the idea that we would each prepare 2 recipes enough for the five families and then swap. The plan was to meet together and prep meals together. I, however, did our once-a-month grocery shop a week and a half earlier and didn't want the fresh ingredients to go bad, so we prepped and froze our recipes ahead of time. I went and pitched in with the vegetable cutting for the other ladies. This co-op was the catalyst for my menu plan. I had wanted to try freezer meals and this was just a good way to "guarantee" that I'd actually do it.
• I spent a day creating a meal plan and grocery list. I have a Pinterest board just for freezer/slow cooker meals and I found a few new recipes that I wanted to try. We have our grocery budget in the middle of the month, so I made my plan from February 16 - March 15. I do not have a freezer meal for every single day, we like some simple meals like waffles or grilled cheese sandwiches and soup, so I left a few days for simple dinner nights.
• David, Micah and I went grocery shopping. My list was very detailed and we stuck to the list. By having a meal plan there is no temptation to buy things you don't need or the need to guess. My grocery list wasn't strictly for the meal plan, but also included lunch supplies, breakfast and other incidentals. I don't plan 3 meals a day for everyday, breakfast and lunch are simply decided on the spot. My littles prefer certain staples and we tend to stick to those things.

"Chopstar"!

• When we came home with all the groceries, we threw everything in the fridge/cupboards to be dealt with the next day.
• Naptime proved enough time to prep the 10 meals that were part of the co-op plus separate all the frozen meat, cut all the vegetables, make supper and cook some chicken for a couple of casseroles. Surprisingly enough, there wasn't even that much mess.
• Naptime the next day gave us enough time to cook the hamburger and prep 7 casseroles, 2 tinfoil meals, cook supper, soak enough beans for 4 more recipes and freeze the rest of the cut vegetables to use later. 22 meals in two days. It felt pretty amazing, I can tell you. 
• In the end we had enough ingredients to make 3 extra meals, great for the unexpected!
• The cooking night for our little co-op was great fun (I may not like cooking, but hanging with my friends I really enjoy). It was a bit surprising how heavy all those freezer meals ended being.
• Discovered that I also REALLY enjoyed cooking with my David. What a great couple of afternoons I got to spend working with him.

Girls, why didn't you tell me I had my hat brim flipped up all night... what a dorky looking thing that is!

Are you interested in what we cooked? Here's the list of the co-op meals:

• Jenny's Chili (no recipe to link, it's her own recipe and I am really looking forward to trying it!)
• Sweet & Sour Farmer's Sausage and Lemon Basil Carrots
• Chicken Cacciatore
• Hearty Beef Stew
• BBQ Spareribs
• Lemon Dijon Chicken
• Broccoli Chicken Alfredo
• Black Bean Taco Soup
• Thai Chicken Curry (From the Mama & Baby Love e-cookbook)
• Beef Stroganoff

And here's the list of meals we cooked at home:

• (3) Mexican Lasagna (from the I (Heart) Alberta Beef cookbook
• (2) Layered Chicken Enchiladas (made with homemade cooking creme)
• (2) Rachel's Casserole
• Easy Chicken and Stuffing (made with homemade cream of chicken soup)
• Crockpot Lasagna
• (4) Broccoli and Chicken Foil Packets

Here are the meals I have planned to cook on the day of the meal:

• Tacos (though I grated and froze the cheese)
• Waffles/Pancakes
• Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Soup
• Pulled Pork Sandwiches
• Fish & Chips
• Pan Scrambler (My David makes the best scrambler!)

Some of the best benefits of once a month cooking...

• little to no clean-up daily
• little to no prep at the "crazy" hour
• so much less time needed in the kitchen
• fewer daily dishes
• no stressful "what's for dinner?" moments
• take-out is a whole lot less tempting when we have a plan and meal ready to go!
• I only have to grocery shop once a month!

Did I mention that I'm sold on the idea? S-O-L-D SOLD!

My friend, Jen, left a comment on my last post about her system... great ideas! Go check it out.

Checkin' In

Happy (almost) Valentines! It really snuck up on me this year and I find myself two days away without any plans. We have had a lot of other things on our mind. In the meantime, let's get to it!

• Today is my meal planning/grocery list making day. I work one month at a time... payday to payday. Last month I worked on emptying my freezer stores - work with what we had, so nothing goes to waste. This month, freezer meals! I've been invited by a friend to join in a small group cooking co-op night. The idea is that we each are responsible for 2 recipes that we make enough of for each family. We then go home with a nice variety of meals. We get to work together, which makes the kitchen work much more enjoyable and we get to have a great variety to go home with. These meals will be some of my months plan. I have a Pinterest board with links to sites full of great recipes. I will be choosing a few of them. My hope is to have at least half a month of freezer meals. I'm not a huge fan of cooking and this will be nice to have. 
• David and I have been exchanging mirror messages this week. Fun and easy and encouraging!

• I finished the iPad mini cover. It turned out pretty good.

• My David made doughnuts last week... from scratch. DANGEROUSLY YUMMY!

• I received love in the mail. Packages are great, surprise packages are awesome! By the way... LOVE this darljeeling earl grey!

• I've had to patch my couch cover. It's in rough shape, but the patches will hold until I can re-cover the whole thing. I've been inspired by these and would love to try my hand at something that fun!

• Valentines Day may have snuck up on me, but it has been on my mind for awhile. I took these pics a week ago.

• I had planned on making Valentines, but with our printer dead (sad day that was!) and not having sent them in to get printed... well, maybe next year. Enjoy my intentions:

• I've been really enjoying quiet time in the Bible lately. I've had to re-prioritize my day to make it work and it's been worth every minute!

• Micah has had a terrible diaper rash until recently. Thanks to my mom and sister (they sent me the base for it at Christmas), I whipped up a batch of diaper cream and it totally did the trick. It also, by the way, cleared up my dry and cracked hands from all the washing I'd had to do. Jenny, if you want some for Ezra, I have some extra!
• David and I are taking control of our finances. Friends lent us The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and we are SOLD! We're working on baby step one and are so excited. It will be hard work, but worth it in the end.
• Road test in two days. Nervous. More nervous this time than the last. Oh well. This IS THE WEEK!

My Tea Cabinet

I am thrilled with how this project turned out and though it took some time, it was worth it. I have a bit of a sad recycle fail story to include. I wanted to keep this project cost effective and really liked the idea of reusing. I shopped my favourite thrift stores for jars and scored 45 matching jars! I was thrilled. They cost 25¢ each. There weren't many lids and most were rusted and in rough shape, but I wasn't too worried because I knew you could buy lids at most stores in canning season. Home with my jars. Washed my jars and they sat waiting for lids. Well, turns out that it costs about the same to buy whole new jars with lids than just the lids. In fact, I soon realized that the jars I bought are GEM jars and need a special lid. $9.00+ a dozen. Ugh! I could get a dozen jars with lids for around $7/doz. This was so frustrating. After several days of research (my David even looked all over the internet) it became apparent that it was best to buy new jars. Being ever so gracious of my love of projects, my David bought me new jars.

Truth be told, these ones fit even better in my cupboard. As you can see on the top shelf, I did need some larger jars to hold some tea that I have a lot of. Including my current favourites, White Vanilla Coconut and Honey Vanilla White Chai (which I sadly discovered is discontinued....WAAAA!)

I found printable labels online for mason jar lids. I was going to copy the idea, designing my own version, but my little Print Shop program didn't quite have the effects I was looking for, so I adapted the free printable labels to suit my needs better. I colour coded the kind of teas and included the brand of tea so that I could easily replace a tea as it ran out.

Doesn't it look beautiful? Oh, and just before I forget, if you want to store tea in clear jars, be sure that they go into a closed cupboard. Tea is best stored in airtight and light free containers. Tins are perfect, but the cost was too high for me to consider. I do have 50+ different kinds of teas.

I had fun in print shop today!

Spent some creative time today in print shop. (That's what I made my organizational calendar in) Whipped up a few more lists today. These are hole punched and inserted into my organizer binder.

Grocery list

(click on images to enlarge)

Babysitter's checklist

Family Organization - part 1

Just a quick post to show what I'm working on...

(click on it to enlarge)

Well, I geeked this out because I am not a fan of domesticity in general, but it needs to be done. I need a schedule in order to keep myself on track and if I can make it pretty in the meantime, then I've thrown in some creative time! I've learned from the past that a meal schedule helps me a lot and so this is included. I also throw in monthly tasks based on this schedule:

Week one: freaky floors (behind furniture)

Week two: clean out fridge

Week three: sort/pack baby clothes (at least until she stops growing so much)

Week four: email calendar (for housegroup)

Week five: clean/swap toys (I give Abigail half of her toys and then swap them out)

1st & 3rd Wednesday: strip & wash bedding/couch cover

2nd & 4th Friday: meal plan/water tree

Today is technically the first day on this schedule, so we'll see what needs tweaking. When I put the whole binder/organizer together I'll take pictures to show you. In the meantime, I have dinner to plan and my bedroom to tidy in order to be on task for today.