Menu Plan Monday

Week of Jan 2, 2011(wow!)

Cheeseburgers, chips, pears

General Tso's chicken, rice, broccoli

Roast with veggies

BBQ Beef sandwiches, roasted potatoes, green beans

Creamy Chicken over Rice, sauteed zucchini

Enchiladas, refried beans, fresh fruit

and always a night of leftovers!

As always, check out mpm at orgjunkie.com for hundreds! of menu ideas!

Going to bed late, getting up early, no schedule, very little time away from each other...the kids are ready to go back to school tomorrow! And I'm ready for that as well...I can finally clean my floor and keep it clean for more than a day!!

New Years Eve 2010

The last day of the year. And I'm sort of ambivalent LOL. Not sure why that it is. Maybe because we don't mark the closing of the past year with partying and silliness. We just hang out at home, eat something yummy(tonight enchildas made for us by my MIL), play video games with two of the kids(one is going to a sleepover) and make a toast to our family and future at midnight. Not such a bad way to close out the year.

But I do feel like something is brewing as I go into the New Year. I want to make changes in myself and how I do/handle things. I want to remember the strong, confident person I used to be. Somehow,I've allowed motherhood to own me, to define my entire self. While being identified as a Mom isn't entirely bad, losing faith in myself and my abilities is not so great. Well this year I plan to change that. I intend to rediscover the things I've allowed to lay dormant over the last decade. Now I have found some things in these past years that I really enjoy, like papercrafting and photography, and with those, i plan to push myself and discover how much further I can push them.

So with that, I declare my One Little Word of 2011: (Re)discover.

Sad and a Recipe.

So our hard drive bit the dust and I lost all my photos from Nov '09 to Early Dec '10 :( .
I went from hyperventilating to not wanting to talk about it to searching the web to find a way to recover those photos. No luck. The whole season of soccer, photos for the school yearbook, day to day stuff..gone. Could have been worse though like baby or wedding photos.
So I received an external hard drive for Christmas and will be figuring out how to backup all those photos very soon.

Along with the photos were fonts, files, recipes and drivers. I'm taking a little time each day to reload the lost items so I can get things back to normal. As soon as I can find my camera software, I'll begin posting photos again.



We had a wonderful holiday season. We spent time with family and had a LOT of great food. One of those yummy items was a buffalo chicken thing I made. The bookmark I made of the page is gone so I'll post it from memory.

Buffalo Chicken

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3/4 cup hot sauce(like Franks Red Hot)
1 cup cream cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

-marinate chicken breasts in 1/2 cup of hot sauce in fridge for one hour
-heat 1 tbsp olive oil in medium pan and cook chicken until juices run clear
-remove from heat and let cool until you can handle. Shred chicken
-Mix cream cheese, and 1/4cup of hot sauce, salt & pepper then add shredded chicken. Mix well.

This mixture is DIVINE! I used it in two ways:
I filled filo dough and rolled it, baked it cut it in slices and it was good.
Then I made little purses from filo and baked them for individual servings. Yum.

But you can do so much with this-baked pastry cups with the filling topped with cheese & browned in the over. A calzone (double the recipe) ..possibilites are endless.

Reappearing

So photos first:


Maddie and two of her friends before her 80's inspired Skate party. All the girls looked fantastic and their dress was a combination of St Elmos Fire meets Valley Girls meets Breakfast Club!

Wyatt in a corn maze. Well it wasn't really a maze more of a "corn was planted in rows with a path". But he had fun.

My Halloween-ers. Wyatt, a StormTrooper, Maddie is not Oscar the Grouch, she's a can of green play-doh. and Sophie is a Motorcycle Mama. She was supposed to be a cowgirl , but we just couldn't find the right components.

Sophie, the morning of her last game and the day she made her first GOAL!! It was so awesome to watch. She set out to do it, and she did! TOtally proud of her!

Maddie, the day of her last game. It was freakin' cold! Everyone was bundled up!

Ok, so Wow, totally disappeared there for a bit. I'm back today ...not sure how long it will last though.

So, for the one person(Irene) who reads this, here is what I've been up to, in no particular order:

-running my tale off for PTA-Scrap Night, Book Swap, Movie Night, Breakfast with Santa. All of these events are within two weeks of each other.

-Christmas shopping. Used to love it, want to hate it now but I can't pass up a good deal. Went out on Thanksgiving Night and didn't return home until 7am on Friday. I think I'm still recovering,.

-Making lots of Caramel Corn. Want to be sick of it, but I'm not. LOVE IT!

-Finished a few crafty gifts to give as gifts.

-Still working on a few crafty gifts to give as gifts.

-Offending my Husband.

-Playing with camera, but still not feeling like I'm "getting" it. *&#!

-Avoiding house maintenance. While, the surface looks ok, the corners and behind doors is a big 'ol mess.

-Taking photos-but not great ones.

-Finished outdoor soccer and made crafty gifts(which included photos I took all season) for all 30 girls

-Thinking about what I want to do next year and have come up with nothing yet, except to stay away from the caramel corn.

-Got an all clear for no tumors on my parathyroid! YAY! Turns out I'm low on VIT D

-Hosted Thanksgiving for the 3rd year for my parents and In-Laws. Sometimes I wish Troy wasn't an only child from his Mom.

-Planning Christmas Day Brunch at our house. What should I make?

-Offending Maddie by simply breathing in her direction.

-Rescued two dogs that literally knocked on our door. Two Chiuauas that were cute as can be..found the owners after two days.

-Went to an adult only Halloween party for the first time ever. Had a blast and so happy that I have friends in this neighborhood that I can "let down my hair" around. I dressed as Rosie the Riviter and Troy was Dwight Schrute. Funny.

Listened to my friend as she dealt with a huge mess in her life. Glad I can be a sounding board for her, but frustrating to watch the same thing ahppen over and over again.

So there ya have it.

I'll be back.

Maybe.

I've been playing with my camera

or to be more accurate, learning how to use my camera! I'm taking a dSLR photography workshop from a friend of a friend and I'm learning a lot. I have a pretty loose knowledge of photography to start, but more theory than practical. That little teeny, tiny bit of knowledge has helped me to understand what he is explaining. Showing us what he is explaining has been the best though!

So the instructor asked what ONE thing we wanted to come away with . Mine was easy- I want to stop the ball. I'm ok with getting the ball in the pictures I take at games(very important-gives relevance to the player) but it's always this round blur streaking across the photo. Frustrating is not even close to the word I think when this happens. BUT now I can do it! So exciting I tell ya!
So the picture is not great -dark and light and bleh. But I stopped the ball! I can zoom in on the ball and actually read the label!!

This one, not so great. Sophies' foot is blurry but I was focused on the ball. Which is stopped. HA! Still not really sure how but I'm close to knowing!

Menu Plan Monday

Week of Oct 10

Havent posted my menu in a while but I have been doing well. In fact, i honestly can't remember when we ordered out for dinner last. Hmm...Remember to check out Laura and Menu Plan Monday ..Lots of fall meals being planned!

Sunday - Beef Stew with biscuits

Monday- Faux-tissarie chicken, watermelon, & ?

Tuesday- Meatloaf , mashed potatoes & gravy & peas & carrots

Wednesday- Creamy chicken and bacon pockets watermelon & green salad

Thursday- leftovers(yay!)

Friday- Grilled tri-tip, baked potato, & green salad-using up the last of the garden tomatos

Saturday- Spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread and a veggie?

It Is Oct 3rd

And I survived! Our Fall Festival is now done for the year and it was total success! Our Parents are the best and they are what helped pull this event off..THANK YOU!
A quick rundown of my day:
-Up at 5am
-Soccer at 9am
-At school by 12pm
-Commence to pull out tables, boxes, chairs, games, auction baskets, prizes, ice chests, etc for the next 3 hours.
-3pm Festival begins and we are RUNNING! Walkies in hand, us organizers kept tickets at the booths, volunteers hydrated, raffles winners pulled, Basket winners were notified
-730-9pm do the opposite of my 12-3pm job.
-930- showered and in bed!
This is the Wave Rider -works similar to a mechinical bull-Riders rides a surfboard though and the operator can make it go slow or fast. Maddie did a good job.

My sweet husband taking charge of the grill. He did anything we asked(or told) him to do! Thanks for the support Troy!

Pumpkin bowling! First time for this at the festival and it was a lot of fun! Our Neighbor friend trying to get a strike!

Country Kitchen! This was a huge job in and of itself! The woman on the right organized all the donations and ran the Kitchen all night. It was such a hit !

Human Hamster Ball! What a fun activity! This was by far the favorite of the night. It will be back next year for sure! That is Wyatt in there so it's great for lots of ages.