Meal Planning

I made these weekly meal planning and grocery shopping papers to help me plan our meals and make my grocery shopping trips as efficient as possible. I love grocery lists that are organized by product type and store location. I don't particularly enjoy grocery shopping so I enjoy it even less when I reach the end of a trip only to realize the last item I need is at the other end of the store where I started my trip. Such inefficiencies pretty much guarantee that my little ones will have meltdowns in the check out line, if not before, and I like to avoid those at all costs. By organizing my lists by type of food I'm able to grab everything I need as I go and get out of there as soon as possible.

Another great feature of these lists, they increase husband efficiency too! I love to have my husband at home as much as possible because: 1) I love his company and 2) I'm a stay at home mom so any help and relief I can get is much appreciated. The sooner he can get home from a errand the better.

I made a general list:

And one that's personalized:

Interested in getting a copy? Click HERE to visit my etsy store.

I'm always looking for better and faster ways to do things so I'm curious, what tips and tricks do you use to meal plan and keep grocery trips as short as possible?

Soccer Cookies

I really enjoy baking. Cakes, cupcakes, brownies... basically anything with a ton of sugar is great in my book, but my favorite thing to bake is by far sugar cookies. Our family recipe is amazing and supposedly from a bakery that closed decades ago. How we got a copy I don't know, but I'm glad we did!

When I have the opportunity to volunteer to take something to one of my kids events sugar cookies are always a serious contender. These were for Daniel's end of soccer season celebration. The kids and parents gobbled them up (and I snatched a few for myself too). Yum! The only problem? Now I want to jump in the kitchen and make a batch.

New House, New Bed

This bed used to be at my mom's house, and Grace was always very excited to sleep in it. However, when we moved into our new home my mom decided to give it to Grace for her new bedroom. It's been a huge hit as it has space for her Dora toddler bed below and a twin size mattress on top. It also has the lovely bookshelf and some storage compartments on the side, which has helped with organizing her books and many stuffed animals.

As you can probably tell, she was over joyed. My original plan for her room was to paint the baseboards white and do some kind of mural on the walls. I was thinking a pretty nature scene, but now that we know we're having another boy, and he and his older brother will only be 16 months apart Grace will probably be moving to a different (smaller) room soon. I don't think this news is going to go over too well, but her bed will go with her, of course, so hopefully that will soften the blow. Anyway, my home improvement ideas are currently on hold until we figure out where everyone's going to go.

Thank you, Ikea!

The entryway from our garage was always a mess of shoes, jackets and backpacks. Despite having an open rack shoe organizer in the closet, the shoes always ended up in a pile in front of the rack. "Closet filler" was not exactly its intended purpose. So, when I stumbled upon this gem online buying one as soon as possible was a no brainer.

Ikea's about 45 minutes from our home, and while that's not too horribly far, I like to buy as much online as possible. With two little kids and another on the way the idea of tackling a 90 minute round trip drive and shopping was not very appealing. There were a couple available on ebay, but I wasn't about to pay twice of what they were asking in the store so off to the store we went.

Thankfully, my mother met us there and was able to help us. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her.

Jack made quite a few purchases.

These made it all worth it! Now our shoes are beautifully organized and off the floor. Wonderful.

Painted Ornaments

This year I decided to give painting ornaments a try after seeing some beautiful pictures online. Unfortunately, there was no tutorial provided with the pictures so I tried a couple different techniques on my own.

The first technique was "squirt the acrylic paint in, replace the top, and shake." Needless to say this didn't work very well. If I was lucky, half of the ornament would end up with paint, but the other half became impossible to coat no matter how hard we shook them.

The second technique was "add a little water and shake." This was when I learned that water and acrylic paint are not friends. They don't like to socialize and will be unkind to one another if forced to do so.

The third technique was "squirt the paint in and smear it around with a brush." The worked pretty well and gave a interesting, impressionistic look to the ornament, but given the size of the brush handle it because impossible to paint the top half of the ornament.

Unsatisfied with half painted ornaments, I grabbed a few cotton swabs, bent them as necessary, and was able to finish all of the ornaments with complete coats of paint.

Grace, my three-year-old, helped me. We used a variety of colors, and let them dry in a muffin pan.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. The blue and green one was my favorite; it reminded me of Monet's Water Lilies. Sadly, they never actually made it to the tree. The season was over before I knew it, but I'm planning on putting them up next year.

2013 Mission: Organization

I'm very excited to share my new daily planner for 2013. I've always loved organizers and color coding events (which is becoming a necessity with our growing family), but it's been difficult for me to find a planner that works well for us. So this year, instead of searching high and low only to finally settle on something mediocre, I decided to just design one myself that will perfectly suit our needs.

(If you'd like your own personalized version visit my new etsy site. The link is on the right side bar.)

The cover:

My Weekly Pages

I wanted to make sure I had enough room for our various daily activities, notes, and a to-do list. 

I included the meal planning portion of the page because it's something I'm currently horrible about tracking. Every once in a while I do a good job planning out meals for the week, but we spend way too much on restaurants because of the convenience and usually poor planning on my part.

I also made a page for special dates so I can easily track birthdays, anniversaries, 

and other important events.

I'm also thinking about printing out a separate copy for family activities.

 I also made pages for contacts, notes, and a calendar for each month.

 

I also love that if something happens to the pages I can print more. Here's to a more organized 2013!

Hello Smiles

With the new year comes the exciting task of planning, organizing, and baking for the various upcoming birthdays we will soon be celebrating. Within the span of three weeks we celebrate three birthdays, and now with our newest little addition on his way that number will increase to four. So if you want cake this spring now you know where to go.

Last year, my daughter requested a Hello Kitty cake. I also made Hello Kitty cake pops inspired by those I found on Bakerella's site. (Click here to visit her site. Just prepare to be amazed, inspired, and create a fun mess in the kitchen.)

These were my first attempt at cake pops, and while the first couple looked a little gruesome Grace didn't seem to mind at all.

After a little tweaking they got better.

As for the cake, I started by making my own fondant. I've used store bought fondant before, and I found it hard to color and difficult to work with so making my own seemed to be the only way to go.

 I added pink food coloring to create a pink ombre surprise for when the cake was cut.

And here's the final result.

 Grace now refers to her third birthday as her "Hello Kitty birthday" so I'll mark this one as a success. This year she wants to have a Tinkerbell birthday... let the planning begin!