Today was another beautiful Monday. I spent the morning at home with the little kids cleaning up after the weekend and making a batch of slow-cooker black beans. My co-leader in Activity Days, Shayla, came over and we had a planning meeting. The kids went out in the back yard a little before lunch and it was so nice out! It felt like a warm spring day. Too bad spring is months away! It got me thinking about our yard and garden though. I'm hoping to have a vegetable garden this year for the first time!
After we picked Eli up from school, the kids and I went to the park next to the school and they played until dinnertime. It was so great for us all to get out and enjoy some sunshine and exercise.
On Saturday, Justin took the kids out to run some errands in the morning while I napped after working Friday night. While they were out, the van died! Luckily, Justin was able to jump it and get back home. We had the alternator replaced today by our mechanic neighbor, which will hopefully solve the problem.
Saturday night, Justin and I got to go out on a double date with some friends. We went to an amazing Thai restaurant up in Louisville called Busaba. I got the Drunken Noodles (which do not contain alcohol ;) and Justin got the Panang curry, both amazing! The food and the company were top notch. I got a picture of my mango mousse cake with my phone.
Benjy took a selfie during church yesterday.
My singing group, Bella Notte, did a favorite things party where we shared our favorite things from the year 2014. These were my favorite things (not people, or events, or experiences) of the past year:
This is such a simple yet fun and useful
craft. I have made magnets with the Activity Days girls at church, at home for
us, and some as gifts. It’s so fun to make personalized magnets to stick on
your fridge, and these ones can really
hold things up. They also provide a perfect perch for my recipe rings (#3).
3. Recipe
rings
This innovation has made my menu planning so much easier. I always have the best intentions about
getting out my recipe binder and planning for the week, but sometimes I run out
of time and in the past have come up with menus on the spot right before going
grocery shopping. I also have tended to avoid getting out my recipe binder
because it is so laden with recipes that I don’t frequently use (but still want
to keep), and I have ended up just coming up with meals on the fly out of my
memory. This leads to recipe burnout, not enough variety, forgotten
ingredients, etc.
Enter the recipe rings. These rings make
menu planning so easy by keeping my most frequently used, “go-to” recipes together
in one convenient, accessible place (on the fridge) where I can just grab them
and flip through when I need to make up a grocery list. Some weeks I still use
my recipe binder, but on the weeks where I don’t have much time to plan or I
just want to make meals that are tried and true, I can still plan for a week of
satisfying meals without investing a lot of time and effort. All I did was buy
a package of binder rings from the store and I hole punched my favorite recipes
and put them on a ring. I currently have two rings-- one for main dishes and
one for baked goods.
4. Finding a great hairdresser
My friend Lisa does my
hair and she is amazing! She only charges $15 for a cut and I can take my kids
to her house and they play while I get my hair cut. That is huge. Not to
mention I get to visit with her while she does my hair. It’s the best of all
worlds!
5. Blogs
Inspired by my friend Elisa, I decided this
past year to restart blogging. I’m so glad I did! It’s already fun to look back
and see pictures of things we’ve done.
6. Chili
recipe
I have been pursuing the perfect chili for
a long time now, and I think I have finally found the one! I tweaked a recipe
that I found somewhere and the results have been delicious, time and again. It’s
also the only chili I have tried that is just as good meatless as it is with
meat.
7. A
Handmade Home planner
I download my planner pages from thiswebsite and print them double sided. Then I hole punch them and put them in a
three–ring binder. What I like about this method is that I can keep lists on
pages in the back of the binder, and I can add and remove the day by day pages
without disturbing any of the lists in the back. I also like having full-size
sheets to write on. And it's free!
8. Paper
pieced quilting
I discovered paper piecing through the book Playful Little Paper Pieced Projects and
have been totally inspired. I’m looking forward to trying some projects this
year.
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