Tasty Tuesday: Weeks Menu

Weekly Menu – Each day is set up for 1400-1800 Calories, meaning you have 600-200 calories left for desserts and snacks, B is also planning on adding calories with bacon and dressing in the salads; they also hit almost all the servings of grain, protein, veggies, dairy, and fruit you should have daily,

Monday: 1723 Calories

                B: Banana

                L: Grilled Cheese, ½ cup mandarin oranges, 1 cup cucumber

                D: Mustard-Glazed Chicken (http://rachelschultz.com/2012/07/11/worlds-best-chicken/ – makes four servings, put two away for Thursday) Sandwiches (http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-your-own-hamburger-153290 - MAKE AHEAD) with asparagus fries (http://damndelicious.net/2014/05/09/baked-asparagus-fries/ -Halve recipe)

Tuesday: 1815 Calories

                B: 1 cup oatmeal, ½ cup dried apricots, 1 cup chocolate milk

                L: Egg Sandwich (See Below)

                D: Frozen Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, and Corn – This is leftovers for us – good night for date night?

Wednesday: 1615 Calories

                B: 1 cup yogurt, ½ cup grape-nuts, ½ cup mandarin oranges

                L: 1 cup cucmber; 2 slices toast topped with peanut butter, chopped banana, and cinnamon (also awesome if you add honey but I didn’t want the calories) , ½ cup cottage cheese

                D: Cream of Asparagus (See Below) + Garlic Toast

Thursday: 1606 Calories

                B: 1 cup oatmeal, ½ cup dried apricots, 1 cup chocolate milk

                L: 2 cups popcorn, 1 cup cottage cheese

                D: Mustard-Glazed Chicken (leftovers) with Quinoa or Brown Rice and a small salad

Friday: 1461 Calories

                B: 1 slice of toast topped with peanut butter, chopped banana, and cinnamon (and honey?); 1 cup chocolate milk

                L: Salad + ½ cup cottage cheese

                D: Ramen with sliced hard boiled eggs, shredded carrots, and corn

Saturday: 1437 Calories

                B: Egg Sandwich

                L: 1 cup cucumber, ½ cup olives, 1 banana, ½ apple (I like snacking on SaturdaysJ)

                D: Tilapia (http://ifood.tv/tilapia/482694-baked-parmesan-tilapia) and Boxed Mac N Cheese

Sunday: 1611 Calories

                B: Apple Cinnamon French Toast (http://lecremedelacrumb.com/2013/10/apple-cinnamon-french-toast.html) – easily switched with Saturday’s breakfast if you have early morning church

                L: Salad + ½ cup cottage cheese

                D: Slow Cooker Ham (See Below) with mashed potatoes and honey roasted carrots (http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2013/01/honey-roasted-carrots.html)

Cream of Asparagus:

6 Tbsp butter

6 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp Chicken bouillon granules

1/2 tsp salt

3 cups milk

Dash of nutmeg

4 cups asparagus

2 Tbsp lemon juice

Instructions:

1. In large pot, melt butter over low heat. 

2. Blend in flour, bouillon, and salt. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat. 

3. Stir in milk. Return to heat and heat to boiling stirring constantly. Boil and stir for 1 min. Let sit on warm heat in pan until asparagus is ready.

4. Place cut asparagus into a medium saucepan and add enough water to barely cover the asparagus.

5. Bring the asparagus to a boil on high heat. Cover pan and reduce heat to simmer. 

6. Cook asparagus until soft - about 10 to 15 min.

7. Puree 3/4 asparagus and water in blender and combine with milk mixture. Add unpureed asparagus and serve.  

Egg Sandwich:
Fry two eggs add dill, salt, and a ½ cup mixed chopped bell pepper and onion. Top with pepper jack cheese and place between to pieces of toast. 

Salad - prepared at the beginning of the week:

4 heads of Romaine lettuce chopped

3 cups of shredded carrots

1.5 cups chopped dried apricots
6 chopped hard boiled eggs

Add for variety in the week:
olives
cottage cheese
canned tuna*
cold chicken*
salad dressing

Bacon bits

*used to replace cottage cheese

Slow Cooker Ham:

2lb pre-sliced ham

1/3 cup apple juice

1/4 cup brown sugar plus 2 Tbs to sprinkle on top on the ham

Onion or Onion powder

1/2 tsp grill seasoning• dash of smoked paprika, cinnamon spice blend, and garlic powder

Instructions: Slow cook on low 8-10 hours if frozen, 4 if not

Grocery List:

8 Bananas

Loaf of Bread

4 cucumbers

2 can mandarin oranges

4 Chicken Breasts

Red Wine Vinegar

Milk

Dozen Eggs

Butter

Bag of dried apricots (1 cup + how much you want for your salad)

1 bell pepper

1 onion

4 cups yogurt

Box of Grape Nut Cereal (or other granola to go with yogurt)

2.5 pounds asparagus

Bag of Popcorn

Cottage Cheese

Quinoa or Brown Rice

2 packs of Ramen

Shredded Carrots (1 cup + however much you want for salad)

Lettuce (4-6 heads of Romaine Lettuce)

1 box Mac N Cheese

2 Tilapia Fillets

Apples (2 + what you want for salad)

Parmesan cheese

Pepper Jack Cheese

Ham

Apple Juice – one cup

Optional: Salad Dressing, olives

On Hand:

Dijon Mustard

Maple Syrup

Yeast

Vegetable Oil

Sugar

Flour

Oatmeal

Chocolate Milk Mix

Peanut Butter

Spices: Garlic Salt, Onion Powder, Cinnamon, paprika, grill seasoning

Chicken Bouillon

Panko/Bread Crumbs

Mayo

Honey

Brown Sugar

Vanilla Extract

Whatever Wednesday: My top ten favorite quote pins

So, these are my favorite pins of quotes that are most powerful to me. Either because they are harsh realities or because they are the way I want to live. In no particular order:

http://kathycoe.tumblr.com/post/81835583812/suki17-this-is-so-powerful-have-you-ever

http://9gag.com/gag/4578055

From the movie "This Means War"

https://instagram.com/p/tJSaqUMMwi/

http://www.heatherhartstudio.com/

http://paigedancexo.tumblr.com/

http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=23100

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/everybody-genius.html

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/29/82/c4/2982c471c08285b80f28dc2d42213432.jpg

And finally, my favorite, because it is basically my life's motto. If I can't accomplish something it's because I don't want it enough.

http://www.organizeyourselfskinny.com/2012/02/23/how-to-prioritize-exercise/

Treat Tuesday: Enchiladas - EVERYONE'S FAVORITE

So, today I am going to share Enchiladas because it is Cinco de Mayo (or was yesterday when I should have remembered to post this). These enchiladas are everyone's favorite. Seriously, my college roommates loved them, my family loves them, my husband loves them. The only person who doesn't love them are my sister-in-law who doesn't like enchiladas period so, you can't win them all. They are so easy too. They take about 10-15 min of prep time tops and 20 min in the oven. So without further ado:

Mommy Mostert's Enchiladas

12 mid-sized flour tortillas

16 oz of cream cheese

2 large cans of chicken

1 small can of green peppers

1 large can of green enchilada sauce (or 2 regular sized cans)

Cheese to top (we like Mozzarella or Pepper Jack)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Pour half the can (or one can) of enchilada sauce into a 9x13 clear baking dish. Spread along the bottom of the pan.

3. In a bowl beat cream cheese, chicken, and peppers until combined.

4. Divide mixture evenly between the 12 tortillas forming the mixture into a thick line along the center of the tortilla.

5. Roll up the tortillas as tight as you can and place them in the pan. They should squish together.

6. Top with the rest of the enchilada sauce and sprinkle with cheese.

7. Cook in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

Mommy Monday: Encouraging Creativity in Children

aCreativity is a WONDERFUL thing to encourage your children. Not only is it fun for your children but divergent thinking (thinking in creative ways) improves convergent thinking (knowledge, school learning type things). Keep in mind, creativity development is complete by age 7, so, you want to start these things early but, continue them throughout their childhood to keep their creativity up and going! 

Here are ten non-traditional ideas I came up with to help encourage and improve creativity:

  Provide toys for your children that can be used in multiple ways, such as Legos or tinker toys. This will allow your child to find a variety of ways to play with one toy. Offer your child pictures of things such as houses or robots and encourage them to build them. This will allow your child to have some guidance without having strict instructions. Another way to use these toys to foster creativity is to encourage them to make you instructions for a toy they have designed. This will only work well at an older age (around 8+). You can show them an example of instructions provided with a Lego set then offer them your camera to take pictures of how they put their design together. Once again they have rough tools to guide them in their task but the full creativity is up to them.

 

Allow your child to play with household items. Children can find new uses for cheap things such as Tupperware, toothpicks, and pillow stuffing. Encourage them to build forts or bang on “drums.” Do not force the child to use the object in the one way it is intended. Allow them to find different uses and perhaps integrate the more pragmatic uses into your home, this will build their esteem in their creative ability.

If you are crafty and creative yourself, allow your child to participate with you. My example is sewing because that is what I like to do. A young child cannot use the sewing machine on their own, but they can sit on your lap and help you feed the fabric through for a straight stitch. They can also help you lay out the fabric. This shows them that you value creativity and that they should too.

Create a daily challenge in your home. For example, one week you can have 100 plastic cups in a basket every day they come home from school. Each day they have to build something new from those 100 cups. Allow them to break, bend, stack and whatever else they can think of with the cups. After a week change the basket to plastic straws. The next week you can have no basket but say build a catapult out of things you can find in the house.

Engage in pretend play with them. If you go to the park and your child wants to be a pirate, offer to be peter pan. If your child wants to play princesses in the back yard offer to be her prince. If your child wants to be a famous musician, help them dress in their nicest clothes and sit on the couch and applaud as they play beautiful “concertos” on your piano. Allow them the ability to lead the play.

 Let your child choose their clothes. What they choose won’t always be in style but it will allow them to try different styles. It will allow them to wear clashing prints and discover what they do and don’t like. Don’t rush them to choose their clothes. This will allow them to have the time to think about what they are wearing and choose it based on their desires and thoughts. 

 Don’t throw out non-dirty garbage. Things like paper towel rolls and jam jars can become telescopes and biodomes. Show your child the different ways to use “trash” and encourage them to come up with their own ways. As you go about your day have a bucket where you throw things your children can use for their own crafts and ideas. Always have this bucket in their reach and in a place they know where it is. You don’t have to hover when they are creating.

  Have either weekly or monthly a day without toys. Don’t spring it on the child; let them know when it is going to be each week/month and remind them. On this day, a child cannot use electronics or any of their regular toys (dolls, Legos, racecars). Instead, they have to entertain themselves with objects around the house or in the back yard. Allow them to let clothespins become earrings and paprika to become blush as they pretend to dress up for the ball. Encourage them to jump from couch to cushion to avoid the lava floor.

Create a long-term family project. From start to finish this can build creativity. Start by having a family meeting and schedule a family meeting for the following week (great FHE). Have each family member think of three family project ideas. The following week discuss all the family project ideas, encourage your children to synthesize their projects together. It does not have to be only his or her idea; it can be a combination of both. Then complete the project together. These projects can be things like building a deck together, learning to modify all the house computers, or starting a family garden. Allow your children to plan (with your guidance) the ways to complete this project.

 Allow your child to cook a side dish to your dinner meal. Don’t have them follow a recipe if they don’t want to. Let them throw baking soda into the frying pan that has sliced strawberries. Have everyone in the family try it and encourage them to give constructive criticism, including the child that made it. Allow your child to try again the next day or may be have them cook their own dish every Monday. As you cook with them offer them some guidance to show you are engaged but allow them to decide whether or not to follow that guidance. 

Sacred Sunday: Our Family Motto

Look unto me in every thought;

doubt not, fear not.

D&C 6:36

             So, this is our family motto that we decided on about February of this year. Now for all of those who have teens in the church, you are probably aware that this is one of the new scripture mastery verses. We had no idea until we told my younger brother (16) that we had decided on this for our family motto and he pointed it out. I'm happy it is a new scripture mastery because I feel like it is a verse that shouldn't be skipped over.

          I love how simple and succinct the verse is. It is a straightforward command that basically sums up the church. If we look unto the Lord in every thought we will be following the gospel. In my Relief Society class today we talked about how we could be drawn away from living the gospel and what we narrowed it down to was: It takes courage to live the gospel, thus, if we are discouraged it can be hard to live the gospel. The second part of this verse addresses that: doubt not, fear not. Get rid of what discourages  you - doubt and fear. 

I hope you've had a lovely Sunday,

xoxo,

Kels

 

Sewing Saturday: Monogrammed Cabinet

So, our kitchen is small. As in, we might have 2 square feet of useable counter space small  (and then another square foot that holds the dishrack because we don't have a dishwasher). This isn't a huge problem, except my daddy bought us a microwave as a housewarming gift (not that I am complaining. I love that microwave! It's wonderful to no longer have to recook leftovers over the stove or in the oven [more like throw away leftovers because I'm to lazy to do those things and the leftovers go bad]). So we've been keeping an eye out for something to put the microwave on. We scored doubly so by picking up this cabinet for $15 at the DI (our thrift store)! We have a place to put the extra rice, beans and dog food we get from Costco now too! Unfortunately, it was dirty and boring. Nothing the hubs and I can't fix.

For this project we used 3 tools:
Power Sander
Wood Burning Kit
Power Drill (We actually borrowed this from Grandpa, we only needed one hole drilled)


Here is our before: (Newsies VHS for scale)

And closed (I love the molding). You can't tell but there is a random hole on the right side of the door. I assume that was were they were going to put a handle but, never got around to it. We decided to drill another hole and put an handle on so we didn't have to worry about filling the hole.

I found a penny! So really it was only a $14.99 cabinet. Winning!

Anyways, we cleaned it out with a lot of clorox wipes (a lot, this thing was nasty). It had so much grossness that we had to sand some of the disgusting stuff off (see picture two, the left is the grossness, the right is after it got sanded off). Then we sanded down the rest of it and cleaned again. Tip of the day: you start with the thicker sanding paper and move down to the thinner sanding paper. Probably common sense but, I didn't know.

Now, is the part that I failed to get pictures for. We stained the wood a dark brown color we had from making my sister a 7 foot collapsible ruler (kinda like this  but, we added a hinge for easy moving and stained the wood). Then came the fun part: the wood burning! Everything I read said to print off an outline of what you wanted and trace it but, we had three problems with that.

1) I didn't find what I wanted.
2) What we wanted was bigger than an 8x11.5 piece of paper.
and
3) We don't have a printer anyway

So, I pulled up what I wanted on Google and used a pencil and ruler to draw out our L with the line through it. I free handed the curves to make it look more serif. Then I used the wood burning angle tool to outline what I had drawn. The key here is to go slowly. You'll go slowly at first of course (if this is your first time using a wood burning tool like us) but, then you're going to want to speed up when you get the hang of it. DON'T DO IT! If you look closely in person you can tell where we rushed. Keep it slow and steady. Outline first then fill in. We took turns burning the wood (have the windows and doors open, it isn't so smelly that you need to be outside but, you do need the windows open).

Then B drilled on the handle we got from Home Depot for about $1.50 and it was set! We love our new microwave holder. What do y'all think?

xoxo,

Kels

Fashion Friday: What is Project 333?

According to theproject333.com, "Project 333 is a minimalist fashion challenge that invites you to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months." This is supposed to included clothes, accessories, and shoes (but, not underwear, workout clothes, or sentimental everyday jewelry [ie. wedding ring]). I cheated a little and only counted clothes. I originally tried to do clothes and shoes but, not all of my shoes would fit in a storage box (that is probably a terrible reason). But, I did count undershirts in my 33, so maybe that evens it out? Meh, doesn't matter, this is my project I can tweak it how I want. Here is my wardrobe for the challenge:

  

 

   

 

 

When I first looked into doing project 333, I looked at a lot of peoples blog posts and their summary of what they recommended. Every single one had like 2 skirts, 1 dress and like 4 or 5 pairs of jeans and I decided VERY quickly that those were not for me. I hate wearing jeans. I have one pair of jeans above (the black ones are thick jeggings) and I only had 3 pairs of jeans in my closet of probably 100+ items that I had before this project. I like wearing dresses and skirts though so, I have a lot of those. I also have quite a bit of color as you can tell. Most blog posts recommended choosing 2 or 3 colors and one neutral for the entire closet. That doesn't work for me. We'll see how this goes though! I have tweaked it and I haven't followed the advice but, here is a summary of my 33 items:

Dresses: 3 (though one of the skirts can fold into a dress)

Skirts: 5

Shirts: 15

Tanks: 4

Pants: 3

Outerwear: 3

Total: 33 

Does anyone want to follow along? Let me know!

xoxo,

Kels