Meal Planning & Cooking software…time saving, money saving, stress relieving :)

Ok…Once a year I have to write a post on this.  I can’t think of another area of my life that I have relieved as much stress as I have in the cooking department (maybe with the exception of recently cleaning/purging my house ).  It did not come easy to me.  When we were first married and became parents, I did not cook well.  I had a few recipes that people gave me with wedding gifts, but we ate a lot of boxed foods, and just JUNK now that I look back on it.

For Christmas 2005, my husband gave me a copy of some cooking software.  I looked at the box and thought he was crazy.  What in the world would I ever do with cooking software? But then I read the back of the CD case, read the reviews online, read what that software would help me do, and I was hooked!

I learned to cook by recipes and ingredients, and have rarely if ever bought another boxed food item.  This software and the beginning of meal planning was life changing for me…and I don’t say that lightly.  I mean REALLY life changing.

I entered all of my favorite recipes into my software, used some of the recipes that came with the software, and found a few more favorites online.  I began to compile menus for two weeks at a time.  I wholeheartedly recommend the two week plan.  Meal planning is not the most fun thing to do for some, so only having to do it every two weeks is great.

Here’s what I do:

I first look in my pantry/fridge to see what ingredients I have on hand.  I can enter those ingredients into my software, and it will give me meal ideas from the recipes I have there…so cool!  Next, I pick a few of our favorite recipes, and I set up a two week menu and fill it in. I try to have a couple chicken dishes and a couple beef dishes on each menu.  I like to have one pasta dish, and one international dish if possible.  I add soups to the menus during the cold months, and some during the warm months.  We have seafood dishes on occasion as well.  My crock pot is my friend in the kitchen, so I use a lot of crock pot recipes.  I will add event dishes to my menus if we are going somewhere, and I make one dessert for every 2 week menu plan.  Here is what my software looks like…

That column on the left is a list of all of my cookbooks.  I can click on the cookbook I want, and scroll through it for recipes.  I add those to my menus.  Once the menus are complete, I click on “list”, and my software will make me a grocery list based on the recipes I chose, and the ingredients needed for them.  Once I have the list in my hand, I do inventory of my fridge/pantry again to see what I have on the list and what I need to buy.  I then hand write a final list and that is what I take with me to the store.  I write it based on sections of the store, and it’s very easy to shop that way.

This is how a typical week’s menu prints out for me…

I am able to choose fun fonts for printing, and it prints out in an easy to read format.  I print out both menus for the two week plan…seven days at a time.  We eat leftovers on the weekends, so I only plan five days. This gets posted on the side of my fridge, along with a sheet protector filled with all of the recipes for that two week plan. A typical recipe looks like this…very easy to read and follow with ingredients listed at the top in columns, and directions underneath.

All I have to do when I’m ready to prepare a meal is grab that day’s recipe out of the sheet protector, and voila! I’m ready to make dinner.   The nice thing about having the menus and recipes posted on the fridge, is that no one EVER has to ask me what is for dinner.  They can just look at the menu.  Now sometimes, due to circumstances beyond our control, I have to switch days around.  That is not a problem at all.  I just do it.   I make the meal that was scheduled for that day another day.  It is just whatever works out best for us. We are able to be a bit flexible. 

Here are the menus and recipes posted on the fridge…Menus on top, recipes underneath.  The watermelon pad is where I make lists of staples we need like toilet paper, etc.  Things that would not be on a cooking list

I cannot express to you enough how much this has changed my life.  It is something I only have to think about every two weeks, and then I don’t.   I just grab a recipe and cook meals.  My husband takes most leftovers for his meals at work, and we eat some on the weekends.  Otherwise we just have soup and sandwiches or stuff like that…easy peasy. I am a person who THRIVES on routine, order, schedules and everything in its place.  Menu planning allows me to have that in a very important area of our lives.  I can still be flexible, but for the most part we follow a schedule, and it relieves a lot of stress for me.

Meal planning has saved us money.  I only buy what is on my list.  I used to shop grabbing whatever looked good to me, and would find ingredients months down the road that were never used.  I have cut our grocery bill well in half doing this, and most two week shopping trips, we come out having only spent $150 or less, both stores combined.  That’s pretty good for a family of four.

For Christmas this past year, my husband bought me the updated version of my cooking software (and I got two extra copies for a STEAL).  I will soon be able to get an iPhone app for the software that will make it even easier to shop.  I can email recipes easily with the software, and I can even type the name of a dish in the search engine, and it will find a recipe for me online.  Then I just click “capture”, and the recipe is automatically entered.  SO NICE.

I gave one of my copies of my software to my sister, but I still have one left.  It is normally around $100 to buy it (SO worth it), but if any of my local friends that read my blog think that this could be for them, I’d be happy to GIVE them the other copy. (Sorry…not into shipping and you MUST be serious about this.  I don’t want to give it to someone that doesn’t really want to give this menu planning business a shot )

The example of the recipe I posted was for Mexican Chicken Stuffed Shells.  It was a new recipe, and I was excited to try it.  It was a bit more work than most recipes I use (I go with easy prep recipes ), but it made two batches.  I cooked one tonight for dinner, and put the other one in the freezer for a future meal.  Next time will not mean as much work!   The meal was very tasty, and I’ll definitely make it again.  This is what it looked like, and this is the picture that I will enter into the recipe so that I can see what it looks like when I’m choosing recipes.  I always try to add a picture, because that helps greatly in recipe selection.

I LOVE to talk about meal planning and cooking software, because it is something that has changed my life, and has relieved a great deal of stress.  Cooking is easier now, and the whole family gets involved in the planning and preparation of meals now.  We love it!  Maybe I will start posting my menus, and some of my recipes again.  I really enjoyed doing that!

Local friends….let me know if you are interested in this software.  It has been a great help to me.

A New House…And A Tour

I don’t really have a new house, but I feel like I do! I mentioned in my last post about the the great purge and spring clean of 2013.  It is almost finished.  I just have my bedroom, kitchen, and office area to finish, and we will be done.  All of the other areas of the house have been purged, cleaned, and organized.  It really feels like a new house to me.

A friend of mine mentioned her basement being a place of chaos this morning, and that is how I felt about my entire home.  We had accumulated so much stuff, that we were bursting at the seams.  I couldn’t clean the way I like to, because there was so much clutter.  The kids were having sleepovers in the family room because their rooms were terrible.  We were coming dangerously close to being the next contestants on Hoarders…well not that bad…

I have been wanting to purge the house for quite some, but my Beloved really struggles to get rid of things.  I waited for as long as I possibly could, and when he saw how much stress the clutter was causing me, he agreed it was time to do a purge.  He was really amazing the both weekends we worked on it.  He left the rooms when it was hard for him, but he was a great help hauling stuff out for me, and I’m so grateful he agreed to let me do this.  I think he feels better about the house now too! We were able to bless several families with things we no longer used, and several more through stuff we took to the Salvation Army.  That was a great feeling to me.  Even more so, was the ginormous amount of garbage we hauled to the curb last week.  Our garbage men took every bit of it when they picked up garbage!  Yay!!!

So though we aren’t finished, we are finished enough for me to give a little tour of my home…here we go! These are all pictures taken from my phone, so not the best quality

One end of our family room with our huge sectional couch…

The other end of the family room….I love the pass through to the kitchen with the bar stools…

A view of our eating area from the family room…(also our classroom ) That bin on the right next to my homeschool shelf is full of old curriculum that I will be getting rid of. Yay! I love the pitcher and large dish on the table. 

The window to the right of the kitchen table is fully shaded now by trees that have grown so tall outside.  I love this window…

Another view of the eating area from the kitchen, and out the window…

Looking into the family room from the eating area…one of my favorite rooms in the house, where we spend most of our time…the chair with the ottoman closest to the fireplace is where I am sitting right now to type this post.  It’s my “spot”. You can see my laptop sitting on the ottoman

Looking into the kitchen from the living room/office area toward the eating area… Morgan’s and my aprons hang there in the doorway.

Looking through to the living room, and our newly painted front door…

I don’t have a foyer, so it was very important to me that this entryway was cleaned up and organized.  There is not much space there.  I had a rack for our winter boots, and just exchanged the boots for flip-flops and summer shoes! My Beloved let me buy the cool umbrella basket, and that really made that area look neater.

Here’s another view of the basket…I really like it! We got it on clearance at Pier 1 Imports, and it will be great for umbrellas and ice scrapers (since we don’t have a garage)

One more of the basket next to my lovely piano…we are actually housing this for a friend who had no place to put it, and we’ve had it for over ten years. I’m hoping it stays a lot longer!

Relaxing in my clean living room, stress free! Now I actually enjoy playing that piano again!

Another favorite spot in our house.  This is a table that sits in front of our front window.  It holds pictures of my Lovies, and our dear Arizona cousins (who are the only ones that provide us with pictures), and the plants that my daughter is raising.  It is so lovely, and even more so now that it is clean and uncluttered.

That is all for now.  I’ll take some pictures in the kitchen, office area, and maybe a couple of my bedroom once it’s all done.  I have a beautiful doorway to my master bath that has two large windows in it.  I have been meaning to make curtains for years, because the poor person in the bathroom has no privacy, and the light shines right into the bedroom if someone goes in there during the night.  I got the idea to cover the windows with a pretty patterned contact paper that matches the doors, and I’m going to do that this weekend.  It will give the room privacy, and no blaring light during the night. So I’ll share a picture of that when it’s done.

Thanks for coming on my home tour! I really love this little house now, and I’m content to stay here for as long as the Lord would have us do that!

I hope you enjoy the new look on the blog too!

The Refiner’s Fire…

My husband and I (well ok…I did) decided that this weekend would be spent purging our house of all of the clutter that has accumulated over the years.  I wanted to purge and clean every room so it would not be hard to maintain. I knew it was going to be a hard job, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be…

Sometimes God has to purge our lives.  He takes us through the fire, like gold and silver when they are refined.  The process can be hard and painful, but when it is done the results are beautiful!

In the process of purging my house, I found a box of things I had saved from an extremely difficult time in my life.  Next to the death of my daughter, this period in my life was the worst.  I cried and ached as I went through each piece I found in the box, especially a journal my sister had written for me when she was taking care of my kids.  My heart ached over the level of sin I stooped to, and I don’t say that with pride, like how could I do it.  Apart from the grace of God, I’m capable of any sin.  In 2005, when God called me out of that sin…quite literally actually, I knew the cost could be great.  Relationships would suffer greatly, or even be lost.  That all happened, and it was EXCRUCIATING…some of them the dearest of relationships to me.  That purging and refining HURT.  But I knew that if I was sincere about my repentance, and truly wanted God to change my life, I needed to take all of the steps necessary for Him to do that.  It about killed me…but I had to be obedient.  There were consequences for my sin, and in my case one was the loss of a relationship I treasured…a best friend.

My pastor quoted yesterday that “if God permits consequences for forgiven sin, they are NEVER proportionate to the sin committed”.  Isn’t that GREAT news? I haven’t been able to get that out of my head.  If they were, I’d be in BIG trouble!  I’m so grateful that God doesn’t work that way.

I’m also grateful that what God took away, He has replaced a hundred fold.  I had a very difficult relationship with a person that is now my dearest friend and sister in life.  We have been through so many similar circumstances, and never knew it.  A really painful situation brought us together again, and now we are “sisters” for life.  I truly adore her, and I’m so grateful to God for her in my life.  We share the same first name, and for many years had the same last name.

Nearly eight years after the refining, we are watching God “restore the years the swarming locusts have eaten”.  It’s been amazing to watch it all unfold, and our family has tightened our grip on each other, and on God.  There are no three people I love more and enjoy spending time with, than my people right here.  We have all recovered from the painfully difficult years, and are stronger for having gone through it as a family.  We have learned to hold loosely to “things”, and hold onto each other with all that is in us.  We’ve learned the grace of God, and his forgiveness in ways others haven’t, and we wouldn’t trade it for ANYTHING.

So many lessons have been learned in the purging, and I reflected on those lessons this weekend as I purged my house and “refined” it.  It was hard, tiring, painful in some ways, and a LOT of work.  But it is nearing the end, and I feel like I have a new house.  That is such a joyful feeling to me I can’t express it.  And the “painful box” was thrown into one of the bags of garbage, never to be brought to my mind again.  12 bags of trash later, and nearly the same amount going to goodwill, I’m a happy lady!

To save myself the embarrassment, I won’t be showing before pictures, because they would be horrendous.  But, two of the rooms that needed a major amount of purging were my kids rooms, and I’m proud to show pictures of them!

Morgan’s room now…

And Parker’s room…

Every closet in the house was purged, and I know were everything is now.  It is such a great feeling to get everything purged, cleaned up and organized.  I’m so glad my husband was willing to humor me this weekend, and help me get it done.  It’s a hard process for him, but he knew how much it meant to me.  I’m so proud of him, and grateful for his help!

I leave you with the words to this song that have been running through my mind all weekend.  Steve Green sang it, and it was always a favorite…

There burns a fire with sacred heat
White hot with holy flame
And all who dare pass through its blaze
Will not emerge the same
Some as bronze, and some as silver
Some as gold, then with great skill
All are hammered by their sufferings
On the anvil of His will

The Refiner's fire
Has now become my soul’s desire
Purged and cleansed and purified
That the Lord be glorified
He is consuming my soul
Refining me, making me whole
No matter what I may lose
I choose the Refiner's fire

I'm learning now to trust His touch
To crave the fire's embrace
For though my past with sin was etched
His mercies did erase
Each time His purging cleanses deeper
I'm not sure that I'll survive
Yet the strength in growing weaker
Keeps my hungry soul alive

Mother’s Day…

Mother’s Day is a bittersweet day for me.  I don’t know about you, but growing up all I wanted to do was be a wife and mother.  As I got later into my twenties and God had not yet brought “the one” into my  life, I started to worry that that dream was not going to come true. 

I met Andy just after I turned 28.  We got married when we both were 29, gave ourselves a few months to get used to living together, and got started on the mutual dream we had to have lots of babies. Like 5 or 6 babies.  God gave us the desire of our heart, but not in the way we had hoped, and not without a great deal of pain, suffering, and deep deep heartache.

On my first Mother’s Day, I should have been dedicating a 9 month old baby girl.  I was there, she wasn’t.  God took our little bean to Heaven at 37 weeks, before she even took a breath.  So Mother’s Day was filled with tears, heartache, some anger, and confusion over whether I should stand with the other mothers, or stay seated as I had no children there with me.

God gave me two more beautiful children.  I love them dearly.  I wouldn’t trade either of them for ANYTHING.  But I always miss the dear little girl that made me a mother…

Every Mother’s Day I like to go to the cemetery and spend some time with Madison.  I know she’s not there, but I love having a place to go and just be with her and her memory.  I have taken story books over the years, and read to her.  I have sat there and just enjoyed the cool breezes as I think about how quickly she darted in and out of my life.  Sometimes I will take her pictures with me, and look at them as I sit there.

This year we were invited to my Mom’s house for Mother’s Day, so we only had a few minutes to visit the cemetery.  I took everyone with me this time.  We snapped a few pictures, and then I made everyone go to the car so I could have a few minutes alone with my firstborn…

 

My kids and my husband GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to make sure Mother’s Day is wonderful for me.  I allow myself that time to remember the little girl that made me a mother, and then I move on to celebrate being a mom to the two AMAZING Lovies God gave us to raise.

I got breakfast in bed Sunday morning, a fun bag of gifts, and lots of quality time with my kiddos.  Morgan and I even got to sing together in a mother/daughter choir at church.  I got to stand right behind her and keep my hands on her shoulders the whole time.  It was a special time for us.

Mother’s Day will always be bittersweet, but I’m so grateful for my two children (not possible for me to carry 5-6 kids), and I thank God for them every day, and for making me their momma….best job in the world!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of my Momma friends!

What’s New?

It’s been a while since I have posted, so I thought I’d pop in and let you know what is up with us.  Things have been crazy busy for us, so not much blogging time!

My husband is doing better, but we are still having issues with getting his blood regulated.  He will have a CT scan this week to make sure there are no blood clots hiding in his body, and then he will have a follow up visit with his vascular surgeon.  Hopefully, he’ll get good reports from both.

We are wrapping up our school year.  We’ll be doing math throughout the summer, but everything else is nearly done for the year.  We’ll be doing something different in the fall, but I will wait to share those details until a bit later.  The kids are excited about it, and I am too…so that is all that matters.

We are still watching our little Baby Bird and Gray man.  My daughter loves to snap pictures of them every chance she gets, and then I get to do the fun part of editing the pictures.  For some reason, I just can’t leave a picture alone.  I just have to tweak it in some little way.  It’s so much fun.  Here are a few of our recent pics of the little darlings…

One with my husband…she took a liking to him right away…

This little darling has some seriously beautiful eyes…

One with me…

While she was sleeping…

She ADORES my son…

Gray man…

We love having the kids here…they are so sweet.

This weekend I took on the project of painting our front door.  It was in dire need of a makeover.  The white paint was peeling, and it looked awful.  I covered it up during the winter months by having Morgan create a LARGE piece of artwork to hang on it.  Now that it is warming up, I decided it was time to paint.  We went with a deep burgundy color called “red red wine”.  We have painted two coats, and it already looks lovely…  Here is a before, and 2 coat picture…we’ll probably need another couple coats, and I’ll paint our back door as well.  We have plenty of paint left!

                  

We had a little incident with our neighbor kids this morning.  They were throwing rocks at our house.  I went outside in all of my painting outfit bed head glory, and asked them to stop doing that.  I asked them to help me pick up all of the rocks and put them back in their flower bed, so they didn’t get run over by our mower. An adult came outside and asked me if they were behaving, so I told her they were throwing rocks.  She made them apologize and go straight in the house to bed .  I felt bad for getting them in trouble, but I really don’t want rocks thrown at my house. 

Later this afternoon I heard a knock at the door, and it was my neighbor Stephanie.  I had never gotten a chance to meet her.  She had her boys with her, and they all apologized again.  Then they presented me with two large beautiful violet plants.  I’m not sure what they are, but the color is so pretty.  I have one for each side of my door on my porch.  I almost cried, because I have never had anything so pretty on my porch.  They accent the new door color, and look lovely right next to my little lilac bush that has finally bloomed this year…Aren’t they beautiful???

Here is my little lilac bush.  I’m not going to cut any flowers this year, because there aren’t very many.  I’m going to my mom’s for Mother’s Day tomorrow, and she has several lilac bushes in full bloom.  I’ll cut some of her lilacs to bring home for my table.   Pay no attention to the big green tendril that is reaching for my lilacs.  I have hated that bush since the day we moved in.  That bad boy’s days are numbered.  It will be out of here as soon as I can hire someone to chop it down.

And just one shot of the lovely tree in our front yard…

Well, super long post, but that is it for us right now.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of my mommy friends! I hope you all have a great weekend.  Be back soon as we move into summer vacation! WOOHOO!