A Day in Our Life

Little Monkey

I won't name names, but somebody in our house has learned how to climb up onto the dining room chairs. No, it's not me or Jerod (I know, hard to believe we have relearned that skill, it's amazing how you have a baby and all of a sudden eating at the table is the new normal.) Now, for most people, this probably isn't such a big deal- but before we had a child we loved the idea of a counter height table. That means that our chairs also had to be a little taller than normal, creating a shaky situation, literally and figuratively. Little gal tried to rock one of the chairs after climbing onto it and about tipped the whole thing right over! Needless to say, she is highly discouraged from climbing in or on the table and chairs, but sometimes she is so darn quick and we don't even notice until she's already up there!

So I took point from our friend, Jamie, and have been keeping the chairs pushed in to the table, which creates this situation:

Cue frustrated whining

This went on for a good five minutes

She was so mad as all get out that she couldn't stand up, but she just kept trying until we pulled her down. Just so everyone knows, I wasn't just snapping pictures whilst she could possibly fall and injure herself- Jerod was standing next to the chair, ready to be Super Daddy if need be.

Monthly Menu: Finding the Recipes and Forming the Menu

So a while back I wrote a completely scatter-brained post about how I thought I was SO smart to create a menu board. It was going to save me SO MUCH MONEY on groceries. I wish I could say it had- but the truth about saving money on groceries is you have to combine several strategies to do it. Mine are:

Coupons
Ad browsing
Sam's club
Monthly meal planning

Now, I can't say that monthly planning will be for everyone, it takes some serious thought. I mean, who wants to get stuck eating some version of chicken and rice 4 days in a week?? It also takes some research- and by research, I mean scavenging for recipes- I do mine mostly with Pinterest and the bajillion cookbooks I have on hand already. It has really helped me feel less stressed about "What am I going to make for dinner tonight?!", all I have to do is look at the menu board, and I'm good to go.

Some people look for deals in the grocery stores and base their recipes off of those- I choose recipes I know my family will like or I think they will like, and then I scope out ads to fit what I need. I have made it a rule that there is at least one crockpot recipe per week and I save fancy or extensive recipes for Sundays- the idea of Sunday supper is nostalgic to me and I have more time to spend on a meal that day. I start searching for recipes a couple weeks before the next month begins- this gives me plenty of time to pick out meals and, ideally, keeps me from stressing about filling in days (though it usually happens anyway). Also, I never pick out weekday recipes that I think will take me longer than 15-30 minutes to get into the oven or get cooking on on the stove, and I make sure to include leftover days. We usually don't need many of these because we take our leftovers for lunch at school, but make sure to include this- you don't have to cook every night! Sheesh!

My printable menu is just a template I downloaded on Microsoft Word. As I'm adding recipes I think about things like:

Do the ingredients have to be fresh or can they be frozen/canned?
Do I have another recipe similar to this in the same week?
How long will this take me to prep and cook?
Do I need a side with this?

You get the picture. Meals that need fresh ingredients that can't be frozen go toward the beginning of the month, then meals whose ingredients can be prepped and frozen go next, then those that can use canned or store bought frozen ingredients. I write in the recipe and where I can find it again, otherwise I would never remember. For me, this is as simple as: Pinterest, Recipe Binder, or Reno Cookbook, etc. Meals that I know by heart or don't really have a recipe are just left blank underneath.

The next menu post will include couponing, ad browsing, and writing my grocery list.

Good Food, Good Meat...

...Good God, Let's eat! My Dad used to say that when we were growing up sometimes, instead of saying Grace before dinner. It has stuck with me :)

I wanted to share a couple dinners we've had lately, that are pretty all around pleasing, at least I'd like to think so since I made them.

Chicken Spinach Alfredo Pizza

I like to make a homemade pizza crust, but this pizza would be a SUPER quick fix if you got pre-cooked crusts (usually in the pasta aisle) or the refrigerated crust you get in a tube by the refrigerated biscuits. I used:

1 jar Light Parmesan Alfredo Sauce

1 box chopped frozen spinach

1 cup chopped or shredded chicken (leftover rotisserie chicken would be perfect)

1 8 oz. bag shredded Mozzarella or Pizza cheese

1/2 c. shredded Parmesan cheese (optional- it makes it seem a little more gourmet, to me)

3-4 slices of bacon, chopped and cooked crisp

1. Prepare your pizza crust if it's not cooked already, it usually needs to cook a bit before adding toppings
2. Microwave unopened box of spinach in a glass bowl for 5 minutes; remove from packaging into a dish towel; wrap with towel and twist ends to wring water out of spinach; combine spinach and alfredo sauce
3. Spread sauce mixture on pizza crust, top with cheeses, then chicken and bacon; bake until desired doneness!

Pork Lo Mein

Get together:

Your favorite stir-fry veggies (we like sliced bell peppers, sliced onion, shredded carrots, sugar snap peas, and crushed garlic, or sometimes I even just use a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies)
1 lb. Pork loin, steak, chops, or you could do chicken breast, too- this needs to be cut into thin strips
Lo Mein noodles or spaghetti if you can't find lo mein (I have gotten mine from HyVee, they were called Wu-Mu noodles there, and I also have gotten them from an Asian food store and they were called Shang Dong noodles, I think....)
Canola oil
1/4 to 1/2 c. Soy Sauce

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook noodles- lo mein noodles only take 3-5 minutes to cook, spaghetti would, of course, take a little longer; drain in collander, set aside.
2. Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a large skillet or wok and stir-fry meat until cook through and no longer pink; remove from pan and reserve
3. Add another couple tablespoons of oil in skillet or wok and stir-fry veggies until desired doneness (we like ours a little softer so the baby gal can eat them with us, so I cook them a wee bit more); add meat and noodles and soy sauce. Start with 1/4 cup and add more to taste- we LOVE us some lo mein with our soy sauce ;)
4. Enjoy!

And just in case you mostly read to catch peeks at our little rascal- check down below, she cracks me up!

Boogie Fever

We have boogie fever at the Brown house! One of our favorite things to do is flip to 90's on 9 through our satellite receiver on our TV and hang out, clean, or DANCE!! Here's a little video of our girl showing her very best moves....

Hawkeye Garb- Cyclone Heart

We obviously have no idea which team, if either, Cailyn will prefer, but I like to think since she's a Mama's girl she's rooting for my alma mater when the Cy-Hawk game comes around. However, I totally forgot to get her Cyclone gear for Friday- though my friend Jamie was happy to donate an ISU toddler jacket she found in a tub of clothes she received for her twins! I just didn't get a picture of her in it, dang it!!

Not a problem though- so far she's seen two of these games, has worn Hawkeye clothes both times, and the Cyclones have won...both times...so maybe I'll continue to let her wear Iowa stuff...

The Joy of a Bunk Bed

To the average busy adult, this may just look like 5 kids climbing on a bunk bed. But to the children playing it is not a bunk bed, and to one another they are not children, they are just themselves.

To a toddler a bunk bed is monkey bar training and a place where only they can fit when standing straight up. It is a trampoline with a roof.

A bunk bed is a window to play.....PEEK-A-BOO!

To a first grader and a preschooler a bunk bed is an indoor jungle gym- or the perfect perch for inspecting dust covered fan blades.....and telling your mom's friend she really needs to clean them.

A bunk bed is a place for snuggling and hanging out. A place to someday stay up late and tell secrets and stories, and then sleep in and smell apple cinnamon pancakes tiptoe under door.

And these children on the bunk bed are not just children. They are childhood friends- and though their memories may fail them as they grow older, they'll always remember the joy of a bunk bed.

Kitchen Cabinets Refinished: Part Dos

So my husband brought it to my attention several times in the last couple weeks that I never provided the conclusion to our kitchen cabinet redo. Hence, here we are!

So in the Part Uno post I showed you how the upper cabinets looked after being whitewashed. Now for the lower cabinets which were a little trickier. We started the lowers a looooong time ago by sanding and painting the backside that is basically one big sheet of wood, a couple drawers at one end. It was super messy- but after having painted the white cabinets and using the "liquid sand" we decided we really wanted to lower cabinets to be very durable. After all, they will get bumped and scavenged by tiny hands more so than the uppers.

So the first thing we did was to remove all the drawers and cupboards from the frames and JB got to work with the orbital sander.

Then came a coat of black paint- later to be followed by a couple coats of polyurethane which really brought out the color (I know- "What color? It's black!" but let me tell you- definitely more black and less charcoal after the poly). The poly also helps add durability and makes them easier to clean.

We bought the same style of shaker doors for the lower cabinets. They received two coats of black paint and two coats of poly.

We found that the second coat of poly went on and dried more smoothly if they were lying down when it was brushed on. You can kind of see the difference in the the pictures above and below.

The extra job we had for the lower cabinets was replacing all of the drawer fronts. For this we purchased solid planks of Aspen wood from the hardware store down the road and ripped them to size. I would venture a guess that this saved us about $175 compared to the alternative of purchasing drawer fronts for about 20 drawers at $15 each. They got the same treatment as the cupboard doors:

We then measured and installed cabinet hardware and drawer pulls, after which we sat back and enjoyed our hard work. I think I must have walked into the kitchen at least 20 extra times that night because I was so in love with the finished product!

This little space houses a cutting board that I haven't quite decided what I'd like to do with....I'm thinking a space for my baby and future babes to help do some cooking since it's a little more their size.