Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Tips on Running a Household: Menu Planning


Tips on Running a Household: Menu Planning


MENU PLANNING 


Why plan a menu?

For me, it's my lifeline. I've got my four kids pulling me in all different directions. When I have a menu, my life is easier.  It's one less decision to make at that crazy time of day in the after school hours. In the morning, I already know what we're going to have, so it's a simple matter to get out the meat to defrost, or to get dinner into the crock pot. I can look at our schedule and figure out when I need to start things in order to be able to eat before an activity. I can also prep things ahead of time if needed. It's so much easier to say no to a $5 pizza on the way home from karate, if I've already got dinner in the oven.

The hardest part of making dinner is deciding what to have. When you have a menu plan, the decisions are already made so dinner is easy!

How do I do it?

Each month I sit down and write a menu. {If that seems too daunting, plan a weekly menu instead.} It's nothing fancy. I literally draw a calendar on a folded over piece of paper and start filling in the meals.

Tips on Running a Household: Menu Planning


Sundays, we always do a roast, chicken or pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy and homemade rolls. Fridays, we always have homemade pizza or calzones. Mondays we usually have some kind of breakfast for dinner {I won't let them have cereal though, they'd want it all the time and we already spend way too much on it}. Then I start filling in the other days of the week.  Mondays and Wednesdays my son has Karate lessons. He gets done at 5:30. My kids are starving by then. I try to either have something in the oven or crockpot, or have something really simple that can be pulled together in minutes {like breakfast for dinner}. I've found lately that Saturdays I don't feel much like cooking big meals, so it's usually something simple and/or quick.  Now in our crazy lives, things are always coming up. For example,  there are dentist appointments, or parent teacher conferences that come up. I don't always remember to factor these things into my menu plan. I may need a quicker meal than I had planned for that day, so I just swap meals with a different day. That's OK. 

At the beginning of each week, I write down that week's menu on my Chalkboard Menuboard. Click the link for my tutorial. Or you can check out my etsy store {Bits of Sparkle and Lace} and buy one.

DIY Chalkboard Menuboard


Once I have my menu plan for the month, I make up my grocery list. But that's a topic for another day.


So do you plan your menus? What tips do you have that help you?




Other Tips on Running a Household:
Menu Planning
Well-Stocked Pantry
Food Storage


Monday, August 25, 2014

Goals - Week 2

Goals


Did you set any goals last week? How did you do?


Here are last weeks goals and how I did:
 1. Try the DIY Ant Poison I saw on Pinterest. If it doesn't work, buy ant traps.  It took me until Friday to finally do this. The jury's still out on how well the DIY ant poison worked. I mixed up the borax/sugar/water solution and set it out. I had quite a few ants attracted to it. The next day there were no ants, but then on Sunday I saw a few. It may take a few times to get them all.

2. Make a hot breakfast at least 3 times this week. This one was hard, but I did it. It takes a lot of planning ahead, since my kids are "starving" when they wake up. It just works better if I've made pancake batter {or whatever} the night before and can make breakfast as quickly as possible. The third meal, I made muffins the night before and so it wasn't "hot", but it wasn't cold cereal, which was the whole point of the goal. This is still something that's hard for me. I'll continue this goal for a few more weeks. Hopefully I can make it a habit.

3. Go grocery shopping. I go grocery shopping once a month.{Other than a short trip mid-month to replenish milk, fruit and such.} So it takes some planning and time, but I'm done for another month now. I'll be sharing more about my system of grocery shopping in my household tips series.

4. Remember morning family prayers. This was also hard. I think we only did it twice. We do pretty good at night, but we haven't ever really focused on morning prayers. It's something that just needs to become a habit. This will continue to be a goal.

5. Can the tomatoes from the garden. I did this on Thursday. We had enough tomatoes and peppers from the garden to make a batch of Picante Sauce.




Some things need to become a habit for me. They say it takes 2-3 weeks to form a habit, so I'll be repeating some of my goals this week. Here we go:

One thing I MUST do this week:

1. Figure out a good system for school lunches. I've pinned a few things that I need to read over. I'm not looking for an elaborate system. I'm just thinking of figuring out 5-6 different main options that they will eat, so they only get sandwiches once or twice a week.

Other goals: 

2. Remember morning family prayers.

3. Make a hot breakfast at least 3 times this week

4. Get packed and ready for camping trip this weekend.

What are your goals this week?
What do you put in your kids school lunches that they like?


Friday, August 22, 2014

No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake Dessert

This summer we made this really yummy dessert! I love the combination of the creamy pudding mixed with crispy Oreos. Every single one of us - even the picky ones loved it. I'm not a huge fan of a plain Oreos. {I know, weird} BUT... put them in a dessert and I'm going back for seconds.

No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake Recipe

This No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake is similar to my 5 Layer Oreo Dessert, but even better. Give it a try and see if you like it too.


No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake



Do you like Oreos?

Oreo Cheesecake Dessert

Oreo Cheesecake Dessert

Servings: 8
Author: Rachel Nielsen
Prep time: 20 MinTotal time: 20 Min
A delicious combination of creamy pudding and crispy oreos.

Ingredients

  • 1 pkg oreos
  • 2 pkgs (8 oz each) cream cheese, softened
  • 1 box (3.4 oz) white chocolate instant pudding
  • 1 box (3.4 oz) chocolate instant pudding
  • 2 1/2 c. milk, divided
  • 1 c. cool whip
  • 3 T. butter, melted

Instructions

  1. Crush 15 oreos and mix with the melted butter. Press into the bottom of a 9" spring-form pan. 
  2. Mix cream cheese until smooth. Slowly add 1 cup of the milk while beating, until milk is incorporated. Stir in white chocolate pudding. Fold in cool whip and 1 1/2 c. crushed oreos. 
  3. In another bowl mix together 1 1/2 c. milk with the chocolate pudding.
  4. Pour half of the oreo pudding mixture on top of the oreo crust. Then pour the chocolate pudding. Add the remaining oreo pudding mixture, and top with more crushed oreos. Refrigerate.

Nutrition Facts

Calories

235.39

Fat (grams)

15.07

Sat. Fat (grams)

9.64

Carbs (grams)

20.72

Fiber (grams)

0.23

Net carbs

20.48

Sugar (grams)

9.53

Protein (grams)

5.11

Sodium (milligrams)

215.63

Cholesterol (grams)

29.46

Nutrition information is generated automatically and is not guaranteed to be correct.

oreo cheesecake, no bake oreo dessert
Dessert
American

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sharing our Talents



I've been doing a lot of thinking about blogging lately, what I want out of it, and what I want to share. I know it's been slow on the blog this summer. Now that my kids are back in school, and hopefully I'll have a little less going on during the day, I want to focus a little more on blogging. I have a couple ideas of things I want to start doing.

It's easy to compare my blog to some of my favorites and feel jealous, or overwhelmed. I really try not to do that. But as I've been thinking about ways to improve, I've found myself comparing a little bit. Ultimately though, I don't want my blog to be just like someone else's. We all have different talents, abilities and ideas to share.

I recently gave a lesson on developing talents. I've always felt confident keeping a household, but never really looked at it as a talent. I always think of talents as being good at sports, or singing, or whatever else I'm not good at. As we were talking, others pointed out some of my talents and I realized that we were all noticing how great everyone else's talents were, but didn't notice the talents we had ourselves. If you're good at something - that is your talent. It doesn't have to be musical, or physical. I know a few women, who when you call them up or run into them, they are so excited to talk to you and see how you're doing and they make you feel like you're important to them... and it's genuine...and they are like that with everyone! That's a talent. We all have them and we need find out what they are and share them.

So with that in mind, I'm going to share one of my talents with a series of posts explaining how I run my household {Think grocery shopping, meal planning, cleaning}  Right now I have 7 ideas of things to share. It may grow larger, or I may run out of stuff to say after those 7 things.  I'm going to try to have these new posts up on Wednesdays.

Next week I'll share my tips on menu planning - how I do it and why I do it.

What are some of your talents?



Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Goals - Week 1



I'm starting a new series. As a blogger, it's sometimes easy to only show the pin-worthy parts of our lives. But in an effort to be real with you all, I'd like to start a new series where I share my goals. They could be about any part of my life. The following week I'll share how well I did and make new goals. I will normally do this on Mondays.

Over the summer, there was one Sunday where I thought "If I only accomplish one thing this week it has to be to vacuum the floor" It had been a couple weeks and with all the kids home, you can imagine how badly it needed it. Once I made that a goal in my mind, I vaccuumed the first thing Monday morning. Well, I guess it was the second thing I did...we had to get all the toys off the floor first :)

I'd like this to be a place where you share your goals for the week as well. We can motivate each other and be accountable to each other.

Each week I will choose one thing that I absolutely must do, and a few other things I need to get done or need to improve.

Here we go:

One thing I MUST do this week:

1. Try the DIY Ant Poison I saw on Pinterest. If it doesn't work, buy ant traps.

Other goals: 

2. Make a hot breakfast at least 3 times this week.

3. Go grocery shopping.

4. Remember morning family prayers.

5. Can the tomatoes from the garden.


What is the one thing that you absolutely must get done this week?