I made Jim watch this and we are completely overhauling what we eat. I am planning the garden again, we signed back up with Winder Farms. It is going to take some serious planning to make natural/organic fit in the budget, but we are going to try!
Showing posts with label Every Day Stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Every Day Stuff. Show all posts
If you have a mac and a blog or even just like to journal, I would highly suggest taking a look at this very cool software I stumbled upon the other day. Mariner Journal allows you to write journals and blogs on your computer and with the push of a butting it will update and upload to your blog. It even downloaded all my previous blog posts. I haven’t fully tested it but so far I like. Maybe I will update the blog more often now? ;)
I have no hope the movie will be anything but cheesy, but all I can say about these posters is YUM. Even Jacob looks hot and I totally feel dirty saying that considering I see him and still think of sharkboy.
Jim and I worked in Willow's classroom at the preschool co-op together yesterday. I was hoping for some really messy stuff like gloop or slime or shaving cream painting, but Mrs. Johnson just gave us car painting and scarf dancing. Still entertaining, just not as much work for him as I was hoping for ;) A good time was had by all tho Willow was not too fond of sharing her dad with the rest of the class and I think he was exhausted afterward. I think that next year he is going to have to commit to working with me once a month....
Every time I attempt to make french toast it is a disaster, but then I read online that Challah bread makes the best french toast. I figured I would give making Challah a shot and then hopefully my french toast would be yummy! Well the results are in and the Challah is awesome. I am considering keeping the plain recipe for just regular sandwich bread its so good. I did let it rise a bit too long so I have SUPER GIANT GHALLAH but its still good. The second loaf I kneaded in raisins and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and its delicious.... I don't think it will last long in this house!
The plain loaf is braided and stuck in a loaf pan but I cooked the raisin loaf just on a sheet pan.
Even tho I felt like slacking off and making sandwiches and soup, I resisted the urge and made Jim's favorite dinner... pork chops. I usually skip the pork and bake myself a salmon fillet instead but I had an abundance of pork chops. It was a new breading recipe and I really liked it! It had a nice crunchy texture to it and even the kids enjoyed all of their dinner, especially when I taught them how to dip the pork chop in applesauce ;)
Breaded Pork Chops
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1-2 cups panko breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 -8 thin cut pork chops
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a shallow bowl or pie plate, whisk eggs. Combine garlic powder and onion powder with breadcrumbs in a separate plate. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Dip pork chops into the egg, then press in the cracker crumbs to coat. Fry in the hot oil for 2 to 3 minutes per side, just until golden brown. Remove to a baking sheet.
3. Bake for 30- 45 minutes in the preheated oven, turning once. Serve immediately.
Thanks to Almond's influence I have been on a decluttering and organizing spree. I trimmed down my 3 crockpots to just 1 and did away with some other kitchen appliances that I never pulled out (including my food saver!). Getting rid of some stuff left more room in my pantry so I was better able to organize my actual kitchen area. This is what I have gotten done so far.... I still need to hit the actual pantries themselves, but this is a start! Ignore the fact that we didn't paint the inside of the cabinets when we painted the doors.... we will get there but I think I am going to change the color of the cabinets and no sense in painting it twice ;)
You can click on the slideshow to see bigger pics...
Previously when we have had chili for dinner getting the girls to eat it has been like pulling teeth...so it hasn't been something we make a lot of. However, tonight I made the best chili ever (unfortunately I can't say the same for my corn muffins) AND got Kyla to eat it by putting it on top of a potato. I don't know why that changes things for her, but it did and she ate all of it - beans included. It was even a bit spicier than I typically like it and she didn't seem to mind. Willow is another thing, but at least she can usually be made happy with a baked potato and some deli meat. See the totally awesome recipe below ;)
I somehow managed to break the admin section of the blog and in fixing it lost some posts. I may try to add them back in tho.... we will see! For now its a new layout I am playing around with :) I am not sure if its a keeper yet, but maybe!
I was late getting dinner together tonight and was really tempted to just make pancakes, but I stuck to my plan and made an old favorite. This is one of my favorite things my mom used to make for us as kids. Unfortunately my mom always did it by "feel" and I am just not that capable so I came up with my own method :) Recipe Below...
Anyway, dinner last night was Baked Pasta. I would usually make this with chedder cheese because I like being different, but I didn't feel like shredding it. Oh and if you are curious why my salad dressing has a 1 on it, check out Meck Mom for a fabulous fridge organizing idea.
It snowed like crazy here in Northwest Las Vegas yesterday. Our house isn't far enough west to get a ton of snow, but we had a light dusting of it. We picked Kyla up from school 15 minutes early and drove off towards the western part of the city and found snow galore! At one point it was coming down like it was cotton balls.... I haven't seen snow like that since living in Vermont.
Kyla was thrilled, Willow was mostly just cold. But the girls got to make their first Vegas snowman and snow angels and a fun time was had by all.
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| From 2008 Pictures |
More pictures in the Picasa photo album.
Anyway, the Kindle arrived on Tuesday and I am happy to say that I carry it just about everywhere with me. Yes, it was expensive but it is also very convenient and there are tons of ways to find free or inexpensive books to read on it. Additionally you can't beat new releases and best sellers for only $9.99 for those rare times when the library has 1 copy and 20 holds.
Amazon charges a subscription fee for RSS/blog feeds, but you can create RSS feeds of your favorite blogs and newspapers for free from Feedbooks. You can also covert PDF files to kindle format with some simple easy to use software! This will be great for business/board meetings at the co-op - I plan to dump the agenda to the Kindle and read it from there. It has a nifty notation features so I can take notes and not lose them in the mess that is also known as my car.
The only thing I am not in love with is the cover it comes with, but I am brainstorming a replacement for that as we speak.
Speaking of reading..... if you do a lot of it you should make sure you head over to Goodreads. Its a lot of fun keeping track of books you have read and I get a lot of great ideas from looking at everyone else's booklists.
Its been a while since I posted. Things have been busy and I just haven't really felt like I had much to type about. I fell behind on gardening and didn't get anything planted for the fall. Oh well, it will give me time to plan things out and rearrange some stuff for spring.
Some may notice that my webstore is gone. I haven't sewn in probably a year (other than some quick mending) and the thought of dragging myself to the cutting table was not a pleasant one. I have sewn and sold clothing/diapers/bags/etc for 8 years... so it has been odd thinking of giving that all up. Ultimately I realized that it just didn't bring me joy anymore, instead I felt obligated and it was more of a burden. So, I closed up the webshop last night. I am about to start selling most of my fabric and a couple of my machines. I will keep my sewing machine and will probably even throw a few things for sale up on the WAHM blogs on occassion, but for now I think I am done sewing and selling.
The reality is that the more I think about re-enrolling in college, the more I realize that when both my girls are in school.... I want a real job that doesn't include being chained to my sewing machine. I simply won't have time to do it all. So I am saying goodbye to girlwomangoddess.com the webstore and saying hello to a degree in some currently undecided computer tech discipline.
Thank you to everyone who has purchased my pieces over the years, you have been greatly appreciated!
I have to start this by admitting I have a thing for kitchen gadgets. Most people who know me find this interesting, or maybe odd, because I really don't enjoy cooking or being in the kitchen. But for whatever reason, I love neat kitchen things! I do try to hold back a bit because I want to live simply, its just a struggle sometimes ;) Anyway I was walking around Bed Bath & Beyond a few days looking for a pineapple slicer. We all love sliced pineapple and I have been buying it already sliced and cut at costco, but its about $7.99 and I was curious as to whether having a slicer of my own would be cheaper because then we could buy the whole pineapples when they are on sale for $2.50/$3 each. 
Now I can make horizontal, unfunny shaped, loaves without using my oven! Its been so hot lately that we were buying bread, but since purchasing the new machine we have made 3 loaves. Yeah the first 2 were "test" loaves and not really very good, but now I have a recipe that works and my house doesn't heat up to bake it. On top of that I am totally trying to think of a good reason to use the cake function on it. It also makes jam, too bad we don't have a pick your own berry place somewhere around here!
Just a really quick update in regards to the new car, the Honda Fit. Our 3rd tank fill up and I am now up to 29.3 mpg. The last one I forgot to blog but it was about 28mpg.... so it has been going up by about 1mpg a tank as I drive it more and break it in. I am pretty thrilled to be getting 29.3 mpg even with the A/C on about 99% of the time. I didn't even do a lot of coasting on this tank. I can't wait til Fall and to see what kind of mpg I can get without the A/C - gosh that sounded dorky!
I have a bunch more to post about the new puppy and some gardening updates, but it will have to wait til tomorrow. I should be sleeping!
