Make It Wish List

In my current state of  nesting and organizing everything around me, I have decided to use my blog as a reminder of all of the wonderful things I want to make as seen on the internet.

So you will notice the new list on the right column of my blog titled, Make It Wish List. I know it is already quite a long list and I am expecting baby number two any day now but you can't blame me for wishing!

My goal is to make something, post it on my blog, delete it from my wish list and, of course, replace it with something new! Call me crazy but this is what I call fun (said the crazy housewife). I may just throw caution to the wind and make a recipe wish list too. Woot!

Menu of the Week

Next week's menu of the week is all about preparing for our baby girl's arrival. I really want to have several meals cooked, frozen and ready to reheat during those first few crucial weeks. Like last week, it seems I have been monopolized by one or two food blogs for this week's menu. Here is what I came up with.

Dinners:
Cheater Italian Wedding Soup
Crock Pot Braised Short Ribs
Goldfish Crusted Chicken Nuggets
Creamy Chicken Enchiladas
Ham Bone Soup- the Honey Baked Ham recipe from their bean mix.

Breakfast: typically I don't meal plan for breakfast but with Oscar home on paternity leave, I thought I'd try a few new ones.
Banana Oatmeal Bake- old wives tales say that oatmeal helps breast milk come in and this sounded super yummy.
Jocelyn's Chicken Sausage and Potatoes- my dear friend Jocelyn made this for the bambina's baby shower. Our CSA box included fingerling potatoes this week so I have to make these for Oscar. Recipe coming soon.

And, because I know myself all too well, desserts ready to pick me up from all those sleepless nights:
Crazy Good Chocolate Chip Bite Sizers
Triple Chocolate Banana Bread Muffins
Whole Wheat Banana Bread

I have already frozen a few dishes or left overs from previous weeks.
Slow Cooker Butter Chicken- from last week's menu. This was delicious and made plenty of left overs to freeze for later.
Red Beans and Rice
Turkey Spaghetti

photo credits HERE, HERE & HERE

Menu of the Week

After attending a meeting with my mom/playgroup where everyone discussed their meal planning strategies, I decided to add my weekly meal plan to my blog. So many of my favorite food bloggers do it I thought I should throw my hat in the ring. It just took me several months to get my first post up!

Meal planning is a great way to take the stress out of the age old question, "What's for dinner?". Now I know what I am going to cook every night and can prepare dinner while Ozzie naps. When I am super organized, I cook a lot of the meals on Sunday & freeze them until they are ready to be eaten. It also has saved us money because we are no longer wasting food. I buy exactly what I need and at the end of the week, the refrigerator is close to empty. I love that the most because I am not spending my entire Sunday throwing away old food that got lost in the refrigerator. It even saves me time in the grocery store because I have my handy dandy little list, which of course is organized by store aisle, and am no longer wondering the store aimlessly trying to figure out what to buy.

Another convenience that I love is our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box (the picture above is from one of our boxes- yummy local organic fruits and vegetables) that is delivered every Tuesday. If I am diligent about meal planning, I can adjust our fruits & vegetables accordingly prior to delivery. Another savings of time, money and food!

So one goal for my blog this year is to share my Menu of the Week. Of course I choose the week before my second child is born to take on this new task but fingers crossed I'll keep up most of the time. Oh and I am not organized enough to add side dishes every week. We usually eat a lot of salads but if I make a fancy vegetable side, I will try to include it.

With that said... drum roll please. Here is this week's Menu of the Week:

Slow Cooker Butter Chicken
Creamy Turkey Taquitos
Roasted Chicken with Baby Red Potatoes
Grown Up Mac and Cheese
Turkey Burger with Basil Aioli
Baked Chicken in Tomato Sauce with Olives

Can you tell I'm loving the blog Meal Planning 101? Happy Cooking!

Creamy Turkey Taquitos

Trying some Super Bowl recipes that are all over the blogs right now. Our little girl should arrive before the Super Bowl so I thought it would be fun to try out some recipes for us to eat on the big day since neither of us will be making any big game parties with a newborn.

Tonight I made these taquitos from Meal Planning 101 except I substituted the ground beef in her recipe with ground turkey. We are not huge beef eaters any more. They were delicious. If you are ever craving the famous crispy beef burrito from Taco Time and want a homemade, lower fat version, give these a try. They scream pot luck or Super Bowl party and will be an instant hit- guaranteed!

Click HERE for the recipe.

photo courtesy of Meal Planning 101

38 Weeks Pregnant

I was starting to feel guilty about the lack of pictures I have of myself during this pregnancy. It is so cliche but true when they say everything is documented with your first and every child thereafter gets cheated. So I forced Oscar to take a bunch of pictures of me before we ran some errands.

As you can see I am ready to burst! We breed big babies. Ozzie was 9.5 lbs at birth and my doctor thinks this little girl will be right up there. Luckily I have only gained 22 lbs myself. So I am hoping this baby weight comes off easily, like half of it with her after day one, because my thighs are gigantic!

Ozzie decided that he wanted to get in on a few shots too. I will always welcome him actually posing and smiling for the camera!

And this marks when he got bored and left, ending our little photo shoot.

Sewing 101: Learn to Spell Your Name Bean Bags

In my ongoing effort to teach myself how to sew, I decided to try Lil Blue Boo's bean bag tutorial. A friend's twin daughters turned three and I figured this would be a fun addition to their gift while helping me learn how to sew straight lines. Have I told you that I still can't sew a straight line? Another friend's daughter is close to the same age so I went ahead and made her one too. Along with my little guy. Practice makes perfect, right?

I did make one modification. Since I have no business using the fabric paint she used (I know my limits), I used my handy dandy cricut to cut the letters out on paper. Then I traced the letters onto felt that I treated with fabric stiff. I highly recommend fabric stiff for any of your fabric crafts. It helped with sewing the letters onto the bean bags as well.

That is A LOT of practice!

I thought this was funny because I was snapping picture after picture and didn't realize my pregnant belly was in the shot until after I uploaded the pictures onto my computer. Whoops!

Ozzie loves his bean bags and is constantly throwing them around and I gotta say it has worked. He only knew "O" for Ozzie but now he has "Z" down too! Not too bad for a little boy who refuses to learn his numbers and letters. Yay for learning how to sew!

Recipe Blogs

I found two new to me recipe blogs that I already love.

Cooking With My Kid- love that she cooks with her son. Ozzie is always my little sous chef and I can't wait for him to do more and more as he gets older.

Good Life Eats- not only are her recipes great, those pictures...yummm....

Next week's meal planning will be easier thanks to these two talented ladies.

*photo courtesy Good Life Eats

Resolutions

Here are mine for 2011 and every year there after!

Now I just need to figure out how to take this (made using Picnik) and make it into real art to hang in my home a la Lil Blue Boo.

Family Pictures

Now that our Christmas cards are safely sent out, I can finally share our family pictures from October. An old friend from elementary school recently started a photography business and I was rather impressed with her work so we hired her to take a few pictures of Ozzie after his 2nd birthday; Mom and Dad jumped in on a couple of pictures too. We think she did a fantastic job!

If you are local to the Seattle area and looking for a photographer, check out her website MUM Photography or Facebook page. Her photos are beautiful and she is super fun to work with!

Sewing 101: A Tutu

When deciding how to decorate the nursery for our daughter, I knew the entire room would be focused around a hand embroidered picture that my mom made for my room many years ago. It is the quintessential picture for a little girls room and I was so glad that she saved it all these years for my baby. I will post it here once it is returned from the frame shop.

In order to stay within that theme, I turned to the internet for other ideas and stumbled on the website Posh Tots. When I saw this dress form and tutu I knew it would be the perfect addition and worked well with the picture.

The problem is it costs $450, which is truly ridiculous for a dress form adorned with a tutu. So the seamstress in me took on the challenge.

I found a dress form on good old Ebay for $50 and spent another $40 or so on the materials for the tutu and flower. Here is my version.

Pretty good for around $100, eh? I am an amateur seamstress. Okay truly I am still learning how to sew a straight line so this took everything out of me. Blood, sweat and tears folks but I love how it turned out and that makes it all worth it.

I used the Lulu Grace tutu pattern. Here are the materials you will need to make this tutu:

- Lulu Grace pattern

- 7 to 9 yards of tulle in your choice of color (I used 7 yards because my dress form is a size 3T/4T so 7 yards made a very full tutu).

- 24 yards of matching ribbon (more if you use more than 7 yards of tulle)

- 1 yard of 3/4" to 1" elastic

-Matching thread

- Fray Check

Instructions:

1. Cut the tulle in half width wise along the length of the fabric so you end up with two long strips of tulle.

2. Pin and sew ribbon along the edge of the tulle with the wrong side of the ribbon against the tulle. Repeat on the other side of your long strip.

3. Fold the tulle, ribbon edges together, length wise. Cut 12" wide sections. You should end up with a ton of tulle rectangles.

4. Apply fray check to all of the ribbon edges on all pieces. Do not skip this step!

5. Cut elastic 2-3 inches shorter than the waist measurement. For example, a 3T/4T waist is about 20 inches so I cut an 18 inch piece of elastic.

6. Seam elastic together. Place the circle of elastic through your leg up above your knee. About mid-thigh area.

7. Begin tutu assembly by taking one section of tulle between your leg and the elastic. Even the edges so the tulle is evenly divided and tie securely twice around elastic, but not so tight that the elastic folds. Continue with each section of tulle until the entire elastic band is covered. 

How to make the organza flower.

- Organza fabric in your color choice

- Matching satin ribbon

- 3 pearls for the center of the flower

- Coordinating thread

- Votive candle

Instructions:

1. Cut 5 rough flower shapes or circular shapes if you prefer a round flower to a rose. I may have cut 2 smaller pieces for the center of the flower.

2. Hold cut organza pieces one at a time over a candle flame until it melts to your desired curliness.

3. Assemble flower with your melted organza pieces and sew pearls through all of the layers with matching thread.

4. Sew bottom layer of organza to matching satin ribbon.

5. Pin to dress form.

Good luck!

Parmesan Toast with Asparagus, Prosciutto and Eggs

My parents were kind enough to take Ozzie on the night before Christmas Eve so that I could wrap all of his presents and prepare for Christmas Eve dinner that I was hosting. To celebrate our kidless morning, I decided to make Oscar a special grown up Christmas Eve breakfast. Click HERE for the recipe. Very yummy for two on Christmas Eve or any other special day.

Happy New Year!

We brought in the New Year with a quiet evening at home just our little family, super yummy chocolate molten cake for dessert and our homemade party hats.

I forced the family to take a picture for my blog. Here is our final result.

Here is what it took to get there...

Then we tried taking a picture of Ozzie by himself. That was an even bigger failure.

I'm sure you can appreciate the first picture now. Hope your New Year celebration was as fun as ours!