Hainanese Chicken Rice. I attempted make this recipe healthier and use chicken breast, not as much oil, and it tastes close enough to what we remember from Singapore. I think what makes it is the spicy chili sauce. I quadrupled that recipe and we poured that stuff all over our chicken. You know us and spice, we love things spicy!!!

Spicy Roasted Bok Choy. I pinned this on pinterest this week and it sounded easy enough to make, so I did. It’s a great vegetable dish to add to our repertoire.

Spaghetti & Stuffed Garlic & Herb Meatballs. I will have the recipe for my meatballs for you this week! Basically, I throw in a lot of herbs and I think that’s what makes it so delicious.

Roasted Cauliflower Steaks with Lemon Relish. I’ve made it numerous times before (see here), and it’s always good.

Week of 8/25 – 8/29
Monday: Leftovers (we still have plenty from last week)
Tuesday: First day of school dinner
Wednesday: Seafood Pasta
Thursday: Chicken Wings with Angry Sauce with Korean Spinach (made healthier of course)
Friday: Sushi night

I’m so happy that I started meal planning over 85 weeks ago. It’s made such a difference in our family dinners and made me feel more comfortable in the kitchen. I actually think cooking is fun! When I’m cooking, the girls usually are playing together and that’s how I’m able to get time to cook. Ben and I really want to start including them in the preparations though, so I need to plan for that time for them to join me in the kitchen. We usually eat dinner around 5:45pm, and I start cooking between 4:30-5:00pm. If I want to get the kids to join in, I probably should start a little earlier so I don’t feel like I’m rushing around. Do you get your kids involved in the meal preparations?

This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

Thankful for a few quieter days earlier in the week, which allowed me to listen to a lot of sermons. It was something my heart needed badly.

This avocado on toast looks delicious.

Another encouraging post for my way too busy heart.

We’ve had a couple parenting trials come this week and it really helped wake us up at how “sloppy” we were starting to get, but I’m thankful for how God worked in True and Brave’s hearts (and ours).

Summer was great! Not quite ready to get back into the grind of homeschooling, but very eager to get a consistent routine down.

Jean Jean Vintage always has the best vintage rings and I’m frequently sending Ben links just in case he needs some ideas for something in the future. HA!

Ben’s working on making more garden beds. Man, these backyard projects never end.

Happy weekend friends!

I’ve started to realize I have way too much noise in my life. Noise from binge watching shows on Netflix, from the internet, my own dumb wants, music, social media, projects, and the list goes on. I have been horrible at listening to my husband, children, and especially my God. I’ve filled my life with so much noise that I was losing focus and neglecting the things that should be most important to me. This week I started to see and hear more clearly, and I’m thankful for the different ways God revealed to me just how cluttered my life was. Sometimes I really suck at this wife and mother thing, so I’m praying (and trying to be more consistent at praying) that God keep shaping and growing my selfish heart into a selfless one.

Strawberry Milkshakes
serves 4

Ingredients:
3 cups milk (we used skim, but go with your preference)
2 1/2 cups frozen strawberries
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Using a blender, blend all ingredients until smooth. Pour in a tall glass and serve with a straw.

Funny Face Straw Toppers

Supplies:
Funny Face Straw Toppers Template 1 and Template 2, printed on white card stock
Bendable straws (the bendable ones work better to get the funny face lined up with your face when drinking)
Scissors
Crayons (markers, colored pencils)
Glue
Glitter
Hole puncher

Directions:
Cut out the faces, including the inside of the glasses, and the small rectangular pieces (1 per funny face). Color and decorate the faces. Punch a small hole on the dotted line of the mouth and on the dot of the small rectangular piece. On the small rectangular piece, fold the opposite end of the punched hole down 1/2″ from the end. Glue that 1/2″ to the back of the face, right above the punched hole of the mouth. Insert your straw through the hole in the mouth and through the hole on the back rectangle piece. Place straw in your milkshake and drink.

These straw toppers make drinking any glass of milk, shake, or smoothie so much more fun!

My mom would make me a similar milkshake when I was a child, but I think it was loaded with sugar instead of honey. The honey adds a tinge of sweetness, but you could probably even do without that ingredient too. Using frozen strawberries is a much healthier way to make a milkshake, since then you can do without the ice-cream, and blended with milk it makes the perfect shake consistency.

My girls don’t have any trouble drinking milk (they have a glass every morning, but True is mildly allergic so she has a glass of soy milk in the mornings), so they get extra excited when they see me blending up a shake for them (and they had two helpings for snack time this particular afternoon).  Between their glass of milk at breakfast and their milkshake this afternoon, they sure got a load of calcium, protein, and vitamin D (and other good stuff milk has) in them.  Then, add the funny face straw toppers and we were all laughing at the silliness that was ensuing from all the silly characters. We had a librarian, professor, cool guy, and a glamour girl, and everyone was getting into it, but it was especially funny to watch Glow because she was being the funniest of them all

This post is brought to you by got milk? Drink to a brighter future.

If you’re in Redlands (or nearby), I’d love to meet you at a craft event I’m hosting at Kissui in Downtown Redlands. I will be doing a couple of the no-sew projects from my book Let’s Sew Together, there will snacks, and of course you can do some shopping! After your craft making, I also highly recommend taking a stroll around the corner and get ice cream from my most favorite place a la Minute. I hope to see some of you there!

The two big girls have been at a sleepover for a couple days, so Soul’s been enjoying some quiet time to paint and play in peace. Maybe it’s me who gets the peace because when there’s only two at home, there is for sure much less fighting.

The dynamic is so different any time one or two (or three) of them aren’t here, and Glow talks a lot more when her big sisters aren’t here doing the talking for her. There’s less cleaning and mess (and half the meals) when only half of them are home. When the baby goes for nap, I try to get as much done as possible from cleaning to emails, to getting curriculum ready for the new school year. Somehow though, I still never get as much done as I hoped to get done when they’re not here.

I’m glad the girls get to have fun, but we sure do miss them when they’re gone. While managing two at home is much easier than four, I like my four, chaos and all. Even if sometimes I feel like the chaos drives me nutso and I’m a crazy yellin’ mommy, I’ll take it.