I love that I have all girls and they just all share clothes (see Brave a few days ago). Not sure they will like that when they are teenagers and fighting over who gets to wear what, but they like it right now, so I will enjoy it while it lasts!
The way kids run is so cute. I think they run and walk with joy in their steps. I ought to have more joy in my steps too!
This first week of meal planning has gone fairly well thus far. Though Ben and I did have a little teensy fight on Tuesday because there was a misunderstanding on who was in charge of the vegetable dish. I guess we have a bit of a learning curve to figure this out.
Most scampi recipes are pretty high in fat, so we never eat it. This was a nice alternative and pretty delicious. Just make sure you wet the noodles in the sauce before serving, just follow what the directions say. We served the noodles first, then poured shrimp and sauce on top, so I don’t think the sauce coated the spaghetti very well. Another change we did, was that we didn’t have croutons, so I just sprinkled garlic herb spice on some whole wheat bread with smart balance light spread atop it, and toasted it in the oven until it was really dark and crunchy. I think that made a decent crouton substitute. The olives give the scampi a good flavor, but I think next time I would put a little bit more.
We were all totally loving this recipe. Soul devoured it in the first minute. We cooked drumsticks for the girls and chicken breast for Ben and me. If you have really big breast pieces, you will need to slice it in half so you won’t get such a chunky piece. I didn’t use the parmesan cheese in the breading because True is allergic to dairy, and for the breading that went on the breast, I added a bit more cayenne pepper than the recipe called for because we like our food really spicy!
It is cooked in the oven and the the breading gives a nice crunch that makes you kinda think you are eating something fried. Just looking at the pictures, it does look fried, but it isn’t at all! I am definitely going to try and memorize this and make it more often.
Ben bought some already cut up butternut squash from the store, coated it in extra virgin olive oil, sprinkled some salt and pepper and stuck it in the oven for about 20 minutes. You can’t really go wrong roasting vegetables that way.
We have enough leftovers from both nights that we had more chicken on Wednesday with a side of mashed sweet potatoes (using this recipe, we didn’t like the gravy) and today we will finish off the scampi. I hope we can stick to this cause it saves us some time and hassle in the evening already knowing what is on the menu for dinner.
This past week’s dinners were common dishes that typically aren’t a high nutrition type of dish due to the fat content, but these recipes were nice alternatives. The wonderful part is that even though they were healthy versions, they still were jammed pack with flavor. I am for sure noting these dishes to be cooked again, especially that oven fried chicken!
Thursday: Oven Baked Taquitos (do something you already know how to make)
Friday: Pizza (or something easy like that)
If you do try out any of these recipes or have some of your own recipes to share, I would love to hear about it! Anyone else doing meal planning or following along with this? I will try to get my family meal posts up on Thursdays, that way you have the weekend to get groceries should you decide to follow along.
I love projects involving chalkboard paint because they always come out fun. I didn’t prime it, so I did three coats of chalkboard paint, but if you did prime it, you might only need two coats of chalkboard paint. Chalkboard paint can be found at your local hardware store and I ordered my nesting dolls so long ago that I don’t remember where it came from, but you can also purchase some from here.
My girls are all about these nesting dolls now cause they have such a blast drawing, erasing, and then drawing again. An easy and quick project that is sure to be fun is what we are all about over here! Keeps all of us sane. Enjoy!!!
My house never looks like this, at least not for very long, and these are our messy kid room pictures taken a couple weeks ago. This is what their rooms look like most of the time. I cleaned it up, but now it looks like that again, but even worse! I will probably try to clean them out again today, but the key word is try. I said that yesterday too and obviously never got to it.
I appreciate all the kind your words all have given in the previous posts. This post also resonated well with me and it helped me understand this crazy time and how I can rejoice in God through it. Though I probably will complain more than rejoice, but that is a work in progress too.
I think I have spent time regretting that I am not enjoying every single second cause a lot of these seconds with little ones are hard, busy, trying to keep your head above water moments. That’s the truth about parenting. It’s hard. No one said it was going to be easy. You have these hard moments all day long, but then you also have moments that make you just be in awe at your kids. I love these in awe moments a lot! I am here to serve my family and will continually ask God to help me with that.
And I am thankful that I can share what God has been churning in my heart with you all, I think that is the wonderfulness of sharing in this space. Also, I learn from the wisdom you all share too!
Okay, promise a more lighthearted post soon. Now, I am off to put on my chef hat for my daughters!
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On an unrelated note, my friend and photographer Ica from Ica Images will be in SoCal soon and from January 24-31 she will be having a “Southern California Special” family shoot, maternity session, any kind of shoot you can think of for $75! She can even teach you the basics of your DSLR as she taught me how to use mine! If interested just shoot her an email at ica.images@gmail.com.
I know as a blogger, my life is out there for people to read, criticize, assume, and make judgements. I know that I can’t please everyone and heck, probably not everyone likes me! I think it is easy to gets lost reading blogs and start thinking, “Dang. I want my life like that.” or “Gosh, their life looks dreamy.” or “That’s not fair that she gets all that.” or “Why is my life so messy and hers so perfect.” or “Man, they don’t have money problems like us.” These are all thoughts that I have thought about at one point or another when reading some blogs.
Blogging is such an interesting phenomenon. I think we are all intrigued by reading about someone’s life. We are all kinda nosey that way and we all learn from each other.
This littlest one is so good. Actually, they were all pretty good as babies. Not overly fussy, easy to console, and all they loved to do was eat, sleep, and get loved on. God was quite gracious to me in that regard, seeing how close in age all of them are.
Glow has been sleeping most nights for two weeks now, but somehow I still wake up quite exhausted in the mornings. I have done the cry it out method with all the girls to get them to learn to sleep through the night, but this one probably doesn’t need it. In the mornings, I get her and put her in my bed to feed her, she does this happy giggle. It is the sweetest thing. This gal is such a giggler!
I know I am quite blessed to be able to mother these four girls, but I can’t say I am always happy pappy about it. Trust me, there are tons of hard moments. We were having dinner last night and I was telling Ben that I just feel angry. Not necessarily at anyone or anything in particular, but just angry and at times it manifests in being cranky towards the girls (or at each other). We continued to discuss that he feels that way too and sometimes the things that makes us happy are just zoning out online reading about the Spurs (for him) or online window shopping (for me). That’s quite terrible that those things give us peace and calm us down!
I think for me, so much stems from lack of believing God is better than all. I believe having this new dress will make me happier, or having a clean house will make me feel better, or if the girls just were obedient all the time it would be easier. I have been finding my joy in the wrong things. Christ is the only thing that can truly satisfy me and I want to want Him above all things. That is my prayer.
I am not a perfect mom. I don’t have everything together. My girls aren’t always perfectly dressed. Heck! Some days they don’t even brush their teeth. Some days they tell me I am terrible. I am a horrible listener and Ben gets frustrated with that. I yell. I cry. Sometimes, I don’t even know what to do. I get frustrated that I easily get frustrated. I try to control too much. I can never get caught up with laundry and I am always behind on emails. I love my children and husband, but I am also quite selfish. I was texting my struggles with someone from our church family and she reminded me this, Christ died so I don’t have to be perfect. That truth is something I don’t live out all the time, but I am so thankful for it!
This post didn’t mean to turn into a novel, but these are just some ruminations of my heart. If you think I have got it all together, you got it wrong. I am messier than you think (or that is shown in this space)! All I am or am able to do is because of God, so I need to live each day knowing and depending on that.
I have a large growing pile of fabric scraps. I refuse to throw them away because I am sure they can be used for something. I have been seeing different types of interesting necklaces made of buttons, beads, and fabric. Then, I figured why not make one out of my scraps...
I think it made my white shirt a little less boring. This was so quick and easy to make.
How to make a recycled scraps necklace (which is very similar to the straps on my braided tablecloth bag):
1. Take your scrap fabric, I cut a .5''-1'' snip and tear the rest of the fabric down for a nice frayed edge. Used 3 different fabrics for each strand.
2. Take 3 of the torn pieces and tie the ends together with a rubber band.
3. Braid the 3 pieces together and tie ends together with rubber band when done.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 for more strands. Remember you can make the strands any length you want, if run out of fabric, just weave more into the braid.
5. Once all the strands you want are braided, gather one end of each strand together and straight stitch together with sewing machine. Repeat for the other ends of the strands. Snip off any excess.
6. Gather ends of the necklace and sew together (snip excess) or a ribbon can be sewn at the ends to be able to tie the necklace closed, but I just sewed both ends together.
7. Voila! A nice way to make use of all your lovely scraps.
Sorry if the directions get you a little lost, but it really is easy. I promise. Maybe I should put some in the shop. Please share any other good ideas you may have of things that can be made with scraps. I would love to hear (read) them!
