Weekly Menu 4/18-4/22

Monday:

We had Pizza and root beer tonight thanks to my poor planning! 

I did, however, make it up to them with cupcakes!

Tuesday:

sloppy joe's and tator tots

I will make extra sloppy joe's and freeze in muffin tins

for single serve portions out of the freezer!  (Thanks for the idea Christina!)

Wednesday:

Beefy Noodle Bake

This makes 2 casseroles so I will freeze one!

Thursday:

Wade's Birthday! 

Tenderloin roast and oven roasted potatoes

Friday:

Spaghetti and garlic breadsticks

I will again make extra and freeze a spaghetti pie.

This week will be good for my freezer, with springs work around the corner, it is so nice to have the cooking out of the way, I never know when I will be out helping when I should be in making supper, so having my freezer ready is so WORTH the little extra work!

Addition! (No, not another baby!)

 My Dishes = LOVE

Mud Room (and Tucker)

MY Laying Boxes...for all the crap that ends up in a mud room!

Living room area, the door on the right is the bedroom.

FIREPLACE!

Breakfast bar...well sort of, mostly a table Wade cut 2 legs off of!

HUGE Dining room table

more of the table/dishes ;)

Fireplace in the bedroom

Master bath vanity...waiting patiently for my mirror to go 50% off at Hobby Lobby! ;)

Thought I would post a few photos of what I have been doing lately!  This addition has been YEARS in the making and I am happy to say we are down to Wade's office and my closet to finish! It has been really nice to see things come together, we are IN LOVE with how it is turning out and are enjoying the extra space!  As you can see, the walls are pretty bare, but trust me...I have stuff for that! :)

Freezer Organization!

I am pretty excited about something I started doing about 3 months ago that is making my life MUCH easier!  I said in an earlier post that when couponing and stockpiling, it is so important to KNOW what you have and keep like items together.  This is something that can be VERY difficult if you have a chest freezer like I do!  It seems like I would toss things in and NEVER be able to get to them, or buy way too much of one thing and be out of the next, it is very hard to keep things in their place in my freezer.  So with that being said, I decided to organize the freezer!  The next time I went to town I bought 5 rubbermaid tubs with lids that would fit stacked in my freezer like these:

I cleaned out everything in the freezer and divided the stuff amongst the tubs.  I labeled them baking goods, frozen veggies, cheese, meat, and one misc.  Now I have them all stacked in my freezer, if I need to get to something at the bottom I can pull the tubs out and easily get to the one I want. All similar items are in the tub so I know when it's time to "restock", therefore reducing waste due to not remembering what I have!  There is enough room in the "basket" for the meals I like to have on and then the area underneath is where I keep some bread items stacked!  I am LOVING this!  I think it probably takes up some extra space but I think it is so worth it!  I am lucky enough to have a deep freeze out in the garage where we keep all of our meats (like the beef and pork and deer we have so much of) and then in my "fridge freezer" I keep the more commonly used items like toaster strudel, frozen pizza, ice cream and those sorts of things!    Being organized like this sure has made meal prep and grocery shopping a lot easier and more enjoyable! Would sure LOVE to know what is working for some of you!

Weekly Menu 4/4 - 4/8

I know this is late but it might be helpful for next week!?

Monday: Sausage and oven roasted potatoes (these are the best, all you do is cube up some potatoes (don't even peel them) toss with some oil and whatever spices you like (I use chives and garlic pepper) and bake them covered for about an hour!) I also just covered the sausage with water and put it in the oven along with the potatoes (in a separate kettle of course), talk about set it and forget it!

Tuesday: We had hamburger helper, I was going to make hot dish but ended up working, so I think they had hamb helper, now that I think of it, I have no idea what they ate! ;)

Wednesday: We had chili topped baked potatoes.  (Again, so stinkin easy, I had left over chili from Sunday so I just threw baked potatoes in the oven, then cut them open, top with the heated up left overs and shredded cheese!)

Thursday: We are having Beef Stroganoff tonight. Last time I made it, I made a double batch of the meat to freeze so I took it out this morning and all I will have to do is heat it up and make some egg noodles!

Friday: Tacos!  I am planning on making extra of the taco meat to freeze, how easy are tacos on a busy night if you already have the meat made up! My cousin also told me she uses the left over meat in breakfast burritos, YUM!, and you ALL know how much I love a breakfast burrito! ;) 

OK, so maybe that wasn't so helpful, It was a pretty lazy week, but we did have supper every night so I guess maybe this will help you realize how EASY it can be to get supper on the table EVERY night!

Trip to OKC

I am back from my 10 day trip to Oklahoma to visit family.  I took the boys, my sister and her one month old!  We should have for sure had a reality TV film crew with, no doubt it would have been good watching! We had such a good time, I just wanted to send for Wade and Emma and stay there!  With that length of trip it was so nice to be able to spend a LOT of time with everyone down there, I got to see cousins at a cutting, I took in 2 baby showers (same Momma, one in OK and one in TX), 2 rodeos, a trip to the zoo, 2 trips to "Uncle Trent's" farm, did some coupon shopping at stores we don't have, it was just so much fun to be able to do all those things!  I am home now and feeling very refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the house additon project so I can move on to yard projects for this spring!  Did I mention I got to play with the cowboys, you all know how much I love a cowboy!  Here are a couple of my absolute favorites!

Fruity Pebble Treats

Just a quick note to let you in on my kids newest love "fruity pebble treats"!  I just make rice krispy bars but use fruity pebbles instead, and they LOVE them!  They beg for them!  They will clean, they will eat all their supper, they will even take a shower instead of a bath, with the simple promise of "fruity pebble treats"... I think I love them as much as they do! ;) 


PS:  I use the malt o meal cereal so really they are fruity dyno bite treats...but that's just a mouth full!

The Meal Planning Center!

YAY!  Finally a place to have all my cookbooks organized and right at my fingertips in my kitchen!  I love how this turned out, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this old jelly cupboard when I bought it but with a little help from Wade it fits awesome right in the corner in the kitchen and frees up all the space my cookbooks used to be taking up in the pantry! From now on, when you see this picture, know that my weekly menu will be posted with it! :)  Happy meal planning!