So far...

So far today, I have been snotted on, peed on, pooped on, and thrown up on. Ellie is teething and though she doesn't seem to be in pain, it's causing lots of mucus. Lots of mucus = lots of fun lots of grossness.

Ezra and I have learned about the month of December and the season of winter and changed out our classroom decor accordingly (a few days late, but oh well). We dug out all the Christmas books and have read 3 or 4 out of 30 something so far (can you tell I'm addicted to children's books, particularly Christmas ones?).

He loves to put the window clings on all by himself
(hence the upside down snowman, ha)!

We also made (Melissa and Doug) cookies in his kitchen and made a 'mailbox' out of an old cereal box and some tissue paper (the only wrapping paper I had had Santa all over it, and that was a bit much for a mailbox). He's been writing 'cards' and putting them in some old envelopes I had left over from last year's Christmas cards, adding 'stamps' (stickers), and 'sending' them to everyone he can think of. :) We mailed some things at the post office the other day and a very friendly mailman gave Ezra a USPS coloring book, so we looked through it and did the activities that were on his level together.

So the back had a spot where the tissue paper didn't cover...
thankfully, my 3 year old isn't a big art critic. ;)

Telling me how to send the mail...

I just cut some construction paper to size and he used those as his 'notes.'
The square stickers worked great for stamps, but any stickers will do!
We also used some stars for some of our letters.

Ellie has been playing in her seat, nursing plenty, and sleeping the day away (slightly jealous of her there, it's a great rainy-weather, sleep-in-all-day kind of day). She's been sure to get lots of cuddles too.

A small selection of Christmas books on our coffee table--
I like to keep the recordable books and pop-up books within sight
since Ezra can get a bit crazy sometimes and I don't want them to get damaged.

Christmas book explosion! (I left the room and he knocked down the stack.)
I thought about wrapping them and opening one each day, but we have more
than 25, and that would be a lot of paper...plus, I have to keep him occupied
long enough to get them all wrapped.

I've also managed to shower and get Ezra halfway dressed (this is a major achievement for a SAHM, especially on a day when I know no one will see him so it doesn't matter if he gets dressed, ha).

Oh yeah, sent out the Preschool Christmas party invites for church this morning (running late due to very sick baby girl, but at least it's been in the bulletin for a while). That's what got us on that impromptu mailbox and letters kick this morning. Thankfully, Ellie seems to be on the upward swing now and should hopefully be her usual happy-go-lucky self by the party Friday.

Well, Ezra just skipped into the living room singing, "You're my friennnnnd, You're my friennnnnd," and I have no willpower against that kind of awesomeness, so I'll get going. :)

Hope everyone else is having a great rainy day. Before kids, I might have spent it reading all day, and I'd like to get around to reading again someday, but this is pretty good for the interim. ;)

~Deidre

You Are What You Eat Giveaway Hop: The Fresh 20 Meal Plan

Californians are going to the polls to vote on Prop 37, also known as the food labeling law. The Green Moms Network supports Americans right to know if their food contains genetically engineered ingredients and is committed to showcasing natural and organic eating. So, welcome to the You Are What You Eat Giveaway Hop, hosted by Happy Mothering and Marlie and Me . A team of 20 + green mom bloggers are giving away prizes valued at $20 minimum related to eating healthy. You'll find giveaways for healthful, natural or organic foods, cookbooks, kitchen gadgets and more! In addition, the hosts are featuring 3 fabulous grand prize packages from Kombucha Kamp, Cultures for Health, Green Pasture, Real Salt, Sante Bakery, Newman's Own Organics, Lucy's, Learning Resources, Green Kid Crafts and Mary's Gone Crackers! You’ll get bonus entries into the Grand Prize Giveaway for each giveaway you enter in the You Are What You Eat Hop! Click here to enter the grand prize. I'm giving away an annual subscription to The Fresh 20 meal planning service and one of their 6 week lunch books! For more information, see my review post here. A few quick facts about the program: - Offers classic, gluten-free, and vegetarian plus a lunch plan - Dinner plans will serve a family of 4, weekly grocery estimate if $75 for the whole weekly menu - 3 month subscription is $15, annual is $49 - We have gift certificates, an affiliate program - The Fresh 20 Cookbook is publishing in 2013 from Harper-Collins - Featured in The New York Times, InStyle Magazine, Prevention Magazine - Annual subscribers have access to the archives which contain over 100 recipes - At any given time, monthly subscribers have access to 3 weeks of recipes. - An email every Friday to announce the new menu and with any giveaways or other news to share Enter via the Rafflecopter form below: a Rafflecopter giveaway Be sure to check out the other giveaways as well!

"The Fresh 20" Review

I'm extremely pleased to give you my review of The Fresh 20, an amazing and affordable meal-planning service that I recently began.

As part of my "job" as a stay-at-home mom, it was very important to me to start cooking healthy homemade meals for my family. I thought that not working full time would mean I became an amazing chef overnight, but no such luck. With a toddler and a newborn to take care of and a house to (constantly) clean, I had little to no time to come up with culinary masterpiece recipes. Sure, Pinterest had plenty of enticing finds, but let's face it, I'm probably only going to end up making the desserts because they are simpler and only have a few ingredients. I even bought ingredients for a few recipes and never ended up making them.

I was tired of wasting food and time trying to figure out what to make for supper. I wanted to cook healthily and with fresh ingredients, but the fresh ingredients usually went bad before I even got to use them. Maybe you don't have this problem. Maybe you cook up amazing dishes from scratch without recipes and everyone thinks you are a cooking god/goddess. Awesome for you, but I'm just not a natural cook. Baker, yes. Cook, no. I can make some chocolate chip cookies or cookie dough brownies so good your mama will taste them when you take a bite, but I tend to flop when it comes to preparing meals. We typically end up in the "What's for dinner? Grilled chicken and canned vegetables." camp way too often.

Enter The Fresh 20. I gave a brief preview of this amazing service here. With simple shopping lists, detailed recipes, and even nutrition information for each dish, this meal planning tool does all the hard work for me. Not only do I not waste any ingredients, I also have occasional leftovers for lunch and many times part of the work you do for one recipe helps you with another later in the week. For example, I made braised vegetable lentils (which I wasn't sure about, but turned out wonderful) to go along with my oven roasted chicken on Tuesday and put some back to help make the Creamy Lentil Soup we enjoyed Sunday. It's nice to see your hard work pay off more than one night!

The Fresh 20 uses 20 staple ingredients from your pantry, 20 weekly ingredients (this may sound like a lot, but it's not for a week's worth of recipes), and 20 kitchen essentials (you probably already have most of these and can substitute some) and  to create fabulous, healthful dishes for you and your family each week.

Here is a picture of one of the fabulous organic roasted chickens I made last week (they were used for 3 different meals)!

It's nice to have all that preparation pay off not only the night you make it,
but also in subsequent meals throughout the week!
(Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes in the background--YUM!)

Here is a list of pros and cons that I've found so far.

Pros

• No more wasting of ingredients
• Makes grocery shopping so simple and easy--the list is even organized by category and gives you details such as where to find some ingredients in your grocery store (Grocery shopping had become a major ordeal with an antsy toddler, and this helps me get in and get out before he gets too wild!)
• I feel like a real, accomplished cook after making these recipes.
• The recipes are delicious! Even my picky toddler has gobbled it all up!
• The recipes are healthy--I feel so good about what I am putting into my family's bodies and am confident there aren't any 'mystery ingredients' since I add all the ingredients myself!
• Cost--I have been under budget on my groceries! The grocery list has an estimate of the price of each item and so far, I've come out under the total estimate two weeks in a row, even when I needed to stock up on some of the 'fresh 20' ingredients for my pantry in the beginning.

Cons

• The recipes do take a bit more time than grilled chicken and canned vegetables. However, the difference in taste and quality is more than worth it to me.
• You will be chopping lots of vegetables. If you're great at this, it's not a concern. I've never been a huge fan of chopping veggies, but I think I'm getting better at it, and I have to admit they look so pretty and colorful all chopped up on my cutting board (yeah, I'm a bit odd, I suppose, but they do). I think I'll be adding 'awesome vegetable knives' to my Christmas list!
• The serving sizes are sometimes less accurate than I'd like. The plan is designed for a family of four. Our family consists of myself, my husband, and our toddler. Most nights we do have leftovers, which we use for lunches, but others we clean the pan. If we went with just the serving sizes, we would be good, but sometimes those just aren't big enough (I think this can be true of lots of recipes, though, not just the ones in this meal plan). Also, you could avoid any problems with this by looking at the serving sizes ahead of time. If it doesn't sound like they will be large enough, you could just double up the recipe ingredients as you shop and cook.

There are 3 options for recipe subscriptions--Classic, Vegetarian, and Gluten Free. My family chose the Classic plan.

The following is a breakdown of the Estimated Cost of the grocery items and what I actually paid.

Item and Estimated Cost --- Actual Cost
2 whole organic chickens (about 3 1/2 lbs. each)  Estimated Cost: $24     Actual Cost: $14.74
(note: these were actually bigger than suggested because I couldn't find smaller ones)

4 Salmon Fillets (about 1 1/4 lbs.) Estimated Cost: $16     Actual Cost: $19.96
I attribute the price to my not being near an ocean. If you live closer to the coast, I'm sure it would be cheaper.

4 Sweet Potatoes/Yams (8 ounce potatoes) Estimated Cost: $3.50     Actual Cost: $1.25
I could only find larger potatoes, so I got 2 larger ones that equaled the same weight.

1 onion Estimated Cost: $1     Actual Cost: $0.43

Carrots (7) Estimated Cost: $2.50     Actual Cost: $0.78
I got a bag of carrots that had a few more than 7, but no worries--the recipes for the next week called for carrots too, so they won't be wasted! If the recipes for the next week didn't, you could always use them for snacks.

Celery (6 stalks) Estimated Cost: $2     Actual Cost: $1.24
Same story as with the carrots, but I knew I could use them as a snack if I had extras.

1 Lemon Estimated Cost: $1     Actual Cost: $0.39
I'm sure the $1 estimate is just done to make a round number. Most items in the produce section will run you less than $1.

1 bunch of Rosemary (to yield 1 tbsp chopped) Estimated Cost: $1.50     Actual Cost: $1.98
I ended up with plenty leftover from the package available at my grocery store.

Spinach (6 cups) Estimated Cost: $3     Actual Cost: $2.18
I bought a bag of salad spinach and checked the back for serving size to make sure I had enough. My husband made the extra into a salad for lunch. Again, no wasting!

Milk (1 cup) Estimated Cost: $1 (they are going by the portion you'll use) Actual Cost: $3.98 (for a gallon of milk)
I'd say the overall cost of the gallon of milk would mean the cup costs less than that. As mom of a milk-guzzling toddler, I always have this on hand and didn't even need to pick it up when I did my grocery shopping.

White Cheddar Cheese (1 1/2 cups, shredded) Estimated Cost: $4     Actual Cost: $2.08
My grocery store only had one option and it was a block, so I shredded it before supper. My son ate the leftovers as a snack.

Baking Soda (1 tbsp) Estimated Cost: $1 (see note on milk)    Actual Cost: ?
I already had some so I didn't buy any, but I'd say you can get an off-brand package for around $1.

Lentils (2 cups) Estimated Cost: $3     Actual Cost: $1.08
I admit I was not thrilled about trying lentils. They just didn't sound appetizing. Turns out, they were fabulous!

Chili Powder (2 tbsp) Estimated Cost: $4 (estimated for entire container)     Actual Cost: ?
I already had some chili powder on hand, but I believe you can buy it for cheaper than $4 here.

Corn Tortillas (16) Estimated Cost: $3     Actual Cost: $1.88 (for package of 30)
I usually use flour tortillas, and wasn't sure about the corn ones, but now I definitely prefer them!

Total Cost Estimate: $70.50
Cost Per Dinner: $14.10
Cost Per Serving: $3.525

Actual Cost: $51.97 (!!!)

I did have to add a few items to my pantry that I didn't already have (these are listed at the bottom of your shopping list, under the total estimate), but they only totaled $16.15, bringing the grand total to $68.12--still under budget!

Stay tuned, tomorrow is the beginning of the "You Are What You Eat" Giveaway Hop, where I'll be giving away an annual subscription to The Fresh 20, as well as one of their cookbooks! One lucky winner will get both prizes!

If you simply can't wait for the giveaway, you can go ahead and get your own plan here. You can do a 3 month trial for just $5 per month! If you get an annual plan, you get access to the archives of recipes, plus you save money--annual subscriptions figure out to $4.08 per month! Remember, there are 3 options--Classic, Vegetarian, and Gluten Free. Choose the one that best meets your family's needs!

Happy Saving,
Deidre :)

Wordless Wednesday: Halloween Truth

I've spent the majority of my day sewing a Peter Pan costume. I've completely disassembled and reassembled my sewing machine numerous times. This thing had better turn out awesome. Pics tomorrow. In the meantime, some Halloween truth:

Gotta do this now while they don't know it's wrong of me, right? ;)

Happy Halloween! :)

Totally Shaken Tuesday

I was going to have a cute post today about funny toddler sayings and moments.

One of my best friends contacted me last night to tell me they were being admitted to St. Jude's because her 3 year old son, Ethan, had been diagnosed with leukemia.

We were pregnant together. Our boys are weeks apart in age. My heart is breaking for their family! Thankfully they seem to have caught this soon and there is a 90% cure rate for his type of leukemia.

I still can't imagine...or maybe I can because it hits so close to home. That could just as easily be my son.

Please take time today to squeeze your little loves extra tight and thank the Lord for their health and the blessing of them...and if you feel led, please say a prayer for the Melikians! Thanks in advance.

Freebies Friday 10/26/12

I haven't had tons of time to look for freebies this week, but I wanted to give you a head's up that a fantastic giveaway is coming next week! :)

I'll be giving away an annual subscription to the new, amazing meal-planning service I just started, along with one of their cook books!

To see one of my posts about this, click here. A more thorough review post is on the way, but right now I need to take advantage of the baby napping and the toddler watching a show to finish up the laundry and get the house ready for company tonight!

Happy Friday, everyone! :)

P.S. Feel free to share any giveaways or freebies (no spam) in the comments!

What's For Supper? Savings! (Think About It Thursday)

Since we decided I would be a SAHM (stay at home mom) and not return to teaching elementary school this year, we knew we would need to watch our budget a lot more seriously. We cut our income almost in half when I resigned. Thankfully, God has blessed our decision and helped us find ways to save money in different areas. One of those areas is our grocery bill/meal planning. 

When I was working, I would stay at school until 5, come home, fix something for supper, eat, do some laundry and other chores, and bathe my son and put him to bed. I didn't have much energy or time to cook, and it showed. Many nights, we gave in to convenience and ordered out or went to get fast food. Other nights, I threw together simple meals that were too repetitive and not especially healthy or tasty.

When I knew I was going to resign, I was so excited to be able to make home-cooked meals again! I dreamed of finally making all those Pinterest recipes I'd been pinning in vain and saving money in the process. Insert the reality of having a newborn and a toddler (aka, no brain left) here. Every store trip was a marathon to see what I could grab quickly before during a toddler tantrum and/or baby meltdown. Even when I tried to put together a few new recipes to try, I almost always forgot a few ingredients, and trust me, when you've been through the kind of trips to the store I'd had, you did not want to go back!

Another problem I kept running into was wasting food. I would buy basics, like chicken breast and ground beef, planning to use them with various recipes, but something would inevitably throw me off each week (eating at a friend's house or not having an ingredient I needed for a certain recipe in time) and I'd end up throwing out something. This was especially true with fresh vegetables and fruits, so I had pretty much given up on buying them. Fresh ingredients are usually more expensive, so I couldn't risk not using them, meaning I didn't buy them as often as I wanted to.

Also, with a newborn and toddler, organization is everything. A little bit of organization can give Mommy a bit of sanity in the midst of chaos. I've been doing different organizational projects around the house, and with each one, a small amount of burden is lifted from my shoulders and I can breathe a bit easier. (Note: I totally expected chaos with two young children and still plan on adding more with more children in the future. I am totally embracing this stage of life, but it's nice to have a bit of control every now and then.) :)

About a week ago, a friend of mine mentioned she and her husband were going to start hardcore budgeting and another friend commented that she had started using a meal planning service and it was the best thing she'd ever done. She said she was able to get groceries for a family of four for about $75 a week. We had been trying to keep it under $100 per week since I quit, increasingly spending less and less. I had been spending less than or right at $100 each week, but like I said, food was wasting, and I was not pleased.

oven roasted organic chicken & mape glazed sweet potatoes

closeup of the sweet potatoes

A few weeks ago, one of the blogging groups I am a part of announced that they were going to host a giveaway blog hop about healthy eating. When I saw the comment from my friend, I knew I had an opportunity here. I decided to check out the meal planning site, and I loved what I saw! I contacted them to see if they would be willing to provide a prize for the giveaway and they were very enthusiastic!

I started a 3 month membership that day. I will be sharing more info soon, but let me just say, so far, I have loved all the recipes I've made! I feel very accomplished with every meal. I feel like an actual cook instead of someone throwing random things together and hoping for the best. I am excited to be feeding my family healthy meals that don't have any artificial ingredients that are good for them as well as delicious. I've tried new things, and been surprised by how much I liked them. I was a little worried that my toddler might not eat the meals well, but he scarfed down the organic roasted chicken last night and thoroughly enjoyed the roast salmon tonight. Can you believe we are eating that wonderfully for so cheap?! I'll detail this more in my review, but the grocery bill actually ended up being less than $70!



Stay tuned for more information in my review and get ready for a fantastic giveaway coming very soon!

Do you think a meal planning service could help you? In what way(s)?