Happiness

After two long months gone with the military, this past Saturday night, late in the night,  Loving Husband returned home. Mae awoke from her sleep and toddled out of her room to see not only mom's face at the top of the stairs but her dada's face - mom and the milk that Mae usually seeks might as well have been nonexistent.  She in her sleepy state reached out her itty bitty arms to embrace her father and his homecoming... and she would not let him go.  Mae Mae cuddled and snuggled into her dada's chest and fell asleep, safe in the arms of her father at last!

To see more happiness...

Freezer Meals

For years I've contemplated freezer cooking and mass production of meals in the freezer.   Heck I think it was three years ago I even purchased a freezer meal book, but I never did anything with it - still haven't in fact.  However, Pinterest provided me with some pinspiration and I decided to give it a go using two different websites.

First I went to The Test Kitchen of Melissa Fallis and Ring Around the Rosies and between the two created my menu and my grocery list.    The amount of time that I spent creating my grocery list I think took as much time as food prep did.   Eventually I settled on a few different meals between the two sites.

My Menu:
Savory Chicken - Ring Around the Rosies
Sausage and Peppers - Ring Around the Rosies
Healthy Mama’s BBQ chicken, using sweet potatoes - Mama and Baby Love
Stephanie’s Goulash - The Test Kitchen
Vegetable Beef Soup - The Test Kitchen

I recommend copying down the recipes (a simple copy/paste into a Word doc will do) so that in case these websites ever disappear your favorite recipe won't.  Plus printing it out - it makes a nice check list as you go along to ensure all ingredients are added.   I did not provide the recipes here, because well that's not very nice if you only visit my page when it was someone else's work. Since I did no adaptations, no recipes will be found here this time.  :)

With a full page, two column grocery list in hand I headed off to the grocery store with both kids.  90 minutes in the store and a FULL grocery cart (I don't think I've ever had one so full!) we checked out.  Combine that with our regular grocery items it was a pricey bill - but considering I purchased:  8 chicken breasts, 6lbs of ground beef, 3lbs of stew meat and a whole host of fresh organic vegetables and organic canned products I really can't complain at the $302.23 bill.
 

We got home and I started to label the gallon freezer bags.  Which thank goodness I had enough - as I forgot to purchase more at the store (it was on the list and I still skipped it!)    So don't forget to buy your gallon freezer bags!  I wrote on the bags if there were ingredients that need to be added later, how long to cook and at what temperature so there was no need to track down the recipe when I was ready to use it later.  Next up,  I broke out some large paper and the crayons for the kids to entertain themselves while I got to work.   They had a lot of fun and I stopped occasionally to trace them or help with something.  

Next, I laid out my recipe lists and got to chopping.  I looked at all the recipes and went through and did all the onions.  So if a recipe called for 2 onions (split between two bags) I would chop one onion and put it in that bag, then the next and put it in the other.   Then move to the next recipe that required onions and do the same thing. So there was no massive pile of nine onions chopped and then dispursed between bags, although it does create an amusing picture in my head. Next carrots, potatoes, and the rest of the veggies accordingly.    The vegetable chopping honestly took the most time,  but overall between stops and starts it took a little over an hour of actual work time for the veggies. 

The next task was to chop 18 cloves of garlic for the various dishes - thankfully I have my Garlic Zoom to use and so while slightly tedious to peel all the cloves and then put them in/out of the Garlic Zoom it wasn't too bad.    After that I moved onto all the can goods, broths, liquid and wine (which I certainly sampled to make sure it was a yummy one first!)   It was also around this time that I broke out cold pizza for my kids to eat for dinner.  Oh the irony.  All this organic, healthy food and they're eating cold pizza.  :)  Next step were all the various spices to be added and then finally I broke out the meat.  I started with the stew meat dishes and got those together.  I left some air in the bag and shook everything up and then went and squeezed all the air out and laid them flat. Cut the chicken breasts in half and placed them in the bags that were appropriate and I was done for the night!

The two bags for the Vegetable Beef Soup went into the fridge for the night, because I needed to brown ground beef before those could be frozen and it was past the kids' bedtime at this point.  The next morning, I woke up, browned the beef with the garlic and onions and split it between the one bag (after the meat cooled!) and the crock pot.   Yes one bag went straight into the crock pot for dinner that night!    Let me say this dish cooking on low for 8 hours - there was very little 'soup' for a soup dish - but it was a delicious meal regardless of soup volume.   If you want soup you might think to add even more beef broth than called for.   

I now had nine more meals awaiting consumption and ready to be consumed!  I waited to write this blog until after I had executed a freezer to crock pot meal and I have to say I was very pleased.   For our next meal on Saturday night (I originally did all the prep work on Tuesday) all I did take out the bag the night before and put it in the fridge.   The next morning around 10am I took that bag and dumped it into the crock pot.   The mess?  Throwing away a ziplock bag!   That's it.   No fuss, hassle, or issue at all.

Now if you are a 'lightly steamed' veggie/potato person I will say that carrots and the sweet potatoes on the BBQ Chicken were a bit more mushy than you would prefer.   If you're really concerned about that I suppose that you could do multiple bags separating your veggies from the rest of the recipe and dump the veggies in when you have about an hour or so remaining.   For me that isn't that big of a deal and so I'll continue with the one bag per meal method for these dishes.  I cooked both of these recipes on low for eight hours and everything was cooked well.   If you choose to cook on high for four hours you might run into the issue of the meat being too dry.   

I have to say that the two meals I have eaten they've been huge hits with the family.  Even my husband who is not a sweet potato fan enjoyed the "BBQ" chicken (it really didn't taste too much like BBQ, but still yummy!)    For our family with busy schedules the prep work and mess at one time was well worth it.    I plan to do this about once a month to help provide my family with healthy choices with very little day to day prep and mess work.  :)   Now really how much prep time did it take?   Well I think if I had someone watch the kids I could prep everything (including browning the meat) in under two hours.    However, with the kids, interruptions, bedtimes, meat browning the next day, etc.. the amount of prep time (including clean up) took 3.5 hours this time.     Honestly, for ten meals ready to toss in the crock pot that still isn't too bad!   Happy cooking!

Wall Makeover

Last time when Loving Husband was away on a mission I went to work and put together the entire nursery.  Paint, furniture building, decorating.    It was fun to get it totally together and a good way to pass time - having no more nurseries or bedrooms to remake (since we just had repainted our bedroom when we moved back in October)  I decided to do something about our basement. 

The basement is a relatively long space and the walls were all one color.   Boring. It is a multipurpose room housing the playroom, office, 'library' and the biggest tv in the house. I knew that I didn't want to paint the whole room that would be daunting and honestly there wasn't any color that I could imagine down there on every wall.   It had been on my mind for years now to make the most center wall a wall for pictures -  for the most part the walls down there remained pretty blank.     I ultimately decided that was the wall that was going to get some paint while LH was gone and I was finally going to execute my picture wall.   :)

In early February, not too long after Loving Husband left on his mission I took the kids and went to the hardware store in search of the perfect blue.   I wanted a bold blue that wasn't too dark, too light,  too "baby" blue,  too teal,  too gray,  too "beachy" and I didn't want to  have to buy new curtains (which are a dark navy blue.)   I thought Martha Stewart might be my best bet for a unique bold color that fit my profile - but alas she failed me (miserably in fact!)   I ended up going with a Behr paint: Ocean View.    Came home with all my needed painting supplies and then we got sick...

Fast forward seven weeks later and the wall remained unfinished and LH was due home in 48 hours.   So on Friday afternoon I finally decided to get my butt in gear and get started on this project.   It took me about 30 minutes to tape and prep the area - which was done during the kids naptime.    Ace woke up right after I started painting (thankfully I had gated myself in with some baby gates)  and Mae woke up when I was about half way done.  She was not terribly thrilled with my unavailability, but since painting took less than 40 minutes she survived.     We left the project for the night.

The next morning I went back and did some touch ups.  I had only bought a quart of paint and apparently was quite liberal with the initial application so I didn't have enough to do a full roller on of a second coat.   Finished painting and then cleaned up the area.   We had lunch and did a few other things and I went back to the project and started taping up paper mock ups of the frames that I had.    I know you're supposed to wait a while to hang pictures, but I'm impatient and the wall was dry enough for me.  ;) 

My original intent was not to do all B&W pictures but the more and more I chose to put up the concentration of them dictated that I use all B&W which is fine by me - I love it. I'm also pretty proud that out of the eleven pictures on that wall, seven of them were taken by me (or the timer.) :)  Ultimately, I placed pictures in an organized chaos sort of fashion with some of the frames laid out in a way that I can convert them to vertical or horizontal depending on if I want to switch up the pictures that are in them.   

After all the pictures were hung I did a little reorganizing of furniture - as I no longer liked the idea of the kids toys been directly under the majority of the frames.  So I moved some books around on the bookshelves and centered the bookshelf to the center of the wall.   Ultimately I plan to get some of the 3M products to affix the frames (especially the bigger ones) a little more officially to the wall, but for now this makes me feel a little safer.  :)

Moved all the toys around the room where I wanted them to be and the project was complete.    Overall the placement of the frames took way more time than prepping/painting/cleaning up, but that's ok - as it is - I might still tweak the frame placement a little or add one or two more.   I also am contemplating a decal below the art work... we'll see!  

So what was Loving Husband's reaction upon coming home?   "It's very blue!"  ... well ok :)  I love it and he'll tolerate it, so I guess I'll take it. 

Quarterly Top 5 Photos

Mae turned one on the 10th of January and I enjoyed taking her first birthday photoshoot

At the end of January I really decided to start working on improving my skills as a photographer
Ace was very helpful and occassionally would stay still to let me snap a shot.  I love this one!

Mae absolutely loves her brother.  She also loves to pose for pictures
and goes and stands against that wall when she wants me to take her picture. 

We had 'Messy March' and one day we played with toilet paper!
I just love his face!  Pure joy!!

Mae loves to play outside (so does Ace of course)
Here she is  playing on the playground with her big brother, Mae showed no fear

What are your favorite five from the first quarter of 2012? Link up over at Sarah Halstead the Naptime Momtog there is a random giveaway too (no skill or amazing photography skills required to win!)

Support

Nothing is more important than support during a military deployment for those left behind at home.  Whether it's someone cooking you a meal (thank you to my church family for the kind offer and meal!) or the friend willing to watch your little ones whenever they can (Vanessa has been a Godsend!) or grabbing lunch with a few girlfriends (and all the kiddos that now accompany us!) anything helps when your better half is away.   Yes, Loving Husband has been away for a while now - he's nearly ready to be home now and we couldn't be more thrilled!


It's been a very trying time.  Not because the duration was long - 2 months this time - but more because I swear he left and we all got sick and stayed that way.  I coughed for 46 days straight before I finally felt better.  So if deployments aren't hard enough - having everyone in the house sick just is brutal!  It limits playdates (aka mommy socialization with ADULTS!) it limits sleep, it limits breaks.  Needless to say it's been a very long two months.  Nights are the loneliest - I get the kids in bed and then its crickets.  That's where friends come in handy!   Vanessa has come over for girl's night in since there's no babysitter for girl's night out...  

I have to say I have some of the greatest friends in the world.  My friend Mo has been 'around' daily online chatting with me - a pretty standard routine for her and I on a non-deployment schedule, but she's been ever so kind to endure my whining, complaining, mini-meltdowns regarding whatever ;) and she repeatedly expressed desire to come help me if she could only afford another trip.   She was just here for New Years.  She even looked up to have dinner delivered to me as a surprise during one of my 'dark' weeks.

Becky scheduled a visit for her and Ben in February only a few weeks after Loving Husband left on his mission.  She caught us at a good time in between the major portions of our illnesses.  I believe since the beginning of February we've had three decent colds that have come through here.  It was so great to see her.  Sadly her Ben had his first bad cold begin while he was here so there was a lot of sitting at home and playing here.   Becky was able to be here to see my baptized!  I was so thankful for that, because even though my husband missed that important event in my Christian walk - it was so nice to have a friend that has been with me on my Christian journey these past two+ decades to be there to witness the joyous time. 

My friend Carrie also made a very purposeful trip to come to the NW to help me out and hang out with me and she was a HUGE help.   She not only was simply here to chat with, hang out with, drink wine with, but also was such a help giving me a free afternoon and being quite the baby whisperer on two occasions getting Mae down for a nap.  The Monday she watched Mae was the first time in six weeks of Loving Husband being gone that I had an afternoon to myself for FUN.  Vanessa has watched both kids for me, but it was so that I could go to the doctor to get a chest xray... not exactly the spa type relaxation (although equally as appreciated, certainly!)    We had a lot of fun and did a lot of shopping.  Now I know why she hasn't visited the NW in a few years... we can't afford it!  :)  She also helped me build my new kitchen island and we got buff lifting the 150lb granite counter top ... and together we had a good laugh at our problem solving skills. 

Support is so important when a loved one is away, and while I was able to talk to LH nearly every day it is hardly the same and so I am so thankful that friends from afar were so supportive and worked around their own busy schedules to really help us out - because when Becky and Carrie came to visit so did their little ones and oh boy how much for my kids had with their 'cousins' :)   Aiden absolutely loves having house guests - especially little ones he can play with.    I loved seeing some of my favorite people for multiple days in a row!    And now I'm on the final countdown to seeing my favorite person of all, my husband!   Hurry home, my love!

Messy Eating

Yes Messy March continues and a reoccurring event includes self-feeding.  While myself, Loving Husband, and Ace seem for the most part to avoid much mess - Mae still is on a learning curve when it comes to food consumption on her own and so there are may days that an immediate trip to the tub is necessary.   Last night (and tonight) happen to be just such nights!

But what fun it is when she gets to splash in the tub after she's all done eating! What fun for mommy to play with her new lens too :) 

Critique Me!

Today one of my photos is being featured for critique over at Click It Up A Notch.   As you recall I decided to get serious about photography make improving my photography skills my resolution this year.   Courtney has been a tremendous help in already improving my photography skills and now she is kindly featuring one of my photos to help me improve even more with some free critique from readers.  

It is thanks to her blog that I have officially switched from auto to manual almost exclusively and really understanding the balance between all the various 'pieces' that bring the camera into functioning mode.    Already from when I took the picture that is featured over on her page I've improved leaps and bounds in my sharpness and achieving it with some regularity. 

Like yesterday (today? I haven't slept yet and it's 1am... so you decide.)  I snapped this picture below of Ace  Unknown Confederate Hat Wearing Incredible Boy (after all I can't identify him he has his mask on as "my idenity is the most important part and I need to protect it.")   He's a silly boy - but the clarity that I got of his eye - I was so proud and excited!  :)  

Hard to tell?  Here let me zoom in for you.  :)   There is a tiny tiny fraction of motion blur - but it's so minimal - that with a preschooler I think that's the sharpest you're ever going to get unless you're shooting upwards of 1/2000 shutter speed.  This was shot at 1/200ss instead. 

I'm having a lot of fun with learning new things with my camera, pushing myself to learn something new regularly and really trying to have fun with it.   I highly recommend stopping by Click It Up A Notch and checking out some of her great tutorials!