Menu Plan Monday - Jan 11

The best way for me to start feeling organized is to make a menu plan on Sunday night, of what we'll have for dinner the following week. I love not having to rack my brain for what to make each day. My menu usually comes together on Thursday evening when I write out my shopping list ready for Friday morning. This is something I got off track with over the holidays so this week I made a concerted effort to do it again.

This week's menu includes a few weight watcher recipes that we recenlty tried, but to be honest it's the kind of stuff we like anyway, so I by no means feel like it's 'diet food'. Here is my menu for the week:

Monday: Crockpot Cheeseburgers (I haven't tried this yet, it's from Heather's blog at WWChick)

Tuesday: Spaghetti and meatballs w/a side salad (I'll be using the WW bolognese sauce from Gina's site, and having it with spaghetti squash, but I'll probably give Jason and Kristen 'real' pasta)

Wednesday: Tilapia with veggies (I'll have to do Jason chicken because he hates fish)!

Thursday: Crispy 'oven fried' chicken tenders (these are the ones I shared with you last week)

Friday: Crockpot Chicken Taco Chili w/rice

I made the Taco Chili (another great recipe from Gina's blog) this past weekend and had some on Saturday. I've frozen the rest and will defrost two portions for Friday's meal). I forgot to take a picture of mine so I'm showing you this delicious photo courtesy of Gina's Recipes and linking it back to her.


This was supper yummy on Saturday when it was so cold outside and I didn't want to be anywhere but right next to our cozy fire. I had mine over a small baked potato.

Other than that we've had a lazy weekend. I spent most of the day Saturday sitting knitting and then popped next door to chat with my neighbor as I hadn't seen her all week. Jason came over and watched some of the game with the guys (her bil and hubby were watching it) and Kristen played with Connor.

I've been trying to get the kitchen de-cluttered and the dining room cleaned up. It's a slow process! but I'll try to take pictures this week to share.

Trying to find a routine....

Yay, it's Friday, first week back at school is over, and I can't wait for the weekend to start. Not that I have any plans. It is SO cold outside (at least for us it is), so I don't plan on going anywhere this weekend.

I need to start getting back in to a routine with housework, grocery shopping etc. I've been to the grocery store 3 times this week... I don't even want to say how much I spent! I finally made a meal plan for next week today, so I bought what I needed at the store (still came to over $100!) so hopefully I won't have to go at all til next Friday again. The thing I keep forgetting to do is take my coupons! I'm not a very good collector/user of coupons. I always find that the ones I get or have are for things I never buy anyway - do you find that? I do want to try and get better at using them. Ooh, did I just make a new year resolution? Well, don't hold me to it, I just said I'd try ;-)

Need to jump off here and go do some laundry. If I can get my routine down it should mean all laundry will be done by Friday and I can just enjoy the weekends and relax.

Have a great Friday. I think I'll take the weekend off from blogging, so I'll see you Monday :-)

Brrrrrrrrr.....

yes, that means it's getting even colder here! Very chilly today and tomorrow we are getting a cold front move in?! What? Seriously! It's going to get colder? I must be getting soft in my old age, or I've been in Texas too long, cos 50 degrees is cold to me now. Tomorrow we'll have a high of about 31 and a low of 22.

I'm so glad I opted to have a fireplace in this house. Let me tell you, Jason nearly talked me out of it.... I think he's glad he didn't. Today I had to go out and buy firewood, (because we'd just about ran out) so I can light a fire this afternoon, and no doubt all day tomorrow. Don't think I'm complaining though, after the heat we endured this past Summer I wouldn't dare. No, I really don't mind that it's this cold, because it usually doesn't last all that long.

Take this picture for instance... this was the end of February last year, it was over 80 degrees that day and the kids wanted the pool out to keep cool!


I'm sure this cold spell wont' last long either, before long we may be back up in the 60's! For now though I'll enjoy our cozy log fire.

On a completely different note... who watched Biggest Loser last night? and loved it! :-)

Off to a good start......

As I mentioned last week, my main 'resolution' for this year (I don't make many cos they just get broken) is to get back on track with eating healthy, exercising and losing those extra 12 pounds I gained last year! I'm happy to say I'm off to a good start. I tried to start last Friday and did well that day but I must confess I lapsed a bit on Saturday and Sunday because I told myself Monday was a better day to start! I still had a nice healthy dinner on Saturday with baked tilapia and sauted swiss chard, but on Sunday I let myself eat some of the chocolates that are still lying around and I had 2 glasses of wine that night! I'm not going to beat myself up about it, but I'm making more of an effort this week to cut out the candy and no wine til the weekend.

I've made myself a new blog so I can track my progress and hopefully keep myself motivated. You can check it out if you like. I called it 'The Healthy Den' :-) Goes along with my theme of 'Dens'. I won't talk about it all the time in here but I've put a link on my left sidebar if you want to follow it or just check it out now and then. I'm still working on graphics and links, so bear with me.

Today I want to share with you what I made for dinner last night. I'll be linking up to 'Tempt My Tummy Tuesday and Tasty Tuesday.

The recipe is for Oven Fried Chicken. I can't take credit for the recipe, I found it at Heather's wonderful blog and she shows a video of how to make it on Youtube HERE

It's a similar recipe to what I've done before, simply using panko crumbs and baking the chicken instead of frying it, but Heather's recipe uses crushed cornflakes as well....

I made a batch of 12 and used 5 of them last night for dinner. I had mine on a bed of salad with an Asian Sesame Seed dressing. They were super crispy. I will definitely be making more. In fact I also made a batch using small pieces of chicken so I have 'healthy nuggets' in the freezer too. Why not give them a try for dinner tonight. The best part (for me) 2 tenders = only 4 ww pts :-)

I can't believe I did that!!!!!

This morning just as I was headed out the door to take Kristen to school I went in to the cupboard where I always keep my purse/bag and it wasn't there? I admit sometimes I don't always put it in the cupboard if I get busy when I get home, putting groceries away etc. Well I had to dash out anyway and think about looking for it after I got home. I got home 30 minutes later and still couldn't find my purse. Now I was starting to worry. The last I had it was at the grocery store on Saturday afternoon (after my trip to Goodwill) and I hated to think that I had done what I always say I hope never to do..... leave it on top of the cart!

By this time I was starting to feel really down, I had that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, what if I had left it and it was taken? What if someone had used my credit card? What if.....

I decided to call the grocery store because I knew by this time the purse was not in the house nor was it in the back or the front of my car. And then........ relief! The girl told me after I described my purse that it was indeed there. Oh My LORD - THANK YOU! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I still can't believe I did that. It's one of my worst nightmares. I've done it once before years ago, but I realized as soon as I got home that I had left it on the cart, so I went dashing back to the store then (which happened to be Walmart) hoping and praying someone would have handed it in and not just picked it up and walked away with it. And thankfully then too, someone did just that and my purse was at customer service.

Today could have started out SO bad, but I am so thankful that it hasn't. It did mean I didn't go out for my morning walk today (I was just so sick to my stomach with worry I couldn't!), so I'm gonna jump off here, pop in a 'Walk Away The Pounds' dvd, then get started on cleaning this house.

Have a great Monday everyone, I know I will ;-)

I 'heart' cheap goodies....

I took a box of things to Goodwill today and couldn't resist a quick look around! Usually I don't find much but today I kind of went a little crazy...

Let me give you a closer look... first up, I was thrilled when I saw all this tassle - if you read The Nester, and you saw my recent post HERE then you'll know why ;-) These were only $2.99 each bundle.


I picked up two frames for $1.99 each. My goal is to collect a few nice frames, paint them all black and make a nice 'collage' of photos up the stairs.

next I picked up these two items... again I plan to paint them black and then I'll find a home for them somewhere around the house. I think the 'pedestal' will hold a very fat candle I have.

and lastly I couldn't resist some motivation for my 'eating healthy' plan... at $3.99 each, these books were a steal.


OK, so back to packing for me.... what are you up to today?

Shape up....

it starts today... yes, my new year resolution is to get back to eating healthy and start 'moving' more! So today, no chocolate, no junk food.... I need to clear up all the Christmas stuff, and that includes the foods and sweets all over the kitchen table. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but one thing for sure, I won't be eating it!

Yesterday I went out and bought myself a pair of Shape-ups! I wanted some motivation to get back to walking, so I thought this would do it. They come with a dvd that I haven't had a chance to watch yet, but I'll do that today and at some point I'll be trying them out and having a quick brisk walk around the neighborhood.

First though, I have to take down the Christmas decorations, and clean up a messy kitchen. I seriously don't know how it gets so messy, but usually it happens when the dishwasher is full of clean dishes (that I haven't had a chance to unload) and the sink starts filling up with dirty ones.

We had fun at our neighbors last night, stayed up til after midnight, but then Kristen got really sleepy so we came home at 12.30am. I was using my new camera but still trying to get used to it, so unfortunately a lot of the pictures are blurry:( I'll try to post a few later today. Right now I need to jump off here and go clean house!

Hope you all have a great first day of 2010.