Menu Planning Made Easy

I don't know about you but I tend to struggle with dinner time if I don't have it planned out before hand so I thought I'd share with you how I plan my meals to make my meal planning go as quick and easy as possible.

First my Inspiration came from All Things Beautiful's Menu Planner Board

I modified mine a little bit and am still in the process of finishing it so you just get a picture of hers for now.  I didn't put the recipes on mine and I am working on adding lunch.  I've got 40 meals to choose from and I always plan a few days to come up with a new recipe or try someone else's out but those 40 are my mainstays and still give me plenty of room for creativity.  I have a few that use up leftovers, a few that only plan the meat or the ethnicity so that I can make whatever I feel like and still know that I have everything I need on hand.  I'm also really flexible with it, I plan it a month at a time but if I'm in the mood for Tuesdays Dinner on Friday then I just switch, keeping in mind what fresh items need to be used up.  I don't plan mine with Sides and a dessert but My mom does and I figure some of you might too, so I threw them in my planner as well in case you want them, along with plenty of blank spots to write in your personal favorites.

You can find my menu planner here in Google Documents, I included a blank shopping list as a bonus.

Want Free Stuffed Animal Patterns?

I am working on making more patterns and have pretty much finished a giraffe and lion to add to my wild animals collection with the elephant but I'm not sure when I'll get around to sewing them, plus I'd love more than one example of each for my shop so if you are interested in them and are willing to send me pictures of the finished products let me know and I'll send you the patterns for free.

Teaching Nutrition to Tots

Today's post was inspired by Simply Modern Mom's post about the "Choose My Plate" gov. site.

Teaching good eating habits to my kids is easier said then done, my 5 year old son is particularly difficult, he won't eat any fresh fruit and only takes a taste or two of smoothies but he could live off of milk, mac & cheese, and sweets or junk food of any kind.  He's not too bad with his veggies, esp. broccoli but he struggles with trying new things and I'm frustrated with how little fiber he gets.  This is the same boy who used to eat broccoli like it was candy and ate curry anything with gusto when he was two.

My daughter is easy as long as I keep the food coming in small quantities, she'll eat half a doughnut and hand me back the rest but I have to remind her not to eat the seeds in her apple if I didn't cut out the core, it's pretty great.

So out of frustration came inspiration, I would make a "food rocket" that my kids could put together piece by piece with every meal until it is finished at the end of the day when they add the flame on the end so it looks like it's flying.  If they have too many sweets, junk food or don't finish the rocket then they can't add the flame.

Here's my "prototype" for it, I'm working on getting a much cuter version of it.

(Speaking of feeding tots, my 6 month old gags on sweet potatoes but adores broccoli. Go figure.)

Mango and Chicken Thai Pizza

I LOVE this pizza, it's my absolute favorite pizza of all time.

My pictures don't even come close to doing it justice but I'll post them anyway so at least you have an idea what yumminess you are in for if you make it yourself.  This is also part of my Thai Kitchen party recipes so, thanks again House Party and Thai Kitchen for all the free stuff.

I got the recipe for the pizza dough from Goop and I loved it so much I made extra and cooked up a bunch of rounds and saved them in the fridge for later, which is what I used today, it makes it a little chewier but still great.  Get the recipe here.

Since the pizza rounds were already prepared and I used leftover chicken I started with chopping up the mango, red bell pepper and cilantro.

I also chopped up the left over chicken to roughly the same size as the mango pieces and then I drizzled some of the Spicy Thai Mango Dipping sauce over the pizza round

Then I threw on the peppers, chicken, mango and mozzarella and I took a heaping tablespoon of the Peanut Satay Sauce and added about 1 teaspoon of peanut butter, their peanut sauce is "currier" than the kind I usually make and a little water to thin it out and drizzled it over the pizza and tossed on the cilantro.   Last, I put it in the oven on low broil since everything that needed to be was already cooked so I just put it in until the cheese had bubbled and browned a bit.

VOILA!  A super easy and scrumptious pizza that took only a few minutes to throw together.

It was so good I ate two.

Super Easy Beef and Broccoli

(Sorry about the pics, they're from my phone.)

Simply Asia's sauce pouches are a great way to throw together a meal in a hurry and still have something super yummy.  For this one I used the General Tsao's mild pouch which was mild enough for my kids but still something my DH will enjoy eating.

All I did was quickly cook up a nice steak to medium rare, cook it to your preferred doneness, and put it aside.

Then in the same frying pan I tossed in onions and frozen broccoli until heated through, and then added in the sauce. 

 While the broccoli and onions were cooking I sliced up the steak

I cheated with frozen rice but you can start the rice first and cook up the rest about 15 minutes before you want to eat, then I just plated it up so that it looked as good as it tasted.  It was a hit for my whole family, from 2-35 and it only took me 15 minutes.  Thank you Simply Asia.

Who Likes Thai?

I LOVE ethnic foods and flavors so I jumped at the chance to hold a Thai Kitchen and Simply Asia BBQ "House Party" and to let you enjoy some of the great stuff and recipes I got I'm posting all of my dishes here and then I'll have a giveaway at the end so that you can try out the yummy food yourself.

My first recipe I forgot to take pictures of because I had family visting and pictures weren't my first thought but it turned out scrumptious so I had to share anyway.  I call it

Thai Mango Chicken

• Chicken
• Rice (brown, jasmine, whatever you have on hand)
• Mango
• Cilantro
• Red Onion
• Lemongrass or ginger
• Lite Coconut Milk
• Fish Sauce
• Peanut Satay Sauce 
• Mango Dipping Sauce
• Optional- Frozen Asian Veggie Blend

My inspiration for this dish was a Thai style pizza I had.  First cook your rice, about 4 cups cooked.  Saute your chicken until nice and brown, I used 1 pound of boneless, skinless thighs, then take them out of the saute pan.  Now drain your pan of any excess oil and put in your rice and red onions, sliced really thin, on medium heat and add about 1/3-1/2 cup lite coconut milk, a splash of fish sauce, 1 tsp. of fresh lemon grass or ginger or 1/3 of dried.  Add one to two heaping tablespoons of the peanut sauce and mango dipping sauce and cook down just until the onions are cooked through and the coconut milk has been absorbed.  

While that's cooking slice up the chicken, dice the mango and finely chop the cilantro.  Once everything is cooked up dish up the rice and top with lots of chicken and mango and liberally garnish with the cilantro.  Thin out 1/4 cup of the peanut sauce with a little coconut milk and then drizzle a little of the peanut and mangos sauces over the top of the whole thing.  YUMMY!!!

You can add more veggies to the rice or have them on the side as well, I'm a huge fan of veggies and it tastes great either way so I serve them however I'm feeling at the time.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I enjoyed making and sharing it, I can't wait to share the rest of the recipes I've used/ made up with you.

Hickory Dickory Dock, Or Why Rhymes Are So Important For Our Little Ones

I always loved nursery rhymes growing up, I still do actually, the rhyme and meter and short silly stories were something I was always clamoring for my mom to sing with me and were a source of plays my siblings and I would put on for my parents.  Today my kids favorite nursery rhyme is The Itsy Bitsy Spider because I do the finger play on them with my spider fingers crawling up their water spout bodies and my hands raining down or drying them up, they love it and I love that I can turn it into a tickle game for extra giggles.  Who'd have thought that these simple rhymes would be so good for their development as well?  I certainly didn't but they help our little ones in many wonderful ways.

When they hear nursery rhymes they hear the sounds the vowels and consonants make in a way that's easy for them to process, they hear different words like fiddle, contrary, fetch, pail, etc. that they don't usually hear, and since they are so short, rhythmic and repetitive they are also easy to memorize so they are often a child's first sentence.

Nursery Rhymes use patterns and many even use counting, size and weight which helps with math skills and they tell a story with a beginning, middle and end which teaches sequence and how to follow along.

Children benefit both physically, and emotionally as well since they develop coordination, self confidence and learn to express themselves as they act them out.

With all the great benefits that nursery rhymes have for our kids I enjoy them even more when I share them with my three.  If you want to apply this to the learning triangle you can watch Barney, or a video that uses rhyming, talk about and recite your favorite rhymes, and then act them out or make a book of the rhyme together.

Afraid of Color? Don't Be.

After a conversation with one of my SIL's, I realized that a LOT of people do not have a natural knack with color, at least when it comes to their wardrobe, this certainly explains the sea of black and brown when I go to church.  You see I grew up with both parents being artists and so it never occurred to me that neutral was not merely a personal decision but a common fear of getting colors wrong.  I've definitely seen color go wrong like when a classmate chose hunter green and hot pink for her wedding because she was sure that any red and any green ALWAYS go together, the result was truly painful to look at.  There is a full proof way to avoid such mistakes though, use a picture, painting or print that you really like for inspiration, a printed cloth is the easiest since even a tiny amount of the inspirational print will help tie the whole look together.  Here's an example:  

 This headband has teal, aqua, black, white and a little bit of pale yellow so you could pair it with this outfit and a yellow skinny belt or yellow clutch purse.  I love teal and teal and yellow is a great color combination.

I'll be posting more color combination ideas as well as some "What I Wore" pics as further inspiration as well.

An Easy Principle for Teaching Our Kiddos

I took a wonderful class that taught a lot about how you can create a full and rich learning environment for your children by using what she called "A Triangle for Learning".  Here is the basic idea:

An example: You see an episode of "Curious George" (Season 1 Eps. 11 "Animal Magnetism") about magnets and talk to your child a little bit about what they thought of the show.  Later you read a book about magnets like "The Wiener Dog Magnet by Hayes Roberts" which is a very funny story about a wiener dog magnet that attracts actual wiener dogs and discuss it a little bit.  You can make a trip to the library for this or already have a book on hand, it's a lot of fun either way but making a special trip to the library every so often for a book about something your child has seen can really make your child feel extra special too.  Now that you've done the first two you can do a fun activity about magnets, it can be as simple as letting your child play with refrigerator magnets and see what they will stick to or you can get other ideas from books like "Mudpies to Magnets" or from websites, You can also get a Magnetic Discovery Board or make one yourself.

You don't have to follow in that exact order, or even all in the same day, as long as you do all three, relatively soon, there are benefits for each so do what works for you.

New Fav Dress Shop

I can't even begin to tell you just how much I love their dresses, I wish I owned one of each of them.  They are fun, flirty, and modest with a nod to the old days and still plenty modern, they even have dresses for girls, YAY!!!

I love all of them so much that I'd be very hard pressed to find a favorite there's the Amethyst or Azure Coast (same dress different colors), Da Vinci, Joie De Vivre, and the Marseilles is the dress that first caught my eye and got me hooked but right now my heart is with the Joie De Vivre at the moment, it is the color I'm looking for, easy to breastfeed with and GORGEOUS!

Not only do they have great dresses but they have skirts, swimsuits, aprons and accessories.  Can I just say AWESOME!!!!!!!!  

Do You Hate Your Body?

So many women do, why is that? Our bodies create new life, they nourish tiny babies and care for our loved ones, they step up to the plate and keep going on little to no sleep or care because we ask them to.  Our bodies are what they are in part because of these things and yet instead of praising our bodies for all that they give us we focus on what we don't like.  Here's a great post by Ev'Yan at
"Sex, Love & Liberation" about our amazing bodies.

Remember "Flock of Seagulls"?

I do and I don't think my baby appreciated it either, do you?