I love experiments that work

My experiment was a success!! I had read that you could put muffin mix in baking cups and freeze them, then just pop them in a muffin tin and bake. It worked great! They taste just like the ones that I made fresh yesterday. I’m so excited. Now I’m working on freezing muffins so we’ll have a very easy breakfast for company or Saturdays. It’s also a great way to use some of the 10 lbs of blueberries we have right now. I’ve made blueberry and chocolate chip so far. I’ll need to see what other combos I can come up with for variety.
 

Menu Plan Monday

I’ve been trying to work on stocking up my freezer with more meals, or parts of meals to make the daily cooking easier. This week I’ll be using the meatballs that I froze last week, as well as freezing more stuffed peppers for later use when I fix them this week.

Monday: Birthday cake and leftovers. Happy Birthday to my youngest munchkin

Tuesday: Pasta and Meatballs (meatballs from the freezer)

Wednesday: Stuffed Peppers (make extra to freeze) & Fried Zucchini

Thursday: Waffles (make extra to freeze)

Friday: Girls night out. The men folk are on their own.

Saturday: Grill

Sunday: Pot Luck at church

 

Rewards of Simplicity

I’m not there yet, still a long way to go to the simple life that I long for, but I’m already reaping the rewards. Okay, so it isn’t totally from my making my life simpler, but since the munchkins and I just got back from a short trip to the grandparents house, our house is pretty much clean. Therefore, the call for a house showing this afternoon didn’t make me frazzled running around trying to clean and stash things in the van before the showing. I had time to leisurely mow the front yard, take a shower, do some straightening and even do a blog post.

That is what I want my life to be like. I don’t want to be a slave to my house and my stuff. If I have less stuff and less to mess with around the house, then short notice showings, or trips, or anything, isn’t something to make me frazzled, but something to enjoy.

Goals

  Goals


Easy to set, yet if they aren’t realistic, they’re very easy to fail to attain. I think that is part of my problem with attaining the simple life that I long for. I have some great goals, but they’re too broad so therefore very hard to attain and hard to keep motivated to work toward those goals.

So, here I sit, disappointed in myself for not doing a good enough job at reaching my goals. Before bed last night I started to brainstorm about the word “simplify” I came up with several things, and I’m going to try and focus on one or two of those things instead of looking at the big picture, I need to get out the magnifying glass and look at a little portion of the simple life that I want.

To start with, one of the biggest things that hit me was that with less stuff, there is less to put away and keep clean. Over the last year of having our house on the market I have gotten rid of a lot of things, but we still have a lot more than a family of four needs.

I turned to a clean sheet of paper in my notebook and started listing what I could do to have less stuff. I truly am amazed at how little of the stuff I have actually gets used on a regular basis and I think that is where I’m going to shift my attention. How many clothes in my closet do I actually wear? Why am I hanging onto the rest? What about in the kitchen? That fondue pot that I got at a garage sale a few years ago and have used twice. It was fun to have fondue, but such a hassle and do I really think I need it? If I wanted to make fondue, couldn’t I just stick it in my smaller crockpot to stay warm? I think the fondue pot can go to the garage sale pile. What about my craft supplies? Much of it hasn’t been used in a long time, how much if it do I need, how much can I get rid of , or have an art day and dump it all out and have the kids create, take pictures of their creations then get rid of it.

So there you go, my goal of living a simpler life is still there, but I know it is a goal that will ongoing, I may never get to where I really want to be at a simple life, but simpler is okay, as long as I keep making steps forward.

So first step . . . keep purging out the unnecessary.

Wish me luck

Menu Plan Monday

 Monday: BBQ Chicken and Fried Zucchini


Tuesday: Pasta and meatballs

Wednesday: Leftovers and Fried Zucchini

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Pizza night

Saturday: Grill and Fried Zucchini



Are you seeing a trend here? It’s zucchini season and we have a ton and the munchkins LOVE it (Mama kinda likes it also) I’m trying an experiment and I sliced up a zucchini and froze it. We’ll see how well it thaws then fries. If it works well, then we can have fried zucchini all year long and wouldn’t that be wonderful!

Grocery Shopping

I like to make lists . . . the problem is I don't always seem to have my list with me when I'm out which makes remembering all the items I need when shopping a tad difficult. 

Enter iphone app Grocery iQ  I'm liking it a lot so far.  It's easy to add items, and it has an auto suggest that has been helpful so far.  I haven't done a lot with it yet so we'll see if it stands the test of shopping time.  At least now since my phone is always with me, my list will be as well, so no matter where I am when I think of something I need, I can add it, and no matter when I stop to do some shopping, my list is there as well.