Menu Plan Monday

Here is a list of what I am making this week. 

For those of you that don't do meal planning I highly recommend it, it makes life so much easier. There isn't a bunch of guessing and you already have all the stuff on hand. 

What works for me is creating a list of 12 meals or so that sound good and then spreading those meals out over 2 weeks. I go to the grocery store with a list of everything I need for those meals and then I am set for the next two weeks. If I am planning a meal with something that will not last two weeks (store bought rolls or a certain vegetable ) I either make that meal first or I just plan on making a quick trip to the store to get a couple items later in the week. I don't however plan what meal is going for what night. I just make a list of meals, stick it on my fridge (or else I will forget what I bought) and then that morning I decide what sounds good and get the meat out to thaw (because it is usually all frozen). If planning out each night's meal in advance works for you do it, but if your like me, then its easier to just have a list. 

Monday

Chicken Noodle Soup: Its going to be a rainy day, and nothing says fall and rain like a nice bowl of homemade chicken noodle.  I make homemade noodles and they are delicious. But if you want to make it easier, buy some egg noodles. I am also trying to eat more veggies, so I am going to puree some carrots and put that into the sauce, and chop up carrots as well. Lots of veggies in this meal. 

Tuesday

Healthy Spice Rub Slow Cooker Chicken: I haven't made this recipe yet, but I hope its delicious. It looks really healthy. I think I might pair it with some homemade rolls, maybe some grilled zucchini? I'm not sure yet. But the chicken is paleo friendly too. 

Wednesday

Pita Pizzas: No recipe needed for these, they are too easy. I recently bought some pitas at the market, not my usual market to make sandwich pockets for lunch and they don't open up, they are just unopenable flatbreads. So I can't use them for my lunches. But I don't want to waste them so I am going to make them into pizzas. Whole wheat pitas are the best, and they make perfect pizza crusts. Just  pile on the sauce and the cheese and your favorite toppings, bake at 400 for about 15-20 min until cheese is melted and voila! Easiest thing ever to make. You can also use french bread too. 

Thursday

Chicken Enchiladas: I love this recipe, its healthy and delicious. I recently made them in the crock pot too, which made them way easier. I will post soon on how I altered it to be a slow cooker recipe. But meanwhile you can find the recipe over at Annie Eats.

Friday

Out to Eat! I can't cook every single night. I will go insane. 

Saturday

Pancakes w. bacon: Breakfast for dinner is always fun, especially because I never, ever make breakfast foods for breakfast. I just really can't cook that early. I just buy pancake mix and use that, way easier. Sometimes I put chocolate chips in my pancakes though, that is the bomb. I love bacon, so, so much, especially wonderful fatty, salty bacon. But turkey bacon is also good, and I buy that so I can have it more often. Its almost just as good. I even converted my husband, he says he likes it better than the pork kind. 

Sunday

Chicken Parmesean: I like to class it up a bit on Sundays. And Italian food is always an elegant food. Someday I will do a post on this recipe, but I don't have one up yet, sorry! 

Bridal shower : FOOD!

{chocolate dipped Oreos}

So like I said in the post before I did the dessert table for my cousins' bridal shower today. I did all the food and all the decorations. You can see more about the decorations HERE.

So for the dessert I went with the theme 'chocolate dipped' which I am so glad I did, it was easy and they turned out so delightfully cute! 

I originally planned to go with POPS, like brownie pops and rice krispy pops and stuff like that, where you roll the brownies into balls and dip them in chocolate and put them on a stick. But I did a practice run 2 weeks before the shower and man oh man am I glad I did. They ended up looking like poop balls. They are way harder than they look. 

So I went for another theme that involved no baking. 

So these photos are all taken from my phone. Why can't I find that dang camera charger?

So I tried to make them look as good as possible. 

So for my chocolate dipped theme I used 1 1/2 package of chocolate candy coating and one package of white chocolate candy coating. Then I had three types of sprinkles and I used coconut on some of them too. I loved the coconut ones, I think those ones were my favorite.

To dip the stuff, I melted the candy coating on the stove on low {stirring constantly so it doesn't burn} then I poured all the candy coating into a mug, so that it would be deep to dip the stuff in. I did each chocolate at a time, so I did everything that required white chocolate first and then did all the milk chocolate second. I also did everything the night before so I wasn't crazy rushed the day of the shower.

So I used about a package and a half of pretzel rods total. I would dip them, and then put them on wax paper  and then I sprinkled the stuff over them. I tried rolling them in the sprinkles and that didn't work. The chocolate dripped off. So sprinkling it over worked best for me. 

I used red sprinkles on the white chocolate a lot since it went with my red theme. But I wouldn't suggest using those sugar crystal sprinkles on the milk chocolate, it doesn't show up and looks like crap on a stick. 

These were the hit of the party. I knew if I was doing a chocolate dipped theme I had to do strawberries. I should have done more. I did two containers of strawberries, which was about 30 berries or so. I washed them, and then dried them, then dipped them, and I only used milk chocolate. Unlike the rest of the stuff, I did these the day of the party. I have seen them the second day, they look all weird and aren't as good. 

I think these oreos were my favorites. They just looked the cutest. I still did half white chocolate and half milk chocolate. The big confetti sprinkles looked adorable on them. I am eating the few leftovers of these right now. Mmmm.... 

Oh and I used two packages of generic oreos. 

I honestly don't like rice krispy treats that much, unless they have chocolate. These were the only homemade thing I did. I dipped half of them in white chocolate. And then when it came time to do the milk chocolate, I was running low on milk chocolate, I had another package, but it was late and I didn't want to melt anymore, so I just was lazy and drizzled it over them. I made them the night before and they were still really soft the day of. I put a piece of bread in with them, and it somehow really does help to keep them soft. It works on cookies and stuff too. The bread gets hard but nothing else does. 

So it was a really easy dessert theme, if I had baked everything, it may have been cheaper, but way more work. and I just liked getting to put sprinkles on everything. I don't get to use sprinkles enough. 

In case you were wondering, we had a meal for the guests too. Soup and Salad. I brought tortilla soup. Which I will post the recipe on here soon, because it is delicous. And then one of my aunts brought Cheesy broccoli potato soup and my other one made chicken noodle soup. Then my other aunt brought two salads.  (pasta one and spinach one) I should have taken a picture. 

We played some games opened some presents and then skyped with my mama who lives in New Mexico and was so sad she couldn't be there. We missed ya mom!

But it all turned out FANTASTICLY SUPERB. 

Now I can't wait to get started on A-Cakes one year old party in December! Sesame Street here we come. 

Family Bridal Shower decor

My cute cousin is getting married next month so my aunts and I threw her a bridal shower today. 

I was asked to bring a dessert. And I guess I went a little overboard and made a bunch of desserts, and then decorations. And I just decided to make a dessert table. And it looked FABULOUS!! I seriously am so freaking stoked about how cute it looked. Unfortunately my camera is dead, and I can't find the charger anywhere, seriously I think I am going to have to find a new charger online cause I am dying without it. So these are all pictures from my phone. So it doesn't even show the fabulous-ness of what I did. 

So this post will show all the decor, and HERE is the one on the desserts

My cousin's wedding colors are plum, cream and black. Which are totally gorgeous colors and I love them so much together. But I had a hard time finding plum cheap decor. So I went with red stuff. I have a ton of red stuff, so it was pretty easy for me. 

I made a red table runner from my leftover red burlap from my previous table runner I made. I thought about just using the one that was already made, but I love it so much and I didn't want mine to get dirty. So I just got my burlap and sewed the edges, easy peasy.  This picture I took at my house, the shower was at my aunt's, but I set up the stuff at my house the day before to see how it all looked. {The pic at the top of the page is the pic I took with everything set up, but you can't see the pom poms}

My auntie made me the magnet board for Christmas a few years ago, I put her shower invite on it, a couple cute quotes on marriage, and then some pics of my cousin and her fiance on it. I made the rosette wreath a year or so ago, so that was nice to have already made. The smile sign was also something I had on hand. The flowers I just put on wood dowels and you can find out how to make them HERE, they are made from tissue paper. I wish I had a close up on them and a tutorial for you, but I didn't want to do that with my phone camera... 

I made 5 pom poms out of tissue paper, they are easy, just time consuming and make a bit of a mess. They are pretty much the same as making the flowers above, and you can find how to make them HERE. I hung them from the ceiling with push pins and red string, except in the pic, I should have spaced them out more, which I did for the real shower. I used 3 packages of tissue paper for these, that includes the red flowers. The big ones took a package each, the smaller ones and the flowers were one package total. 

This picture is at my house again, on set up day. I love how it all looks with my blue table. So country shabby chic, and it all matched with my kitchen stuff too. I didn't want to take it down.  The plates I got at Dollar Tree. They were a dollar each, and I loved them because I will reuse them a ton, I put red napkins on them once I set out the food. I made the banner out of material I already had and quickly sewed it. It was even easier to make than the tissue pom poms I thought. You can find a tutorial HERE for it. I just cut out red triangles and sewed them to the tan fabric. 

The decorations really made the treat table look AMAZING! I got a ton of compliments on it. 

Since I had a lot of the stuff on hand I spent $11.00 total on all the decorations. 

Tissue paper-- 3 packs at $1.00 ea = $3.00

Red Napkins-- 2 packs @ $1.00 ea= $2.00

White Plates-- 6 plates @ $1.00 ea = $6.00

So I spent the most on the white plates that I used to display the food. And I those I plan on reusing a lot. So this is easily done on a budget. 

I did spend way more on the food, but you can def. do whatever food you like for cheaper, or delegate food tasks out too. I recommend just going with whatever color you have a lot of stuff with, so then you don't have to buy as much. And let me tell ya, dollar tree rocks my socks! 

Food Tracker

So I wanted to track my food that I eat on a daily basis to see how many calories and stuff I am eating and to just make me more accountable on the way I eat. 

I think my Sister-in-law told me about this website a while ago, and I just remembered about it. 

I started using it this past week and I think it is totally sweet. 

Its by those people who make the food pyramid they teach you about in school. The website is called Choose My Plate and the food tracker is called the 'Super Tracker' and it is completely free! 

So basically what it does, is it has you enter in everything you ate that day and then it tells you approx. how many calories that was and what food groups it goes into. It also lets you set goals to lose weight and then gives you how many calories a day you should eat to get to that weight and how many of those calories can be 'empty calories' that don't have much nutritional value. It told me I can have 2400 calories a day, but that is with me breastfeeding full time. I actually haven't even come close to that, and I even had pizza and cookies yesterday (I did fill up my empty calories which is 300 eating those items though). I don't worry as much about trying to fill up each food group category. Do you know how many vegetables you have to eat? It is an insane amount. I even have like carrot sticks and spinach almost every day and it still is only like half the chart. I do usually fill up my fruit intake though. But I don't eat dairy products so I pretty much will never even get close to that bar.

 But it is cool to see how much you are eating. It has a ton of options so, you can say you ate 3 strawberries or 1 cup of strawberries and if they are cooked and if they had sugar on them and so on, and then see the nutritional value of that. It even has some store bought products that you can enter in too. Homemade meals I enter in individually each ingredient, which can be a pain, but you can save those meals so it remembers it and you don't have to do it every time, you just click on that meal.

It also has a tracker for your exercise, you can even add cleaning to your daily exercise, which makes me feel better. 

The site has you make goals and stuff like some of mine are not going over my daily empty calories and to exercise at least 150 min. a week. 

I really like it because I like to make lists and cross things off, it makes me more productive, so this is kind of a version of a list for me. 

But it makes me more accountable in what I eat because I eat a cookie and then I have to enter it into the site. I guess that doesn't work for everyone, but it definitely helps me! So if you think it would help you, you should totally give it a try. 

All opinions in this post are 100% mine and I was not compensated in anyway for promoting this. 

Meal Plan Monday

It seems like I haven't posted in like forever, packing, moving, unpacking and getting sick twice hasn't given me much time to post, or much to post about it seems. 

And I have a couple craft projects that I want to post, but my camera just died and I don't remember where our charger is. I am hoping I find it soon, or I am screwed. 

But anyways, I thought I would share some of my ideas for meals that I am making this week, in case any one is in need of some ideas. 

Monday: 

Chicken Fajitas with Rice-A-Roni Chicken Fajita flavored rice.

I love these, I have been craving them so much.

Its a really easy meal and not too expensive either. 

Tuesday:

Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches with cantaloupe. 

These are incredibly simple to make. I think steak is too expensive to buy for these, so I get roast beef lunch meat, green peppers, onions, and rolls. I saute the green peppers and onions in olive oil and then add the roast beef and saute it for a couple more minutes. Then put it all on a lovely roll. Easy Peasy. 

Wednesday:

Santa Fe Tortilla Soup

I am making this one from the Body For Life cookbook. I don't have the recipe for this on here, sorry about that, I always forget to take a picture of it when I make, but I will this time, if I can find the camera charger. But here is another recipe for one of my favorite Tortilla soups  . 

Thursday:

Grilled Chicken with Rice-A-Roni chicken flavored rice and watermelon

I am trying out a new recipe I found on pinterest you can find it at Diary of Dave's Wife. I hope its yummy! 

Friday:

Spaghetti with Texas Toast

Made with Semi-homemade sauce that I made for my little sister last month and she said it was the best spaghetti she had ever had, this girl is picky people, so I was pretty proud! And I just buy a box of frozen garlic texas toast, my fav! 

Saturday: 

Bacon wrapped Chicken with watermelon and steamed vegetables

I am going to do a whole post on these bad boys. Man they are freaking amazing. And surprisingly really simple. I use turkey bacon, healthier and almost as good. You can find the recipe over at Jam hands. And I just buy a bag of steamable veggies in the freezer section. 

Sunday: 

Beef Enchiladas. I am craving me some Mexican food! 

My little model

We went and took A-Cakes 7 month photos with my sister-in-law. We are so lucky we have three amazing girlies in our family that all take super amazing photos. You can find my SIL's photo information over on Facebook. Its called Sincerely, Lex Photography. She is moving to California (boo!), so if you live there, you should contact her for some photo-shoots. Or you can ask me about my other amazing SIL's that do photography too if you live in Utah. 

A-Cakes was happy all day, but for some reason, we got out there and she decided to be an ornery goose. So smiles were few and far between, but I think the pictures turned out gorgeous. 

We were exhausted by the end trying to make a ton of noise to get her to look at us, and not the grass. 

Finally a smile. And thats just cause she was being held by daddy.

We snapped a few family ones in there too. 

Beef Enchiladas

My mom used to make these Enchiladas when I was growing up. I was not an easy kid to cook for since I hate cheese and most other dairy products, so finding things I would eat is tough. Usually she would make something that she could easily leave a spot without cheese for me, but add cheese for the rest of my family, who all love cheese (ick!)

But I always loved these enchiladas, and they are pretty easy to make, not very much work at all. I make them pretty often because Jeremy loves them. It was one of the first meals I made for him once we were married. 

Beef Enchiladas

1 lb ground beef

1 small can green chiles

1 can refried beans

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp cumin

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

 5-7 tortillas

1 can green or red enchilada sauce

Cook the Ground beef  with garlic powder, salt and pepper, and cumin, until no longer in pink. Add green chiles, saute about 1 minute. Add refried beans, mix until beans are pliable and all mixed through. 

While that is cooking, get a 9X13 pan, spray with cooking spray, and add a tiny bit of enchilada sauce to the bottom of the pan, and move pan around so the sauce spreads. 

Get your tortillas and add the beef mixture to the tortilla, so it spreads across the tortilla in a line, you can add more or less depending on how big you want your enchiladas. I used mine to make 5 because I only had 5 tortillas, but I usually use six. 

Now line your enchiladas along the bottom of the pan. 

Add more enchilada sauce and cover the tortillas. 

Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes, cover in cheese, bake another 10 minutes or until tortillas are a little crispy on the edges. 

Serve! 

Beef, green chiles and beans mixed together