Menu Plan Monday - January 16, 2017

Hello my friends! Hope this week has treated you well! This was our first full week back to full time everything - school, all the after school activities and of course, work. I'm extremely proud of myself (and my friend Alana) for going two straight weeks bringing lunch to work and not going out! It's like a miracle! We used to go out for lunch (and spend money) every single day pretty much. If we had brought lunch, we would still go out and shop in the mall beside work. Now we hang out in one of the lunchrooms at work and make plans, get organized and figure out what's next up!

Our family managed to mostly stay on the menu plan this week too! There were a couple of days where I need to swap one days' planned dinner for another, but we stuck pretty close! I'm also trying to get back on the organizing train. For those of you who have read along with me since the beginning will remember, a lot of my past posts were about simple living, following a minimal-ish lifestyle and household organizing. Since the first of January I have been following along with Peter Walsh's #31Days2GetOrganized and trying to complete the mini-challenges each day.

Here's a photo from the challenge this week to get your kitchen utensils under control - it was an easy task, I didn't spend more than ten minutes working on it, but gave me a little sense of accomplishment and incentive to keep going on my journey!

On the menu this week - a few family favorites, and one of my faves too!!

Monday: Turkey Pot Pie
Tuesday: Ravioli Lasagne (my favorite!)
Wednesday: Crockpot Honey Chicken
Thursday: Salmon, rice and veggies
Friday: Miss A's heading to camp for the weekend! Out for dinner!
Saturday: Baked ham, mashed potatoes and veggies
Sunday: Teriyaki chicken rice and veggies

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I really appreciate it!! Here's hoping this is the first of many posts this year!! I'll be linking up to OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday, stop over and check it out!!

Menu Plan Monday - January 9, 2017

Good morning my friends!! I hope you all had a great first week back to work and school! We were back for four days of work, school, dance, brownies, girl guides, catechism and play dates and bottle drives and madness... but thankfully I had my very first menu plan of the year all queued up and ready. Guess what?? We followed along most of the week!

I made these lovelies for dinner last Sunday and kept the rest for lunches this week!

Now that I'm back on the menu planning train, I have to share with you all my latest and greatest find - online grocery shopping!! Our local grocery store, Save On Foods offers two different kinds of service - online shopping where they pick your order and they deliver for a nominal fee (between $5-8) OR (and even more amazing) you can order online, they pick the order for you and you can pick it up in a time slot you pick! I usually plan my orders so they are ready for pickup while my girls are dancing and my hubby picks them up while they are at the studio.

This week, when it came time to use the store's app, I checked in with my menu plan and placed my order for whichever ingredients I knew I would need for the week's recipes. I also love that if we run out of something during the week, I can open the app and add it to my cart right away so I don't forget. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

On this week's menu, we are having one pick from each of the kiddos! They love having input into what we are having for dinner, and I love that I'm making something that won't cause an argument at the dinner table. Win/Win!

Monday: Spaghetti and meat sauce
Tuesday: Fish burgers and fries
Wednesday: Tortellini with Prawns
Thursday: Tacos and cheese quesadillas
Friday: Baked ham, mashed potatoes and beans

Saturday: Home made shake and bake chicken, roasted potatoes and salad
Sunday: Beef and broccoli

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I really appreciate it!! Here's hoping this is the first of many posts this year!! I'll be linking up to OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday, stop over and check it out!!

How to Host a Successful Christmas Cookie Exchange

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is coming up next week! This year will mark the 10th Annual Christmas Cookie Exchange that I will be hosting at my house! It’s a day for us ladies to get together over tea or wine and have appies and catch up, all while trading our new or favorite holiday cookie recipes!!

If you have never been a part of a Christmas Cookie Exchange, let me tell you how it works!! It’s surprisingly easy and a LOT of fun!! Basically, each person who attends the party brings six dozen of their favorite type of cookie, then we make the exchange and everyone brings six dozen different cookies home!!

Ten years ago when I hosted my first cookie exchange, I wasn’t really sure how it worked, so I googled, and found this page . This site gave me a very specific set of rules that, for the first couple of years I was very specific about following… and honestly some of the rules were a little too much for me, so I have relaxed them into the rules below and things have gone much more smoothly ever since!

Recipe for these beauties

Before the rules, a few tips to make your life easier as the hostess of the cookie party!! First of all, give LOTS of notice! I usually send out my invitations (usually as a facebook event) about a month or so before the party. People have very busy social calendars, and if they know about this event well enough ahead, they can also plan to make time for the baking part of the party!! Although some people get stressed about having to bake 6 dozen cookies, remember: that usually just means two batches of a single recipe, since most cookie recipes make 3 dozen cookies!!

Second: Don’t stress!! This is supposed to be a fun event!! I usually have my Christmas tree up mid-November, so my Christmas décor is the only decorating I do for the party, well aside from the beautiful cookies all my friends bring along!! I buy or make a few easy appetizers, open a few bottles of wine and make a pot of tea and we just sit and chat and catch up with each other!

If you have the time, ask your friends to provide you their recipes ahead of time and put together a Cookie Book. It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s super easy and your friends will thank you! When I hosted my first cookie exchange, I asked people to bring copies of their recipes, so if someone LOVED a cookie, they’d be able to bake it! Inevitably, people would forget, so I try to collect everyone’s recipe the week before and print them all off into a little booklet for my guests to bring home! Voila, ten minutes of copying and pasting into a Word document and all of our new favorite recipes in one place to share!!

Finally, I know that people are busy, but busy people still want cookies!! I allow people to bake their cookies and drop them off to me before the party and I will do the exchanging part for them. Last year I had one participant in labour, and another working and one more that had a different party to attend… but they all wanted to bake and exchange cookies, so they brought them over before the party, prepackaged and ready to go and I exchanged their yummies for them! One last thing that may make your life as Cookie Party hostess a little better… and by no means is this necessary, it’s just my OCD coming out to play… if you have an odd number of participants, and you won’t be able to evenly divide cookies (for example 11 people x 6 dozen (72) cookies = 6.54 of each recipe per participant) whip up an extra batch of cookies.

See how amazing having twelve different types of cookies can be????

As the hostess, you are likely already a baker and have a ton of recipes in your arsenal. In addition to making it easier to divide and package cookies (especially when many of the guests pre-package their cookies), if you bring two entries to the party, you LEAVE with double the cookies!!

So, without further ado, and using guidance from Robin’s Rules to Hosting a Cookie Exchange, here are my…

1. All cookies should be homemade, baked and main ingredient must be a type of flour. This means your guests will bring COOKIES. Not Rice Krispie treats, not meringues, COOKIES. After all, this is a Cookie Exchange!!

2. No plain chocolate chip cookies, cookie mixes, no-bakes, meringues or bars. Anyone can open a package and add an egg, this party is for cookies made with love. We allowed bars one year, and they didn’t cut well, they weren’t evenly sized, and they didn’t package and stack like cookies.

3. Please bring 6 dozen total cookies… well maybe a couple extra to share… but really, six dozen cookies. One recipe baked twice, 72 cookies. It makes it easier for sorting and separating when the actual exchange part of the party, and means that no one is shorted cookies because someone only managed to bake 60 cookies.

4. Email a copy of your recipe before the party (or bring recipe to the party). In addition to putting together a Cookie Book like I do, having everyone provide their planned recipes in advance means that you won’t get duplicates. Not that having four kinds of shortbread is the worst problem to have, but variety is the spice of life!!

5. If you don't have time to bake, or have burnt your cookies, but still want to attend, you must go to a real bakery and buy 6 dozen yummy cookies. This one is pretty self-explanatory! In all of my years, it’s only happened on time that someone had to bring bakery cookies!!

I am so so so looking forward to this year’s festivities!! This year’s Cookie Book already has recipes for Oreo Peppermint Crunch Cookies and Salted Caramel Stuffed Snickerdoodles. I. Can’t. Wait!!!!!! Thanks for stopping by today! I really appreciate it!!

Menu Plan Monday - Oct 19, 2015

I made this!! Can you believe it??? 

Good morning!! I hope you all had a great weekend – mine was completely chaotic, filled family photos with our fave photographer, birthday parties, Operation Shoreline Cleanup and a fun filled Paint Nite out with some of my fave ladies!

My minions and a friend cleaning up a local park as a community service #GirlGuidesinAction

I am so so so thankful that I was pushed by my friend Alana to get back to blogging. Without the push of making this schedule for myself, I pretty much didn’t plan a meal all summer and we just ate whatever was quick and easy, which was not necessarily wholesome and nutritious. This week we are fully booked once again, and the girls have a dance competition an hour away, so part of my menu “plan” will be planning to eat dinner on the road a few times!

I hope you will have time to check back in on the blog later this week! I’ll be posting about our master bedroom closet overhaul – it’s a big big big change!!

On the menu this week:
Monday: Spaghetti and meatballs
Tuesday: Lettuce wraps, gyoza and rice
Wednesday: Chicken fajitas and cheese quesadillas
Thursday: Homemade pizzas!!
Friday: Kids are at a birthday party – Date night dinner out for mama!!
Saturday: Kids dance competition! Dinner out!

Sunday: Tex Mex Lasagne
I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

Breakfast Sandwiches - Freezer Meal

If you are like me, one of your favorite meals of the day is breakfast. It’s so much my favorite that I can eat breakfast foods for lunch and dinner too! Like most other moms I know, I barely have time to run a brush through my hair and find clothes that match before dashing out the door to work each day. Most days I don’t have breakfast before I leave for work, so if I don’t remember to pack and apple and some yogurt, I’ve got a long wait until lunchtime.

In the past I’ve made a few different freezer breakfast meals that I can bring along to work and keep in the freezer to microwave on crazy days. I’ve done Bacon and Egg Breakfast Muffins , Breakfast Burritos, plus the usual type of baked breakfast (banana bread muffins, etc). This time I wanted to pull together a quick and easy (to prep) breakfast sandwich that’s easy and healthy at the same time.

I picked up the essential ingredients (all four of them!) and got to work yesterday. All in, this task took me about 20 minutes, including cooking and packaging time!

Breakfast Sandwiches – Freezer meal

Ingredients
1 package of a dozen English muffins
1 dozen eggs
1 package of deli ham
12 slices of cheese
Salt and pepper

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375F. Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray. Crack an egg into each muffin cup, use a fork to slightly beat the egg. Season with salt and pepper and bake in the oven for approximately 15 minutes, until the egg whites are cooked through.

While the eggs are baking away, slice the English muffins in half and put a slice of cheese and some ham on one half of the muffin. When the eggs are finished baking, put one egg on each of the muffin halves. Top with the English muffin top.

Wrap each breakfast sandwich in Saran wrap and store them in a Ziploc bag. When you are ready to eat them, unwrap from the Saran wrap and microwave for approximately 1:45-2 minutes.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! Hope you enjoyed this recipe! I had my first breakfast sandwich at work today and it was fantastic!!

Thanks for stopping by today, I really appreciate it!

Menu Plan Monday - Oct 5, 2015

Hello everyone! I hope you are all keeping well!! I know it’s been ages since I checked in her – I missed a whole summer – but I’m hoping to be able to get back to blogging a little bit at a time. As I am sure all the mama’s out there know, back to school is a crazy time, and my girls are scheduled to the max! Between their activities and me working full time, this place seems to get forgotten.

After taking the summer off from planning and organizing and trying to enjoy the many adventures with my husband and girls, I finally managed to pull together a menu plan for the month of September. Even more exciting than a whole month of dinners all planned out?? We managed to stick to it most days!!

Today I wrote out our menu plan for the rest of October. When I printed out the blank calendar, I had a complete brain freeze. I couldn’t think of a single recipe that I wanted to make… I went through my archives on the blog and found some recipes that I can’t wait to make again! First on the list - Baked SalmonParmesan and Turkey Meatloaf!!

It’s Thanksgiving here in Canada this weekend, so with the extra day off from work I’m going to hopefully manage to get a couple of freezer meals (Tex Mex Lasagne and Baked Ziti) prepped and put together to make the rest of the month even easier!

On the menu this week:
Monday: Pizza and Salad
Tuesday: Scalloped potatoes, BBQ chicken breasts and beans
Wednesday: Chicken enchiladas, cheese quesadillas
Thursday: Baked salmon parmesan, rice and veggies

Friday: Thanksgiving dinner at my mom’s – I’m bringing Chocolate Éclair Cake
Saturday: Turkey pot pie
Sunday: My birthday! Maybe we’ll go out for dinner?

Here’s hoping I can manage to a) follow the menu plan; and b) continue on the planned blogging schedule I’m trying to keep! Wish me luck!

I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

Super Amazing Giant Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rainy Sundays in our house mean one thing - time to bake!! After another busy week, and some sleepless nights with a certain 8 year old, it was nice to come home from church today and have absolutely nothing to do. The hubs headed off to work and the girls and I decided to retry a recipe that completely failed a few weeks ago!

My first attempt at these cookies - FAIL!!

I found this recipe in HGTV Magazine and made a few tweaks to accommodate a few ingredients I didn't have on hand. After following the actual baking directions this time, these cookies turned out soft, chewy and gigantic!! The first time I made these cookies, I just used my regular cookie scoop and placed them "normally" on the cookie sheet for baking. Had I read the full baking instructions, I would have noticed that this recipe makes "big, bakery-size, gooey cookies."

Super Amazing Giant Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe adapted from HGTV Magazine

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups chocolate chips
1 1/4 cups rolled oats

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375F and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Beat the butter and sugar together for two minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until just incorporated. Scrape the edge of the bowl and mix again to make sure it all comes together.

Add the flour, baking soda and salt and mix until combined. Next, stir in the chocolate chips and rolled oats.

Form the dough into balls of about 4 tbsp each (for me, this meant a heaping scoop of my large cookie scoop). Arrange the dough onto the parchment lined baking sheets approximately 2 inches apart. *** This is the most important step!! These cookies spread out a LOT, so make sure to space them well. I used a large cookie sheet and only had 14 cookies on each sheet.

Bake until the cookies are lightly browned on the edges, approximately 15 minutes. Let cool for for two minutes then remove to baking rack to cool completely.

I hope you all love these cookies as much as the girls and I do!! Thanks for stopping by, I hope I have inspired you today!

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Sandwiches. When I was a kid, that's what I had in my Rainbow Brite lunchbox. Every. Day. Flash forward so many years into the future and I have two littles packing lunchbags to school every day. BOTH of my small people refuse to eat sandwiches and this mama is running out of options.

I have had a lot of success with sending baked goods with the girls instead of sandwiches, and I wanted to try something other than these (awesome) Banana Oat Muffins that I make every other week. While watching tv the other week, we saw an ad for Robin Hood quick breads and the girls wanted to try them. I hit up my fave recipe site allrecipes.com and searched for a Cinnamon Bread recipe. I specifically was looking for a recipe that didn't include yeast (like a loaf of bread) and could be made with ingredients that I have on hand all the time.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread 
Recipe adapted from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients

1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9x5 loaf pan with non-stick spray. In a small bowl, combine 1/3 cup brown sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and remaining brown sugar. Combine egg, milk and vegetable oil. Stir wet ingredients into dry and stir until just combined.

Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan, sprinkle with half of the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Pour the remaining half of the batter on top, and then top with the remaining cinnamon and sugar.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the loaf comes out clean. Let cool on wire rack for ten minutes. Slice into delicious slices and serve warm if you can!!

I plan on making these into muffins next week for the littles to be able to pack along easier when they go to dance class. When I make them into muffins, I'll modify this recipe with the new cook time.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope I've inspired you a little today!