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!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving friends!! This weekend we have so much to be thankful for - a healthy family, beautiful children, turkey dinner with my parents, siblings and beautiful niece and nephews!! I managed to put together a Chocolate Eclair Cake for our Thanksgiving dessert, and it was delish!!

I am thankful for my husband - also known as the Laundry Fairy. He works hard for our family and will always make sure we have everything we need (before he turns on the football game).

I am thankful for my children - these two gorgeous girls who test and challenge me every day to be a better mother, teacher and friend. Every day I learn something from them, and I hope they know that I love them to the moon and back.

Seriously?? I took 14 photos and this is the best one!!

I am thankful for our family - parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. I know that they are always there when we need them and can be counted on for everything - fixing a leak, emergency babysitting, sharing a cuppa and some chocolate digestives. Our moms pick up the girls from school and are always around to spend time with the girls for which I am eternally grateful.

I am thankful for turkey dinner. This is the first year my side of the family didn't have our traditional dinner for 50 (yes, 50!!). Although I miss seeing my aunts, uncles and cousins, my dad cooked us an amazing turkey and ham dinner this year. And I got the leftovers for Turkey Pot Pie. Life is good.

I am thankful for my friends. We are so lucky to be surrounded by amazing people. Friends who live next door and pop in for a cup of tea and a design consultation, friends at work who can tell when I need a hug or a cup of tea (I'm sensing a common theme here... happiness is a cuppa tea...and sometimes a glass of wine).

As the sun sets tonight on my 36th year, and I celebrate Thanksgiving and my birthday with my favorite faces, I am thankful for all of the gifts in my life. I hope that this coming year is as amazing as all those before. Cheers!!

Thanks for stopping by for a read 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!!

End of the Year Teacher Presents - S'mores Gifts!

Hello friends!! I hope you all are having a fantastic day! It’s been a while since I checked in, but as we get closer to the end of the school year, it was time to put together some awesome gifties for some pretty amazing people.

My girls are blessed to have some pretty amazing teachers and leaders. This year the girls came so far in school and in dance and that can be attributed to their awesome teachers. The girls also both started in girl guiding (Miss E in Sparks and Miss A in Brownies) and had an absolute blast. I wanted say thanks to their school and dance teachers and their guiding leaders in a special way.

One of our favorite treats in the summertime are s’mores. We camp a lot, and we often make s’more-gasboards with fun ingredients to up our s’mores game! So we decided to make s’mores gift baskets for our special teachers. I hit up my local dollar store and found small cooler bags to use as my “baskets” and got to work filling them up.

We picked up marshmallow roasting sticks, marshmallows, graham crackers (the necessities), and then got a couple of types of chocolate (one with caramel, of course!!). I just printed a cute little tag for the front of the gift and tied it up with the cooler bag straps! Easy peasy!

For the tags, I made a few different types:

• School was s’more fun because you were my teacher!

• Dance was s’more fun because you were my teacher!

• Brownies was s’more fun because you were my leader!

Even though my sister says all teachers actually want is a gift certificate to Starbucks or some wine, I’d like to think that our teachers will like these gifties!

Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope I’ve inspired you today!!

Menu Plan Monday - March 30, 2015

Happy Monday my friends! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! If you live out here on the Wet (I mean West) Coast, I hope you managed to stay dry! We had a pretty low-key weekend, which almost never happens, but it gave us the opportunity to re-try a cookie recipe that failed for us a few weeks ago. Did you see it? We made Super Amazing Giant Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies!!

Belle at the World Irish Dance Championships!!

Our schedule is a little all over the map this week. We have a week off from dance, as our teachers at the Steel School of Irish Dance are accompanying some of our dancers to the World Irish Dancing Championships in Montreal!! Here is a photo of the dancer who inspires my girls to dance - her name is Belle and she is amazing!! 11 years old and dancing on a World Stage!!!

Since we'll be home Monday and Tuesday, we expand our dinner options! Normally we only have an hour between activities to prep/cook/eat dinner, so this week we'll be able to have a proper dinner. Also this week, my lovely husband and I are heading out to a fancy award dinner. My husband is up for an award at work, and I can't be more proud.

On the menu this week:

Monday: New recipe! Spicy smoked sausage alfredo bake
Tuesday: Smashed potatoes, turkey meatballs and veggies
Wednesday: Mom and Dad having dinner out!
Thursday: Mac n cheese
Friday: Salmon, rice and steamed asparagus
Saturday: Cheeseburgers and fries
Sunday: Easter Dinner with family

I'll be linking up with OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday - you should 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!

Menu Plan Monday - March 23, 2015

Happy Monday! Well it looks like we are back to real life today. I’m back to work, the kids are back to school, all of our activities are back on the calendar. Although I’m happy that we are back to a semblance of normalcy, it was nice to have a little bit of downtime last week in the evenings.

Our spring break was filled with accordion music, wigs, buns and dance shoes. The girls danced in twelve shows over the span of three days and had an absolute blast. Although it was a lot of work for the girls, they had a great time, and their dancing was an amazing treat for the seniors for whom they danced.

Last week I made Twix Shortbread Cookies! They were super delicious and I think you should definitely make a batch!!

On the menu this week:

Monday: Tortellini alfredo with prawns
Tuesday: Chicken fajitas
Wednesday: Kid’s cooking night! Fish and chips & salad
Thursday: Perogies, turkey meatloaf and balsamic glazed carrots
Friday: Date night! The kids are sleeping over with their Auntie!
Saturday: Miss A & Mommy night out, Miss E is going to the Whitecaps game with Daddy
Sunday: Kung pao chicken and rice
I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!