Monday, May 31, 2010

Menu Plan Monday

I know it's been a while since I have posted my menus. I have been doing them...most weeks. It really does help to save money and make shopping easier if I know what I am going to have. I try to sit down with my coupons and ads to see what is on sale and make my menu off of that. It does help save a lot of money!


Check out I'm An Organizing Junkie to get more menu ideas!

Monday:  Picnic Lunch at the Beach
                Dinner: Turkey Salad w/ Cherries and Walnuts

Tuesday: Firecracker Chicken

Wednesday: Crock Pot roast w/ veggies

Thursday: Chicken Sandwiches, herb-roasted oven fries

Friday: Taco Salad

Saturday: Lunch: Pancakes and sausage
               Dinner: Buffalo Sliders, chips, veggies

Sunday: Unknown for lunch but we always have Pizza for dinner so that's nice! :)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

More Cake! :)

Rebekah was recently invited to some friends' birthday party. Robby and Will are twins who turned five. Sadly our whole family was hit with a super nasty stomach bug and was not able to make it. She was pretty disappointed as she is still really "into" birthdays - I mean really, what 3 year old isn't? Cake, presents, balloons, games? Life doesn't get any better. 

So I made her a promise that once we were all better we would have them over and have a party for them at our house.  "With a cake?" of course.

Bekah wanted another purse cake but I told her that five year old boys were probably not real excited about a purse cake so we headed to the computer and looked through many, many cakes where she decided on a car one. Thank goodness I still had my friend's round cake pans since I hadn't bought any for myself yet (Thanks Julie!) So we made them this race track. We got the cars but I wasn't thinking clearly and chose brown and green cars to put on a brown and green cake. Should have gone with red and yellow to show up a bit more - but the kids didn't care so I'm not going to stress about it. :)


Will and Robby - big smiles before cutting the cake!
Robby and Bekah enjoying every bite (and the green tongues it gave them)
Lizzie enjoyed the cake too...she mixed it right in with her pizza...mmm yum!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

What is that? Or things we do for our kids!

Can you guess what this is - Yes, it's food - it's edible...

Does this picture help?

Yes - it's black spaghetti. Pasta continues to be one of the most negative foods for Rebekah so we are working with her on making it a little more "fun" for her. I recently took Rebekah to the pasta aisle at Super Target and told her she could choose any type of pasta to try. I thought for sure she would go for the Mickey shaped pasta, or the daisies, or the letters - or maybe even the little O's but nope - not my daughter - she marched right over and picked the black spaghetti. She declared it "my favorite" (I'm not sure she quite has the understanding of that yet).

So I thought - what the heck...I'll try it. I didn't bother looking at any recipes. I just cooked it like spaghetti as per the instructions on the back and while it didn't look too appetizing to us it did taste just like regular spaghetti. Once you covered it with the red sauce it wasn't so bad.

Of course - she didn't eat any. She did touch it though and tried slurping it which is a huge step. If you remember when we started this at one point when pasta would touch her lips she would vomit almost instantly. She still hasn't eaten any pasta but is much more tolerant of it.

I found out later it's colored with either squid ink or cuttlefish ink. I think I'm glad I didn't know that before hand. I recently looked online to see what others were saying about it and found an Italian recipe blog that made it look a little more appetizing...but it still doesn't look like something I would make on a regular basis.  Feel free to check it out at lucullian delights.


Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Minnesota Weather Confusion

** Another post written a while back!

We live in MN - a land of 10,000 lakes and weather that changes every few minutes - or so it seems some days.  It's hard to be three in MN and after months and months of having to wear coats and boots and hats and mittens and scarves and layers upon layers to suddenly be free from all that. We finally had a nice warm day after a cold, cold winter. We loved playing outside but Bekah just was not sure about being out there without boots. It's hard to give up those habits. She wanted to wear her coat too but after figuring out it didn't fit over the wings she was content to go outside without it.

Grandma's Birthday

***Note: I wrote this post long ago. Then I got a few questions asking why I didn't blog anymore. Low and behold instead of posting my blogs I have just been saving them so I will get them out for my few dedicated readers.

My mom came to visit in late march - once again she was willing to spend her birthday with us. Rebekah is really into birthdays these days and is always asking when someones birthday is. I found a site online that has a gazillion (well, maybe hundreds) of birthday cake ideas - some with video. Bekah and I would sit and watch them make these fun cakes.

When I told her Grandma was going to be her for her birthday her response was ... "We have to make her a birthday cake!" I asked her "What kind of cake would you like to make her?"  "A purse cake," was her reply. So we went online and found a video that taught us how to do the "purse cake". Of course I didn't have the right pans for it but a friend was coming to visit that day and I called her quick and asked her if she had two 8 inch round cake pans --( I mean really, how does one NOT have round cake pans???)  She came through for me (thanks Julie- I promise I'll get them back to you...someday!)

Bekah and I made the cake. She is a great stirrer and loves to dump the ingredients in. She is finally getting the concept that you have to cook the food. (When we first started baking together as soon as the ingredients were mixed and in the pan she wanted to eat it - thinking it was done.)

We had to wait a day to decorate it until I got the rest of the ingredients and had time but I think it turned out pretty cute! :) Bekah was thrilled with it and still talks about it. It was pretty tasty too although I wasn't quite sure how to cut it. It's not the quality of Amanda's cake over at I Am Baker - no secret surprises inside and yes - it came out of a box but I'm still pretty happy with it. Plus Mom and Bekah liked it so that's all that matters...right?







Here's mom with her cake. In case you're wondering why it looks like we gave Grandma a memory game and snowman coloring book let me assure you - we didn't. We got her a strawberry pot (which Bekah gave the secret away) so hopefully she will have fresh strawberries this summer. My friend that was coming over brought some Christmas presents for the girls that they never received. We were to go to their house for Christmas Eve but we had a terrible snow storm so ended up staying home and this was the first chance we had to get together - only three months late!