Happy New Year! I resolve to...

I am sure there are millions of people blogging today about what their New Years resolutions are... It's been a while since I blogged and I thought my resolutions for 2013 seemed like a good place to start back up!

The past couple of weeks we have been moving into our new home (yay!), here's Lylli running toward our home sweet home!

Anywho, the more time I spend in our own home the more I long to be a stay at home domestic goddess once again! I have noticed that owning our own home lights a fire of pride under my tush. I have plans and dreams for our home that I never had for a rental. I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon. More so than ever I am dreaming of the day I can be a stay at home mom and wife again. 

So with all of that said I guess I have one primary resolution and a few secondary ones that support my primary one.

1) Resume my full time position as a homemaker
     2) Be uber, super disciplined with out budget
     3) Significantly reduce debt
     4) Create and stick to meal plans

So, there it is ladies and gentlemen ... Although I think I may have listed those backwards because 2-4 will help me reach my #1 resolution but I don't care because #1 is my #1 goal for 2013!! The past 2 weeks (after taking an eye opening look at our bank account and where our money has been disappearing to... eeep) we have REALLY buckled down and been watching our pennies and eating at home. This is delicious but difficult for us because eating out is both mine and my hubby's weakness. :-/ I have been reading some blogs I found on pinterest and getting ideas and one of the tips I came across was having each member in your family choose a dinner they want for the week you're planning for. This has been a great help for me since I am the one who does the meal planning and shopping, it takes the thinking out of at least 3, maybe 4 dinners a week. So, in long, I think I have regained my motivation and am starting out 2013 with a successful foot forward! 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading!!
 ~Casey

Playing catch up. The story of my life!

For those of you who care to follow our mission "dinner impossible", I apologize for my lack of posts. I have been taking pictures and had good intentions to post. Today's post will be multiple meals in one.
Day 6 we had "chili coke roast" with mashed potatoes and garlic green beans. It was really good and pretty easy too since the roast was a crock pot meal. This is a pic of Lylli's plate (I forgot to take a pic until after I ate!), don't mind her fat scraps!

Look how happy Lyl was to eat her dinner. lol

Day 7 we had some technical difficulties... The meal on the menu was bacon and cheese quiche with fried potatoes and this fell on a night that Luke was making dinner. When I got home from work he was working on the potatoes and the quiche was in the oven... I settled in to feed little baby Lucy while dinner was finishing cooking when I heard a noise of dismay (lol) emerge from the kitchen. Luke forgot to put the eggs in the quiche!! You don't have a quiche without eggs. Here is a pic of the non quiche...

Needless to say, we did not eat this for dinner. haha We did eat the potatoes and I made some scrambled eggs to eat with them. Dinner was saved and without a trip to taco bell! Yay us!
Day 8 was also a Luke night to prepare but he remembered all of the ingredients (success!). We had "brown sugar meatloaf", or "loaf" as the kids called it, with mashed potatoes, corn and rolls. It was so good!! And pretty easy too.

Day 9 was SO good and SO easy. Everyone should try this!! "mexican chicken" with rice and veggies. This was as easy as chicken in a pan, salsa over it, baked and pulled back out to top with cheese for the last few minutes of baking! We also had tortilla chips on the side. Yum yum yum!!

Day 10 is my last meal to catch up on with you. We tonight we had "burgundy pork", it was supposed to be beef but I had pork roast so I substituted. We had it over pasta. Super easy because it was in the crockpot all day and all I had to do tonight was boil the pasta. Nothing bad to say, everyone loved it!

I had forgotten to take a picture before we ate (again!) so this is part of what I packed up for Luke to take to lunch tomorrow. It tasted much better than it looks in this pic. lol
That catches me up for now... Tomorrow we have "apple butter pork loin" with baked beans on the menu and I am kind of excited. :)
Here are a couple of pictures that help you understand why it has taken me a while to find a moment to post.

My little helper. :) She keeps me busy!

I had a birthday!

4 crazy kids!!

Thanks for reading! ~Casey

My husband's new favorite!

Wow! Mission "dinner impossible" day 5 ended with my husband having a new favorite meal! That is saying A LOT. My father in law calls my hubby "spaghettisauras rex" because he love spaghetti so much and always has. Well look out spaghetti, there is a new favorite in town!
Dinner tonight was baked pesto chicken with garlic noodles and bread.
This picture really doesn't do it justice. Imagine chicken breast smothered in pesto sauce, baked to perfection then topped with a tomato slice and mozzarella and popped back in until melty cheesy goodness is reached. mmmm

So there it is people. Dinner 5, so simple and so delicious! ~Casey

Mission "Dinner Impossible" and a few other things

I missed a couple of posts... So for those of you following my mission, "Dinner Impossible" meals 3 and 4 were "bubble pizza" and a new take on "tuna noodle casserole".
The bubble pizza was a hit and super easy. It's made in a 9x13 dish with refrigerator biscuits on the bottom as the crust, ground beef mixed with spaghetti sauce and topped with cheese. This was even easier because Luke had already browned the beef on our prep day! It was easy, tasted good and the kids loved it. Can't beat that!
Here is a not so appetizing picture of the bubble pizza. lol It was like a spaghetti pizza if you can imagine that.

The tuna noodle I forgot to take a picture of and it is gone already! There wasn't anything really special about it, it was tuna noodle casserole. haha It was made with cream cheese though which made it yummy. Again, everyone loved it!
I'd say this mission is getting easier to stick to. We know we CAN, plus the kids are responding really well to it too and that is awesome!
On a non-dinner note, Lucy has her first tooth, can clap and can play peek a boo. All within the past 24 hours! GO Lucy!!
Here are a couple of pictures of our wonderful children, for your viewing pleasure. :)
Here are the big kids playing and getting along even! Please disregard our pitiful lawn!

 Here are my girlies. How sweet are they?!

Thanks for reading! ~Casey

Super Mom!!

I had so much energy yesterday! It is amazing the difference it makes when Lucy doesn't wake up 3 times a night! I slept straight from 10pm until 6:45am night before last and my energy level sky rocketed from it. Yesterday I cleaned and organized (more than the bare minimum!) and worked too, and then the normal ins and outs of running our home. To you it may not seem like much but to me this felt so good.
Ok, down to business. Mission 'dinner impossible' day 2 was chicken stroganoff with salad and garlic bread.

I forgot to buy the mushrooms so our stroganoff went without. Luke and the kids didn't mind not having mushrooms, but I would have liked them. lol It was really good otherwise though, even Cody cleaned his plate and we all know how picky he can be with food! As far as meal preparation goes, this meal was slightly less complicated than the porkchops. I took the chicken out of the freezer the night before and organized the ingredients we would need so they were easily accessed when needed... Another thing we did was we purchased ready to eat lettuce and frozen bread to save us time the day of.
Now I want to share my before and after pics of my refrigerator, I am so proud!

Before (what a mess!):

After (so beautifully organized!):

I am using that little red bin on the bottom left to hold our ingredients for the following day's meal. Right now it is holding items to make "bubble pizza", kids are excited for this one and they really like being able to look at that saweeeeeeet dry erase menu I made and know what we are eating for dinner each night.

~Casey

Deliciously complicated...

We started our menu today, like I said yesterday we started with honey pecan porkchops, sweet potatoes and broccoli. I have to say that this was a MIGHTY delicious dish. The chops reminded me of my favorite McDonald's meal when I was a kiddo, chicken nugs with honey! Although this picture doesn't look so great, this was my 2nd helping. lol

Lucy likes it!

So, yes. It was very, very good but still not as simple as we need in order to keep up a good dinner routine. I am hoping that as we continue it will get easier and we will get better at knowing what we need to do and can do on our prep day to be ready and relaxed at dinner time. One of the items I made to help us stay organized is this menu, I saw this idea on Pinterest.com.

I took a dollar store picture frame that we had, I spray painted it, printed this printable menu and put it in the frame. We are using a dry erase marker to write the meals so that we can reuse it every week. I should probably also say that the site we are getting our meal ideas from is http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/easy-dinner-recipes-week-one.html. Thank you "momswhothink"!
Tomorrow we are having chicken stroganoff. I am hungry just thinking about it! ~Casey

Dinner. I dread it.

Oh man, it's been a while since my last post. The whole being a working mom thing isn't easy! Working, being a mom and wife and maintaining a decent looking home is difficult but doing all of that and planning, shopping for and preparing meals seems like an impossible task. Thinking about it overwhelms me!
I recently checked a book out at our local library called cooking once a month, or something like that, and the idea seems fantastic but it was written in the 80's so some of the meals don't appeal to us and also some of the items aren't available anymore. We have decided to try this on a smaller level though and with our own recipes and not cooking everything ahead of time but preparing what we can and know how to in advance to help cut down on the weekday evening burden. This week being our first week we shopped today (still missing a few items, hopefully we will get a better hang of things as we continue) and prepared some things for our dinners this week. We cooked some of our meats and chopped our veggies. Prep work is the worst when all you want to do is eat! Here are pics of Luke and baby Lucy helping with meat and veggies for the week!

So we have 7 meals planned for this week and a cute weekly menu to fill in (I will post pics!), tomorrow we are having honey pecan pork chops with baked sweet potatoes and broccoli. Luke will be doing a lot of the "day of" work since I am working afternoons and he is used to doing simple meals like spaghetti, chicken and rice or mac and cheese so this will be a change for him...  I know he can do it though!! Wish us luck~Casey

Adding another item to my list of things to do...

I was offered a job yesterday with the hospital here in town and accepted! This is an answer to prayer, although not the answer I was hoping for. haha
This income will be coming RIGHT when we need it, so I am grateful and looking forward to a new chapter. It is part time, but I am going to miss my little baby while I'm away, I miss her just looking at this!

I will also have to give up some of my mommy/wifey duties and I am quite bummed about that. I love being a wife and mom and taking care of my family in that way and am struggling with giving some of that up... Prayers are happily accepted on this matter! 

Jewelry makes me feel pretty!

Yesterday marked the beginning of a new adventure, we had a great kick off party for my Independent Sales Consultant venture with Cookie Lee Jewelry! I had a few sales and am using that money to purchase Spring/Summer 2012 items for my upcoming parties. I am so excited for the parties that are coming up, I can't wait to show the new pieces I am purchasing and have some fun times with some fun ladies!! 

Anyone who's interested in checking out the jewelry can see the catalog online here http://cookielee.com/shop.aspx?p=catalog and you can contact me directly with orders at CaseyWithCookieLee@yahoo.com.

DIY task of the day: Homemade Fabric Softener

Since starting to make homemade laundry detergent for ourselves about a year and a half ago, I had cut out fabric softener because of the extra expense. I had tried using vinegar but just wasn't so pleased with the results that I kept it up. The other day I ran across a "recipe" for homemade fabric softener so I whipped some up today and it was SO easy and inexpensive! I haven't done any laundry with it yet, but it smells amazing so I know it will smell great in our laundry. The next thing I want to try with our laundry are those "dryer ball" things ...

They are supposed to help with static. 

Fabric softener:

I made a "how to" on the fabric softener, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tFQHXqhjdw&feature=youtu.be

Rainbow-Cakes (as Lylli called them)

We made fun "rainbow-cakes" for breakfast this morning! I was inspired by a photo I saw on pinterest of regular foods we eat a lot that had been fancied up with food coloring. This morning I made my favorite homemade pancake batter and the hubster and I experimented with the colors. The cakes were just as delicious as ever but just a tad more fun...

Luke's creation, the 4 on top are all cooked 

together to make one big "rainbow-cake"!

How fun would the pumpkins be around Halloween?!

Lyll-O-Lantern! haha

Homemade Mopping Solution

So today I decided to give a homemade mopping solution a shot. I had been using the reusable mopping wipey things but our floors just always seemed dirty still so when we ran out of wipeys I decided to bust out our regular mop and give it another go with a homemade solution. I found a site that had a few different "recipes" and this is the one I decided to go with:
1 Gallon warm water, 1/2 Cup white vinegar, 2 Tablespoons mild dish soap.

I mixed the solution in my kitchen sink and mopped from there...

Before pictures...

After pictures!!!!

I am so happy with the results! The solution got my floor much cleaner then the mopey wipers, AND I saved money because I had everything on hand to make the solution! !

For the other "recipes" go to: http://housekeeping.about.com/od/surfacefloors/p/homemademopping.htm

http://youtu.be/-VA4qdh5KSA