Strawberry Sparkles

We did an easy, yummy craft today that I thought I would share.  I got the idea from FamilyFun.com.  This is one of my new favorite websites, by the way. 

Their website calls for a cream cheese mixed with a little powder sugar, vanilla, and milk but my cream cheese was still too cold to mix well, so I borrowed an idea from my good friend.  Her favorite way to eat strawberries is with sour cream and brown sugar.  So I used sour cream instead and it worked just fine.  Then we dipped in colored sugar.  I bought the blue and yellow from the store and tried making the pink with sugar and food coloring.  It worked pretty well, but dissolved really quickly.  

 Here is Ryan enjoying his strawberries once we were all done:

Sick

This little guys is usually very healthy, but he his sick for the second time in a month.  I think that his immune system was already worn down a little from his last cold, so when this nasty virus came along, he didn't stand a chance.  This is the sickest that I have ever seen him.  His fever got up to 103.  He's had a runny nose, a slight cough, and had thrown up a couple of times. Poor guy.  I hope he feels better soon!

Meal Planning

I love cooking.  I love making new recipes.  But I also love not having to think about what to make when dinnertime comes around.  I’ve tried a few different ideas to help me stay organized when it comes to meal planning, and I think I have found one that works for me.  I got the idea from this Pocket Full of Posies: Perfect Pocket Meal Planning.  I liked the idea, but I needed to tweak it to fit my needs.  

The most time consuming part of this whole project was organizing and formatting all of my recipes.  I have printed them on card stock and cut them down to be a 4x6 card.  On the front I have put the recipe:

 

On the back is the ingredient list broken down into categories: 

  

This makes it really easy when I go to make my shopping list.  I use this back side and quickly jot down all the ingredients that I need.  If I already have the item on hand, I don’t write it down.

I then made my pocket organizer.  Originally I wanted four pockets in all, so that I would be able to plan out an entire month at a time, but I messed up.  Instead there are only three pockets.  I will probably go back and fix it sometime.  To make the pocket, I found some cute scrapbook paper, cut it down to size, laminated, then sewed the pieces together:

When organizing my recipes, I broke them down into five different categories.  I have color coded each category to make it easier:

• Family favorites-this includes things like Hot dogs, Hamburger, Pizza and other miscellaneous item
• Chicken 
• Beef, Pork, and Beans
• Past and Casseroles 
• Soup, Salad, and Fish

When I’m planning my menu (three weeks at a time), I pick one card from each category.  I end up with five recipes each week.  This leaves room for us to eat out, try new recipes, or on a lazy night, just make breakfast foods for dinner.

 

Once I have selected all the recipes for a week, I put them in one pocket.  With just a few minutes of planning, I end up with THREE (four if I ever get around to making a new pocket) weeks of menus. 

 

Making my grocery shopping list is a breeze now.  Since all of the recipes are right there, I’m not looking through my various cookbooks to figure out what ingredients I need.  It’s also really easy for me  to maintain.  If I find a new recipe that I want, I have the template saved and I just plug it in and cycle it through. 

I've been using this for a couple of weeks now and so far, I LOVE it.  Like I said, the hardest part is gathering and formatting your recipes.  If you want, I can send send you the template for the recipes.  Just let me know!

Wildlife Experience Museum

This morning we went to the Wildlife Experience here in Parker.  We got a really good deal through Groupon and decided to take advantage of it.  It's a nice little museum with a few live animals, but mostly taxidermy and plastic animals.  They have a variety of animals from different habitats.  They did a really good job making the exhibits interactive and life like.  There was actually some snow(frozen wet stuff, not just fake plastic) falling in one of the areas.  Included with the Groupon was tickets to one of their movies about animals.  It had clips of animals, music, and rhyming dialogue.  It was pretty cute.  What a fun morning!

Ryan

What a cute little boy we have!  What a busy little boy we have.  He is constantly on the go, but occasionally he still cuddles, which is nice.  He is growing so fast.  He is finally catching on the some of the baby sign that we have been teaching him.  He can do at least 25 different signs.  I think  he is enjoying being able to communicate what he wants, and let me tell you, he KNOWS what he wants.  He really is a sweet little guy and we are so happy to have him in our family.