Menu Plan Monday 5/13/13

Yeah this is a day late LOL

 

I planned out only a handful of meals for this week and next (I only menu plan every two weeks because that's how often we go to the grocery store) I did this because my husband will be gone a couple days this week and the other days I work in the evening so really we won't have a lot of meals together this week.

 

We received a Bountiful Baskets co-op share this past weekend so a lot of the recipes are centered around the produce we received (which was tons of green peppers, lettuce and I went nuts at the grocery store for sale tomatoes and mushrooms. 

 

I never usually pick which days I'm making which, I just know I have ingredients for these recipes on hand so I can make them any day.

• Chicken Broccoli Stir Fry
• Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes
• Cheese on the Cob w/pork chops on grill
• Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers
• BLT's
• Artichokes (I'm gonna try these for lunch one day, I've never had them before)
• BLT Grilled Cheese

To see more of my menu plan recipes check out my board on Pinterest!

 

xoxo

SS

Fashion Fridays - Suspenders!

So this is a day late but I figure that's ok! 

The other day as I was in Hot Topic they had their clearance Buy One Get One FREE!  PLUS I get my associate discount (from Torrid) there as well.  So I found some Jack Skellington ear buds and was looking for a second item.  These Hello Kitty suspenders really caught my eye.  I was unsure if I could successfully pull them off.  Tucking in my shirt, suspenders, hello kitty...it was all a risk!

I am so so so glad I got them, I may go back for a couple more pairs as well.  I did rock them with my Hello Zombie shirt I recevied from my BFF (and I'm unsure where she got it from) and also with my ankle zip stilletto pants from Torrid.  Some black flats and a Hello Kitty nerd headband were my only other accessories as I wanted the suspenders to steal the show.  Feeling totally chubby and unsure having my shirt tucked in I strolled into work yesterday and everyone loved em!!  I got rave reviews on my Instagram and Facebook.  All in all I was really pleased. 

Be yourself.  That's my only tip from this fashion day.  I deal with this on a daily basis at work.  Helping women who are considered plus size try to step out of their box of wearing jeans that are too small or too baggy, all black and nothing form fitting.  Women need to embrace their curves.  Love yourself, even your flaws.  I am the worst, I critizie myself terribly.  But every now and then I find an outfit I feel fabulous in.  Every woman needs that feeling. 

So on that note I will share with you my suspender outfit and then today's outfit for work.  To see my daily outfits on Instagram be sure to follow me (sallystitches31)

 

Yesterday's outfit consists of:

HK shirt - ???

Stilletto jeans - Torrid

Suspenders - Hot Topic

Flats - Payless

Headband - Claire's

Today's outfit consists of:

Shrug - Maurices

Black tank - Old Navy

Blue cami - Torrid

Bow belt - Bettie Paige Store

Skirt - Torrid

Necklace - Torrid

Bracelet - Lia Sophia

Toddler Tuesday - Fingerpainting

So now that my little one is turning into a little man I love doing lots of new activities with him.  I'm pretty relaxed where I'm not too worried about a little mess or a lotta mess as long as he's having fun and maybe learning something. 

 

So we've tried painting before but it's mostly been just handprints for projects or feet prints for gifts.  I never let him just go wild with paint and he didn't seem all that interested.  But now with the weather finally getting nice we can go outside and make a mess.  Today was that perfect day.  He had a great nap and was in a good mood so we went outside with the paints, a throw away plate for the paints, his huge scribble pad and a few flower pots to paint for mother's day.  I had clothes on him that I could care less if they got dirty and really with the crayola fingerpaints it doesn't matter much as it is all washable.

 

At first he was a little apprehensive but I demonstrated a little and got myself pretty covered in paint as well.  We had a blast!!  I even lifted him up and dipped his feet and he walked all over stuff.  The driveway looks like a rainbow exploded and he successfully painted a huge picture and two flower pots.  Cleanup was a breeze as I just put him in the sink and washed him off. 

 

I loved it and he loved it.  I think we will do a lot more painting exercises.  I'm excited to introduce him to paint brushes too to help with his dexterity.  I love crafts so so much and I hope he embraces his creativity forever!!

 

Here is a few shots from the day!

 

Happy Painting!

SS



New Blogging Subjects!

So in an attempt to blog more often about the various things that interest me on a weekly basis I thought about possibly having a different idea for each day of the week to keep it a bit more organized!  I may not necessarily blog daily but more often!  If there is ever an idea you would like to see please let me know!  Here are the new ideas:

• Social Media Sunday - I'll chit chat about new things I see or do on some different social media sites which may include: Instagram, Postcrossing, Facebook, and any of the other blogs I follow.
• Menu Plan Monday - I try to menu plan weekly or bi-weekly so here I will post some of the recipes I will be using along with links to my favorite recipes.  This day is all about food!
• Toddler Tuesday - This will be all about toddler activities, recipes and mannerisms.  We're approaching the terrible two's in our home so new things are discovered weekly LOL
• What I'm Watching Wednesday - We don't have cable but we do watch Netflix, Hulu and DVD's often.  We have a DVD collection of 600+ movies and tv shows so I will use this day to discuss and review movies and tv shows I recently watched and loved (or hated!)
• Pin-testing Thursday - I'm addicted to Pinterest and like to try a lot of the things I find on there whether they are crafts or recipes or home improvement things.  This will follow my successes and failures...
• Fashion Friday - I work at an amazing clothing store and have always loved hair and makeup.  I will post photos of outfits from throughout the week along with new makeup and hair ideas!
• Stitchin' Saturday - I will update on some of the new and old stitching projects I'm working on.  Including cross-stitching, sewing, knitting and crochet.

I'm very excited to start sharing with everyone the things that interest me the most and hope you follow on the day(s) you are most excited about!  Which sound most interesting to you??

 

xoxo

SS

Valentine's Day Cupcakes

I feel like every post lately has started with the phrase "So on Pinterest..." Frankly I eat, sleep, breathe this silly website.  I have it on my phone and my kindle and lay in bed scouring new ideas and recipes.  It's terribly addicting and I'm not quite sure what I did with my life before it.  Now of course I will begin this post with:

So on Pinterest I saw this recipe for these super easy quick cupcakes for Valentine's day, so naturally I wanted to try it out.  I don't normally used boxed mix or premade frosting but I seriously procrastinated this year and decided to make cupcakes when I woke up on Valentine's day morning....so quick it is!

 

I wasn't too convinced with this recipe, lemon-lime soda mixed with boxed cake mix....yeah right there's no way that's gonna turn out!  Well it did.  It gave the cupcakes a more sticky feel but super moist and lemme tell ya the batter was delicious (and egg free!) I did use premade frosting as well and piped it with a ziploc bag to somewhat seem fancy.  They were a huge hit and got devoured at home and work. 

 

The only problem I had was these need to be treated very much like angel food cake in the oven.  I like to turn my pans halfway through baking/cooking times to evenly cook (our oven is old) and when I turned em I did bump them slightly and they all the sudden collapsed in the middle like an angel food cake would...they never recovered.  So that was good to know for the future.  I may used this recipe again and experiment with different flavors but probably only if I'm bored or in a bind.  I enjoy cupcakes from scratch wayyyy too much!

Here's some lovely pics!

 

 

 

Toddler approved! 

 

Menu Plan 2/17/13

I haven't been able to make a menu plan for quite a while since we separated and I'm mostly living at my parents house right now but we did one this paycheck because I've been spending more and more time here and it's just always a money saver for us to have meals ready.  And I miss cooking a lot!  So I made our plan for two weeks (I only picked 6 meals and a dessert since I won't be here every night and leftovers usually happen for us) made our shopping list and we went grocery shopping.  Always stressful.  But all in all we got quite a bit for a decent price.

 

How I go about picking recipes is I will look through the grocery ad (we like to shop mostly at one grocery store) and then scour Pinterest and past recipes we've used and try to pick stuff that is on sale or that we can use out of our pantry/freezer.  I then make a huge master list of all the ingredients needed for every recipe organized by category (meat, dairy, frozen, etc) THEN I go through our cupboards and freezer to mark off what we already have.  Finally I make our master grocery list with what we need along with other items we may get (snacks, breakfast foods, etc)

 

It makes me feel so much more organized when we get to the store.  I know what aisles I need to go down and know what I need to get and we rarely if ever get anything not on our list because we know the foods we're buying we can make meals out of.  It cuts down on stress sooooo much!

 

I don't necessarily plan meals for certain days as some days you just don't feel like what's on the menu but I do know I have ingredients in our house for at least 6 homemade meals and a dessert that will last us most of the week.  Which also cuts down on unnecessary grocery trips throughout the week which also can add up money wise.  So with that said here's my menu for the next couple weeks with links!

 

• Meatloaf with Crack Potatoes (halved recipe)
• Orange Jello Salad (already made and it's so yummy!)
• Tacos in Pasta Shells
• Slow Cooker Creamy Ranch Pork Chops and Potatoes
• Mexican Chicken Casserole
• Slow Cooker Lasagna Soup
• Homemade Pizza (no link for this)

 

Follow my Menu Plan Monday list on Pinterest to see past recipes I've used as well!

Til Death Parts Us

Til Death Parts Us

That was the last line of my wedding vows which was 4 years 4 months and 9 days ago.  Since then we have dealt with a lot (as any couple does) which includes cancer (he was diagnosed 4 months after our wedding and beat it!), buying a home, having a baby, changing jobs, money issues, personal endeavors, and sick parents.  These every day things can really weigh on a marriage and if your foundation isn't strong it can crack and even break...this happened to us.  Despite being together for 5 years before we were married we never really had to deal with much stress until after we got married (oddly enough), we then realized we're not as strong of a team as we thought we were.  We got comfortable, complacent, bored, and stressed...in other words we let real life take over and said bye bye honeymoon period.  Now what?!

 

About a year and a half ago I left.  With a 4 month old.  I just couldn't do it anymore and didn't know what else to do.  I'm not going to go into details but it was a wake up call for the both of us.  For the last year we have bounced back and forth from being together and separating leaving us currently in a separated (but working on it) stage.  We are finally talking to a family/marriage counselor and it seriously has worked wonders but we definitely still have the days where we struggle.  You fall back into your bad habits and in our case that creates a volcano that blows!  BUT this time we both have made a conscious decision to stick through it.  We will make this work.  Forever. 

 

Today was one of those days.  Voices were raised, names were called (which is never helpful) and fingers were pointed.  We both were at fault for our actions.  It made me stop and think why do we do this to each other?!  So in an effort to salvage some hope that marriage can work I put out a question to my personal Facebook and my Sally Stitches fan page

"If you could give a newly married couple realistic advice about how to make it work for a long time what would it be?"

The response was overwhelming.  So here are some of the responses I received...I will be listing just first names so you know whether men or women wrote it.  Please share with me your comments and ideas!

 

• Communication is key --Nate S.
• Being happy is more important than being right --Dave S.
• For better or worse - see it through!! --Jean S.
• It's okay to go to bed angry; sleep it off and generally once you're rested things don't seem that bad. Often they seem stupider than you thought the night before, and you can laugh at it. --Megan F.
• When upset with each other tell each other one reason you love them - "even though I am upset with you one thing I love about you is..." --Melissa A.
• Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. In most cases they're not acting out of malice, and you'll avoid a lot of arguments if you don't assume they are. --Eowyn C.
• If you cannot talk about a hot button topic to resolve an upset in the moment, give it some time. Respect for each other will keep you together, the ability to let something rest until cooler heads prevail will keep love lasting. I don't always like something my spouse does/says but I've never lost love or respect for him and I try to remember that in those moments where life tests me. --Nina S.
• Don't be a**holes to each other. Haha. How's that for honest. --Kari B.
• Financial peace does wonders to prevent stress and fights --Lee W.
• Don't take everything so seriously! Allow each other to have their own space, not everything needs to be done together. And get rid of any ideas that come from books or movies...neither are realistic nor practical. Have fun! (Works for us...almost at 28 years!) We must be lucky, I can only remember maybe three arguments over the last 28 years, otherwise smooth sailing...gotta let the small stuff go. --Karl S.
• Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff --Nikkie S.
• Communication!!! And remember that not every couple communicates the best the same way. Some do better writing things down, some better in the moment in person, some better after cooling down away from each other for a few minutes then talking in person. Every couple is different but knowing how each other feels about things and figuring out how to work with each other on those things will help a lot!!! --Farren G.
• Treat each other kinder than you treat others. Most folks resort to the opposite. If you wouldn't talk to your boss or a new friend that way, don't talk to your spouse that way. Also, wake up every day and think of one thing you can do to make your spouse happy. It doesn't have to be big, or romantic... Clean off the kitchen counter, pay the bills, wear that shirt he likes. --Jen P.
• Learn each others love language. We all give and receive love differently and most times we show people love in the way we need to receive it ourselves. --Chloe C.
• My mom and dad have been married for 49 yrs and I just asked my mom the secret to their success not long ago and she said Forgiveness, but whole hearted ..when you forgive you let go and move on. My dad says if you can figure out money and sex it's smooth sailing because somehow you'll never have enough of either one. --Tammy R.
• Don't think your spouse can read your mind. Talk, don't assume. --Elina S.
• Laugh together --Katie S.
• Forgiveness, don't wait for him to apologize or make a big show of being sorry. Just remember you love him and forgive and forget. --Leah O.

To be continued....