Meal plan for January 26th – February 1st
I am not here today to brag about the Seahawks win, because frankly we phoned the game in and Green Bay deserved that win. I want to show you this sign that Jack made right when the Seahawks made that crazy play with less than two minutes to go. The sign is hard to read because Jack is going through a phase of only writing in yellow highlighter.
I’m not sharing it because the sign is great or Jack’s face is insane, but because it puts Troy’s freak calves on display. Seriously, it looks like he grew up downwind of a nuclear reactor.
Wanna see my parent’s completed kitchen?
I have total space envy. All the cupboards and drawers have that “soft close” technology and basically make me want to take a sledgehammer to our kitchen.
I was going through some photos recently, and got freaked the freak out by the resemblance between five-year old Jack, and 11 (ish?) year old me.
Troy and I were both off on Friday, and once Jack was safely at school, we headed to IKEA. We needed to look for a couch, and turns out the one I had my heart set on has been discontinued. Damnit! We also needed some storage ideas for our master closet. With the remodel, all our closet storage was removed and has to be reworked. What used to be a nice normal wall in the closet is now a pass through in to our bathroom. Old closet photos can be seen here. Where the door was is now part of the hallway wall. Sorry about the blurry photos; all photos on my blog before I switched over to WordPress in May are fuzzy because of the transfer.
With all the construction and having to move items around every few weeks, our master closet is currently home to a mixture of health and beauty stuff, clothes racks for air drying, and a myriad of other junk. Once we install the shelves in our new hall closet, all this crap can be removed. For someone who likes organization, this has been a lesson in patience for me.
Love the blue moving blankets held together with clamps and duct tape? That is the (new) doorway to our bathroom that used to be a closet in our bathroom. The moving blankets keep the heat in our bathroom so that I can shave my legs. #priorities Eventually there will be a door there, but we have to install new flooring first.
During our IKEA trip, we picked out this shelving system to go on the wall behind all the toilet paper rolls in the photo above. It’s the shelf with the four pullout wire baskets behind the white piece of paper Troy is holding while apparently looking like he is about to sneeze or fall asleep.
It’s a Pax system, and is on sale for $212 right now, originally $250. Troy is going to just hang some brackets and basic (read: cheap) dowels on the other walls in the closet and we’ll call it a day.
Randomly I was cleaning out a cabinet last week and found some photos of our yard when we first moved in to this house. Yikes; nothing edible in the whole yard.
I can’t find a photo taken at the same angle now, but this shows you the flip side of that photo.
Here’s a reason on why you should “friend” me on Facebook…you get to read such flattering gems about my life like this:
Meal plan time! Just a reminder that I only plan our dinners for the week. For breakfast we tend to eat the same things (homemade Greek yogurt for me, a sandwich for Troy, and whatever Jack’s heart happens to desire that morning), and lunches for the grown ups are leftovers of what we had for dinner the night before.
Monday:: World’s Second Best Baked Potatoes, tomato soup I canned, and salad. We were supposed to have this last week, but I ate the biggest lunch super late in the day last week, and had zero desire to eat dinner that night. I let Jack pick anything he wanted for dinner, and he ate flat bread, cheese, a carrot, yogurt, and apples. Done and done.
Tuesday:: Turkey cheeseburgers, roasted root veggies, salad, and fruit.
Wednesday:: This chicken gnocchi dish thingy I found in a magazine. Will share if it’s any good. Pairing it with lumpia and fruit.
Thursday:: Lasagna from the freezer, salad, and fruit.
Friday:: Popcorn dinner!
Saturday: Leftovers! I’m throwing a baby shower that afternoon and will have zero desire to cook, so we’ll eat all the apps leftover.
Sunday:: Super bowl at my parent’s, which means a bunch of appetizers and other yummy nibbles.
This week I spent $27 at the local farm for raw milk (I needed a gallon) and three dozen eggs, $12.57 at our local butcher for ground turkey (enough for two dinners and two lunches), and $76.62 at the grocery store which included candy for a work event and some food for the baby shower.
What are you having this week?
Love Ikea! That’s a good price on the shelf with the baskets. I don’t think you could make one for that price. What are you going to do for closet doors? We usually go to the one down in Portland. It’s nicer, faster to drive even though it’s farther, and hello no tax!
Love the kitchen though. Maybe you could do a redo on yours, blog about it and give me inspiration? Or maybe just motivation…
There probably won’t be a door to the closet since it is just a pass through to the bathroom. Seems like a hassle to me, but maybe that is because I pee a lot in the middle of the night?
The drive down to Portland would cost us a fortune in the truck, so it wouldn’t make up for the lack of tax, darn it! I agree on the cost to build the shelves; Troy is handy but I don’t think he could make those for keeper.
I’d love to redo mine. Just a matter of finding $15k. Ha! In my dream kitchen, a wall gets removed, plumbing gets moved, and a new window gets cut, so it wouldn’t be cheap.
Just curious! We live in upstate New York where any raw milk sold has to be from a farm certified by the state. It’s quite controversial here. We by it from one such farm that sells it in 1/2 gallon Ball jars. The first ‘jar full’ is $6, because of the deposit. After that, we pay only $3 per 1/2 gallon. What are you paying? Your $27 dollars doesn’t sound like it went too far. We raise our own chickens and ducks for eggs. We raise our own grassfed beef, lamb, pork and turkeys for year round food and to sell thru our CSA. We sell our colorful eggs, blue, green, light and very dark brown for $3/dz. It sounds like we need an outlet in your area! We have sold to people in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Not quite the west coast. We like you, hate eating crap! Always look forward to your posts. Thanks!
Raw milk is not regulated here. The people I buy it from have an honor system with a cash box and a fridge. You can pet the cows and see the chickens walking around, and the family has four healthy boys so I’m never worried about the quality.
The half-gallon is $6.50 for the very first jar, and then $3.50 a half after that. The eggs are $5 a dozen. Sadly my lazy hens haven’t laid a single egg since before Christmas so I am forced to buy eggs right now. The rest of the year I just usually get one half gallon of milk per week to make yogurt. The $27 was for 1 gallon of milk and 3 dozen eggs (1 dozen for my parents).
My sons last Dr. visit was his 3yr old checkup. He was crying and refusing to cooperate, the Dr. was trying to be friendly and get eye level with him and he scratched her down the side of her face, fish hooked her cheek with his thumb and then proceeded to kick her in the stomach. It. Was. Mortifying. I was trying to hold him but he is freakishly strong. His 4th birthday is coming up in March, which means time for another checkup. Ugh. Not looking forward to that.
Oh my gosh, I’m sorry! It will be totally funny one of these days.
I hadn’t scrolled down enough and thought the kid in the reindeer antlers was the 11(ish) year old you, and that you really did look just like Jack. Then I scrolled down and said, “Oh.” But you still really look just like Jack (or vice versa).
It’s creepy, huh?
Hahaha jack at the doc. kids say the darnest things.
How many more weeks until the house is done? (or should I ask for months, not sure if the number of weeks to go will make you lose your patience).
My parent’s part of the house will be done as of Tuesday when the county comes to do the final inspection. They can’t move in until the concrete walkway is poured outside for my mom’s wheelchair to be able to get in the place.
Our part of the house…? Well that’s a bit longer. I think we’ll be done painting it by the end of this week, and then hopefully the floors will be done in about two-three weeks. Once we move in to the new bedroom, we’ll vacate the temporary bedroom that we’ve been in for the last four months. Then the contractors will come in and turn that temporary space in to a real bedroom (closet, covering up the giant hole in the wall from where the slider was taken out and a normal window was put in.
I think I’m a little confused… I thought your parents were moving in with you? I guess you’ll have separate kitchens in the house? I do have kitchen envy too. Mine is about as large as this one but it was the same old cabinets as yours until I painted them 10 years ago. Now they’re all flaking and they look gross and I’m way too lazy to repaint them. Good thing I don’t like visitors so no one ever comes 🙂 Also, I have about 1/5th as much counter space as your parents’ new kitchen, which kind of stinks.
In other news, I made homemade gnocchi for the first time last night! It was super easy (if a little time consuming because of the potato cooking and potato peeling) and delicious. I used the AllYou Magazine February 2015 recipe for “Baked Gnocchi with Pumpkin-Cheese Sauce” and got to use some of the pumpkin puree I had made from the jack o’lanterns I had gotten at Save A Lot in October ($2.99 a pumpkin). The recipe for the gnocchi (found on a blog) made enough that I froze about half of them to reuse… probably this coming week since it was so darn delicious:) I had been tempted to buy gnocchi at the Dollar Tree this week (because, hey! $1 a pack and NO WORK to make them!) but after looking at the list of ingredients, I put them back. Too many ingredients that didn’t sound like “potato” and “flour”. Anyhoo, please do share your chicken gnocchi recipe if it turns out.
I laughed at Jack’s sign… good luck in the Superbowl! I’ll be cheering for your team since I can’t stand Tom Brady (my husband’s favorite).
Have a great week!
They are moving in with us, but the first floor of the house (daylight basement) is being turned in to their own apartment. It’s a one bedroom, 1.5 bath apartment will a full kitchen combined with a livingroom. They’ll have their own separate entrance to the house.