Kid Friendly Meals

Hi Friends!

It's been a while, this hockey mom has been a busy gal!  We've had graduations, birthdays, back to school, the return of hockey season.  And it's all just beginning!

I was looking for some kid friendly crock pot meals for our Tuesday & Wednesday early practice nights.  Practice starts at 5:30 on those nights and I figured why not embrace my crock pot.  One problem: My youngest two children tend not to eat ANYTHING that comes out of my crock pot.  So what do I do?  I Google "kid friendly crock pot recipes".  Here is what I get:

• Slow Cooker Squash Lasagna
• Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken Mushroom Pot Pie
• Slow Cooker Smoky Pea Soup
• Slow Cooker Spinach Enchiladas

Clearly, these children, the ones who eat these recipes, have never met my children.  Seriously people??  Who's kids eat that?  I want to shake their hand and personally hand over my mother-of-the-year award to them.    This has added fuel  my quest to create some kid-friendly & practical everyday recipes that meet two key requirements:

1. Use ingredients that real kids will actually eat.
2. Use ingredients that can be regularly found in your grocery store.

So, that is my goal.  I'm going to try and post one kid-tested recipe a week starting next week.  Next week because this will involve a trip to Wegmans and that isn't scheduled until after the second game on Saturday.  :)

Any suggestions as to what I should start with?  Anything you're looking to try out with your kiddos?

The Mommy Wars; The Battle of Bedtime

I am fighting a war.  There are may days that I feel like a drill sergeant.  "Put that down", "Don't you talk to me that way", "It's bedtime because I SAY it's bedtime", you get it.  

Tonight's battle is the Battle of Bedtime and my friends, I am losing.  The water is freezing and their aren't enough boats.  I have read all the parenting crap on how to get you children to peacefully drift off to sleep.  Honestly, the only time my younger two children have EVER drifted off peacefully was when they were drugged (of course I am referring to when they are sick).  My oldest sleeps like a champ, he's actually such a sound sleeper that I worry about him waking up in the event of an emergency.  My middle one is much better since starting school too, he still has his moments but really, he's 5.

I've done it all: bath, book, bed; brush teeth, stories, songs; cry it out; rock them to sleep; just keep putting them back in bed until they get the point without talking to them; all of it.   

My youngest is 3 and is the ring leader of this battle.  Do not let him fool you.  He may sound all cute and innocent but seriously he's the main insurgent.  I have found this child sleeping in the oldest"s room, in bed with the middle one, in my bed, curled up with the dog in the hallway (that night I almost broke my leg when I tripped over them), and my most favorite: curled up on the bathroom floor sleeping with his head about 4 inches from the toilet <insert vomit noise here>.  He has come downstairs naked (complete with the naked boy dance), with half of his pajamas on, in new pajamas, dressed as Iron Man, you name it. I have pictures of almost all of these places which I look forward to sharing with his wife someday and whispering to my future grandchildren for payback. 

I am seriously at the end of my rope with this bedtime crap.  I have no ideas left other than to have the kids that are up until 11 pm watching various child-inappropriate things that kids that stay up until 11 watch because "it's easier than enforcing rules".  I may just have to go to the "you don't have to sleep but you can't leave your bed" philosophy which I think is insane for a 3 yr old.  As I write this it is 9:40.  They have been upstairs since 9 (summer vacation baby!) and it still sounds like a heard of elephants in his room.  It's very difficult to not yell at this moment.  The keys on my keyboard are screaming for mercy, they are taking most of the heat right now! 

I realize that I will miss this one day.  I will want this back.  I already have the "I miss cuddly babies" or "maybe we should try once more for a girl"  moments more than I should.  And I feel like they are growing up so fast that I can't keep up.  Why is this one thing so difficult?  I'm reasonably sure that I'm not a bad parent for wishing that I could just tuck them in and kiss them goodnight and that was the end of the drama.  

~Sigh~ I wonder where he will eventually pass out tonight??

Meal Plan 7/12-7/19 & Home Improvements Oh My!

What a busy weekend!!  

I had some work to do at the office on Saturday so I was there until about noon, went home and did some major work there.  We are in the process of tearing out old and yucky carpets that have seen one too many years and one too may pet accidents to stay any longer.  I say in the process because we are ripping out manageable pieces that can be thrown out with the weekly garbage.   Multiple reasons for this: 

1. This saves up from paying for an additional garbage pick up.

2. This also allows me to seriously scrub the floors in smaller sections.  Since this will take a few scrubs to get it really clean, I'm ok with smaller sections.   

Pre-floor scrubbing was another round of blackberry picking. which were saved for a pie that we had after dinner on Saturday.  I lost my mind while making my pie crust, but it turned into a happy accident.  Here is my new pie crust recipe:

2 C Flour

1 C Shortening

1/4 Sugar

1/2 C Water

1T Milk

Sprinkle of Sugar

Mix the first 4 until you have dough.  Toss in the fridge to set for a while.  Roll out & fill with delicious pie filling of your choice.  Brush the top with the milk then sprinkle with sugar.

I also got a new fridge!!  It makes me really happy!  Not only is it energy efficient, thus saving us money BUT it's about 50% bigger than our old one!  We now have space to put everything.  It's the little (or bigger in this case!) things in life that really make me happy.  

Isn't she lovely??

On to the meal plan.  It's a pretty boring week in the Frugal Hockey House.  LOL!

Friday: Free Choice Friday

Saturday: Hot Dogs, Mac Salad, Baked Beans

Sunday: Family Graduation Party

Monday: Burgers, Mac Salad, Veggies

Tuesday: Spaghetti & Veggies

Wednesday: Hot Dogs, Baked Beans, & Veggies

Thursday: Spaghetti & Veggies

Blackberries!!

I'm "berry" excited to tell you about our backyard discovery!  We have blackberries!!  In our yard.  Can't get more frugal than FREE.  That's my kind of deal, and the perfect price if you ask me. :)  

In about 20 minutes worth of we picking we got this:

That is about 8 cups of berries and that's only about 1/3 of what is growing.  Which I turned into this:

Which is 6 varying sized jars of jelly! (just pretend that crap on the corner doesn't exist I do :) )  How well my jelly jelled remains to be seen as I'm not brave enough to try it yet.  I want to live the dream that it's perfect for another day or so.  

I may need to tweak the recipe but seriously, it's like the second time I've canned in my life.  I can't wait to be able to pick the rest!  I see blackberry pie, maybe some frozen berries for all those smoothies that I want to make but are too cheap frugal to buy all the ingredients for.  So many possibilities ahead! 

Anybody got any good ideas for berries??

Meal Plans July 5th - July 12th

In an attempt to save a little more money by pre-planning and to save some of the remaining bits of my sanity I started planning out my dinners a couple weeks ago.  I figured that if I can have these things planned in advance then it would make the evenings flow a little better.  My little Parker is a bit of a picky eater and this seems to have helped him eat some more if he knows what's coming. :)  

After a quick search on pinterest (which I have an unhealthy addiction to btw) I found this sheet that I really like: http://www.partyblog.mygrafico.com/freebie-friday-dinner-meal-planner/, printed a few off and away I went!

I'm only planning dinner since Rob is currently a SAHD he deals with breakfast & lunches.  I let each of the boys pick dinner one night of the week & Rob and I fill in the rest.  Here is what I came up with for this week:


Friday: Free Choice Friday (Parker's idea, we have a list of things we can pick from for dinner including leftovers.  I'll post about that soon!)
Saturday: 4th of July Picnic with family ~ no planning really required there, just have to bring dessert which will be red, white & blue m&m brownies and our veggie dogs
Sunday: Pizza night!  I have 2 sheet pizza crusts in my fridge just waiting for us to make. 
Monday: Rigatoni & veggies
Tuesday:  Mock Tuna Melts w/chips & veggies (recipe coming!)
Wednesday: Veggie Dogs & Veggie Burgers w/ veggies & baked beans
Thursday: Spaghetti w/veggies
Friday: Free Choice Friday

Yummy!!

Diet and Exercise Blah Blah Blah

See that?  That up there, that GIANT FREAKIN ZERO?  Yep, that's from my last month...Yes, MONTH of diet and exercise and trying to get myself back to a regular human size.  A size that is on a chart other than the scary red terrible BMI chart.  Now, I'm not buying my dresses from the tent maker huge here, but I am 3 babies and 5 years of no exercise worth of overweight.  

My efforts have not all been for naught.  I have lost 2 in from my waist & 3 in from my hips so something is working.  I would like to know where these inches are going though if that precious little frog is stuck at zero??  Maybe I should start tracking my ankle size....

Anyhow, I've started taking a Zumba class which I really like.  I find myself much more disciplined to exercising for an entire hour when I have peer pressure and I forked over $5.00.  I think that my favorite thing about the class is that I finally get some me time.  That is something that has been seriously lacking in my life for a long time.  I'm the person who does everything for everyone.  I'm the "hey we need 115456784514568473 cookies for a bake sale tomorrow can you do it? : We need an office party organized for tomorrow oh yeah and we need you to make 12354684605415 cupcakes.; Hey mom, I would really like it if you where the team manager this year;  Hey mom can you come on my field trip tomorrow?; Hey, I'm having a candle party an hours drive from your house tomorrow, in the middle of winter, in western NY you'll be there right?  And btw can you bring a dish to pass?"  I think you get the point.  I seriously can't say no to anyone.  I'm the facilitator.  What I'm working on is finding ways to facilitate some time for myself and my interests.

I'm finding myself much more zen lately, I think that having a physical outlet like my class is really helpful.  Now, I'm too frugal to pay for class twice a week even though it's offered on Sunday and Tuesday. $10.00 per week x 4 weeks a month = not happening.  So, I've been trying to walk or do a workout video after the darling hockey players are in bed.  Although, I think that some nights bedtime could be classified as cardio for the number of times I have to put the escape artist back into his bed.  I'm really working on not having guilt that I'm missing time with them.  I get this feeling that since I work out of the house that I need to spend every other waking minute of the day doing things for them or with them.  I'm working on knowing that taking a half an hour to an hour each day just for me will somehow teach them that I value myself as a person.

Hopefully that little froggy will begin hopping along the trail here very soon.  If not, do not be surprised if there is a future blog post titled " sitting on living room floor surrounded by peanut butter cup wrappers".

The Easter Egg Bags

So, I get these ideas in my head of all the things that I want to make for my kids.  Usually, these ideas come to be right before I will need them.  The awesome birthday cake the night before the part, the best Halloween costume ever on October 30th, you get the idea.  These bags were no different.  I got the idea about 4 days before Easter: "Hey, I should make the boys these cool egg hunt bags with their names on them.  This way there will be no fighting over whose bag it whose."  AND by making something reusable I will be saving money in the long run.

So, into the car and off to JoAnn's I go.  I need 3 yards of fabric, 3 yards of interfacing, and 1 pack of letters.  **Note: Not that I have measured anything or drawn any form of pattern, I just figure this will work.  I pick up my stuff, manage to confuse the cashier because the coupon that was sent to my phone wouldn't scan which resulted in 50% off my entire order not just one item (score!!), and went on my merry way.

Fast forward until after the crazy people boys are in bed.  Bag assembly begins.  I decide when looking at the size that I was thinking about is going to lead to a skinny long bag that maybe I could measure a bag that I like the size of and work from that.  I'm the first to admit I'm not always the brightest crayon in the box.  I decide on a bag that is 11 in x 17 in., so I begin cutting.  I figure I'm going to need 12 rectangles to put this together since I will have to sew the interfacing in each side of the bag. Anyone with math skills can figure out at this point that I don't have enough fabric to make 3 bags.  So, I make one. No complications really outside of the broken sewing machine needle.  Pretty straight forward once I got down exactly how I wanted to assemble it, it went very quickly.  The whole process took me the length of the movie that that Rob & Evan were watching.  The next two were a breeze once I made my 2nd trip to JoAnn's for more fabric and more interfacing.

Here is the finished product:

Not to shabby eh?