Four.Twenty.Eight

Menu Plan Monday

It has been a while since I've shared my weekly menu plan.  Here's what I have on the docket this week:

1. Hatch Chile & Pecan-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin (Sammy wanted this one at Central Market and the butcher said it didn't freeze well, so darn it all if we have to eat it this week!) We are pairing it with some stir-fried asparagus and the infamous wheat biscuits.
2. Healthy Soft Tacos (We eat this a lot, but it is just so darned easy, and it works into two nights worth of meals.)
3. Hatch Chile Pre-marinated chicken breast sandwiches (on wheat buns topped with tomato & avocado) with baked chips on the side

Yes, it appears we are overloading on the flavors of the Southwest this week, but I guess it's a good thing we like it!  We kind of go nuts on stocking up the freezer during the Hatch Chile Festival that Central Market takes part in every year.

I slacked a bit on my planning, so it was necessary to use the freezer and try to keep it easy.  Apparently my freezer and my recipe database are chock-full of Southwestern-style recipes.  Ah, well, this is what I came up with and it will probably work just fine.

Curtains and Bedspreads and Lampshades, Oh My!

For starters, the purpose of this post is a cry for design assistance.  I have lampshade and curtain mind block.  Help me pick them - the fate of my bedroom decor rests in your hands.  Too dramatic?  Nah.

To make a long story short, or per my usual method, make a long story long, we have purchased new bedroom furniture and it has been on order.  I'm very excited about it, and the store says it could be in this week or weekend.  Here is the bed:

This bed is what I've always been looking for.  Sleigh-style headboard. Extra storage in the end of the bed.  Genius.

Here is the night stand.  It doesn't look like much, but it is by AspenHome and they have very innovate pieces.  See that little "dot" on the side of the stand?  That is a touch button.  Just touch it with a finger and a night light attached to the underside of the stand fires up.  Not to mention this:

This is what AspenHome calls the "Liv360" feature.  Charging cords and cubbies. In your very NIGHT STAND.  Nerd alert.  I is one.  In all seriousness, though, their furniture really does have a lot of thought put into it.  Thought for real people and their real needs.  Pretty cool.

We also purchased the dresser, but without the mirror.  We like the tele on there, okay?

I have already purchased a new duvet cover and pillow shams as well. Here's the new duvet and pillow shams I purchased:

This bed set is still on sale at West Elm and there are several colors.  But hurry, it seems to be disappearing fast.  I picked this out because I thought the color would look good with the black furniture and will be more washable than my current quilt that has to be sent to the cleaners.

Last but not least, our wall color is a nice, warm tan.  Not too red, not too yellow, it is a great color.  It is actually a Sherwin Williams color, Totally Tan.  I think the bed set and furniture will go well.

So, since I told you this is a long story long... I am debating curtains and lampshades.  I have black curtains, which I might keep.  If you think maybe a white curtain or another color might be a good option, by all means leave me a comment.  I kind of want a change, but I'm not sure there is a better option than black.  What would you do with curtains in this scenario?

Last, I was interested in lamps that are similar to this one below (not yet purchased).  I know they are out there everywhere, just need to have time to run around and search.

If you can't tell from the photo, it is a stacked acrylic lamp base.  I want something glass-like.  I intend to decorate with some glass accessories, like a large apothecary-style jar with a filler of some sort, like natural woven orbs.  So, it begs the question, black lampshades?  Neutral?  White?  Cream?  I can't picture this one.  What color lampshade would you do in this scenario?

So, that's my predicament. When we got married, we patched together a bedroom set from some pieces I already had, and I just got so tired of it.  My style evolved.  It isn't life or death, but I finally have found bedroom furniture I really love, so I want to get precisely what I want and what looks great.  You know what they say about your bedroom being your sanctuary?  That's what I'm going for.  Share your lampshade and curtain ideas!

Menu Plan Monday

Okay folks.  I'm going to get back to my blog.  Here is my attempt.  Hope it meets all your expectations - or not.  :-)

I thought I would start sharing my weekly menu plan.  Maybe by sharing, I can keep on my weekly meal track!  Sammy and I found out lately that we were blowing our weekly grocery budget out of the water.  By approximately double, sometimes more.  It was really bad, and opened our eyes, so we have committed to trying to keep our weekly grocery budget around $100-120 including breakfasts and lunches.  It can be a real challenge.  Eating healthy is hard to keep in a budget and it's hard for us with our work schedule.  However, I have devised ways to keep the cost down.  A couple of ways:

1. Plan weekly meals in advance (including breakfast and lunch).  It is easier to stay on track with a plan.  Our breakfasts and lunches are either on-the-go or at work.  It is often the easy way out to go to the deli for lunch or grab a bagel on the way for breakfast, but a commitment to buying breakfast and lunch items in advance really helps the budget.  This week, I bought a package of Ezekiel Cinnamon Raisin English Muffins and I keep a small tub of butter at work.  Sammy bought Van's Frozen Waffles for his breakfast.  For lunch, I bought bread and chips and plan on using some peanut butter and jelly I already have in the work fridge for PB&J sandwiches.  Sammy will be doing Evol frozen microwave burritos.

2. For one weekly meal plan per month, raid the freezer and raid the pantry.  My theory is that one week per month, we can save a huge hunk of the budget by essentially buying very little at the store.  At any given time, I may have a partial box of pasta, multiple canned goods, or other various half-used items in the pantry.  I may also have several Food-Savered and frozen meat items stashed in the freezer.  I can find recipes to utilize what I have on hand.  I plan on using the "raiding" method to cut the budget drastically at least one week per month.

3. Eat leftovers.  I often plan one or more meals a week that I know will yield leftovers.  The leftovers can make what I call a "two-meal recipe" or they can go to work for lunch the next day.  It saves on the budget and time when you can make recipes that will yield leftovers.

4. Buy meats and produce when they have specials and use the freezer.  I will openly admit that I am a meat and produce snob, and that can be pricey.  I like my Central Market and Whole Foods.  There are just some things I won't skimp on, and that is okay with me for the most part.  With that said, I always grab the Central Market Weekly Specials out of the junk mail flyer and look for what is on special.  Sometimes they have excellent meat specials, like $2-3 off per pound on pork tenderloins.  When these come around, I either stock up, Foodsaver and freeze or I will plan a meal around what is on sale.  It may bump the budget up that week, but I know it will balance out in the future.

So, with all of those ideas, I hope to keep my budget more in check.  I will try to provide an update in the future to see if our grocery budget has dropped.  For now, here is this week's dinner meal plan.  We typically treat Friday as our dinner-out day, so I plan for 4 meals per week.  I don't set any meal to a particular day, I play it by ear and see what works best that particular day.

1. Grilled turkey tenderloin (2 in a package, I Foodsavered/froze one), strawberry & blueberry fruit salad with vanilla greek yogurt & cinnamon

2. Grilled chicken breasts, this spicy pasta salad

3. Naan bread pizzas (2 nights) - Wheat Naan bread, chopped bell pepper, jalapeno olives & nitrate-free pepperoni

Project Progress

Quite sometime ago... my mom brought me this little cabinet.  It was at a little antique store she frequents.  The owner gave it to her for little to nothing since it was not in good condition.

I didn't get a good picture before I took the top and bottom doors off, but you get the idea.  It is a cute little cabinet.  However, it is a little worse for the wear.  It's warped in areas, dinged, chipped, and wobbly.  It's supposed to have a mirror above the right side, but it's long gone.  Broken off and missing. But I like it.

The backing to the cabinet was a mish-mash of whatever someone had on hand to patch it.  The above is a picture of the right side, patched with wall paneling.  Yes, the ugly kind that your grandparents had in their house.

This side, behind the glass door, was decoratively covered with contact paper (the kind you used to put in your kitchen drawers) circa 1976.  Not too cute.  It had to go.

So, I sanded.  Sammy helped me take the backing off. Unfortunately, I didn't decide to replace the backing until after I took off the ugly contact paper.  Could have saved me the time and elbow grease.

Now it's on to priming.  Really, I didn't think this project would take as long as it has.  Prime, prime, paint, paint.  Prime with roller, prime with brush.  Paint with roller, paint with brush.  Let dry.  On and on and on.

1. I have the glass door left to prime and paint.
2. I have to purchase new backing plywood and prime and paint it.
3. I have to *hopefully* find new hinges in silver that will fit the original hinge locations. Thought I found some this weekend, but they were too big.
4. I also need to find one of those decorative "keyplates" for the skeleton key hole on the glass door.  That may be near impossible.
5. I need one more new knob (only got two at the store).
6. I have to get some glass cut to fit in the left side for shelves.

It seems like I might never finish, but I will.  Hope to have a completion photo soon!  

I Think It's In My DNA

I think organizing is in my DNA.  It has to be.  That's the only explanation for why I love it so much.  Last weekend it was time to help the husband organize the garage.  He got a wild hair and decided to really organize "his" space.  I was happy to help!  So, we headed to Home Depot and bought some of this:

Before installation, however, we moved everything away from the walls and put several things in the back of the 4Runner and made a trip to the Goodwill Donation Center.  Happy with that, we decided to document our "before" and our garage looked about like this:

We then hung our wire shelves and placed every item back in a much more efficient setup. We changed location of a few things (the toolbox being one), and I am enjoying it.  So much more room in there to get around!  No longer tripping on things!

I think he's happy with the results, no? His wife likes it a lot better, too.

Mini Home Improvement Project

Sammy and I always want to perk up the homestead.  It's just not always easy without an endless supply of funds!  So, several months ago (about eight to be exact), we were in Lowe's for something other than what we came out with.  Typical, huh?  We ended up leaving with enough half-price drawer handles to install them in our whole kitchen.  Easy and low-cost way to perk up the kitchen.  Why it took us 8+ months to get around to installation, we don't know.  Maybe we can get around to the higher cost projects later, but for now, this one was fun and pretty easy to do.

 

 

We knew that installing cabinet pulls (especially those like we did with two holes) could be nerve wracking.  It isn't always easy to get them aligned properly and level, but with a template we did fine.  I will begrudgingly admit to our two very minor mistakes, though.  We put a drawer handle where it should not have gone (the adjacent drawer won't clear the handle), and we put the little punch spots on the wrong side of one door (easily covered with a matching wood putty pencil).  So, not too bad for a couple of amateurs!  Guess all that DIY Network and HGTV is paying off...  :-)

Another Spring Cleaning

I am an idiot!  For no reason at all, I thought the teacher job fair was today.  So, I got on the horse yesterday and fixed up a notebook to take with me, re-wrote my philosophy of education, and even bought a new pair of shoes to go with what I wanted to wear (Yippee for DSW $10 off coupons!).  Guess what?  The job fair has been on my calendar for Saturday for weeks now.  I checked and re-checked and, yes, it is Saturday!  What a dunce I am.  It doesn't even make sense for it to be on a Thursday (a school day)!

So, today, I am cleaning out my hall closet.  I'll let you know if I come across any fabulous finds, and I am sure there will be some.  That closet is overflowing and I can't stand it.

I need inspiration for blog topics!  My posting lately has been dismal!  All I can seem to write about is junk cleaning and the rain!

Notes On Organization and Another Note.

I've just got organizing on the brain!  People - watch out.  I might have a wild hair inching out.  I've gotten the strange urge to clean out the closet under the stairs and maybe even the boxes stored in the garage.

The garage boxes are "storage" items.  Think about that.  Storage = things I keep for no reason.  Have I even looked in them in the last year?  No.  Are the things in those boxes worth keeping if I haven't even acknowledged them in the last year?  No.  Goodwill, here I come!  There are a couple of boxes with keepsakes (I think my wedding shoes are in a box in the garage), those I need to re-box and store.  But I think the bulk of the boxes are home decor items and just "stuff."  If there's any home decor, I will take photos and post them here - just in case someone wants them.  I think I recall someone saying they were interested...

On the same vein, I wanted to share a couple of my very favorite organizing items of late.  There are things I use daily that I absolutely love.  Here's one:

I use it for dog food.  It's pretty big - it holds 1.25 gallons, but when I dump an Axel-sized bag of dog food in there, it fills it a little over halfway.  It is awesome.  Got it at Container Store, of course.  I think that store pipes in some sort of addictive substance through the air ducts.

Here's another item - the Container Store's "frosted tote."  It comes in two sizes, and I can't tell you how much I use these.  I have one in the pantry with the coffee K-Cups in it, I have one in the kitchen with folded kitchen towels, another in the kitchen with the pot holders.  In the bathroom, I have three.  One for my "stuff", one for Sammy's "stuff", and one with the hairdryer/brushes/hair "stuff."  I even keep one on the stairs that I throw things in that need to go upstairs.  When I go up there, I take the bin and empty it.  Every time I need a bucket to put stuff in, I always grab one of these.

My last note of late: With all this job searching, I have seriously debated teaching.  I know, I can't believe it either.  It scares me a little, for some reason.  However, I somehow feel more capable, "tougher" (I put that in quotes, because in reality I probably am still a big wimp), and I feel like having a real job for the last 5 years has made me stronger.  I am not a fresh-out-of-college, green-as-spring-grass graduate.  I feel like I can darn well do it if I set my mind to it.  I didn't feel that way in 2002 when I graduated school.  I truly feel like a completely different being than the person back then - maybe I feel more like an "adult."  GASP.  Besides, there are people out there who get alternative certification and teach school just fine - certainly I can do better than them!

I don't know.  It is still to be seen.  I wish God would just send me an e-mail explicitly stating what I should do.  I could even get it on my Blackberry if I was out buying groceries.  :-)

Merry, Merry Christmas!

Be sure to click for the larger size.

The Christmas Tour of Homes

I always enjoy viewing all the homes on BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes, but the entries on her Mr. Linky are piling up and I might view them all by New Year's Eve.  Good grief, there's a lot!

I really made a new effort this year with my decor to ramp it up a little and get things a little more coordinated.  Years past, I felt like I had a mish-mash of things and now I've gotten things a little more "together."  I'm happy with it this year!  I got more burgundy and gold balls, bought more greenery, and coordinated my dining area better.  I hope you enjoy my tour!  Lots of pictures ahead!  Remember to click on the pictures for a larger view.

The main living area all fixed up with Christmas pretties!

Here's the centerpiece - the tree.  Same as usual, with the most beautiful angel on top.



I highlighted a few ornaments... here's one from our ski trip last year to Vail.  We try to get an ornament on vacations.  A couple of other favorites - a red blown-glass cross, one of several sterling silver James Avery ornaments, and a Christian fish that I love.









I really got going with the glass balls and I love it.  I should have thought of this long ago!  This little metal church is also a favorite item.
 





Here's the nativity scene.  I **borrowed** the white Lenox china one from my mom this year because it would go with my decor.  I ordered the glass hurricane nativity and it makes a beautiful addition to my decor.





Moving toward the kitchen/dining area... here's my small collection of Russian Santas.  I hope to collect more through the years.



I really re-vamped the kitchen and dining rooms this year.  My mom made me a really pretty and detailed quilted table runner.  I love the peppermint theme, so I searched and searched and found some complimentary items.

















Last but not least - a last minute find - these pretty glittery snowflakes were 4 for 99 cents at Target!  This was a no-brainer decoration - I just stuck the snowflakes in the greenery... voila!  Love it!



Hope you enjoyed the pictures - I took a lot!  Merry, Merry Christmas!