Holiday Fun

Sorry it has taken me so long to post this, I had trouble uploading my photos.  I also don't have an actual working camera at the moment, so all of these are from my cell phone and poor quality.  Hopefully Santa knows that I need a new one for Christmas!

Kevin was lucky enough to have off on Thanksgiving and the day after, so we took advantage of this and joined my family on the farm (my aunt and uncle's) for the holiday.  It ended up being a smaller than usual gathering which ended up allowing us to have a really nice visit with those that were there, even though we missed everyone else.  We all love the farm, doggies included, so needless to say we had an awesome time!

 They were waiting for me ... and very anxious!

 Puppies enjoying the mud on a beautiful Thanksgiving Day!

 "hunting" for birds ... I did shoot a shot gun for the first time ever though.

 It is so peaceful there.

 Puppies were so worn out ... enough to curl up on the barn floor.

 Staring at chickens

When we got home, I took advantage of my last three days before starting work to decorate for Christmas.  There is something so much more exciting about decorating when you own your own home!  So even though we won't be here for Christmas, we can enjoy a whole month of decorations.

Living Room:

 

Family Room:

 

 

 

I made this to hang up our stockings since we don't have a real mantle .... I drilled 4 hooks into a board I found out in the garage and secured two of Kevin's deer antlers to it.  I love how it turned out.

 Our Tree, we decided to be budget friendly and put up the fake tree we purchased last year.  I was a little disappointed but I know we will have plenty of Christmases to get real trees.  The only things we actually bought for Christmas Decor this year were timers for the lights in the window, and a couple new strings of lights.  I even made some homemade ornaments out of baking soda, corn starch and water.

 

Dining Room:

 Gotta have those antlers incorporated somehow .. all of the greens our from our yard

 I bought a bag of cranberries, filled these jars with water and the cranberries float on top!  I got the idea from Kevin's sister who does this with a bowl of water.

 Our advent Santa .. I love him.

 Please excuse Kevin's "pile" on the chair .. I never want to put his stuff where he doesn't know where to find it, but then it ends up on a chair like this while I wait for him to put it away (which he did do).

 On another note, my first week of work went really well.  I was a little worn out, and it was definitely an adjustment from staying home and doing whatever I want all day.  I am still excited about my actual work, and happy to be making some money!  Since the dogs are now home about 9 hours a day by themselves we decided to risk mayhem in our house by leaving them out of their cages.  There has been no destruction so far, however we think this is where they are all day, backed up by evidence of bones, tennis balls and lots of white hair on both the couch and our bed at the end of the day.

Oh well, you can't really blame them .. right?

Paper, Paper, Paper

Like most other households we have paper piling up everywhere!  We do a pretty good job of only keeping what is important/necessary but we didn't have any method of sorting that out.  For example everything went into one "it's important" spot .. bills, things to be filed, things to be kept etc.  Also, Kevin never looks at the mail so everything with his name on it .. important or not was piling up, so I decided to get organized.  I have wanted to paint our the door to the garage/basement(which is in our kitchen) with chalkboard paint for awhile.  I thought it would be neat to have a place to write notes, lists and the week's menu, plus it looks cool.  So I decided to combine that idea with my need to get organized.  Enter in magnetic dividers from Target and some magnetic primer and chalkboard paint.

I bought a quart of magnetic primer and a quart of chalkboard paint from Lowes.

And then just followed the directions on the can, after prepping the door (tape on the trim, removed the door knob and put a drop cloth down).  The magnetic primer is nasty stuff to work with.  It is really really thick (you have to make sure it is stirred really well), and it splatters everywhere when you paint (I recommend wearing gloves!).  That being said, I think it ended up working really well, and I like having the door magnetic.  The directions said two coats, but I ended up doing 4 thin coats and allowing them to dry for about an hour in between each coat.  I let the last coat dry for 24 hours before moving on to the chalkboard paint.

I then applied just one coat of chalkboard paint.  It went on really well, and you had to wait 24 hours before applying another coat, so I cleaned up after the first coat and then decided it would be ok without another coat.
So here are the results:

It's hard to get a good picture because it's a tight space.
You can't see in the picture but the bottom two "slots" are for coupons/gift cards (I have an envelope for the grocery store, one for target and one for miscellaneous) and bills that need to be paid.  The "mail" slot isn't for outgoing mail, but just holds our return address labels, stamps and envelopes.  The "greet" slot holds thankyou and greeting cards (I like to keep some birthday, baby and congrats/wedding cards on hand).  The "important" slot holds things that we need to keep and know where they are, for example my mom and I have tickets to the ballet in May, so they are in there as well as miscellaneous info (like trash pick up times and other village info.).  The "file" slot is obviously for things to be filed.  Lastly our slots are for incoming mail, or other stuff that just pertains to us (including stuff Kevin leaves on the table and I want him to put away!).

 

I really like the way it turned out, and I have plans to paint the trim in that room white (and the cabinets a light grey), so I think it will look even better then.

Meal Planning

As the time approaches for me to start work I am starting to worry about all of my free time disappearing, which prompted me to try and get my daily schedule organized.  Kevin thinks I am crazy for being so worried about this, but I have a hard time believing that it is going to be easy to adjust to working and doing ALL of the household things ... such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and yard work.  Kevin is not going to have any more free time, and even though I keep telling him he will need to help out more, that doesn't change his schedule.  The biggest thing I am worried about is the cooking/shopping thing, so I focused on streamlining that process this week .. before I start work.  I have never cooked/shopped based on a meal plan, but I am familiar with meal-planning because my mom does it for a living (as a dining service director at a retirement community) and I can imagine that it makes things easier.  Also, on my visit home last week, my friend Laura showed me how she manages to cook at home every night while her and her husband both have over an hour commute every day.  She suscribes to a service via this blog: 5 Dinners in 1 Hour where for about $5 a month she gets a monthly meal plan which organizes her dinners and shopping lists.  Even better, the plan is organized in a way that you can prepare 5 meals in one evening in less than an hour ... so you can basically do all your major prep work on Sunday evening and have your dinners ready to pop in the oven for a week.  I watched her prepare her meals for the week ... and it is no lie ... seriously under and hour and so easy! (The dinner we had was delicious too!)  I have decided not to subscribe to this service at the moment.  I am a slightly picky eater (even though I have gotten better) so I didn't want to sacrifice the control or ability to pick what to eat every week, I also want to be able to shop around coupons I have and grocery store deals.   So I thought awhile and came up with a system that I am going to try on my own to see how it goes. 

To start I organized all of my favorite recipes into a binder (Cookinglight.com is a great resource for recipes .. I use it all the time, and they are easy to print out and keep)

I then planned out a months worth of meals.  I just started by looking at a calendar and writing down a general category for a meal on each day ... such as pork, chicken, pasta, fish, beef, slow cooker, leftovers or quick.  I then went back and picked actual recipes for three weeks straight and put them into a weekly "meal planner" that I just made on my computer (taking ideas from the 5 meals plan).  Here is an example of a few weeks from now:

 

 These are the steps I took to pick actual meals:

1. Look at what coupons I have (can also include looking online for manufacturer coupons and my grocery store website to see what they have on special .. wegmans.com)

2. Pick a few main entrees based on those coupons, for example I have a coupon for Wegman's pre-packaged butternut squash, two coupons for Wegman's "cheese shop", and coupon for a fresh fish purchase.

3. Look through recipes to "match" to a coupon purchase or do a recipe search online for particular items. Butternut squash soup was a given (its one of my favorites, and a Cookinglight recipe).  I usually like to pair the soup with apple and brie grilled cheese, which was made even better by a coupon for cheeses.  Salmon is also one of our favorite meals and we try to eat fish at least once a week so that was easy.  I chose the maple pork chops because I already have boneless pork chops in our freezer, and it would go well with the leftover soup as a side.  The turkey burgers I chose because it is a quick meal, I have another coupon for cheese (which has to be used on a "cheese shop" purchase, aka fancy cheese, like feta and goat cheese) and we already have sweet potato fries.  The chili I chose in order to use the rest of the ground turkey from the burgers, that way I can make just two burgers instead of six, which also enables me to make a smaller batch of chili.  I am trying to make meals fit two people instead of eating a lot of leftovers (we're not leftover people), so re-using the same ingredients that come in large portions (like ground meat) in two completely different meals is a way I can avoid wasting food but still have variety.

4. Then I just glanced quickly through the week to make sure the order of the meals made sense as far as coordinating leftover ingredients and as far as timing the meal preparation.  For example, the soup takes a long time to make .... so it would be a no-go for a weeknight.

5. I pull all of the recipes for that week out of my binder and make a grocery list, being careful to check what I have on hand.  This really doesn't take as long as I thought it would, and I feel so much more focused at the store.  I am only buying things I need rather than thinking in the store "oohh what would be good for dinner and trying to remember all the necessary items".  I also mark down what coupons I have so I remember to get the right brand/size and to use them!  Shopping with coupons is fairly new to me, but planning out my meals is making it much easier to plan around maximum savings.  

6. I then print out my meal plan and put it in my recipe binder, with my shopping list and coupons.  I also put all the recipes for this week right behind the meal plan so they're all right there.

* at this point my shopping list just includes items for meals, that is why I put it in the binder instead of posting it in the kitchen.  We have a dry erase board on the refrigerator that we mark down things we need as we run out of them.  I then take my paper list out of the binder right before I am heading to the store and add everything on the dry erase board to the paper right then.  This allows me to remember the coupons, and "writing" out a list right before shopping is how I shopped in the past so it works for me.

I plan two weeks all the way out at a time, which allows me to use coupons I have on hand before they expire and to look at current specials at the grocery store.  It took me about an hour to do this last week (aside from making the binder and printing out recipes), which I think is completely worth it to have everything more organized, to save more money and to spend less time each night deciding what to eat.  So far it has worked great, but I have just done one shopping trip, and this was a short week anyways because of the holidays.  I will do an update in a couple of weeks to let you know how it is going then!

Home Sweet Home

The title of this post is almost a misnomer, because I am really starting to think of Syracuse as "home", however I do still refer to PA/DE as "home" and that is where I was for the past week.  I decided to go back for an extended visit when I found out that I don't start my new job until the end of this month, and I am really glad I did.  I got to attend University of Delaware's Homecoming and to spend time with family & friends as well as visiting friends from Florida (and baby Olivia!).  I am happy to be "home" in Syracuse now, I have a whole lot to do before I start work, including Christmas decorating (after Thanksgiving of course!)  I'll keep you updated.

Sara and me tailgating

We met Kylee at Deer Park

Juliana and me at Deer Park

Harley and Stephanie came out too

Laura has been my best friend since first grade, so her family is like a second family to me.  I was so happy to get to spend time with all of them this visit home and to meet Baby Olivia, who is her younger sister's new baby.  Just look at her, she's so beautiful and so alert for a 6 week old.  Sorry for the bad pictures, I just had my phone for the whole week.

 

Olivia and her mommy, Stacey

Even though I had a wonderful week, it was really nice to come home and see Kevin.  The dogs were happy to be home too:   

  

When we did get home all of the remaining leaves on our trees were gone!  We also got our first dusting of snow!  You can remind me of this in February when I am complaining, but I am excited for it to really snow.  So far the weather has been unseasonably warm .. even today it's in the high 50s.