Tips from the Kitchen of an unexperienced cook...

I feel that the last year my cooking has improved. I am just getting more of a feel for providing meals for the family. I am not there yet, but I'm working on it. I decided that I wanted to blog about a few of my favorite money and stress and saving ideas. Feel free to share any that you have. :)

1) I have a meal calendar on a white board in my kitchen where I plan out 6 weeks of meals. Zac and I pick 10-15 meals that we like and I arrange them on the calendar every 6 weeks. When I get ready to go grocery shopping I just look at the calendar and then at allrecipes.com to see what I need to buy. It is definately subject to change. But I love not worrying about what I should make, Zac likes knowing what is for dinner, and we waste a lot less food by planning the grocery list. Our goal is to spend $40 a week and I'm usually within $5 of that. When I don't plan out my week I spend 50 or 60. I am a HUGE believer in meal planning!

2) Fresh garlic is the only way to go. I have just started using it and it makes a HUGE difference. I get a 5 pack for $1 and it lasts about a month. I cut the garlic into tiny pieces, fry up the garlic with onions and butter for lots of meals like spaghetti, chicken pot pie, enchiladas, mexican chicken and pretty much everything we eat that I'd normally use garlic salt with. Everything tastes so much better with fresh garlic...and it's super cheap.

3) Chicken breasts (with the bones and skin) go on fabulous sales sometimes. Today I got a pack for $97 a pound. The bones and skin are kind of nasty to deal with, but if you just take an hour and deskin and debone them you can save a lot of money. Here is what I do: I take all the skins and fat off with my kitchen scissors, I use the scissors to cut the chicken off the bone in one big chunk. I of course don't get all the chicken, so I take all the bones that still have some chicken meat on them and boil them in water for 10-15 minutes. While the bones are boiling I cube the chicken breasts or put them in strips or leave them depending on what we are eating that week and put them in ziplocks and put them in the freezer. When the chicken on the bones is cooked I peel off all the chicken, shred it and freeze it. I usually get enough for two meals just from the bones. I spent $4.oo on chicken and got enough for 5 meals. It took some work, but it makes life easier later anyways.

Those are just a few things that i do that make life a little bit nicer. I seriously would love to hear any special little tidbits that you guys have about the kitchen.

Update on Cockroaches

I want to tell the rest of my cockroach story so that it can be known that I am not a horrible housekeeper.

The same day that I saw the army under my fridge I went and bought this gel stuff from Lowes (courtesy of my manager :)) that I put in all the corners around the fridge. It was nasty because there would be dead roaches next to the gel, but at least they were dead and I could just suck them up with my vacuum. I didn't see live ones for about a week and then all of the sudden they were back.

I was seeing like 1 a day and it was so gross. I kept bugging my manager (no pun intended) and she got someone to come spray the outside of all of the buildings, but i insisted on having a treatment done for the inside as well. She said ok and planned to get all the apartments in my building treated.

So yesterday my manager comes by to schedule a time for today (yeah!!) and said that they were going to spray everything because it was so bad. I told her that I hadn't seen a roach since Sunday and she was like, "oh really, that's funny because Monday we sprayed the apartment that backs up to yours." This is why i hate apartment living. It really doesn't matter how many insect traps and how often I wipe my countertops and clorox my sink and mop the floors, if my neighbors decide to be slobs I can't stop the creepy crawlies from infesting my apartment.

The good news is that the roaches are gone and they are still going to treat my apartment to prevent them from coming back. I guess the plus of living in the apartment is that I just have to call and complain and she has to figure out how to solve the problem. :)

I am just happy that I'm not sharing my kitchen floor anymore.

Elephants

Zac was spending his 20 minutes with Teagan last night reading Noah's Ark. Teagan mostly just wanted to point to each animal on the animal page and Zac would tell him the sound they make. It was the cutest thing. I love my boys.

Yeah for Grandma!

Zac had a four day weekend so we decided to pack up and go to my mom's house for the weekend. We had so much fun relaxing and getting a break from the drudgery of every day life.

We got there and Teagan ran to the slide, climbed up and went down. Last time we were there he didn't even attempt to climb. He is such a funny boy.

My mom literally has the greatest ideas in the world. here is the latest: Painting the sidewalk with water. Teagan and Zac both loved it. I would highly recommend to any mom out there. I would have Loved doing this as a kid.

Zac got an electronic dart board from my mom for his birthday. We had a lot of fun playing with it! We also played a lot of Texas Hold em, which is SO fun!
My mom has mannequins from her school so I broght one out and we taught Teagan how to shake hands. hehe

I am in charge of Girls Camp for my church and the theme I've chosen is "Treasure Seekers." I decided that I needed a fancy treasure box so me and madre got to work.


We started with a winnie the pooh chest that I've had since about age 8.

I painted it white and then we painted it this color.

Then we got creative and my mom got about 4 different colors of paint and she painted and I dabbed here and rubbed there with a paper towel and some textured fabric.

Here is the finished box. I couldn't get the camera to show how awesome the different textures and colors look together. She had gold paint so it glimmers in the sun. We also waxed it at the end so it is shiny. We are going to make a big latch/buckle decked out in treasury goodies. It was so fun doing a project with my mom. She is so incredibly talented, I'm amazed.

Are you dying to see Teagan's new shoes???

So I went to EVERY store that sells shoes and found a Lot of really cute summery shoes for TEagan that were out of our price range so I took advice from the comments and got old navy flip flops for $3.50. he wore them around the store for about 15 min and seemed fine.

I've also been having trouble finding him t-shirts. Old navy has about 20 different styles of little boy t-shirts 3 for $15 but mine rang up as 3 for $12 LOVE THAT!

You are lookin at TEagan's new summer wardrobe (notice the lack of light colored t-shirts? I got really sick of scrubbing out slobber stains for an hour every time I did laundry and decided to go wiht darker colors.

I don't know why I posted this, I gues I was just excited. :)

Oh my Teagan

Teagan was sick last week and I thought it was just a cold so I resisted taking him to the doctor. I always take him in and the Doctor says "Looks like a cold, use a humidifier, give him lots of liquids and nose drops" so I just did those things. Well it kept getting worse and his eyes were looking puffy so I took him in. he had an ear infection and an eye infection. Figures, the first time I don't take him in is the time where something is really wrong. On top of the infections his top molars are about half way through.

Lets just say that last week we watched a lot of Disney movies and Teagan got his bubba all day and I did alot of holding a crying baby.

Then Monday he woke up happy and he was himself again! YEAh! I had forgotten how funny and cute he is!

When he gets done taking a drink he goes "ah" as if it was really refreshing or something. If we prompt him he really gets into it, but he does it by himself sometimes to and it makes me laugh.

Where is the best place to get sandals for a baby? I cannot find any anywhere that aren't like $20. San Diego stores still sell seasonal clothes so its 80 outside and they are selling snow boots, I really don't get it. Anyways if anyone knows of any great sandals places let me know!

Advice please

Blogs are good for so many purposes. It is like a little journal for our family, but since a few experienced moms look at it I can get advice!

Problem: Teagan's crib is too small. My dad made a beautiful crib/cradle for Teagan when he was born. I love it SO much! Teagan has never fallen out of it because the sides are nice and high, but he is just getting to tall and wide. During his naps I can hear him moving around and he keeps bonking his head against the sides (it doesn't help that he sleeps horizontally sometimes).

Question: What kind of bed do we get next? Here are the options I can think of:

option 1: Upsize to a larger crib. The problem with this is that I don't really want to buy a crib because then I would have 2, why would i want 2 cribs?

option 2: Toddler bed. Is it really worth the money to buy a bed that only last a couple years? They are really cute though and you can get the kind that has the gaurd rail already.

option 3: Twin Bed. My mom has one that she would give to us for free so I like this option because it requires no money, but Teagan is still a baby so i'm afraid he wouldn't understand staying in his bed.

Teagan is 14 months old. Would we be crazy to put him into a twin bed with a gaurd rail? How do you make the change from crib to "big boy bed." How does this whole thing work? I appreciate your imput!