Thursday, August 11, 2011

Before I had the baby...

The month before I had Amélie (I found out how to put the accent on!) I was working on lots of projects because I knew it would be a while before I could do any of that again (and believe me, everything that I didn't finish beforehand is still sitting there waiting. and waiting.) I have lots more to show you all, but for today I am just going to give you a peak at a few random things I did that were inspired by pinterest!
I made 22 meals and froze them! I knew a few people would bring me meals, but I hated the thought of  grocery shopping and making dinners while trying to balance a newborn and a toddler. I've seen this a million times on pinterest but never got the guts to try it until now. I bought THIS book  which teaches you the secrets of freezer cooking and also has tons of recipes! I probably could have figured out most of it from researching more on the internet, but its nice to have all the info in one place. Here is what I made:
pizza dough/kits (with cheese and veggies already portioned out) 4 nights
tortilla soup (4 nights)
chicken/cream cheese/beef rolls (4 nights)
chicken enchiladas (3 nights)
pulled bbq chicken (3 nights)
Hawaiian chicken (3 nights)
pre-cooked and pulled chicken for a tortilla salad (1 night)
A lot of these meals are just needing rice, fresh veggies, or some tortilla chips which is no problem. And let me tell you these things have SAVED me! I think this is my new way of cooking. First of all, it takes me no time to have dinner ready and then I am only spending around $30/wk to get the rest of the essentials (milk, bread, fruit, veggies, and some fun stuff). I DO use coupons though, so that helps. My initial cost for the freezer meals was only $60. I didn't buy any fancy meat though, like I would've liked (fancy as in free-range).

Okay I could go on and on, but let's just say freezer cooking is the bomb!
I saw this several times on pinterest and though it might be overdone, I still kinda loved it. Its this picture frame, and I just cut a piece of board to fit the frame and painted it with chalkboard paint, and spray-painted the frame yellow (no priming). It had two holes so I used my trick to hang it:)

 Last, it was my husband's birthday (and then Olivia's)  so I wanted to put up some simple decorations for our family parties. I had seen these on pinterest as well, and let me tell you they take very little paper and time to make! so simple (and so much cuter in person)!  I didn't have time or energy to make anymore decorations though and since it was just my parents, brothers and sisters coming over I didn't feel any pressure to put on something over-the-top. I still haven't taken them down...



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Free range beef is fantastic. We used to buy it in PA but probably won't use it again unless it is our own cattle. And hooray for doing freezer meals. I did them before baby #1 and they were super awesome to have. Love the frame, even seeing it all over the internet, it's still cute.