September Recipes

I try very hard to not cook the same things over and over.  Of course we have our family favorites, but I also enjoy cooking new things.  I try to cook something new each week.  In the past, I have subscribed to many cooking magazines to get new ideas.  I would tear out recipes that interested me.  Just recently I create a new organized way to store and save these recipes.  You can read about that here - Recipe Binder.  Now I have Pinterest :) The nice thing about Pinterest is I don't have to print off the recipes.  I can pin them to my boards and quickly access them on my iPad when I am meal planning and cooking.  Here are my recipe boards if you want to take a look:
Yummy Snacks                               
Slow Cooker
Delicious Desserts                             
Soups
Drinks                                               
Daily Dinners

Good Morning Breakfast                     
Lunches

Here are some new recipes that I tried this month:

Personal Pizzas

The pin said that these tasted just like the personal pan pizzas at Pizza Hut.  They were right :)  These pizzas were delicious.  The recipe makes 3 large personal pizzas.  I think next time, I could cut it in half and make two smaller pizzas for my husband and I.

Broccoli Penne

This is a very simple dish which is great for a school night.  I am not a big fan of broccoli, but due to the fact that is covered in cheese in this recipe I could handle it :)  

Baked French Toast

This was a great breakfast for Sunday morning.  I like to relax, to be able to take time to sip my coffee and read the newspaper on Sunday mornings so the last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time making breakfast.  However, Sunday morning is the only morning that we can have a family breakfast so I want to make it something special.  This fit the bill.  I could make it all Saturday night and leave soak in the refrigerator over night.  

Chicken Bacon Avocado Chopped Salad

I love avocado so when I saw this salad, I had to try it.  I tend to take quite a few salads to work for lunch because I can usually prep them the night before or if I have to do it in the morning it doesn't take too long.  However, this is one that I found out wasn't going to work for school.  When I opened the salad at lunch, my avocado had turned all brown and mushy :( Maybe next time I will bring the avocado whole to work and cut it up for the salad right before I am going to eat it.

What I Wore Wedensday

A couple of the blogs that I follow have been participating in What I Wore Wednesday for a while now.  I enjoy seeing all sorts of different outfits and thought that I would join in on the sharing.

(Sorry for the poor photo)

Top:  Kohl's

Necklace:  Kohl's

Jean Skirt:  Gap

Putting Some Order in the Chest Freezer

Over the summer I made a ton of  freezer meals to stock up the freezer for when school started again and I want some easy meals for dinner.  I wanted to find a way to keep the freezer organized so I didn't lose things at the bottom.  About a year ago, I created a list that hangs on my refrigerator.  It is on a dry erase board which makes it easy to erase something when we take something out or write down something that was added to the freezer.

However, I am getting sick of having to dig through everything to find what I am looking for.  I have decided to try and use plastic milk creates to organize things a little.

I picked up four different colors thinking that the colors could aid in the organization.  I am a little worried that over time, the plastic will crack from the cold, but we will see how long it lasts.  My freezer already had three baskets, so this gave me a total of seven different categories I could divide my freezer into.  Here are my categories:

• Beef
• Chicken
• Other Meat (Pork, Sausage, Hot Dogs, etc.)
• Bread & Pizza
• Potatoes
• Other Frozen Food (Cheese, Veggies, Fruit, etc.)
• Ice Packs

I was only able to actually fit 3 of the 4 crates in the freezer.  That is okay because now I have one that I can use to transport things from the freezer to the refrigerator on Sunday's when I do my weekly meal prep.  There was space between the crates at the bottom of the freezer where I placed my frozen bread and pizzas instead of putting them in a crate.  

The color coding did help.  On my list on the refrigerator, I put the color of the crate and what is it in.  Therefore, when my husband needs to find something in the freezer, he will know what crate to look in.  

Getting Ready for the Week

School started a couple of weeks ago, meaning my mornings are pretty rushed.  I already get up at 4:45 a.m. so I can have a little quiet time and get myself ready before I wake the others.  I refuse to get up an earlier so I am always looking for ways to make the mornings a little easier.

I have decided to plan out what I am going to wear to work for the week on the Sunday night before.  I take into account what is going on at school that week and what the weather is supposed to be like.  I first layout all the outfits on my bed.  I can then easily see if something needs to be ironed and then iron it on Sunday instead of trying to do it in the morning on the day I want to wear it.  I then pick out what jewelry and shoes I want to wear with each outfit.

Each outfit is then hung up together in my closet.  I also hang the jewelry up on the hanger as well.

I have only been doing this a couple of weeks, but so far I think it has made a difference in the morning.  I don't have to stress out about what I am going to wear or even take time to think about it.  I open up my closet door and get dressed, that's it.  I am starting to think that I should do this with my daughters clothes as well.

Calming the Gift Wrapping Supplies

My gift wrapping supplies (bows, ribbons, wrapping paper, bags, tissue paper, etc.) have a home in the closet in my husband's office.  Up until now, I have used two large gift bags to store all of my other gift bags and tissue paper.  My bows and gift tags have been kept in a plastic grocery bag.  These bags were then stacked on top of each other in the closet with the rolls of wrapping paper leaning on the wall next to them.

This system seemed to work okay for me until the other day when it all came tumbling down on my cat who was trying to get at the ribbon in one of the bags.  Due to the fact that it was all spread across the floor and I had to pick it up anyways, I thought I would try to organize it a little better.  Here is everything on the floor, a "before" if you will...

If we have another child, my husband's office will be turned into a bedroom, meaning this stuff will then have to be stored in our basement.  Therefore, I wanted my new organizing system to be something that would keep the gift wrapping supplies neat and clean in the basement when the time comes.

First I took all the gift bags out and grouped them by event (baby shower, Christmas, etc.).  As I was doing this, I threw out any that were too wrinkled or were broken.  I found an extra gray plastic tub in the basement that I then placed all the bags in, still keeping them grouped by theme.  I like the fact that I can put a lid on this when it has to go in the basement.

Next was the tissue paper.  First I sorted this out by color, again getting rid of any that was to torn to use.  I had a really nice shopping bag from Victoria's Secret that I placed on the tissue paper in rainbow color order.

I was struggling with what to do with the wrapping paper.  I wanted a plastic tub like this made for wrapping paper, but I am going to try and wait until after Christmas hoping to get a good deal on one.  I ended up using an extra wastepaper basket that used to be in my office.  For now, I will just stand the rolls up in it, keeping them a little more contained.

Last was to find something to hold the ribbon, bows, gift tags, a pen, tape, and a scissors.  I recently had a Thirty One Gifts party and as a gift for hosting, I was given a small canvas bag with many pockets.  I found that this worked perfectly.

Here is everything neatly organized in the new containers...

The gift wrap supplies now take up much less room in the closet and are not creating a leaning tower ready to topple.