Getting into a routine is HARD!! part two

I have spent a good deal of time thinking about how I would like to put my routine into place. (mainly while nursing Evee, since I am stuck sitting anyways) ;-) I have decided that I am in need of a daily routine as well as a chore routine that handles the weekly/monthly chores. I am hoping this will help me not have days were I feel SO overwhelmed it is hard to even get started. I am also hoping this will help us fit in working out and homeschooling without feeling pressured. So here is the tentative schedule I have worked out. I am always open for changing things as the kids grow and our needs change.
Daily:

Morning

·         Get kids up by 830

·         Change kids

·         Make beds

·         Start load of laundry fold the load that is in the dryer from night before

·         Eat

·         Email (while kids eat)

·         Circle time/homeschool (half hour)

Afternoon

·         Eat no later than 1pm

·         Unload dishwasher (load am dishes)

·         Wipe counters/table/high chair

·         Move over laundry/tidy up house

·         Quiet time (my time for email and workout)

·         Shower

 

Evening

·         Dinner by 630pm

·         Bath

·         Pjs/teeth/vitamins

·         Fold load in dryer

·         Load and run dishwasher

·         Wash counters/table/high chair

·         Read stories

·         Kids bed by 930pm

·         Mom bed by 11pm

Days	Chores
Monday	Clean master and kids bathroom
Tuesday	Wash kitchen/dining room floor
Wednesday	Wash Windows
Thursday	Clean down stairs bathroom
Friday	Deep clean kitchen
Saturday	Wash sheets (catch-up on laundry day)
Sunday	Make bread and yogurt

Bi-Monthly:

Dust

Clean fridge

Go through stock pile of food and move older things to front

I will add chores as I realize I forgot them. I am going to write up the chores for the week on a white board and add the bi-weekly when necessary. I am not going to freak if I don't follow this sometimes as things come up with the kids but I hope this will help alleviate my some of my stress and overwhelmed feelings.

A catch up on the recipes I did last week, I HATE HOMEMADE SOY MILK as a drink or in my smoothies. I LOVE EDAMAME but I HATE soy milk. It is good for baking and I like that I can control the sugar/salt content but Kevin and I think it tastes terrible. I loved the yogurt and different dips we made as well as the yam taco. I changed the recipe a bit but I followed the key ingredients. I added more vegtables and didnt get to make the pesto so I made homemade salsa.

Over the weekend I made polenta for the first time and we loved it. I made braised veggies with it and then had left overs with eggs and veggies for breakfast! YUMMY! 

trying to get into a routine is HARD!!

I have yet again been gone for a while. I am trying to get my family going on a routine. I am following MoneySavingMommy's how to develop a routine series, I have to say so far I am really impressed and have thought about her posed questions. I am not religious so I do not have some of the same answers as the other women following her postings but I still love her insight and thoughts.

I am on day two and here are what I have come up with so far:
I AM NOT AS ORGANIZED AS I THOUGHT!

my five big rocks:
-quality time (reading doing crafts just playing ect) with my children
-time alone not watching tv with my husband
-making our food as wholesome and from the "farm"/homemade as possible
-homeschooling the kids
-exercise and getting back in shape/staying healthy as a family

Next I love how she talks about needing to come up with a "framework". I used to have a morning routine with jj but honestly after evee came I has mostly just gone with the flow. It is really just making things harder for me and giving me more excuses not to do the things I want to do. I am going to make it my goal this weekend to come up with a basis for our routines. I am just making some rough time ideas now.

Morning:
-get up at 8
-get jj up by 830

Afternoon:

Night:
-start bedtime routine no later then 830
-kids in bed by 930 at the latest
-my bed no later then 11 (time to spend with hubby)

I will work on filling in the actual goals around these a little more this weekend and see how it goes.

On a side note I am working on making some changed to my families diet. I am trying to add some new and interesting dinners and lunches to the menu. (another goal of mine is to star to menu plan a bit more to help save money as well as vary our diet more)

I am currently making these veggie burgers to freeze and use as lunches when I am in a rush and want something nutrient packed and yummy! I am add toppings to make them Mexican, Asian, or even just regular hamburgers. I tasted one this evening and I have to say that I am impressed and they are very filling with not a lot of fat or "bad" calories.

I am making a lunch for a friend coming over tomorrow and am excited about it. I love closet cookings blog and have made a few of his yummy looking meals. Tomorrow I am going to tackle making sweet potato and black bean tacos with swis chard pesto.

I also have some yogurt in the crock pot getting ready to be made into frozen yogurt, Greek yogurt roasted veggie dip, cream cheese, and just some good old plain yogurt for the fridge. JJ loves yogurt and I love being able to make it less sugar filled and tailor each day to his mood of flavors. I also have soy beans soaking to make some homemade soy milk tomorrow. I will post recipes and results of these tomorrow! GOOD NIGHT!

back to fun!

I am hoping that the kids are finally back to being healthy. I am so ready to get back into fun and creative things. I have a lot to post that we have done even throughout the sickensses, but I will have to post those later tonight. I will post that I finished a bird feeder with JJ. (actually we did both this one and this one) ours of coarse were made by jj and i so they dont look exactly like those two but jj loved it and we hope to make another milk carton bird feeder for my moms side of the yard.

One of the days Jj and his dad made this fort.

proud daddy and little evee
 (he even made windows and a working door)

side view of the cool house

bed time reading in the house
(every night since it was built, id say that makes the house a sucess)



There are plenty of other projects to post later. These are just my two favorite! 

Got lost in snow craze!!

Have not blogged recently for a lot of reasons but mostly because I just have not had a lot of alone time to get it done. Sadly, the only reason I have a little alone time today is because JJ is not feeling well and is taking his first nap in over 6 months. He passed out on my bed after laying down on his own free will. He has some sort of eye infection. :(

We have still been busy as always though. I have finished a few projects but I am not ready to post about them yet.

Since it is snowing, I figured it was only appropriate to share what we have been doing to occupy our time since we are snowed in (only one car and Kevin had to take it to work).

We have made:
Snow Ice Cream (After a lot of research, I loved this website because it gave us options on how we wanted to make the snow ice cream and lots of ideas we are going to try again later.)
We made two kinds on snow ice cream but between the two kiddos "helping" I only got a few pictures. We made the mix the snow in the milk/cream kind and the put the snow in a bag and the cream in a little bag inside of the snow and and mix kind. I have to say after having both Jaedyn and I both liked the put the snow in a bag and then the cream in a smaller bag and not let the snow touch our ice cream simply because it was smoother and richer. The kind where you mix the snow in is a LOT easier with little kids though. Its like instant gratification. We made the mix the snow in kind chocolate using a bit of coco powder in the mix. We made the other kind vanilla.

ingredients

jj mixing it all up

finished snow mixture

 

Snow "gems" (These are currently freezing in the snow and awaiting jj in his bath tonight, he is too cold and tired to play with them in the snow today, we will make more tomorrow if there is still snow to play in)
These did not work as well as hoped. I reccomment using small water ballons since they hold more and you can make them bigger and the ballon is thinner so it would have actually frozen solid like we had hoped.

ingredients

water in balloons

Freezing the water

 

now paint ( I didn't have spray bottles so I used old mustard and ketchup bottles I also use for homemade chalk during the summer because jj isn't ready to have to paint it all over he loves to squirt it and make designs)

our painted snowman

Freezable Sugar Cookies (we made the drop cookie version today and froze more then half of the dough so we have some ready for other days)

Freezable Peanut Butter/chocolate chip cookies (we added the chocolate chips to the recipe)

Slow Cooked Chuck Roast (I didn't use sour cream, I used our homemade plain yogurt instead)

Spinach Pesto chicken with noodles (this is where I got the idea. I honestly didn't use a recipe and just made it to taste. I decided to add grilled chicken to my pasta and mix it all together. FYI Jaedyn LOVES this recipe and just thinks this is how we make pesto) 
Homemade liquid Laundry Soap (FYI I LOVE THIS SOAP, but I don't put it in a 2 gallon bucket, I put it in a large yogurt container, well two to accommodate it and only make about 1/3 at a time, then I have one under the sink for later and one I use in the laundry room at a time)

Those are just the things we got done. We are still working on our crate paper flowers to decorate for Valentines Day. I will be posting more details and pictures later! :)

HOMESCHOOL DAY #1

  First we made a few more weather descriptions  and the days of the week to go along with the ones we had. (month, date, and some weather descriptions) Making them required JJ to help me type them up, we printed them, cut them out, and then we put them through the laminate machine. It took quiet a while and now I need to buy some more Velcro but all in all its nice to have more options for him to choose from.
  Then we just made out letter tracing papers A-Z after a few mess ups and changes, I made them black and will let him trace using homemade paint the color of the week so we can use these same tracers week after week.
  I decided to start with the Zoo as our main subject. So this month we have A-alligator, B-bear, C-cheetah D-duck, E-elephant, F-fox, G-giraffe, H-hippopotamus I-iguana, J-Jaguar, K- kangaroo, L-lion, M- meerkat, N-newt, O-ostrich, P-penguin, Q- quail, R-rabbit S-snake T-turtle U-urchin V-vulture W-wolf X-Xenopus: a frog Y-yak Z-zebra. that list was actually kind of hard to come up with. I did my best to pick animals that we can see at the local zoo or science center. I also wanted all real animals that I can show him online. I think this will help him start to connect with the letters.
  I picked out some of his books that have to do with the zoo and animals to read each day as well as our nightly books that are now focused around the animals he will be learning about.I plan to take this month as a trial to see how in depth he is ready to get into each of the subjects.


I am excited to say that we are going to make a felt board soon as well as some felt letters and numbers. I am pretty excited.

HERE GOES NOTHING!!! :)

homemade ritz and ricotta cheese.....cheeses #1

Today we made some homemade ricotta and Ritz crackers. I will make both of these again because they are pretty easy to accomplish. I have some notes for myself now concerning both of these recipes.

Lets start with the ricotta. Which I got from here. I have to give this blog some credit for their recipes and the ease of understanding instructions. I love quiet a few things from here.

Makes about 1 generous cup of ricotta
3 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream (see Note above about using less)
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

• Pour the milk, cream and salt into a 3-quart nonreactive saucepan. Attach a candy or deep-fry thermometer.
• Heat the milk to 190°F, stirring it occasionally to keep it from scorching on the bottom.
• Remove from heat and add the lemon juice, then stir it once or twice, gently and slowly.
• Let the pot sit undisturbed for 5 minutes.
• Line a colander with a few layers of cheesecloth and place it over a large bowl (to catch the whey).
• Pour the curds and whey into the colander and let the curds strain for at least an hour.
•  At an hour, you’ll have a tender, spreadable ricotta. At two hours, it will be spreadable but a bit firmer, almost like cream cheese. (It will firm as it cools, so do not judge its final texture by what you have in your cheesecloth.)
• Discard the whey, or, if you’re one of those crafty people who use it for other things, of course, save it.
• Eat the ricotta right away or transfer it to an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use.

Today, I did not have whole milk and with Kevin at work all day I didn't want to take the kids to the store. I used 1/2cup cream and 3 1/2 cups 2%. The ricotta worked like a charm and now that I have confidence I will make sure to have the right ingredients next time because while it tastes good and is so going on pizzas tomorrow I would have liked it to be creamier. There was just not enough fat with 2% to achieve that. I would like to make it like this those to make some manicotti soon though.
Side note, I WILL NEVER THROW AWAY MY WHEY AGAIN!!!! This is an amazing site to let you know where to use up that left over whey.

Next up was the Ritz crackers. I will make the dough with store brand butter that firms up better and not my expensive real cream butter next time. It was a bit sticky. I will also roll them out in a few smaller batches and as thin thin thin as I can. They taste really yummy and I have eaten quiet a few with the ricotta I made spread on top with roasted garlic. YUMMY! I love this blog! I am so also going to make her graham cracker recipe later this month with these homemade marshmallows ( I also love this blog).

This recipe is made in a food processor. If you cut the recipe in half, you can fit it in a mini food processor.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp + another 1/2 tsp salt for topping
• 6 tbsp cold unsalted butter + 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Put the flour, baking powder, sugar, and 1/2 tsp of salt in the food processor.
3. Pulse to combine.
4. Add cold butter a few small pats at a time, and pulse to combine.
5. Add vegetable oil. Pulse to combine.
6. Add water a little bit at a time. Pulse to combine after each addition. The dough should start to form a ball.
7. Roll dough out as thin as you can. Mine ended up being all different thicknesses. Don't sweat it. They are homemade! If you are really concerned, Jeffrey had luck using a pasta maker to make the dough all one thickness - great idea!
8. Use cookie cutters to cut the dough out. You can make them "Ritz" shaped or any shape that you like.
9. Bake the crackers on a parchment or Silpat lined baking sheet for ten minutes or until the crackers just begin to brown.
10. While the crackers are baking, melt the remaining butter and mix in the remaining salt (Some people said that the crackers weren't salty enough. Add more or less salt to your taste.)

As soon as you remove the crackers from the oven, brush them with the salty butter.

Final products together. The ricotta was mixed with freshly roasted garlic and some Italian herbs.

Homemade Cheeses!!

I am going to start a couple week long post where I am going to experiment making different types for instance mascarpone, ricotta, cream cheese, hopefully eventually ending with harder to make cheeses like mozzarella and cheddar. I will also be spotlighting different ways to use each cheese. Meaning I will pair making crackers and puff pastry ect… with the different cheese I make. This weekend was yogurt and we are going to try to make some homemade frozen yogurt tonight. I am thinking mascarpone is next week’s venture with homemade graham crackers to enjoy it with.


YUMMY!!!