Meal Plan Monday ~Jan 31st

I have been struggling with planning meals the entire time I've been married but it never seemed too big a deal in the past.  Now; however, with a baby the lack of organization in this area is really becoming a burden.

So, I am going to attempt to dedicate a blog each Monday to menu planning starting this week.


This week's meals:
Monday:  Slow Cooker Pineapple Pepper Chicken Stew with rice (if this is good it might end up as my monthly food exchange group meal for February)
Tuesday:  Pot roast
Wednesday: Shrimp and Cheese Grits with Okra
Thursday:  Dinner out
Friday:   Make your own pizzas (I'll have to come back and add the links later - I can't recall where they are right now!)

Project Life is here!

Here I am hugging my Project Life box!  I don't think I've been this excited in a while about a package.  I'm such a nerd really....that's all it boils down to!

Well, as you can imagine I tore into the package like a dog on bacon and pulled everything out.  I started setting my binder up - put the page protectors in and then started putting the monthly divider tabs in and that's as far as I got because Real Life started crying to go to bed (that would be my sweet Olivia)!

So, you'll have to stay tuned for more details but I will leave you with this shot of my page protectors and the dividers.  Aren't they pretty?!

OYtamOL: Wk4 Slicing the Pie of Life

It's Week 4 in Unsolicited Advice's One Year to a {more} Organized Life challenge!  This week Brenda asked us to look at how we spend our time as a pie graph and she provided yet another adorable worksheet.  I tried to use it, believe me I did but I just could not quite visualize the slices so being the nerdiest of nerds that I am I resorted to creating a pie graph in Excel. 

But, do you want to hear something CRAZY???  The hours I input for the week did not add up to 168!  What?  I can barely find time to shave my underarms more than once a week but Excel is informing me that I have twenty-some odd hours not accounted for?  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark! 

So, I have a mystery on my hands it seems and the only solution is to pay more attention to where my time is actually going.   One thing I may have mentioned before that I have realized from working on this challenge is that I spend WAY too much time on the internet, especially during work hours.  Probably shouldn't confess to that on a blog but I'm trying to be accountable to make change this year so the price of admission is transparency.

Since we know that my pie chart was completely inaccurate I'm just going to share the categories I had entered into it (try not to laugh at some of these):

1. Actual working time
2. Time at work not working
3. Time spent in support of my marriage
4. Time spent with God
5. Household maintenance
6. Hobbies/Relaxation (ha ha!)
7. Olivia (this represented time where I am taking care of Olivia and cannot multitask such as when I am putting her to bed, spending play time with her, etc. vs when she's in the high chair and I'm cleaning in the kitchen)
8. Cooking or other food-related time
9. Entertainment (including TV, movies, internet - at home)
10. Personal hygiene (another ha ha!), and my favorite,
11. Sleep (I have come to the conclusion that I took sleep for granted to such a degree pre-baby that I actually should apologize to it!)

So, those are the "slices" I came up with.....think I missed anything??  Have any idea where those twenty-some odd hours were spent?

52 Weeks of Organizing: Week 4

Once again I am ready to show you my mini organizational success for the week as part of Org Junkie's 52 Weeks of Organizing challenge!  

We're in the fourth week of her challenge and for this week I chose to organize a few drawers in my dresser.  I decided that would be the project for the week when nothing more would fit in the middle drawer and I was tired of digging through it to find whatever I need. 

So, here is a look at the before:

And now, the after, complete with cute dog:

Printable Subway Art

I just LOVE the Subway art I keep finding around the blogosphere!  I posted in December about getting started with these at Christmas and my goal is to get them for all occasions and have them ready to put up with each season.  I just love how clean they look and how easy it will be to change them out of the frames each season and constantly have something 'current' up.  For someone who really does not "decorate" this makes it very easy to look like I do!

So, with Valentine's Day around the corner I thought this new one should be the next in line to print and frame and Jessica of Craftily Ever After is providing them for FREE to anyone who posts about them on their blog so you, too, could have one!!   And, PS. congrats to Jessica on her pregnancy!!

Project Life....woo hoo!

I feel all tingly today because I ordered Project Life last night and it's on the way!  

I happened upon this product a few days into the New Year when a blogger posed a question about preserving memories in 2011 and a reader responded that their next scrapbook would be Project Life.  I had never heard of it so I put my "googling" skills to use immediately and boy, was I excited when I saw it! 

As a diehard scrapbooker, who has been burnt out for years but still has all the tools, I couldn't be more pleased to find this 'scrapbooking alternative'.  With a baby I feel the need to document as much as possible but have felt trapped in regards to how to get started.  The baby books where you fill in the details and add photos didn't feel personal or creative enough yet the idea of traditional scrapbooking was overwhelming when you consider that I rarely get more than 2 showers a week, if that.  I had begun making notes on scraps of paper and throwing them into a basket for later but let's be real - when is later??  5 years from now when she's ready for kindergarten, when she's graduating from high school, getting married?  The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say, and this mom has lots of good intentions she doesn't want to fall by the wayside.  So, this seems like a nice middle-of-the-road solution for this season of my life and I can't wait to get started!

What is stockpiling?

Recently I heard about a new TLC show called Extreme Couponing.  I haven't watched an entire episode but I did watch several clips online.  My immediate thought afterwards was that the folks depicted are not extreme couponers, they are HOARDERS, it's a disease and they need help!  There is a BIG difference between hoarding and stockpiling so I thought I'd dedicate a blog to talk about what stockpiling is and how extreme couponers do it.

Stockpiling is exactly what it sounds like - creating a stockpile of something.  I consider the "something" to be a household or food item that you use or consume regularly.  Most couponers accomplish their stockpiles by combining sales with coupons.  I find, personally, that I am able to stockpile most efficiently and inexpensively at Harris Teeter and CVS but it can be done using a plethora of other stores if those are not near you. 

Why stockpile?  Well, that should be obvious but for me, my purpose is multifold.  1) I hate shopping (that's right!) 2) I love getting stuff for free or cheap and 2) I hate shopping!  Confused about how shopping helps someone who hates shopping?  Well, my dear, you see the more I stockpile the less I run out of the stuff the less I have to shop....it's all about how you look at it!

I thought you'd enjoy seeing a few photos of my most useful stockpiles:

Toothpaste, toothbrushes and floss (you can't see)

Deodorant (very important item you don't want to run out of!)



Shampoo and conditioner



Liquid dishwashing detergent

Powder automatic dishwasher detergent



Liquid formula concentrate (we don't normally use this but I found it on a clearance rack at Harris Teeter and it turned out to be a better deal than our normal powder so we bought all that they had - 24 cans = 24 days of formula)