Menu Plan for Aug 15-21, 2021

Today's post is going to be short and sweet.

We have had a super busy week, and I am worn out.  I'm ready for a night of watching TV and then lights out.

Here is what we'll be having this week:

I hope you all have a good week, and you find a good meal plan or two here!  See you next week!

Zone 2 Cleaning For The Week

 

Hi there!  It's Monday, and time to get back into the weekly routine!

I hope you had a great weekend, it was a fun one for me.  I got some shopping done, went to a new quilt shop and got some great new fabric, and did some baking to share with the neighbors.  

I have started my day, but just remembered I hadn't shared this week's cleaning plan.  Here is the calendar for August:  (you can see we are in Zone 2 Bathrooms this week)

Here is my guide I am using to clean the bathrooms:

I set my timer for 30 minutes, and clean until my time is up.  Whatever I don't finish today, I will get tomorrow or the next day!  Before I start my Zone work, I complete my Dailies.  If you missed it, here are the things I do daily before entering The Zone :)  -  

There you have it!  Now I need to get back to work!  Happy Cleaning!

Weekly Menu Plan Updated

Let me try this again.  Okay, here it is.  I have no idea what the problem is, but I just kept playing with it until I got something reasonable.

Please see the post below for the full post for this week.  Thanks, and sorry this is in 2 parts!

Weekly Menu Plan for August 8-14, 2021

 

Isn't it just darn sad that kids are already back in school?  Here it is, 90 degrees outside and perfect swimming weather for the kids, and they sit in a classroom looking out at the bright sunshine.  One of our middle schools is right next to a water park!  The kids can see it right outside their windows!  How hard would that be to concentrate on school stuff??

Anyway, it is going to be hot, HOT, HOT this week, so I am planning to grill out a couple times.  I also am having salad for dinner twice, because it's the kind of heat that makes you not hungry.  I don't like anything heavy when it is hot outside.  The chicken salad on Wednesday uses leftover grilled chicken from Tuesday night, so if you want to try those recipes, make some extra grilled chicken on Tuesday.  That way you just have to prep the salad on Wednesday.  I will be using gluten free pasta in my salad.

Just for fun, and because I wanted to make my air conditioning work overtime, I baked three coffee cakes this afternoon to share with the families at the bus stop tomorrow morning.  There are so many parents and grandparents at the bus stop this year!  I told my granddaughter, who is in 5th grade, that this year I would be watching her from the window or the front step (her bus stop is right across the street from her house).  But when I saw all the parents and grandparents out there, I felt guilty!  So I dragged my sorry self across the street and joined them.  I might change my mind when the weather gets cold, though!

A funny story about the coffee cake.  Right before COVID hit last year, the grandparents of a family across the street from my daughter's house moved here from Alabama.  They moved here to help their daughter and son-in-law with their three little ones.  I baked them a coffee cake to welcome them right after they moved here.  Well, Thursday morning at the bus stop the grandparents were there to see their grandkids off on the first day of school.  Right after the bus pulled away, the grandfather came up to me and said, "Well, we've lived here over 15 months now, and we love it here.  We all made it through COVID and are glad things are getting back to normal.  But.....that coffee cake you made.  I've been thinking about it for 15 months, and want to know where and when I can have another one!  Just tell me the time and place, and I'll be there!"  

Well, that made me laugh and I was quite surprised!  Last year, I drove my granddaughter to and from school, so she didn't ride the bus.  I never saw those grandparents during the school year.  And here I find out the poor guy has been craving a coffee cake for a year and a half!  So that's why I made three coffee cakes today.  One whole cake for the grandparents, and I'm cutting up the rest to give to the other parents.  I guess I forget sometimes that a lot of people don't bake!  

Now on to this week's menu plan.  Here it is in all it's glory!  It's a pretty simple week, really.  I hope you find something you'd like to try!

Well, for some reason, Google is not allowing me to embed my slide here without it being HUGE and covering the whole thing.  So for right now, I am posting a picture of it, and then after I figure out what is going wrong, I will post the slide with the active links to the recipes.  Here is the picture:

The links will not be active on this, but I will try and figure out what is going wrong and will repost it with the active links.  Sorry about that!

Have a great week, and will post as soon as I can!

Cleaning Schedule, Part 1

 

I don't know about you, but the older I get, the less motivated I am to clean the house every day.  Or every week.  Or every month.  Or whenever.

I can find time for all sorts of things, including sitting on my porch swing for hours just staring out at my backyard, but I seem to run short on time to clean.

Since I've re-committed to menu planning, I also decided to make time each day for cleaning.  Now, my house is an empty nest house.  We still live in the same house we raised our family in, but the kids are grown and it's just us chickens left here.  The house doesn't get dirty and messy the way it did when our kids were little.  But it still gets messy and dirty, it just takes a little longer.  It still needs to be clean, and I need to commit to keeping it that way.  Laziness is a habit that I can form very quickly!

So, what I've done, and what I'm still working on, is a planning calendar for a cleaning routine.  I've looked at lots and lots of ideas on Pinterest, and looked at a lot of cleaning checklists.  Before I retired, I used the Fly Lady system a lot.  But these days, I need a routine for completing chores and for keeping the house uncluttered.  The routine I've come up with is specific to my needs, so if you look at it and think you want to do something similar, you will have to tweak it.  

Here is what I have come up with so far.  It has taken me a lot of time to come up with something I really like, and I think I can do!

First off, I started with a list of things I need to do daily.  Then, I divided my house into zones, and am making a chart for each zone.  Each week I will work mainly on a certain zone.  I made a calendar for August labeled with the zones.  I am keeping these sheets in a folder with clear plastic sleeves, so I can just pick up the folder and start my chores. 

Here is my Dailies list:

This list is what I start off with first thing in the morning, after I get home from getting my youngest granddaughter on the bus.  I don't do these in the order listed, I just have my routine down and make sure the first 9 things get done before I start in on #10, the zone work.  The first 9 items take me about an hour, and about 20 minutes of that is doing my exercises.  

Here is my August calendar with the weeks labeled with the zone I am working on:

So, you can see this week I am focusing on the Living Room and Dining Room.  What I do is, I set my timer for 30 minutes, and just go down the list and complete as much as I can.  If the timer goes off before I'm finished, I just complete what I'm doing or come to a good stopping point.  That way I can pick it up where I left off!  The last week of August, Zone 5, goes over into the first 4 days of September.  Then, I'll make a new calendar and continue on with Zone 1.  I hope that makes sense!

What list, you ask?  Here is my cleaning list for the Living and Dining Rooms:

I still feel like I'm forgetting something on this list, but I can just add to it if I think of something.  If I change the list, I will post the update the next time I am in this zone.

I don't have all my charts ready, I am still working on those.  But now that I have the major plan in place, I think I can finish those up in a day or two.

So that's it!  That's what I'm using to keep myself in a cleaning routine.  By setting the timer for 30 minutes, I get some work done, but still have most of my afternoons for cooking, baking, and sewing!  So I get the least favorite part of the day over with first, which gives me something to look forward to the rest of the day.  My granddaughter calls it "Eating a Frog."  She read something somewhere that if you do the most unpleasant thing of the day first, like if you had to eat a frog, the rest of the day will be great compared to that!  So whenever she has something she doesn't want to do, she says, "Well, I guess I better go eat the frog," and she gets it over with.  Good plan!  

So far, I've followed my cleaning routine to a T.  But it's just the first week, so I don't want to be overly optimistic.  But I'm determined to keep trying!

Hope your week is going well!  Take care!

Menu Plan for Aug. 1-7, 2021

 

Hi there!

I'm back by wildly popular demand!  That is, if you consider 1 person checking up on me, to be wildly popular!  🤣

Explanation of my absence:  I got lazy.  I guess I just needed a break from cooking and cleaning and blogging.  While I was gone, mostly I sewed.  Lots and lots of bags and a few other things.  I sewed and sewed, and we ate a lot of sandwiches and salads, and went out to eat a lot.  And I watched my soaps almost every. single. day.  We also took a two week vacation to Disney World, with my daughter and her family, and had the best time I've had in a long time.  But I'm behind on cooking and cleaning, and need to get back in a routine.  The granddaughter I babysit goes back to school this week on Thursday, so that should get me back in the swing of things.  And thank you Linda, for checking up on me, because that motivated me to stop sewing and looking at fabric all day, and to have more of a healthy balance.  

I am working on a cleaning schedule that will work for me.  I have tried lots of different schedules on Pinterest, as well as Fly Lady.  It all works for awhile, but then I miss a day or two and the whole thing gets thrown off.  I wind up doing way too little, while I need to do A LOT.  So, I am trying to be realistic and motivated at the same time.  I need to follow a routine, and I like to pre-plan my week ahead as much as possible.  I get so much more done that way!  I am about 1/3 of the way done figuring out a workable cleaning schedule.  Right now, I have post it notes and pieces of paper shoved in my planner, ready to organize.  My biggest schedule breaker is SEWING!  If I start feeling like chores are getting in the way of my sewing time, I always break away from cleaning and head to my sewing room.  I would rather bake and sew than do anything else!  But that is not good in the long term, nope.  I need to do better.

Menu planning for this week was actually fun.  I am cutting out so many desserts, but not all desserts.  I have to have something sweet and yummy to look forward to each day, are you feeling it, too?  It just makes the day so much brighter!  I love having a cookie, or a piece of pie or cake, or some kind of treat, in the evening after dinner.  It's just a luxury that I love!  Sometimes I sneak a little treat in during the day, too, depending on what I'm doing.  I've got a sweet tooth, that's for sure.

Here you go, take a look at this week's menu plan.  I've already got the Gluten Free Chicken Enchiladas ready for the oven tonight.  It smells pretty good - it's been making me hungry all day!  

     

It feels good to get back to menu planning!  I sure do hope you find something here you can use - either a main dish to try, or a complete menu, or even a dessert!  

Thank you for stopping by!  You know, it's a big world out there, and it's nice to know we have blog friends to share our days with.  Please come back often, as I'm planning on coming completely out of my cocoon to keep sharing!  

Have a wonderful week!

Apple Breakfast Tart

 

It's been awhile!  I had to take a little intermission while I took care of a hip and back flare-up.  I am on the road to back to normal, thanks to a good doctor and physical therapy.

So for the past month or so, we've been eating a lot of sandwiches, frozen foods, and take out.  Whatever I could throw together without too much standing and/or bending.  And although I am almost ready to start cooking again, there are a couple considerations.  

First, according to the doctor, I need to change my diet to a more healthy one.  I totally get that!  I don't like it, but I get it!  Second, I am just not quite there yet for sitting down and making a menu plan and going to several grocery stores to get everything I need.  I'm doing way better, just not there yet!

What I have done, though, is I've been looking at different ways of sharing my menu plans.  I like using Google Drive, but it's just not my favorite.  I checked out Bublup - have you heard of it?  I really like it!  It's kind of like Pinterest, in a way, but you can save files, notes, and all sorts of things in your folders.  Then, if you want them to, Bublup just takes all the stuff you've put in a folder and makes a blog post out of it somehow!  It's like magic!  

I tried one out this morning.  I made a really yummy Apple Breakfast Tart this morning, and we both loved it.  So I quick put notes and pictures in a folder, and they made it into a roll (that's what they call a blog post).  It was pretty easy and pretty darn quick to throw together!  

So....I decided to make you my guinea pigs and share the link with you all, so you can see how it looks when they mosh it all together to make a blog post.  PLEASE let me know what you think!  Because I'm thinking I may try to make my menu plans using the BublUp app, if you guys like how it looks.  If not, I can go back to the old way of using Google Drive.  It's no big deal, but I'm interested in knowing what you all think!

Here is the link to see the BublUp blog page for my Apple Breakfast Tart:

Apple Breakfast Tart

PLEASE let me know what you think!

Have a great day, and I will be back soon with a menu plan!