Kitchen Magic With Merrill Family Deep Thoughts

Lovelies! Here we are again with another fabulous line up of guest bloggers to entertain you all while I am busy cleaning our new house from top to bottom, grocery shopping, and all of the ever-important mani/pedi, spray tan, waxing, and hair appointments in preparation for the big HOMECOMING!! I am so glad I have all of these wonderful Lovelies stepping in for me so I can focus on the important things not to mention so I can be sure to take breathers in between my anxiety attacks. So please be sure to show all of my wonderful Lovelies lots of love because they deserve it. Today, I have my cousin! Yay for family right?! I wish I was super domesticated like her. She's like supermom with twin boys and doing all this fabulous food savvy stuff. Enjoy!!

So, our lovely Mrs. S. or as I call her, Rachelle, is my cousin. Our mothers are sisters and we grew up in a very large extended family seeing each other at massive Thanksgiving meals, family reunions in the summertime and our Aunt Kay's gigantor gift-givings at the annual Christmas parties. I love staying in touch with her and reading about all her adventures here on her blog and on Facebook. So, I was honored to be given the chance to do a guest-blog post and hope you like it. My family blog is Merrill Family Deep Thoughts, where I document the goings-on in my family and crazy mind.

My life is busy. I am a wife, which can keep you busy. Last year, I became a mother, which can keep you even busier. I am a mother to 15-month old TWIN boys, which undoubtedly keeps me busier than I could ever imagine.

Since I stay home with my boys now, I have taken on the task of becoming more domestic, especially in the kitchen. I wanted to start meal-planning, sticking to a grocery budget, start contributing to food storage and have fun with trying new meals. The tricky part was achieving all of that within money and time constraints. When you add two more mouths to feed and take away a full-time salary, the grocery budget gets a bit tighter. As you can also imagine, I don't have all day long to tend to the affairs of the kitchen. So, I started developing ways I could save money, save time and most of all save my SANITY, when it comes to food and organizing my kitchen.

I would never claim to be an expert in this arena. I am not reinventing the wheel here and some of you probably do some of these very things that I have only recently discovered and you probably do it better. I am an admitted Google-junky and much of what I do now was found by doing an online search. But, I wanted to share my strategies that I have come up with to help me and my family. Here we go!

Inventory

Knowing what you have in your kitchen can be invaluable knowledge. It helps you on a daily basis, when you need to throw a meal together quickly. It also is great when meal-planning and making a grocery list. I used to get so mad at myself for buying something at the grocery store, only to get home and realize I already had plenty of it. Keep track of what you have on hand in your pantry, refrigerator(s) and freezer(s). Post it in a convenient place and update accordingly, as you use items. I taped my lists directly onto my freezer or the inside of my cupboards. When you use up an item entirely, put it on your re-stocking shopping list.

Online Resource: Organized Home Checklists
This is a website that has checklists for your entire house, but in my case, I mainly use the kitchen inventory sheets. It has inventory sheets for your freezer and pantry, shopping checklists and weekly menu planners.

Buy Fresh Produce

This is the only food group that I am going to mention specifically, but I think it is the most important. It’s healthy for you and your husband and your kids and your grandkids and for everybody! When you buy produce that is in season and on sale, you will not spend as much as you think. You reap the immediate benefits of fresh and yummy produce, but also the long-term benefits of healthier eating. I get most of my produce from a food co-op that has weekly baskets of produce to buy. There are food co-ops, farmer's markets and grocery store ads that can give you great produce buys. Research what your options are in your area and see what you can find.

Online Resources

Co-op Directory Listing

This is a great website to discover where food co-ops are in your area. Food co-ops are usually ran by volunteers and pool resources together to get everyone the best produce at the lowest prices.

Bountiful Baskets

This is the food co-op that I belong to. I have fallen in love with this organization and anybody who is friends with me on Facebook will see my weekly pictures of all the goodies I get. Baskets start at only $15/week and they operate in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Meal Plan

This can be easier said than done. Everybody has their own methods. I prefer to wait until I get my produce basket for the week and then plan what we will eat that following week. You might want to use the weekly grocery ads and see what is on sale first. Any way you want to start out, follow that up by using your pantry/freezer items and your fresh produce to plan 5-6 meals for the week. I like to leave at least one day open for leftovers or special occasions, if needed. Get ideas from everywhere: a recipe book, a website or your own mind.

Online Resources

Allrecipes 


I know that we all have our favorite recipe websites. Allrecipes.com is on the top of my list. Besides having great user reviews, the ability to customize recipes for your family sizes and pictures of almost every recipe, it has a great feature called, Ingredient Search. You can quickly type in asparagus and that chicken breast you have in the fridge and find a delectable recipe to make! I just typed those two items in and got a result of 41 recipes. It is genius.

Supercook.com

This website takes the idea of an ingredient search and kicks it up a notch. You can enter EVERYTHING in your kitchen and it will automatically find online recipes that you can make. The more you add, the more specific the recipes can be. It even tells you which recipes you can make right now, because you have all the ingredients in your kitchen already.

Printable Meal Planner 

I found this cute printable meal planner and loved the idea of using it on a weekly basis. Just print it out, laminate it and use dry-erase markers to keep track of your weekly meals. If you don't like this meal planner, find one you do like and hang it in your kitchen somewhere. It helps you and everyone else in your house stay on track and know "what's for dinner?".

Prioritize Needs

I break down my shopping into three categories:

1. Staples-whatever your needs are on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. For example, in our house we get lots of whole milk, bananas and Cheerios as our weekly staples.
2. Meal Needs-whatever you need to make your dinners for that week.
3. Re-stocking/Food Storage Needs- items that have run out in your pantry, refrigerator or freezer. Also a good way to regular build your food storage.

Shop Smart

Depending on my budget, I can choose to buy from one, two or all three categories. Some weeks, I only buy the staples and fresh produce and make meals with only what I have in my kitchen. Other times, I may buy a few items to complement my meals. When I have extra money in the budget, I will focus on re-stocking those items I have run out of or even building on my food storage. My next goal is to start setting aside a little money each week to put towards a food storage plan.

Online Resource

Food Storage for $5 a Week 

This is just one of the countless plans you can find online for food storage. It is easy and only uses $5 or less, on a weekly basis, to build your food storage. It's a good beginner's stage, which is definitely where I am at.

Food Prep

When I get home from grocery shopping, I make sure to not only organize and store food in a way that makes life easier, but that can also save money in the long run. If you bought a big package of meat, break it down into separate freezer bags to make it last for several different meals. If you have a lot of produce, wash it, cut it and store it in the way to make it last longer. For example, I have noticed that if I just stick a head of celery in my fridge as it came, it wilts quickly. But if I take the time to wash it, cut and trim the ends and store it in a re-sealable bag, it lasts much longer.

Online Resource

Produce Freshness Chart

I follow this chart religiously. I have it posted on my fridge and store every piece of produce accordingly. I never knew that cantaloupes should be kept in the fridge or that cucumbers should be kept out on the counter. Since I started following this chart, my produce lasts SO much longer. It is even color-coded for added convenience.

Be Resourceful

Try to not waste ANY food if possible. If it comes to the end of the week and you just don’t have a use for a food item, try to use it in a recipe that you can freeze for later or even give away to a neighbor. Use those overripe bananas to make banana bread for your neighbors. Squeeze those oranges and freeze the juice for recipes later. Try a new recipe with the odds and ends you are left with at the end of the week and you may be pleasantly surprised. At the end of the week, I will even start googling my leftover foods to see what I can freeze. I have orange zest, green onions and turkey stock in my freezer, because I didn't want to throw anything away! I was surprised when I discovered how much I could actually freeze, if I did it right. Another great way to be resourceful is canning your food. This is an area that I have just starting scratching the surface of, but am excited for the possibilities.

So, there you have it. My (not really) secrets to having an organized kitchen and meal plan that can save you money, time and sanity. As you can see, there aren't really any new concepts here. Just a pooling together of strategies and ideas to help us all out. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at skrd116 at gmail dot com.

Thanks again to Rachelle for asking me to do this. Hope you enjoyed it!

Amazing Giveaway!

Oh oh oh I wanna win this so bad! Go check her out ya'll!

I'd Rather Be Laughing

♥ Mrs. S.

My DIY Projects!!

I love love love all of my decor blogs I stalk. They have fantastic ideas and most are so easy for DIY and super cheap. I found this fantastic post on the DIY Show Off with a full tutorial and knew I just had to do it.

This is the post link: http://thediyshowoff.blogspot.com/2010/01/diy-chair-and-headboard-love.html

I love the look of a tufted headboard and it seemed simple enough for me to pull together. After a couple weeks of dreaming, sketching, planning, and saving, Cody and I went to purchase all of the things I needed. With the wood, foam, batting, glue, yards and yards of black vinyl (leather is scary expensive), a new electric staple gun, wire, screws, a set of upholstery needles, and leather buttons I found online, the grand total came to 117 $$.

Getting ready to start


measuring and drilling the holes took the second longest amount of time on assembling the entire thing.


foam and batting now on it


the vinyl upside down getting ready to be attached


all of the upholstery now done


ta-dah!


buttons, buttons, buttons... the buttons took me a collective four or five hours. for fifteen buttons. it was ridiculously frustrating and my fingers are seriously raw but i love the finished look.




I used a piece of the extra wood, sanded it down, then used extra spray paint I had from the frames.


I used these stencils I got at hobby lobby



It took me a while to detach our current wood planks then attach the new headboard by myself but i did it and it looks amazing!

I love love love the way it turned out. I need to get a gloss spray to finish it off but it goes great with the way I'm redoing our room.


The room will be even more fantastic looking when my new bedding (late birthday from my lovey love) gets here. I can't wait!

Early Morning Cobbler

I got up a few Saturdays ago, long before Cody, and made a wonderful discovery. I found this delicious recipe for oven baked berry cobbler and instantly decided to make it. It was super delicious. I also added some vanilla to the batter and on top sprinkled cinnamon along with the sugar. It really was so good.

I found the recipe here: http://marinscreations.blogspot.com/2010/01/triple-berry-cobbler.html

Feelin' a Little Crafty!

I have been feeling very crafty lately. Almost every night, I lay awake for HOURS because all of the ideas I have bouncing around in my head. Decorating is so exciting and I have so so so many blogs I love to look at and get ideas from. I have a love for funky and eclectic things as well as vintage decor. I stumbled upon this blog The Graphics Fairy (click my post title, and it'll take you there) and decided to just print an image I liked, and put it together with some ribbon inside my sea shell frame.

Here is the white frame I got when I was like 14 and a few weeks ago I just hot glued a ton of broken sea shells I had collected from the state park beach in FL.


Here is the image I found and printed from The Graphics Fairy blog. Its from an antique book, I believe it was the cover.


I trimmed the cover down then without having first planned on it, I pulled off a fabric cover on a basket I had received as part of a gift forever ago. I cut it into strips to help frame the picture.


I am OBSESSED with the fleur de lis symbol so I found another image that incorporated that.


Instead of breaking out my hot glue gun, I just used double stick tape to get everything to stay together. Since I was planning on filling the entire frame, I didn't use a matte so I stuck everything directly to the back of the frame backing.


I finished it off with a border of some fantastic brown satin and mesh ribbon.


Here is the finished product :) I am going to get some dark stain and darken up the frame just a little then probably sand the edges and corners.

Letter from a Military wife (title is link)

Normally I would have cried while reading this. Now, having the very distinct possibility of this being me in the near future, I started to cry before I even got through the first two sentences.

"Published June 11, 2009 03:02 pm -

Letter from a military wife

By Kathy Laffitte

“Honey, I’m deploying.” He states the words, slowly, quietly, waiting for the reaction. Will a book be thrown? Will there be door slamming. Will there be deafening silence? He waits … patiently … ready to duck. With a long, drawn-out sigh, heart pounding, the military wife’s questions come, “Where? When? How long?”

These separations never get easier, especially not the “missing him part,” but military wives learn to cope just like most of us learn to cope in stressful situations; in our own crazy way. The other option, falling apart, just doesn’t work too well.

New athletic prowess is discovered. We find ourselves running around neighborhoods, through fields, over hill and dale (well, if we had a hill and dale), trying to expend nervous energy from all the anxiety. Our knees begin to show signs of wear from all the time spent kneeling in prayer. And we have a strange fascination with closets, where we find ourselves at the end of the day, sitting or standing, trying to take in the scent left hanging on our husband’s clothes.

We also develop strong attachments to objects that ordinarily would make us shudder, like our husband’s old sweaty baseball cap. The one thing all military wives excel in is hope; hope that our husbands’ deployments will be “just another day at the office,” only with sand.

During the ensuing months, “busy” is the buzzword. If you are busy, you don’t have to think about those two guys that sometimes come to people’s doors bringing news no one wants to hear. You learn to play the guitar, speak Spanish, and visit long-lost relatives. You fold strange origami shapes or cut pictures out of magazines for no apparent reason.

Your cupboards get that organized Martha Stewart flair. If all the cans are placed in alphabetical order, from small to large, left to right, then surely the war will go OK.

Next comes the sloppy stage, who cares if the dishes get washed, there has to be some advantage to hubby being gone. You are often forgetful. You find yourself looking for the hairbrush in the laundry room, or the garage, because you know it is not in the pantry, that’s all organized.

New wardrobes are created; ugly flannel pajamas find new life, as you wear them repeatedly to watch old, black-and-white, romantic movies, three times in a row. There is always a new diet. You eat ravioli for breakfast, and cereal for dinner, just ’cause you can.

Children are an enormous help through this time. Loving military daughters make special homemade calendars, so mom can have the joy counting off the days until her man returns.

Grandma’s old adage “Don’t wish your life away,” slightly niggles at the back of our brains, as we gleefully cross off another day. It is important to note, that we cross off our days rather than tear them off, as we may have to recycle them for another deployment.

Our older sons and daughters impress us with their new ability to work on garage doors that won’t come down, find new ways into locked houses, or tackle lawns that grow at twice the rate than they normally would when dad is at home. Younger children delight us when they learn to go with the flow, by listening to dad read bedtime stories on tape, or learn to say “daddy” to the man in the picture frame that mommy keeps kissing.

Military wives teach everyone in the household to be on standby when the phone rings. Phone calls are tantamount to high hurdle Olympic events.

When the phone rings in a military household, leaps across tall buildings (or mounds of laundry) are not uncommon. You learn how to sidestep the dog, balance the plate in your hand, and keep the opened loaf of bread, and jar of peanut butter from falling to the floor, as you realize the kids have immersed themselves in your sloppy stage, to answer the phone for a telemarketer, whom you mistakenly thought was your husband.

When hubby does finally call, you’ve usually just entered the shower and lathered up your hair for a shampooing, or it is two in the morning, and you are barely coherent, when you answer the phone. But your heart still does a double take, when you hear his voice on the other end of the line, just like when you first met and fell in love.

You even learn to put up with the military operator who cuts into the conversation to say your call must end, just when you began an important story, and you always, always, end your calls with “I miss you, I love you,” while you wait for him to hang up the phone, because you don’t want to first.

You gently place the receiver back in the phone’s cradle, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that each day is a gift from God, not to be wasted.

One of the hardest things for a military wife to accept in every deployment is that her spouse has a second commitment — an undeniable love and commitment to his country. And while we may be jealous of this commitment at times, we are so very, very proud of him for answering our country’s call.

After the business, the sloppiness, the nights sitting in the closet, and the races to the phone, we do realize that our biggest asset is hope. Hope that mankind will someday learn to live with our differences, or maybe even learn to celebrate them. Hope that our country will someday be at peace again, and hope, and patient waiting, for our husband to call out, “honey I’m home,” and this time really mean it. Until then, I’m waiting, watching, praying, and hoping. Please join me.

Kathy Laffitte is a history teacher at Valwood School. She has been married to Greg Laffitte, who is in Iraq and regularly writes this column, for 27 years. She may be reached at klaffitte@valwood.org."

Support our troops everyone. Not just the deployed men and women either but the people stationed all over the US, the ones all over the world, the ones in training right now. All of them because what they are doing is sacrificing. They are sacrificing their time, energy, comfort, and yes their lives just so we can have a semblance of normalcy in our ever-bogged down, stressful, overwhelmingly busy lives. They keep us safe and free so even if you don't agree with the war or anything else going on in this country, support and RESPECT our troops. Each and every one of them.

Cody & Chelle Photoshoot June 2009

My friend Millie is an amazing, self-taught photographer. Before Cody left for Basic, we did a shoot with her and I got the pictures from her the other day. I can't wait to take more when he gets home now that we've both lost lots of weight. Ha ha she made us look good anyways. Here they are!!

Note: Click blog title to see Millie's photo blog or go to www.photosbymillie.com

Also I had like 10 more really good ones I was going to post but Blogger is being fickle and extremely aggravating so I gave up. Maybe later. Enjoy!!

Photos by Millie

My friend Millie has her official site up and running. Check her out, she's fabulous!! The title will take you straight there and she is also featured with her blog and site on my left sidebar.

http://photosbymillie.com/

Great Giveaway!!

Note: Port-key title included

Natalie Norton Photography is having a wonderful giveaway. Click blog post title to see what wonderful things await someone lucky!!

Go dear ones, go!!

LOL Moment

Note: Title is a port-key

I found this cute site on my AF Wives group with tons of products for AF Wives and other USAF products. Some are kind of random and I ran across this bumper sticker and I had a literal (L)augh (O)ut (L)oud moment. Here it is. The port-key takes you to the site. Enjoy my dear ones!

Quickie update!!

We are back in Arizona and loving it!! We had a blast in Vegas (I'll post pictures later) and have been spending lots of time with the kids and family. Cody's been doing so good working out and we are all (my whole family) going to be doing the P90X workout. It just happened that we all are doing it. Its hard but fun. Today Cody and I ran lots of errands and tonight we got a big family shin dig so I thought I'd throw this post up here real quick to let you all know we are alive and kickin. The other day we had a photoshoot with my friend Millie and she released a sneak peak so here it is! She is such a good friend and photographer. Check her out!!

http://rylinphotography.blogspot.com/

Umm, Hello?? Where have you been all my life??

Once again, I found something that has pleased me to the point where I would feel guilty for not sharing it. I don't know why its taken me this long to discover it, I heard its "all the rage" with the cool kids nowadays. To see exactly what I am raving about, click on the title and it shall act as a port key (shameless HP reference). ENJOY my loves!!

This site will also be added to my fantastic fashion list.