Week of November 15th

Last week was a pretty low-key week, which is always nice.

I'm doing my best to ignore all of the pictures I've seen all over social media of people moving right on into Christmas and bypassing Thanksgiving completely.  Or, I guess they still celebrate it, but surrounded by Christmas stuff?  I don't know.  So weird.  I choose to live in a world where each holiday is celebrated in its own special time.  #waronthanksgiving

I'm super pumped that Thanksgiving is next week.  Everyone knows it's the best holiday and I'm ready to eat all the things and give all the thanks!

I've been Instagramming and I totally love it.  I realize I'm like 5 years late to the party and the cool kids are probably already post-Instagram, but I loves it!  I love seeing pictures from friends and strangers that capture everything from the special to the mundane.  I love that you can browse different topics depending on what your interest is at that moment and it's fun to see what different people share.  After all, a picture speaks a thousand words, eh?

In other random news, I've perfected homemade coconut oil kettle corn so it made an appearance for snack twice this weekend.  Nothing beats freshly made salty sweet popcorn!

Here's what we're eating this week:


Sunday:  Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Panini

Monday:  Sweet Potato Nachos

Tuesday:  Shepherd's Pie

Wednesday:  Mom's night out for me, Homemade Pizza for the fam!

Thursday:  Leftovers

Friday & Saturday:  Out


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com

Week of November 8th

So, let's see, last week...

My car went for a little spa visit and came back looking beauteous.  When we purchased it the car had *just* become available and when we test drove it literally hadn't even been vacuumed out. While we were dealing with paperwork they did a quick once over and washed, wiped down, and vacuumed, but it was in need of a full detail and a few miscellaneous things like a good wax and buffing out some surface scratches, basically everything a dealership typically does before selling a car.

I had to drive a Chevy Cruze for a day and... that was sad.  Glad to have her back!

Tuesday was chicken day!

^That's 40lbs of quality chicken, purchased at an awesome price, trimmed and ready for the freezer!  Well worth the hour or so it takes to get it freezer ready.  This will last us for about a year!

Know what's nice when you have to deal with 40lbs of chicken?  Having adequate workspace to do so.  I used to have to do this on a little ~3ft x 3ft (that's probably a generous measurement) square of counter space that wasn't even dedicated and still had some things sitting on it.  Doing anything feels so much easier when you have more room to do it in!

 
I'm still feeling the effects of the time change.  That^ was taken at about 4:30pm.  When the sun was going down.  ::facepalm::  I dislike that it's completely dark out by the time dinner rolls around at 6pm.  It's going to be a long winter.

At my nieces' birthday party over the weekend Molly played stand-in for her slightly older cousin who had enough of birthday partying by the time cake time rolled around.

Somebody had to do it.  Molly's just practicing for her own 3rd birthday in just over 2 months (say what?!?)

And I got this full of awesome shirt, which pretty much made my life.

This is a phrase I use on the reg so I'm pretty sure Target designed this shirt just for me.

Also: I'm Instagramming now.  Apparently this is where all the cool kids hang out so obviously I need to be there jump on this trend about 5 years after everyone else.


Edibles:


Sunday:  Meatloaf with Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli

Monday: Teriyaki Chicken Stir-Fry with Brown Rice

Tuesday:  Leftovers

Wednesday:  Leftovers/Freezer Meal

Thursday:  Homemade Pizza with Salad

Friday & Saturday: Out


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com

The above link to Zaycon Foods is a referral link.  I'm in no way affiliated with that company other than loving them for quality bulk meat purchases at a good price.  I've been a regular customer for several years now.  

Week of November 1st

Woooweee!  I can't believe it's already November.

Last week we celebrated Halloween with some pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating.

Mine is the happy pumpkin.  Always.

Firetruck and purple princess (A.K.A. Sophia the First)

Molly chose her own costume.  At this age, Jack still didn't care what he dressed up as (he was a lion).  It wasn't until his 4th Halloween that he wanted to choose his costume.  Big surprise, Molly had an opinion :D

Jack, of course, wanted to be a firetruck.  A fire fighter?  No, a fire truck.

His costume turned out pretty cute.  Lucky for me, I have experience with crafting truck costumes.  I also bought him a little fire fighter coat and hat to wear with it, but that idea was nixed because according to Jack he's a firetruck and firetrucks don't wear clothes.  Obviously...

The coat and jacket came in handy for his school party because kids were allowed to bring costumes to wear, but they had to fit in their backpacks.  Firetruck =/= backpack friendly.  Lucky for everyone, Jack was okay with wearing the firefighter costume to his party.

This was our first year trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood so I wasn't sure what to expect as far as how much candy to have on hand to pass out.  There's a lot of kids around so the day of trick-or-treat I panicked and picked up a few extra bags of candy giving us probably 1 1/2 big bowls or so to hand out.  We left a bowl out for trick-or-treaters while we went around trick-or-treating ourselves and came home to... at least 2/3 of the bowl still filled.  And with a half hour of trick-or-treat left to go we didn't even get anymore trick-or-treaters.  Womp, womp.

I have no idea where all the kids were because there were plenty of trick-or-treaters out and about.  I guess many just didn't make it back to our little cul-de-sac despite the fact that nearly everyone back here had candy to pass out.  ::shrug::  Guess I'll know for next year.

And now Halloween is over and everyone's all like...

And I'm just sitting over here like...

It's only November, people, slow your roll.  #waronThanksgiving


Menu for the week:


Sunday:  Smothered Sweet Pork Burritos with Guacamole

Monday:  Wisconsin Cauliflower Soup with Panini

Tuesday:  Paleo Sausage Veggie Bake

Wednesday:  Freezer Meal or Homemade Pizza

Thursday:  Leftovers

Friday & Saturday: Out


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com