Meal Planning {SeRieS}: First Baking/Freezing Day

Today, I (Leigh Ann) had my first baking/freezing day. A few weeks back, I posted about a new way of cooking meals one month at a time. I know, that sounds like a lot to tackle, so I started slow by only cooking a couple meals.

Today I made:

• Lasagna (doubled)
• Taco Soup (doubled)
• Banana Bread
• Gingerbread Muffins
• Granola Bars
• Berry Cool Pie
  

See the recipes on the left sidebar or here.

Ways to be more productive next time:

• A second large pot would be helpful if I am making doubled recipes of soups or sauces.
  
• Make sure the meat has plenty of time to thaw out.
• Read all recipes fully, and if some call for items to set for x number of minutes, then do that first when starting that recipe.
  

End results:

• 40 Gingerbread Mini Muffins
• 2 loaves of Banana Chocolate Chip Bread
• 2 pans of Lasagna (9 x9)
• 1 loaf pan of Lasagna
• 1 serving of Spaghetti Sauce (leftover sauce from Lasagna recipe)
• 2 loaves of Blackberry Granola Bars (Slice when ready to eat. I did not use the 8 x12 pan only because I did not have one, so I use 2 loaf pans.)
• 6 containers of Taco Soup (5 cup Rubbermaid Take-Along containers, 1 container = 1 dinner for our family of 3)
• 1 Berry Cool Pie
  

Overall, I had a great first experience cooking all day. I was organized and had all the ingredients I needed for each recipe, which I think is KEY. It would have been so stressful to not have something in the middle of cooking, especially since I was doing all my cooking during my son's naps today. He naps twice a day still for about 2 hours a piece, so I had a morning cooking session with all the baked goods and an afternoon session with the taco soup and lasagna.

Here is the spreadsheet I created called 'Freezer Cooking Day- Blog Edition' to help me organize my cooking day.

**The spreadsheet includes more meals and ingredients then I cooked today. I wanted to start slow, but also already had a couple Broccoli Rice Casseroles and Chili made up in the freezer. I still am planning to make the waffles but I am going to have to borrow a waffle maker from a friend.**

I am also working on an expanded spreadsheet of the one above to include the estimated cost per meal. I would love to know how much each meal costs to make, because I think it would give me more motivation to cook and eat at home more often. The thought of having food, already made, in our freezer, is so exciting to me and I am ready to see how our grocery budget will reflect the savings of not eating out when I do not feel like cooking one night.

Here is a helpful inventory sheet from Once-a-Month-Mom.

What do you think? Are you going to try it? If you are or have, then let me know what you think, if you saved money, ate out less, and any tips to be more productive. Let's help each other out to be better home managers.

-Leigh Ann

Aquafresh Iso-Active Toothpaste {Product Review}

A few months ago, I signed up with SheSpeaks.com. Its a website that wants to hear what women think about certain products, etc. After using a product, you go to their site and leave your opinions on the discussion board and take a survey about your experience. You aren't required to blog about it, but I thought I would. This past week, I received my first product to review. Aquafrest Iso-Active Toothpaste. I have used it twice and already am very impressed. Its a foaming toothpaste so my entire mouth was covered in toothpaste. It was great. After using it, my mouth feels very clean and fresh. I like that even after a few minutes of brushing and spitting, there is still a lot of toothpaste still in my mouth. It is a whitening toothpaste, but I haven't used it long enough to know if it will make any type of difference. I have always used a whitening toothpaste but have never really noticed that they make much of a difference. Maybe this one will be different.

Another factor that I was impressed with was the dispenser. It comes in a can like shaving gel and cleanly dispenses onto the brush.

I have not been to the store to purchase this product, so I don't know how it compares in price to other toothpastes. If you want to give it a try, there is a $1 off printable coupon at the link above. If it is higher in price, it will affect my decision to use it in the future. But overall, I am very pleased with this product and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in looking for a new toothpaste.

Recipe Link

Creatively Homemaking as added a recipe link on the left side bar of our blog. Go check it out! More recipes to come!

Meal Planning {SeRieS}: A New Way to Cook

I want to apologize for the long pause in this series of posts. Blogging had to take a bit of a backseat this last month due to so many things going on with my family, but I am slowing down a bit and had some time to catch up on my reading, brain storm new ideas, and write. I am so glad.

On a side note, this series will probably be an ongoing one because how we cook, plan meals, grocery shop, etc. seems like it is always changing and we are always coming up with new/better ways to do it then we did before. As of now, I don't see an end in sight.

Getting on with today's topic:

This week, I have been learning about "once-a-month-cooking," baking days, and freezing meals. I am eager to give it a try, but I think will start slowly. I want to try a few recipes first before making them in bulk and see how they turn out after being frozen. To be honest, I am a bit of a food snob. I will eat leftovers, but only the next day. After that, it typically just sits until we clean out the fridge. What can I say, I like fresh food.

But the idea of cooking once or even twice a month and freezing several meals, is so amazing to me. It would allow more time with my son each day. It was save me time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning. And maybe even some money! I already freeze my spaghetti sauce, chili and lasagna and those are super after being frozen. Plus, I know exactly what ingredients are in each recipe and there is nothing I can't pronounce. Good news!

If you are interested in learning more cooking in bulk and freezing go here:

Once a Month Mom Once a Month Cooking

Money Saving Mom Tackling Meal Planning One Month at a Time

Money Saving Mom Tips on How to Freeze Without the Burn

My mom will be visiting in a couple weeks, so I may try this for the first time when she is here and can help me cook and help with Cole. Then after I know how and what I want to, it should be easier to do it on my own next time. Or I might always do it with a friend! Cooking with friends is always fun!

What do you think? Do you cook in bulk, freeze, or have baking days? Let us know how you do it, what recipes are your favorite and any tips you can give for all us that are just starting this process. Who wants to try it?

Leigh Ann

Teaching a Toddler

My 21 month old son LOVES to learn. He could spend hours a day sitting with me doing puzzles, coloring, pointing out things in books, making animal sounds and more. He absorbs so much and we are constantly amazed at how much he knows and how fast he picks up on things. Lately, I've been trying to come up with some sort of organized plan for activities for him. However, I can't seem to find much information about what kids his age can understand right now. I have a list of things we need to work on such as colors, letters, numbers, etc..but I don't know when is too soon to start. Don't worry..I am not trying to make my 2 year old a genius who knows the presidents in order. (have you seen those kids on tv?) But he WANTS to learn things. He is constantly asking what things are, pointing at things and looking at me for a response, etc. So I want to teach him.

I want to be careful not to push him too hard or expect him to know things that he can't understand right now. I feel like he should be saying more things than he does. For example, he can point out every animal in a book, but the only ones that he'll actually say are dog and duck. Even simple ones such as cow he seems either uninterested in trying to say or he doesn't know how. He can point to the cow if you ask him or says "MOOOOO" but never tries to say it. I have no idea if this is normal for his age or not. So I want to learn more about this. About how to help him learn because he is inquisitive and loves learning with mom by his side. I just don't know where to go from here. If there are any education majors, teachers, or parents who have already been through this stage..I would love your input! Please share ideas, links to helpful websites, books, etc. My growing boy would definitely appreciate it!

Internet Safety {PaRt 2}

Over the last couple of weeks I've researched ways to keep your family safe, while still using blogs, facebook, etc. Below I've listed a few ways that you can help keep weirdos from finding your blog.

1. Keep your blog private. Blogger allows you to send invitations to people to view your blog. Those are the only people that can see it and must be signed in to view it. (We actually didn't do this with ours bc we didn't think our grandparents would sign in to a google account every time they wanted to see pictures of the great-grandchildren.)

2. Don't put your last name on your blog. I learned this from a Marine friend. He has the scoop on intelligence stuff and he told us a while back how by just knowing your last name, people can find you easily on the internet. So make sure your blog address, title, description, profile, info, etc. do not include your last name. We make sure to only use first names when writing about ourselves and children.

3. Don't let others link to your blog. If you only want those who know you to read your blog, its smart not to let your friends have your link on their blogs. The more links are out there, the greater the chance of blog stalkers to come across yours.

4. Make it unsearchable. This is my favorite feature of blogger. It allows you to make your blog unsearchable using Google, Yahoo, etc. So if someone knew your name and googled you, your blog will not show up in their search results. I'm sure other blog platforms such as Wordpress allow this too. Even if someone wasn't searching for you specifically, but let's say they typed "baby photos" in Google. If you mentioned anything about baby photos on your blog, your link could potentially come up in their search results. Scary huh?

5. Don't post city or address. This one may seem obvious, but be sure not to post what city you live or your address. Again, just by knowing your town and last name, someone could walk right up to your front door. On this same note, never post which parks, malls, etc that you take your kids too. If you want to plan a play date, don't use specific info on your blog but instead have those interested email you.

We made all these changes to our family blog lately (except #1). We completely changed our blog address, made it unsearchable, etc. Then I sent an email out to all of our family and friends with the new address. I asked them to save it in their Google Reader or as a bookmark, and to take off the link from their site. By doing this, we are hoping it will decrease our traffic to only those who we have given the link to instead of it coming up in google searches, etc.

As far as Facebook goes, the jury is still out on this one. I have been researching but still am not sure if there's a way to guarantee only people you know see your info. I have all my settings on "friends only." This means that no one besides people that I have approved as friends should be able to see my news feeds, status updates, photos etc. And here is a crucial point. If you upload photos of your kids to share with high school friends or whoever, be sure to go into Album Security and click friends only. If you notice, on the sidebar on FB, if you have a friend who is tagged in an album, you can view the whole album, even if you don't know the person who owns the album. This will prevent that from happening. It should also prevent your friends from sharing the album.

While doing all these things can help, its still up to us as parents to use discretion and common sense when it comes to the internet and the safety of our families. It's sad that we have to be so worried about all this. My next step is to make sure that my photography information that's on the web gives as little info as possibly while still allowing interested clients to contact me.

I'm hoping our next posts will be lighter in nature :)

-Larra

Internet Safety {PaRt 1}

This is going to be a 2 part post. Part 1 I will share some thoughts and questions I have about Internet Safety and Children. In Part 2, I will share some research I've done, solutions and ways to keep your family safe while still being a part of social networking and blogs.

My husband and I have been talking a lot lately about internet safety. I'm sure we got on the topic after a CSI episode or something, but whatever it was, it really got us thinking about blogs, facebook, etc. We have a personal blog where we post pictures of our children, their milestones, funny stories, etc. They are so young (21 months and 3 months) that we wanted to really capture all of these memories so we can look back on them. (Did you know that you can upload your entire blog to a website and it will make a photobook out of it so you can put those memories on paper?) Plus we wanted grandparents and other out of town friends and family to be able to see how they are growing.

However, last month I got some weird text messages and phone calls from a strange dude. And we've had a random person that we don't know leaving comments on our blog about how our baby was beautiful and his "fans" would really appreciate it if we'd post more pictures. It just seemed strange..it wasn't a normal comment just saying they thought our kids were cute. I've just really noticed lately how the internet can be a scary place and sick people can do some crazy things. So we started talking about how we could maybe be a little more wise in this area. Believe me, we are not extreme, jump on the bandwagon type people. However, we know the world is a sinful place and the safety of our children is extremely important. So what do we do....Do we totally eliminate the blog? Go through the tedious task of allowing only certain people to view it?

And what about Facebook? I admit that I love FB. I love seeing what's going on in people's lives. And I like sharing what's going on in mine. And, it helps my photography business by putting up photos that so many people can see. I have photos of my children on there bc I want to share them with friends from high school, etc. And my photography business...I have a website, Google ads, Facebook page, and blog that all have my contact information on it so that potential clients can contact me. (I think that's how the weirdo found my phone number). Are these type of things a danger to my children?

These are all questions right now. I have started researching this to see really what could be a danger and what isn't. I've got a post coming that will share what I've learned, what we've decided to do as a family, and ways you can keep your children safe as well. Maybe you've already taken all precautions possible and know that there's no way crazies can find your family. If so, please share! We'd love to hear!