Weekly Meals!

I'm on a blogging roll today, haha. Motivation has struck me in many areas of my life. Finally! 

I think I'm going to start posting our weekly menu on here for you all to see and find the recipes! I'm constantly talking about cooking, but I have a terrible habit of actually posting what I'm making along with the recipes and if you're anything like me... you are CONSTANTLY looking for new stuff to try with your family! My portions will be a little smaller for some of you with large families since there's really just the two of us eating dinners right now, but you'll know to adjust I am sure! :) 

I would like to do this the week AFTER I make items so you know what we had for dinner each day and that way I can post a recipe and a review of the meal. What do you think? But I'll fill you in on what we're having for dinner this week and I'll just come back next Friday and fill in the blanks!

Monday 1/30: Baked Spaghetti and Salads
Tuesday 1/31: Chicken Quesadillas and Mexican Rice
Wednesday 2/1: Rice Bowls
Thursday 2/2: Flavored Yogurt Pancakes
Friday 2/3: Leftovers
Saturday 2/4: Eat out

Hopefully you'll join me in sharing your weekly meals and we can make this something exciting! :) Go ahead and list your link so we can share!

Co-Sleeping

I'll be honest.

I cannot get out of the habit of letting Tayler co-sleep with us. Everyone has always told us not to do it because they do not think that it's safe, because it will create a bad habit, because Ethan and I will lose out on intimate time.. There are a multiple number of reasons why there are individuals that do not believe in this. And I completely see where they are coming from. 

However, we have co-slept with Tayler since she was born. Not EVERY night. There are some nights where she was sleeping peacefully in my arms and I laid her down in her crib and she slept her little heart away. But you know what? Some nights, I am completely worn out and Tayler is not asleep yet. 

And there comes the beauty of Cry It Out. I know that it absolutely, positively works for some parents and that is great! If you are able to do that and your child self-soothes and sleeps through the night, I give you major props. I just can't bring myself to do it. I hate hearing her cry. I tried CIO for like 3 nights and it was too much for me. 

So, we (meaning Ethan and myself) find it easier if Tayler just sleeps with us. We were blessed with a big bed.. we don't even feel her most of the night, but it's nice because she's right there beside of us. She sleeps good with us.
 

Like I said. We don't co-sleep every night. Sometimes she'll fall asleep downstairs watching a movie and I'll carry her up to her bed and she sleeps in there until she wakes up for a bottle (and I know if she didn't wake up for a bottle at 4AM, she would sleep all night in there.) She loves her bed. But she loves sleeping with us too.

Honestly, it hasn't created any problems with us. We still have our 'alone time' and we don't feel like she 'takes over the bed.' Of course, when the next baby comes along, then what? Do we let that baby sleep with us AND Tayler? Will we be confusing her to make her start sleeping in her own bed? We figured we she understands that 'You MUST sleep in your bed means you MUST sleep in your own bed...' then she'll start doing it. Right now, I just enjoy her being next to me. She'll be 17 one day and think I'm the weirdest person on earth. She probably won't even want to ride in a car with me, let alone sleep next to me. So, I'm enjoying that time while I have it. But am I confusing her?

Seriously. I knew parenting was full of decisions, but I didn't know this many. I am always worried that I'm making the wrong decision. And I worry WAY too much about what people think about how we parent. In the back of my head I'm thinking, 'What will people say about this? Are they going to talk about me or it behind my back? Will they think I'm a bad parent?' It's tough. I need to thicken my skin up though and know that I'm doing what is best for us... and Tayler. But I'm still wishy-washy on that. I enjoy doing 'our own thing' but I also worry about the future and the consequences of actions.

Do any of you out there practice CO-SLEEPING or have practiced co-sleeping? How old did you co-sleep with your child? When did you stop co-sleeping with your child?

And please, I'm not trying to be rude, but no negativity about all of this. I'm asking for opinions, obviously, but lets be adult about those opinions. Nothing downgrading. Thank you!

Just a Catch Up!

Yes, it does feel like I have fallen off the face of the earth, haha! I don't know why I feel so behind in every area of my life! I haven't baby sat all week (well, until today), but I seriously am SO behind. I have yet to make the grocery list (making a mental note as we speak) and I have not cleaned the house this week! TOMORROW IT IS. :) So, what's new in our neck of the woods?? Well, would you believe that Tayler is 43 weeks old today? Yes... 9 weeks until her first birthday party... which has been taking a lot of my 'mental' time! It's all I have been thinking about. Well, that and having another baby... but we'll leave that for another blog, haha! The theme is going to be 'Yo Gabba Gabba' and I think it's going to be just adorable! I am so excited!  Speaking of today... it's my mom's birthday! So if all of my lovely readers out there could wish her a HAPPY BIRTHDAY that would be incredible. She keeps telling everyone she's '29' so we'll just go with that (even though I'm almost 25..... oops, sorry Mom!)
We are getting CENTRAL AIR! They are coming to install everything tomorrow. That's what it's called right? Install? Regardless... I couldn't be more excited! I wasn't looking forward to having to go out and buy new air conditioners. Plus, it's our first summer in a new house, so we don't even know how warm/cool it will get! Guess we'll see now.. and be prepared! YAY!
I'm still watching all of the usual TV shows, just haven't really blogged about them. American Idol is back on and you best believe I'll have full blown blogs about that once it really gets started! I'm loving all of the auditions though. I swear, that's my favorite part!
I think that about covers everything on our end. How about y'all? What's keeping you busy here lately? :)

JANUARY.. BEST MONTH!

  If you are interested, January is a GREAT time to host a Scentsy party! :) You can even do it ONLINE! So even if you live a good distance from me, have no fear! I can send you the link to your party and you can spread the news to your friends and family! 

Why is January a GREAT month to host a party??

That means if you would regularly earn 1 half-off item, you would get two.. and so on! :)

ALSO....

January is...

Bring back my bar month! That's right.. your old favorites have returned!

So please.. shoot me a comment and let me know if you are interested!

Stirfry-Laya? :)

I did something different tonight for dinner. (It's 4:22PM and I'm already talking about eating dinner? *sigh*) When your husband wakes up at 4:45AM.. dinner comes early... FOR EVERYONE, considering breakfast for him comes at 5:30AM and lunch at about 11AM. He's definitely ready for some food around 4 or so! So, I typically have it ready for him as soon as he walks through the door. I know... WGW. (World's Greatest Wife? ;))

We like spicy foods. I'll tell you that. We have something spicy almost every single night. It's just who we are... so, I decided to spice things up tonight.

I made Stirfry-laya. (It definitely has a ring to it, eh?)

What is that you might be wondering?

Well, allow me to explain... okay, actually, it really isn't that complicated, haha. I didn't make much from scratch so these directions will be rather simple!

First, cut yourself up a green pepper and an onion. We like a lot of onion in ours and less green pepper. So, that's why the onions seem to be a bit overpowering (and they were.. I lost all of my mascara through the darn process!)

And after that, I cut up two pieces of steak and cooked them. Depending on how many people you are serving, you can change that to whatever you'd like! 2 just seems to be 'just right' for the two of us. The picture is a bad shot, so sorry about that! Make sure that you cut the steak when it's semi-thawed. If you wait too late and it's super soft, it's a lot harder to cut and you don't get the nice cubes (hence my photo ;))

I cooked it in soy sauce, a little bit of oil, some garlic powder, and pepper. After it was cooked, I threw in the green peppers and onions... and of course, added some more soy sauce, garlic powder, and pepper.

I let that simmer on '2' for about 20 minutes or so and just kept stirring. I wanted to get the onions and green peppers super soft, plus, I wanted them to absorb that yummy juice!

While that was cooking, I took a box of Jambalaya Mix and made it just like the box told me to. I told you, this wasn't an in-depth thing. I'm not a great mastermind in the kitchen. I just do what things tell me to do, haha :)

All you do is get 2 1/2 cups of water and boil that. Then dump in the mix. I didn't add any meat to it, obviously, since I was putting the steak and green peppers over it! Bring it back up to a boil, lower the heat, cover, and simmer for about 25 minutes. 25 minutes always seems to be just the right amount of time for it to really soften up. Just brace yourself because it smells AMAZING.

Then, I put a large spoon full of rice on my plate and throw the steak and peppers on top! It was DELICIOUS. Might be a bit of an add combination, but it was perfect for what we were craving! Y'all out there might be thinking 'Dude, that sounds gross...,' I'm not sure, haha, but I promise you it is worth the try. It's cheap too! I bought the round steak for $3.25 at Walmart, the green pepper and onion were a little over $1.00, and I bought the rice mix for $1.00. $5.25 for two people's dinner sounds GREAT to me :)

Happy cooking!

Top Mommy Blogs!

Also, I am back on board with 'Top Mommy Blogs!' If you haven't check this website out, I would recommend it! Lots of good stuff for mommies to read! :)

Hawaiian Chicken!

I'm TOTALLY addicted to Pinterest. (Wait, have we established that already?) And with that comes TONS of recipes! I LOVE cooking... like so much I seriously want to own my own restaurant one day... so I thought I would try out a new chicken recipe I found on there.

I'm going to be honest-- meat is a big part of our dinner EVERY night. We love us some chicken, pork, hamburger, steak.. you name it, we eat it. So, when I came across all of these chicken recipes, I got a tad bit excited!

If you have pinterest you can check out the recipe here.

And I'm not too sure how pinterest works if you are not a loyal (trust me, if you are active on pinterest, you are quite loyal to it, haha) follower. If you can't click on the picture or see it for that matter, the recipe is:

Hawaiian Crockpot Chicken: 4-6 chicken breasts, hawaiian style BBQ sauce, and a can of crushed pineapple all throw in for 6 hours on low. Can't get much easier or delicious than that! 

Oh, I bet you're SUPER excited now that you see it's a crock pot recipe, right? Yeah, I was too! It's sooooo simple! You throw three ingredients in and let it sit. Dude, what could be more awesome! I even threw some green peppers in just to give it a little more flavor!

And it was a SUCCESS. My mom even came over for dinner and she loved it! I made some fried rice with it (recipe here) and I got five stars from everyone, which always makes me happy!

If you're making your grocery list for the week, go ahead and add those ingredients to it! You will not be sorry! Happy cooking!