I am so fortunate to have a wonderful outdoor area with plenty of space, but I also wanted to create more of an intimate "living room" type of patio underneath my deck area for some privacy. I wanted a spot to gather and drink with friends under pretty lights away from the bugs near the grass. I'm so excited with the progress! I suppose we should start from the beginning. We used to only have an ugly but functional concrete slab under the deck - that is until our last frigid winter cracked the slab and flooded our basement. That was a bad day. So we had to redo the back with pavers to prevent the same scenario from happing again. Then to keep the rain/snow runoff away from the area (and so we could utilize the space even if it was raining) we decided to put an espresso roof underneath the deck with a gutter for drainage: Then we found some cool vintage looking outdoor lights and a patio set from Costco (yes, I have a slight addiction with that store...) Now we have a great little space tucked away from the rest of our patio to enjoy on those warm summer nights. I still have a few more plans - a drink cart and a few more pops of color - but I am so happy we were able to put together this little under-the-deck oasis!
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Now that the weather is finally getting warmer, here's a fun idea for a girl's night in (or couples of course, that would work too...) - a Summer Tasting Party! I put together some of my favorite summer recipes, including appetizers, main course food, sides, desserts, and a summer drink and had a girl's night to celebrate summer. Everyone who came got to take home a little recipe book of my (easy!) summer creations. You could also do this like a potluck where everyone brings their favorite summer dish, along with recipe cards to pass out to the other guests (so by the end of the night, everyone would have a compilation of everyone else's recipes). But since I'm somewhat of a control freak (it's true) and I just like hosting and cooking all the food anyway, here's what I made: we had a Poppy Seed Sumer Salad, Baked Parmesan Zucchini Bites, Grape Salad, Summer Guacamole, Caprese Salad, Cowboy Beans, BBQ Chicken Sliders, Chicken Salad Croissants, Mini Peanut Butter Pies, Mini Strawberry Shortcake Trifles, and a Lemon Berry Moscato Sangria. The party was supposed to be outside on my patio, but of course the weather didn't cooperate for a summer party (go figure!) - here are a few pics from the party: Attached are the actual recipes for everything I made - keep in mind I'm not big on measuring things when I cook so these are more like estimates (- very helpful, right? :) But these are virtually fool-proof easy recipes. I doctored this document up quite a bit for the recipe cards, adding graphics, borders, etc, but here is the basic template so you can do whatever you want with it to make it your own, in case you want to add your own recipes, omit some of mine, etc! Welcome to summer! :)
So with cookout season upon us, naturally that leaves us all with one reoccurring problem.... Leftover buns. You know how it goes, you have a package of 10 hotdogs to cook, but the buns come in packages of 8, so you buy two packages, just to be left with a bunch of extra buns. Well, here's your solution: turn them into freezer lunches! You already know I'm obsessed with make-ahead food, but this is one of my favorite things to do because my kids love the occasional novelty of their lunch sandwiches on buns. Yes, that top one in the pic is a "peanut butter banana boat" - perfect for leftover hotdogs buns. They also like tuna melts in the hotdog buns as well. For the hamburger buns, I load them up with PB&J and whatever lunch meat and cheese I have on hand. Then I just wrap them tight in saran wrap, put them in ziplock bags and free them for later. Whenever we need a quick lunch, either because it's the end of the school year and I've given up on lunches with real effort, or just for lazy summer days at the beach/park, all you need to do is lay these sandwiches out in the fridge the night before and bam, they are perfectly thawed and ready to eat the next day! One more helpful tip - it's always a good idea to label them so you know what they are if you have picky kids. Some I freeze individually and some I freeze in groups, that way I have them separated for different outings.
Don't forget, unopened packages of leftover buns freeze really well - but once they package has been opened, they never freeze right for me if I just try to seal them back up and store them. By making sandwiches out of the opened buns and wrapping them individually with plastic wrap, it preserves them and they come out of the freezer as well as if you put them together fresh that morning! So don't toss out any of those extra buns from your cookout this summer - just repurpose them! (Which means less lunch making for mom all summer - whoo hooooo!) Tis the season for BBQs and cookouts every weekend! I love patriotic holidays. I have family who has served in the military and I am so appreciative for what they have done. If you need a last minute patriotic themed food to take to a neighbor's house, try these! They are so easy, themed, and taste delicious! Kids love them! All you need to do is use a small star shaped cookie cutter to cut the watermelon (my kids love eating the scraps while I cut these!) and then layer on toothpicks with the blueberries. Presto!
Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend! I had a great hall closet downstairs in my basement that I needed to find a good use for - it was too far from my bedroom to use for any clothes storage (translation: I'm too lazy to walk that far) so I wanted something "useful." So I decided to turn the empty closet into a present wrapping station! I'm not just wrapping presents around the holidays, it's a year-round task for me with birthday parties, showers, teacher appreciation weeks, etc. I literally have a separate expense line in my monthly budget for "gifts" because I feel like I'm always buying something for some special occasion. Wrapping supplies get messy quick, so I thought this would be an easy way to lay out what I have to make this as efficient as possible (and it also saves me money because I can recycle all those boxes/bags/bows given to me so I rarely have to buy new supplies).
On top I have gift bags full of other gift bags in 3 categories - Christmas, Birthday, and Showers. I can simply reach into the themed gift bag and pull out another bag in that category. All the wrapping paper stays nice and tight in the plastic bin, and those black shelves are full of extra cards (I literally keep cards on hand for all occasions, including lots of blank ones for emergencies!) and plenty of tissue paper. I am a huge ribbon/bow person (if you're wrapping something in the first place, you may as well make it pretty!) so I took an old shoe storage organizer and hung it up. It was a little too long, so I cut one section off and hung it above on it's own full of tape, scissors, gift tags, and pens. This whole project literally took less than 30 minutes, and now every time I have to wrap a present it's so much more efficient! And the wrapping station hides behind the closet doors so guests don't even know it exists when they're over. So go my lovely readers, go make something useful out of that extra closet space! :) I'm so excited to release some details about the new book I'm writing: I usually don't finalize my covers until the story is finished, but I just loved this so much I got a little ahead of myself. It's a "New Adult" Romance and much of the book takes place on a road trip. Reid is handsome, spontaneous, and carefree and somehow manages to convince Cassidy to go with him on his trip from California to Michigan. He also, however, has some secrets and isn't exactly forthcoming with them before Cassidy is already along for the ride...
And... that's the only teaser you get so far, I don't want to give too much of it away! I'm shooting for a late-summer release date for it. More details to come! :) I was so delighted to receive an early Mother's Day gift from my 4 year old, and I thought it was such a cute, easy idea. He simply painted a glass vase (and was very proud of it!) and filled it with soil and flowers with a little Mother's Day sign (the flower instructions are on the back of the sign). Other similar ideas would be to do this with a wine glass (flowers in it for Mother's Day, and then she could use the hand-painted glass for drinking after the flowers are gone) or other glassware like Mason jars. You could paint on small handprints, personalize them with Mom's name (or Grandma! :), write the year, etc. Spray paint also works really well on glass if you want the whole thing a certain color.
When my boy brought the vase home from school, I asked him if it was for me. He said "no, it's for me for Mother's Day." I said "why do you get a present for Mother's Day?" His response: "so every time I look at it I think about you." The kids have been begging for a pet for years, but nothing seemed like a good fit for us. We're such a busy, active family, so it's hard to find an animal that you can love on but that can also be somewhat self-sustaining for long periods of time. Dogs are such perfect pets, but it just didn't seem fair to a dog to be part of our family - we're gone at work/school all day, sports practices in the evenings, parties all weekend. Cats are easier to leave on their own, sure - but half our family/friends are allergic to them. So we went on a search to find the perfect family pet for us, and here's what we brought home: Yep, I'm the mom with a bunny on a leash - I think I've peaked. My daughter wanted a lizard most - which I knew would be lost in our house about 5 minutes after brining it home. Next was a turtle - but then we were told the sand turtles live 120 years - yeah, I'm not passing down an animal in my will. The bunny however, seemed perfect all around - pretty low maintenance (water bottle and self-feeder in her cage so we can leave for a weekend getaway) and their longevity is about 6-8 years - perfect for small children. All we had to do was potty train her and we'd be good! Yep, you heard that right - potty train a bunny. This is actually a lot easier than you think - we use those little disposable chucks pads and have one area in the house where it sits. The bunny went potty a couple times and we moved it/the bunny to the potty mat. Two accidents in the beginning and she's gone potty on the mat ever since! She's actually a pretty chill, snuggly pet - even when being tortured by a 6 year old, she doesn't seem to mind. So if you're looking for a family pet, I know this seems a little more unusual than the typical options, but it's actually working out quite well. We got a special cage from a farm store (the ones in pet stores are awful, the animals basically lay around in their own dirty litter - no thank you! Ours falls into a nice tray below that we can just take out, dump, and clean - so easy!) and the bunny literally plays with toys with the kids and likes to cuddle during movies. That's my kind of pet!
One of the best ways to organize your life is not as hard as you think - it all comes down to Meal Planning. It saves you so much time cooking and grocery shopping, and it saves you a lot of money as well. I've read endless articles and "plans" about meal planning and a lot of them seem like too much work. I keep it VERY simple. The two easiest meal planning tricks: 1) buy meat when it's on sale and freeze it and 2) plan your week's menu around using the same kind of meat for 2 different meals. First, I have a list of "food ideas" to help me when I'm stuck on what to make for the week. These are tried and true meals and my kids love everything on the list I've attached below (and yes, one of them is a picky eater!) This helps so I feel like I'm not making the same exact food over and over. I'll still sprinkle in new recipes during the week from time to time, but if I'm in a pinch I know anything off this list will satisfy. The easiest meal planning trick I use: I cook a large batch of a certain kind of meat and use it creatively in different meals. My kids don't know that the chicken in our stir fry on Monday is the exact same thing in their enchiladas on Wednesday. Ground beef is also easy to do this with, I can use it in spaghetti sauce one night and then use it for tacos another night. This drastically cuts down on cooking - in fact, I often cook up large batches of ground beef when it's on sale and divide it into 1 pound portions and freeze it - then all I need to do is lay it out the night before and the meal is mostly cooked ahead of time. The easiest way to meal plan is to keep some staples on hand at all times - things like tortillas, shredded cheese, boxes of noodles, canned/jarred sauces, and frozen veggies like Edamame for nights when you don't have something fresh available. I have at least 1-2 "already stocked" meals on my menu each week, that way if plans change and we're out, we get home late from soccer practice, we go to the neighbors for dinner, etc, I'm not wasting fresh food. So breakfast for dinner, pasta dishes, soup & sandwiches, etc are often thrown into the mix once or twice a week on the chance we have an impromptu picnic at the park and I need to modify the menu a bit for the night. So the menu doesn't have to be strictly enforced - this allows you to move everything around a bit to keep your schedule fluid if you have a lot of busy nights. Below is my May Menu, along with a blank calendar you can fill in for yourself (I attached my "menu ideas" that I pull from as well in printable form if that will help you, but I encourage you to make your own to have on hand to quell those "what's for dinner?" questions... it really does help when you feel like you're in a dinner rut!) I've also attached some basic meal planning tips to help you out. If you want more, including recipes, ideas on grocery list organization, etc, email me at [email protected]!
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AuthorI love writing romance novels, editing other people's novels, planning parties (heavy on the theme food!) and watching movies. Cooking has also become a passion of mine (because you can't have a proper party without food!) and I love finding new hobbies when I can squeeze them in. Archives
December 2020
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