Happy Easter 2013

All photos from Shone Foto

Easter One Year Ago

Oh how this pumpkin has grown up! 

Monday Meal Plan

Here we go!! Lets get back on board this train!


Monday:  Baked Sour Cream Chicken

Tuesday: French Bread Pizza

Wednesday: Leftovers

Thursday: Baked Taco Pasta(ok, I made up the name, there wasn't one)

Friday: Hawaiian Crockpot Chicken

Saturday: Leftovers

Sunday: Easter brunch at a local restaurant. They only had an opening at 4 so I am sure we will be too full for a real dinner. Might be cereal for a late dinner.

I am really going to try to find some more meat options for us. I decided I will go through the local sales ad each week to see what meats are on sale. Then head over to my trusty Pinterest for ideas on what to use it for. I hope this helps us!! 

As always, feel free to share some of your recipes you will be using this week!

SUYL-Pinterest Ideas

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is doing a Show Us Your Life-Favorite Pinterest Ideas. Well, we know with the new house I have been going Pinterest crazy, so here are some of my favorites!

I love these calm colors for our bathroom

Check out these great shutters for the bathroom windows!

I would love to get some build in cabinets and bookshelves for Mark's office

How about some good cleaning and organizing tips?

Our pantry is going to be smaller than the one we currently have, I hope I can get it this organized!

I always wondered how to make those false drawer fronts into storage flip downs..here is a tutorial!

I am not a good window cleaner...hopefully this will help!

I am FINALLY getting a Jacuzzi tub!! Now I know how to clean it

Here will be my cleaning calendar, lets hope I keep on track!

Here are a few more things I liked!

Perfect eggs for Easter

Genius! Bundt cake pan for an umbrella decoration

Industrial strength un-poppable balloons, Eliza would go crazy!

What are some of your favorite pins?

Five Friday Favorites

Here we go with this weeks 5 favorites!

1. I am a sucker for sugar and these just happen to be one of my favorite treats all year 

I love peeps so much, probably because they are just all sugar! My teeth sure don't like them though!

2. I am loving this recipe for meatloaf. I posted about it last week and we had it again for dinner last night. I might possibly make it every week! Make sure to make a glaze for the top with ketchup and brown sugar, put it on top the last 15 min then hit it with the broiler for a minute. AMAZING

3. I am loving our library. Eliza loves going there and picking out movies. She has so many books at home she isn't really into the books there yet, but oh man those movies! They also have a great kids area to play so we can hang out a bit.

4. I am loving free agency for football right now. It gives me a little hope for the Lions this year, we signed Reggie Bush. I'll be honest, I don't care much about him, just hopeful he brings some new life to our game!!

5. And here she is, my favorite of all time. My little bug. She seems so grown up lately. She has the best manners, has been so caring, and really starting to enjoy playing with her friends. We have a birthday party to go to this weekend, I can't wait to see how she does with all of the kiddos.

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One Minute

Some days, all it takes is one minute to change your mood. Unfortuantely, sometimes it can be a minute to change you into a bad mood, but this time it was something to put me in a good mood.

We have hit a few road bumps with selling our house, but then I got this text from our builder which made it all better.

In case you were wondering why it looks crazy, I blurred out his name and our street name.

My whole mood changed when I got this. This is our future, it finally has a street number and a name. That is our forever home!!

I also love that when he comes over, we go off on some pretty crazy tangents, and get a little wild with the blueprints. This is a photo of our latest change, the sad part is, I totally understand what it all means.

Monday Meal Plan-On a Wednesday

Well, I kind of dropped the ball this week on meal planning. I knew it was going to be a hectic week so I just decided to wing it. Mark will be gone for dinner a few nights because of meetings. The builder is coming over one night at dinner time, and a few birthday parties and Easter celebrations this weekend.

I did grab some ground beef to defrost so I know I have that if we need to grab it, but last night it was soups and sandwiches.

Since I don't have much planned, I thought I would throw up some new recipes I found!

Made these carrots last week, SO good!

Would love to try to make these fruit snacks for Eliza, she LOVES fruit snacks

Who doesn't love Cinnabun??

We are BIG bread people here!

Hopefully next week will slow down a bit and we can get back on our game! I am starting to really enjoy cooking. Eliza loves to help me! It is great mommy and me time. Kind of out of left field, but I just LOVE this little Kitchen Helper Tower, I definitely want to get one for the new house as we will have more storage.

Tutorial Tuesday-Easter Flashback

I gotta have faith, faith, faith,
I gotta have faith, faith, faith,

A little George Michael anyone?

OK and back to our regular scheduled program! How is everyone today? We have a quick, and cute, Easter project. 

Get out your:

Wood Board or Canvas

Scrapbook Paper

Wood Cross

Paint

Rotary blade or Scissors

Hot Glue

Spray Adhesive

All of my supplies were purchased at Hobby Lobby

Lets jump in!

1. Start out with your board, prime it if you are using wood, if you are doing a canvas proceed to step 2

2. Paint your board/canvas. I picked a light blue to coordinate with my scrapbook paper.

I TOTALLY spray paint my grass every time, my lawn looks hilarious. My husband does not agree. Better then the garage floor!

3. Once it is dry start with your scrapbook paper. I used a 12x12 sheet so that it fit my board, but didn't cover all of it. Spray the back with adhesive spray and stick it on. The good thing about the spray, it doesn't dry instantly so you can move it around a few times.

4. Trim your paper. A great tool is a rotary blade, especially since my board had a lip. Just line it up and cut along the edge, nice clean edges.

5. Trace the larger of the two crosses(the bottom cross) onto the BACK of the scrapbook paper, make sure you lay the cross face down.

6. Spray paint your two crosses

7. Cut out the paper, spray on some adhesive and stick it on.

8. Now, hot glue the large cross onto your board.

9. Time for the little cross. I spray painted it the same color as the board, but didn't want it to be too much the same. I went and got acrylic paint and painted the word in purple. I then scuffed it a bit so you could see the blue coming through.

10. Now that it is dry, hot glue this down to the larger, bottom cross. 

11. Put your faith on display!

All together the project takes about 10 minutes, it is just the drying time of the paint that makes it a little longer. On a nice sunny day, the paint dries really quickly. The shimmer paper looks amazing with this, just a little tough to photograph because of the shine. Love the way it turned out!

DIY Cleaning Supplies

I have been looking into DIY cleaning and laundry supplies for a few weeks now. The thought of all of the chemicals in our house has made me nervous more and more. Also, the cost of cleaning supplies and laundry soap is just ridiculous.

I stumbled upon this blog post today from Yesterday on Tuesday.

She has all of the recipes broken down for the following:

*Window Cleaner
*Multi-Surface Cleaner
*Fabric Softener
*Laundry Soap
*Stain Remover
*Tub and Shower Cleaner

She even provides you with the labels to print out and stick on the bottles! She also has blank labels you can print if you have other cleaners you would like to label. I used the blank labels to write out the recipes and stick on the back of the bottle!

Here are my supplies!

If you have any DIY cleaning recipes you use, I would love to hear them! The more money we can save, the better!