Sweet 16

My babies turn 16 today, and I have mixed feelings about that! haha I'm very proud of them, of course, and the young man and woman they are becoming, but shouldn't they really still be in kindergarten? We'll be celebrating low key today. DS wants roast beef and apple tart for his birthday dinner. DD wants her usually macaroni and cheese and a cookie dough/cream cheese/pudding/whipped cream/chocolate chip dessert that she loves. Monday she is having a few friends from school over in the afternoon for cake and ice cream and a movie, and then next weekend we are meeting with friends for a celebration dinner at the kids' favorite restaurant and then heading to The Ohio State University in Columbus for WinterJam, a Christian music event.

It's fitting that there is snow on the ground today, just as there was 16 years ago when the twins were born during a snow storm, yet so much else has changed. I'm just very, very thankful that we love and serve our Heavenly Father, who is in control, no matter what, because I'm sure there will be many more changes in the years to come.

Finally.....Cinnamon Chicken

We finally had cinnamon chicken yesterday. DS offered to cook Monday, so this got put off a few days as a result. Anyhoo, the results were mixed. DS didn't like it. Started out as "not his favorite" last night and proceeded to "I didn't like it" today. DD wouldn't even attempt it. (No surprise there!) I really liked the subtle cinnamon flavor of the chicken. The chicken was very moist, and it reminded me of a Mediterranean dish. The funny thing is, I usually avoid cooked tomatoes at all costs and love onions no matter how they are prepared, but with this recipe, the tomatoes were awesome, but I hated the onions! So I'm not sure if this is a dish I will try to tweak or if it's one of those "I'm glad we tried it but I doubt we'll have it again" things. This recipe is from The $5 Dinner Mom's first cookbook.

1-1/2 pounds bone-in chicken thighs or drumsticks
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
salt and pepper
2 whole garlic cloves
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 onion, quartered
1 - 15-ounce can stewed tomatoes, drained
1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning

Place the chicken pieces in the insert of a slower cooker and add 1 cup of water. Sprinkle the cinnamon, salt and pepper over the chicken pieces. Place the whole garlic cloves, olive oil, quartered onion pieces, drained stewed tomatoes and Italian seasoning around the chicken in the slow cooker. Set the cooker on low and cook for 8 hours.

I used bone-in chicken breast because that is what I had in the freezer. It was still frozen when I put it in the crockpot, so I cooked it for about 9 hours, and the meat was very tender. Let me know what you think!

Flexibility

I used to be a lot more flexible. I'm not talking joints and physical positions and twisting and turning my body; I mean change-of-plans flexible. It used to be that if I woke up with one set of plans for the day but something happened and a whole new set of plans presented itself, whether voluntarily or by circumstance, it didn't throw me - I just went with it. But not so much lately, and I don't like it. One of the reasons I work at home is so that I CAN be flexible. If I need to schedule an appointment for the me or the kids during normal work hours, I can do that and make up my time later in the afternoon or evening and not take formal time off. If I have a repair person coming over, I can still be productive work-wise while waiting for them to get here. If I have to leave in the middle of the afternoon to go renew the license tags for my car before they expire because I've put it off for the last 30 days instead of getting it done and over with, I can. Things like that. But lately I've really noticed myself becoming resentful of interruptions to my day and my plans. Nonimportant interruptions. Like DS asking if we can have something different for dinner instead of what I have planned. Like DD making plans with a friend for a school project without clearing times with me first. Nothing that is going to matter in the overall scheme of things even a few days from now. I'm not sure what the underlying problem is, whether I feel a lack of consideration from other people (not just my kids) or whether the urgency I feel to get work accomplished when it's available during this slow period is becoming too overwhelming or I feel a lack of control in my life or if I'm just getting old and set in my ways. All I know is I don't like how I've become. In just a few short years, my children will be off to college, and I will have all the time in the world for my plans without interruption. Until then, I need to change, start saying "yes" more often and work through the meaningless anxiety and resentment that has no place in a life with twin teens.

3-Week Meal Plan

DD helped me inventory the freezer this weekend, and as I thought, we have more than enough food for meals to carry us through the rest of this month. Here is what I have planned:

Mondays
Cinnamon chicken
Chicken tortilla soup
Chicken-broccoli rollups

Tuesdays
Beef wellington
Tacos
Flaky beef pie

Wednesdays
Italian beef stew
Chicken teriyaki
Spaghetti pie

Thursdays
Leftovers

Fridays
Pork chops paprikash
Asian pork chops
Beef fettuccini

Saturdays
Potato-leek soup
Chicken cacciatore
Birthday dinner out

Sundays
Pizza with Papa

I do need to make a list of lunches to just keep on hand. I did that during Christmas break, and having a plan really relieved a lot of stress while I was working. (Amazing, huh! ;-) ) I've had a mental list before, but having it written out and on my day planner right in front of me seemed to make the difference.

Eat From the Pantry Challenge

Life As Mom is hosting an "Eat From the Pantry" challenge this month. The idea is to use what you have on hand for meals and snacks and to limit your grocery spending. This is coming at the perfect time for me as I know my next paycheck will be small, and the grocery budget is one of my few non-fixed budget items. My goal is to cut my grocery spending in half and use up a lot of what is in the freezer (or at least enough that the bag of chicken no longer wants to fall out when you open the door!). To cut my budget in half will leave me with $31 a week to work with, and if I focus (notice a theme this year?), it is definite do-able. Even though I spend $10+ a week on milk. And only milk. Some days I think a dairy cow would be cheaper. :-)

To accomplish this, I intend to do a freezer inventory either today or tomorrow morning and then go through my recipes and cookbooks and make up a rough meal plan for the rest of January. I'm not going to plan to the specific day, but I am going to plan to the day of the week. A few months ago I started with a theme meal plan. Mondays we have chicken, Tuesdays beef, Wednesday a freezer or crockpot meal, Thursdays leftovers, Fridays pasta/pork/pizza and Saturdays a meal that might be more labor intensive than I want to tackle on a week night. This has actually worked out real well, and at first I was planning menus for a 2-week period. Then in December, I decided I wanted to avoid the stores those last 7 days before Christmas and planned out a 3-week menu, listing 3 options for Mondays, 3 for Tuesdays and so on. That worked REALLY well! And thanks to leftovers, I still have probably half that menu still available for the rest of January.

Once I do an inventory and make up my menu, I'm going to post it to keep myself accountable. Another area that needs to be cut back this month is our fast food. We traveled over New Years and spent way too much, as usual, in the drive thru. Our Sunday morning tradition is to stop at Tim Horton's for doughnuts on the way to church (spending less than $3 here lately since I've started eating breakfast at home before we go), and apparently it's *tradition* that we stop at Arby's for my son and McDonald's for my daughter after each orthodontist appointment, so those 2 habits won't stop, but I would like to avoid the drive thru entirely for the rest of January. THAT will be a major accomplishment if it happens!

So anyhoo, the pantry challenge is on, and the fast food challenge, too, I guess. Hopefully succeeding at both of these will help my budget this month, and, by eliminating fast food, help my waistline too!

January Goals

Here are my January goals. A lot of them this year will be carried over from month to month, but I think I will need to do that to stay on track, and I am going to try to be more specific in what I need to do. My financial monthly goals will be harder to hit this month because work has been slow the last few days, as in pretty much nonexistent, and therefore the paycheck is going to be scary small, but I am going to put my trust in God to supply what I NEED. Not necessarily what I want, but definitely what I need. :-)

1. Keep on date with my Bible reading and not fall behind. (I'm using the Wendy Pope online study with a friend from church.)
2. Extra payment on the Visa. (It may only be $2 or 3, but there will be an extra!)
3. Make a savings deposit. (Again, it will be small.)
4. Read a book. (I am going to finish "The Cheapskate Next Door" and then read "The Twelfth Imam" by Joel C. Rosenberg.)
5. Complete a project. (Fix the leaky bathroom faucet.)
6. Teach the kids a meal.
7. Take a bag to Goodwill of unused items.
8. Clean out DS's closet. (He has been asking me to help him for a while now.)

Goals for 2011

I really debated about goals this year, or at least putting them on paper. After my fail of 2010, I wasn't sure it was worth it, but in looking back, a large part of that failure was that I didn't break my yearly goals down into monthly goals. So I'm going to try again this year and make yearly goals AND monthly goals. Maybe that will make a difference.

Goals for 2011
1. Read the Bible in a year.
2. Pay off Visa.
3. Increase savings to a specific amount and make monthly deposits.
4. Read 12 books.
5. Finish 12 projects.
6. Teach kids to cook a different meal each month.
7. Reduce clutter and unused items and take a bag to Goodwill each month.

These are all attainable goals, as long as I keep focused and don't procrastinate. Hopefully 2011 will be more successful than 2010!