Project Organize Revived

The last time I posted on Project Organize 2013 was in March.  Since then, we remodeled our house, sold that house, moved into a rental for the summer and then moved across the country from Ohio to Texas. Sooooo....my organizing plan gets a fresh start.

I have three goals to keep my new home organized:

• Monthly Meal Planning - so dinner time is easy peasy (October's Menu)
• Cute and easy storage - for all the kids miscellany (okay, mine too - but we'll blame it on the kids)
• Put Pinterest to real life use - 
• Use those helpful cleaning tips and schedules to create a simple clean routine
•  Actually make all those cute crafts to decorate my home, it will make it feel welcoming
• Make-over for my closet (which will require a personal make-over too!)

I want my role as homemaker to bring glory to God. I want a home where my husband can relax and feel at peace. I want my kids to value a well-kept home.

Ambitious? Maybe! But, that's why I'm sharing it here with you - accountability! I welcome encouragement and suggestions! I hope my honest sharing is encouraging and inspiring too!
         

Monthly Menu: October

OctoberMenu 

Here are my dinner plans for 31 days of October. A few things you should know:
*I plan for a month, but shop weekly because we like fresh produce that won't last more than a week and to pick up any random items that always seem to be needed.
*My budget for the month is $550 for 2 adults & 4 kids - that includes all home-cooked meals, snacks, school lunches (for 1 student), and dining out. (We usually have cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch)
*I love to use leftovers to create another meal (ie. wk 1 I use left over pot roast for beef & peppers and beef stew)
*My meals are pretty simple (most ingredients are listed in the meal item) My go to cookbook is my 1996 Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook (you know, the red checked one) - it was a wedding gift and has been extremely useful.

 Week 1 Menu:
1. Pot Roast, Potatoes & Carrots (6-8 hrs. in crock pot w/ 1 c. water and onion soup mix)
2. Oriental Beef & Peppers on white rice (sauce: soy sauce, peanut butter, brown sugar and garlic)
3. Beef Stew (beef stock, leftover pot roast chunks, potatoes, and carrots, plus green beans, corn, and onions)
4. Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
5. Leftovers
6. Pizza (from favorite local restaurant)
7. Breakfast for Dinner: Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs
Snacks: Apples, Grapes, Cubed Cheese, Homemade Caramel Popcorn

Week 2 Menu:
8. Whole Roasted Chicken with carrots and rolls
9. Chicken and rice broccoli, cream of chicken soup(use leftover ckn)
10. Chicken Quesos (leftover chicken, plus onion, and cheese grilled inside a tortilla)
11. Pork chops, mashed potatoes and green beans
12. Homemade Chili (hamburger, onions, chili beans, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, chili powder, basil and garlic)
13. Chili Dogs (hot dogs, buns, leftover chili & cheese)
14. Eat Out: Burgers & Fries

Snacks: Cinnamon Roll-ups (butter & cinnamon-sugar on a tortilla, rolled-up), Homemade Caramel Popcorn, Homemade Applesauce, Graham Crackers & milk

Week 3 Menu:
15. Grilled Chicken (with Italian dressing marinade), Sweet Corn and Crescent Rolls
16. Chicken Stir Fry (ckn, squash, zucchini, onions and broccoli) with rice
17. BBQ Chicken in Crockpot (4 ckn breasts with fav. BBQ sauce) with coleslaw and baked beans
18. BBQ Chicken pizza - leftover ckn, onions, pineapple, bacon & mozz. cheese on pizza crust (or crescent roll dough)
19. Tacos - beef, lettuce, tomato, cheese, tortillas, salsa, sour cream, black olives
20. Meatloaf, rolls, green beans, and corn
21. Eat Out: Sandwich Shop
Snacks: Homemade granola, pears, bananas, homemade cookies, chips & salsa

Week 4
22. Garlic-Lime Chicken (saute chicken breasts with minced garlic and lime juice), sweet peas & bread & butter
23. Home-grilled Burgers & Tater Tots
24. Spaghetti with meat sauce, corn, bread & butter
25.  Homemade Lasagna, salad, rolls
26. Leftovers
27. Chicken pot pie
28. Eat Out: Sandwich shop
Snacks: Bananas, applesauce, cereal trail mix, cinnamon roll-ups, fruit smoothies

Week 5
29. Roast, potatoes & carrots
30. Philly cheese-steak (leftover roast sauteed with peppers and onions on hoagie with cheese)
31. Steak Quesos (leftover roast with onions, cheese grilled in tortillas)
Snacks: Oranges, pears, homemade granola, yogurt

Book Review: Bake Though the Bible

I love, love, love Bake Through the Bible: 20 Fun Cooking Activities to Explore the Bible Story with Young Children (Beginning with God) by Susie Bently-Taylor and Bekah Moore!!  It's perfect for any family - homeschoolers, preschoolers, hand-on learners, and anyone who desires to teach their children the true gospel.

Here's why I love this book so much:

• It follows the redemptive narrative of the whole Bible. The authors didn't just pick random, well-known stories that would make cute recipes. They intentionally followed the story that God laid out in His word from creation to the cross to show why and how we need Jesus.
• The recipes are simple and yummy! These two ladies obviously know what it's like to cook with children. The recipes are easy to follow with simple steps that kids can actually help with. Plus the ingredients are things you would normally find in your kitchen that kids might actually eat. Even my picky-eater is eager to try these recipes.
• The artwork in this book is beautiful! I love the mixed-media. The drawings make the directions easy to follow and the photographs are big and bright and make the food look delicious! The artwork really attracts the interest of the children - my kids love looking through this book at all the pictures! (Our favorite picture is "The Good Book Company" lego-man looking inside the Empty Bread Tomb on page 51.) 
  In reviewing a cookbook, of course we had to try out the recipes. Here are some pictures of us making Dirty and Clean Hearts on p. 54. It was easy and fun, plus I got to talk to my kids about our hearts being dirty with sin and that only Jesus can make them clean! 

 

 

*Special thanks to The Good Book Company and Cross Focused Reviews for providing this book, free of charge, in exchange for an honest review.

 

Five Minute Friday: WRITE

Five Minute Friday with Lisa-Jo Baker and hundreds of others. We write for five minutes. All on the same prompt. No extreme editing. No worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

Prompt: WRITE

I have wanted to be a writer for a long time. It started in 2nd grade writing a poem about leaves that was awarded and published in our school's Honor Writers Book - it was the first thing I ever typed on a computer - I felt very important! I wrote poems in high school and started a few novels - plenty of ideas in my head - not a lot of them have made it on paper yet.

 A few years back, I decided to take my passion for writing serious. I knew I needed to find a niche that I was good at and that was unique and useful. I decided I would write devotional books, for several reasons - my main audience wouldn't be people who read 100+ books a year - it would be mainly moms and grandmas, working women and college students - ladies who only have a few moments and who need lots of encouragement.

My first book, Sights and Sounds of Christmas, was written for the ladies at my church, to encourage us to focus on Christ in the midst of a hectic holiday season. (I converted it to an ebook for Amazon,  check it out here.) I'm currently working on a devotion book for moms on the Fruit of the Spirit. My hope and prayer is that what God teaches me in and through His Word, I can share and encourage other women to grow in their faith. That is what inspires me to WRITE.

Book Review: Apostate

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say that our American culture is falling apart because "they took prayer out of the schools". But the reality is that's just a side-effect of the 800 hundred years of shifting in philosophical thinking from a Christian worldview to a Humanist world view. Kevin Swanson, author of Apostate: The Men who Destroyed the Christian West has done the extensive research to show how men of great influence have left us with such a depraved culture.

From Thomas Aquinas to Jean-Paul Sartre and William Shakespeare to John Steinbeck, Swanson gives clear historical evidence of how 16 of the "greatest thinkers" left the Christian faith in favor of Secular Humanism, or self-worship and influenced generation after generation to follow in their steps.

I appreciate that Swanson does a consistent job of using the Bible to disprove the philosophies of these men, allowing the Word of God to shine the light of truth on these dark, twisted minds of men.

I was slightly disappointed in his conclusion, though. His solution seems to suggest that, as Christians, we should just remove ourselves as much as possible from the culture as it collapses and then rebuild. My question is, where's the mission mindset of rescuing people from this dangerous way of thinking with the power of the gospel?

For those wondering how the cultures got like this or who think removing prayer from school was the cause, this book is a must read. For those who admire or highly esteem the "great thinkers", this book will challenge your comfort zone, but is worth reading considering the obvious detrimental results of their work.

*Special thanks to Generations with Vision and Cross Focused Reviews for providing this book, free of charge, in exchange for an honest review.

Behind the Scenes: The Kitchen Chemist

"Behind the Scenes" is a fun link up where we show those photos - but tell the real story behind them. The sneak peek behind the scenes, a look past the edges of the photo to the real life behind it. - Crystal Stine

                                                         

I'm notorious for not measuring when I cook -  I just kinda guess at amounts - it keeps meals interesting. That's why you can have Chicken Stir-fry 10 times at my house and it will taste different every time. I also like to experiment with recipes - I might get a craving for cookies and substitute whatever I have in the house to make it work. Here's my latest Chemistry experiment:

Chocolate No-Bake Cookie Cakes??

I started with the correctly measured amounts of milk and sugar. (That's the first shocker!)
I guessed on cocoa, butter and vanilla.
While that all came to a boil, I pull out the big container of oatmeal - oh no! only about a cup left and I need 3 cups! What will I do? No worries - there are packages of brown-sugar-cinnamon instant oatmeal right there in the pantry.
I add 3 or maybe it was 4 packages of instant oatmeal to the pot. After stirring, it's still a little runny, so I add about 1/4 cup of peanut butter. Now I don't want to wait for these to set up in a couple of hours - I need to make sure that they taste good - so my next brilliant idea is to fill cupcake liners with the cookie mix and put them in the fridge.
I snapped this quick pic because I thought I either have an awesome Pinterest post or something to remember and laugh at later!
(P.S. They turned out pretty good - really sweet though and the fridge & cupcake liners didn't really speed up the process that much.)

Five Minute Friday: RED

Prompt: RED

Lots of things come to mind with the word RED:

My son's favorite color RED - because it's the color for stop at the traffic light (um, okay?! not sure why that makes it your favorite, but if you say so, son!)

Go RED for Women - the American Heart Association's Initiative for Women's Heart Health (I worked for AHA for 2 1/2 years, so I celebrate heart month every Feb.)

Bright RED lipstick - because I'm jealous of Drew Barrymore and my friend Sara who can confidently wear bright red lipstick with beautiful femininity.

But most importantly, the RED blood of Jesus - that was shed as the payment for my sins - that I am forgiven and made right with God only by His sacrifice for me!

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!
O, precious is the flow, that makes me white at snow 
No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

(Hymn written by Robert Lowery)




Five Minute Friday with Lisa-Jo Baker and hundreds of others. We write for five minutes. All on the same prompt. No extreme editing. No worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.Unscripted. Unedited. Real.