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Gratituesday: I’m WARM!! (UPDATED)

May 4, 2009 by Laura 22 Comments

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I feel a little bit silly writing this post…but really, you can not imagine how grateful I am to FINALLY BE WARM!!! I can not stop thanking God that I am warm, and that’s no joke.

I have been cold, almost constantly since about October. I try to stay warm…but our big old house is just never really toasty warm…and well…I live in Nebraska. I was so tired of being cold.

And now I’m warm!!

In fact…a couple of times…I’ve even been hot!! I have been cold for so long, that I will NOT complain about being hot!

I’ve been sitting in the sunshine as much as I can (gotta soak up that vitamin D, you know) and just praising God for spring.

And our windows are open, letting in the spring breeze…and our sheets are hanging on the line…and the birds are chirping.

And I’m WARM!!!

Good luck coming up with a comment to leave on this post. “Laura, I’m so glad you’re warm” is about the only option I’ve given you today. Sorry ’bout that. Maybe you can be more creative than that.

Right now…I’m going back outside to breathe in the springtime!!

Oh…and I hope that you too are warm! Hooray for being warm!
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Join us for Gratituesday! Read the details here, then come link up with us. If you don’t have a blog, leave a comment letting us know what you’re thankful for!

**UPDATE** Mr. Linky seems to be out enjoying the spring weather too. Doesn’t he know he’s not supposed to take any days off?! If you wrote a Gratituesday post, please leave your link in the comments section until Mr. Linky decides to get out of his hammock. Thanks!

Also…my overall site was having issues earlier too…sorry about that. Nothing scares a website owner more than when her website is not working. Shew. HOPEFULLY it’s all good now?! :)

***RE-UPDATE*** Looky there. Mr. Linky is back. Let’s hope he stays for a while…

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Feeding the Family: Lunchtime

May 4, 2009 by Laura 32 Comments

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Several of you have asked (or perhaps wanted to ask) how we have time and afford to eat a big meal at lunchtime as well as dinnertime.

If you look at my menus…you’ll notice that often our lunches are just as big as our dinners. There are several reasons for that:

Matt works all day putting on new roofs, tearing out and rebuilding bathrooms, working on people’s yards, you name it. The guy is hungry when he comes home for lunch. (and dirty…but that has nothing to do with this post)
Our four boys are….hungry….always.
I’ve found that it actually costs more to feed my family sandwiches and chips for lunch than it does to fix them a cooked meal…and it doesn’t take much more time to prepare.

Here’s a little research and number crunching I did to see how much it costs to feed my family of six a meal of sandwiches:

100% whole wheat bread…$2.00 on sale if I’m lucky
Two packages of Hormel Naturals Deli meat (the only kind easily available to us that I sort of feel okay about eating)…$2.98 each…$5.96 total
Mayo and mustard…50¢ (just a conservative guess…we go through a lot of it on a whole loaf of bread)

Total…$8.46

And that’s just the sandwiches.

We do, without a doubt, finish the entire loaf of bread and the entire contents of both packages of deli meat. Add fruit and carrots to that…and milk to drink…it can really add up!

Now, could I buy the cheaper bread and a package of bologna and save money? Sure. But…blech. (and I mean that in the kindest way possible)

And…I usually make my own 100% whole wheat bread…which is less expensive (and WAY better for us) than store bought…but…I’m just trying to make a point here. ;)

A typical lunch at our house might be something that uses a package of SmartChicken (which I buy on sale for $2.49ish/pound)…or a pound of hamburger meat (which costs me $4.35/pound because it’s from cows that are allowed to graze on organic grass and have college degrees). But look at that! Even my “expensive” high quality hamburger meat is less money than the mediocre-quality lunch meat.

Wow…I’m getting worked up here. I’ve never actually added it up before today. I knew I was saving money…but wow. This is exciting.

I have just succeeded in making myself very happy. I’m glad I did the math on that. It’s exciting to know that I’m feeding us good, filling lunches for much less than sandwich lunches.

Oh, and does it really take much extra time to fix a lunch, compared to the time it takes to make sandwiches? Maybe a little. But not much. Our lunches are often a High Five Recipe, which are quick to make, or something I’ve made ahead of time to throw into the oven.

Because many of you have asked about good lunchtime recipes and options…I’ll continue to share ideas as I can. Be watching for more High Five Recipes that are great quick and healthy lunches…plus…look through my menu plans for ideas on what we eat for lunch.

What do you usually eat for lunches? What works best at your house?
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Menu Plan for the Week

May 3, 2009 by Laura 4 Comments

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Last week was a super fun week with the Springtime Giveaway Carnival. Thanks again to everyone who participated! Hope you won something!! Be sure to voice your opinion on whether or not we should have a Fall Giveaway Carnival!

This week everything will be back to normal on the blog, with new posts in the Feeding the Family and Women with a Mission series…Gratituesday…and if you’re lucky, I might go random on you. I’ve been feeling like a little randomness lately.

Here’s our menu for this week:

Sunday, May 3
Pumpkin muffins, bananas
Chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, carrots, brownie fudge sundaes (friends came over!)
Leftovers

Monday, May 4
Honey whole wheat bagels, applesauce
Shrimp pasta salad, boiled eggs, apple slices
Deer steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas

Tuesday, May 5
Barbara’s puffy pancake, scrambled eggs
Chicken-veggie stir fry
Tuna on toast, fruit salad

Wednesday, May 6
Kefir-fruit smoothies, sourdough biscuits
Grilled cheese sandwiches, strawberry-peach slushies
Easy chicken alfredo, steamed broccoli and carrots

Thursday, May 7 (Field trip day!)
Breakfast cookies on the road
Picnic lunch (Tortilla roll ups, carrots, apples, fruit leather, cookies)
Burger dinner at Elks Lodge (Asa is being honored for a soccer shoot-out he participated in.) (Thanks for dinner, Asa!)

Friday, May 8
Peanut butter honey toast, pears
Homemade pizza pockets, carrot sticks
Sourdough pancakes, turkey sausage

Saturday, May 9
Fried eggs on toast, oranges
Something beany
Hamburgers on the grill, veggies, creamy cole slaw

What are you eating this week? Join Organizing Junkie for more Menu Plan Mondays!

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Swagbucks!

April 27, 2009 by Laura 9 Comments

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I’m sure most of you have heard about Swagbucks by now. But if not…

When you use it…you earn “bucks” that can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards…and lots of other stuff. I’m just in it for the Amazon gift cards!! Bring on the books!!!

I was skeptical at first…but Swagbucks just uses the same search engines that Google uses…and there’s no catch. Each time I need to “google” something…I “Swagbuck” it instead. Each time I earn 450 Swagbucks…I can turn them in for a $5 Amazon card.

Let me say it again…BRING on the books!!

Or, should I say it this way…Bring on the FREE books!

Good grief…I need to search things online all the time anyway. I may as well use Swagbucks and earn some curriculum and fun reads.

If you follow this Swagbuck link to get started, you’ll earn some automatic swagbucks…and I will earn some swagbucks too. Then…when you tell people about it…you’ll earn swagbucks when they earn swagbucks. It’s a regular swagbuck party. Swagbucks all around!

What will you/do you use your Swagbucks for?
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The Great Closet Clean-out

April 27, 2009 by Laura 25 Comments

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The boys have been begging. I finally said yes.

We finally pulled out all of our clothes and did the great switch from winter to summer clothes (leaving some sweats and jeans and sweatshirts in the closet just in case because packing all the warm clothes away is a sure way to make it snow).

Here’s what happens at our house:

I clean out and organize the boys’ closets twice a year. In the meantime…we receive boxes and bags of hand-me-downs. When this occurs…do I carefully sort and organize the clothing we receive?

Nope. I throw them into the back of a closet until unti the next biannual closet clean-out.

Why, you ask? Because I’m lazy like that. Because our clothing bins are in the attic making them hard to get to. Because we don’t need the clothes yet. Because I don’t want to. Because the clothes we receive are likely not to fit anyone yet anyway. And because organizing clothing twice a year for four growing boys is plenty for me.

This is what my camera captured when I turned on the flash then stuck
it into the back of the closet. That pile was several feet high.

We pulled it all out and it looked like this.

I asked Matt to bring our clothing containers down from the attic and the boys started pulling out all of their favorite shirts…and talking at once…and asking me loud questions like “will this shirt fit me this year?” and “oh can I have this one?”. Malachi was crawling all over me and into my well ordered piles and into the containers. It was a fun organizational moment. The kind that makes me want to not let them help me. But…I know they love helping me with this job, so I kept myself from screaming for Calgon to take me far, far away and let them go a little nuts for a while.

Two days and several hours later…the bottom of the closet is storing only sleeping bags. (Someone needs to take a broom to that floor.)

The clothing bins are now ready to go live in the attic again until the next time I feel like we need a little family insanity.

And…I was able to take a very full container of clothes to the clothing giveaway at church we hosted over the weekend.

What’s it like at your house when you sort through clothes during the changes of seasons? Have any closets that you need to clean out? (My boys would be happy to come and help you.)

You can go visit Tammy’s Recipes for more “Pile Clean Up” motivation.

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High Five Recipe: Creamy Mac and Cheese

April 27, 2009 by Laura 251 Comments

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High Five Recipes 2

I’ve been searching my whole life (give or take) for a good homemade mac and cheese recipe. The recipes I’ve come up with in the past are decent….but not great.

A couple of months ago, a friend told me how she makes it. I adapted it a bit and now we can’t seem to get enough! It is THE creamiest mac and cheese ever.

Here’s the secret: Cook your pasta in MILK instead of water. The milk makes it super creamy. The starch from the pasta thickens the milk into a sauce. Add your cheese after the pasta is finished cooking.

Uh-huh…comfort food at it’s best.

Creamy Mac and CheeseYum

5.0 from 1 reviews

High Five Recipe: Creamy Mac and Cheese

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Author: Laura

Ingredients

2½ cups whole wheat pasta
3 cups whole milk
½ t. sea salt
1 cup shredded cheese (I use white cheddar)

Instructions

Mix pasta, milk and salt in a large sauce pan.
Cook over medium-high heat STIRRING ALMOST CONSTANTLY until the pasta is tender (10-15 minutes).
Remove from heat. (IMPORTANT!)
Add cheese and stir until melted.
Serve immediately.

Be very sure to remove this from the heat before you stir in the cheese. Otherwise you’ll have a gritty mess. :)

You can use any shape of pasta you want. I have found that elbow noodles cook quite a bit faster so I use those when I need a quick lunch.

Every time I make this, we can not believe how creamy and delicious it is. My lifelong search for awesome homemade macaroni and cheese has come to an end. We should have some sort of mac and cheese ceremony.

The Creamiest Mac and Cheese

If you haven’t ever tried cooking your pasta in your milk, you must do this! You can enjoy it for an easy meal as is. Or you can use this base recipe to make:

Life as you know it just got better. Serve any of these with a salad and some steamed veggies. It’s amazing!

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Gratituesday: Successful Clothing Giveaway

April 27, 2009 by Laura 8 Comments

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I had something else planned to write about this Gratituesday, but I can’t stop thinking about the excitement of the weekend, so I’ve gotta shout about this instead. (I love having the problem of having SO many things to be thankful for that I just can’t decide what to share!)

Hopefully you read about the Clothing Exchange my friend organizes at our church twice a year. If you didn’t have a chance to read it, please go do that. I have always loved the idea of this Clothing Exchange, but after this weekend I’m even more excited about it and convinced that this is one of the most beautiful ways a church can reach out to a community.

I was only able to help sort and organize the clothes for tiny snatches of time because I had one boy at home with a fever and another boy with a double ear infection. Then on the day of the actual clothing exchange, we had soccer games so I could only help for a little while.

But…I hope I can capture the joy of this ministry for you with my words. The Clothing Exchange (which I really should be calling a Clothing Giveaway because the clothes were really just set out on tables for people to come and just take what they needed)…began at 8:00 on Saturday morning. When I arrived at 8:02, the parking lot was completely full and there were cars lined up on the street. I walked into the room filled with clothes and already over 50 people were there finding clothes for their families.

I took a few moments to get my emotions under control because there is something very touching about seeing our church building being used to meet the needs of others. Then I spent the next part of the morning handing out sacks as people walked in…and helping people get to their cars with their arms full of clothes…and my favorite part: holding babies so mamas could “shop”.

Oh, and the smiles. Yes, that was my favorite, favorite part.

Our prayer now is that the people that entered our building Saturday morning left with more than clothes. We pray that they felt our love for them…and that maybe those that don’t know Jesus saw something in our eyes that will make them search for the One they’re missing.
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What are you grateful for? Read the details here, write about it on your blog, then come link up with us! If you don’t have a blog, leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for!

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Menu Plan for the Week

April 26, 2009 by Laura 11 Comments

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Well…if I didn’t have ideas for cooking with beans before…I do now! Thank you so much! I can’t wait to start trying some of your recipe suggestions!

Last week Donna asked if I would show a picture of my lamb chops. Hey…if you want to see my lamb chops…I can show you my lamb chops.

See how cute they are? They are super tiny.
Six chops fit into my skillet.

I just brown them slowly and sprinkle on some onion salt.
Lamb chops are some of the most delicious things on the planet.

Here’s our menu for the week:

Sunday, April 26
Applesauce bread, bananas
Potluck – take “angeled eggs“, frosted fudge brownies
Nachos

Monday, April 27
Whole wheat waffles, milk
Salmon patties, strawberry-peach slushies
BBQ chicken, baked beans, creamy cole slaw

Tuesday, April 28
Scrambled egg sandwiches, clementines
Creamy mac and cheese, steamed carrots
Italian roast wraps, kefir fruit smoothies

Wednesday, April 29
French toast
Popcorn chicken, ranch potato wedges, fresh pineapple
Tuna casserole, peas

Thursday, April 30
Crepes with jelly
Tacos, fruit
Roasted chicken with potatoes and carrots

Friday, May 1
Orange muffins, applesauce
Pizza casserole, tossed salad
Lamb-burgers, homemade onion rings

Saturday, May 2
Peanut butter honey toast, pears
Bean and rice bowls
Steak, baked potatoes, green beans

Be sure to join us this week for the Spring Giveaway Carnival!!!!! The post will go up at 8:00 CST Monday morning!

And…just so you know, we will still have Gratituesday as normal this week. The only difference is that the Spring Giveaway Carnival Mr. Linky will remain at the top of my blog all week. Please remember to scroll down for the Gratituesday post and for all new posts this week!
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Visit Organizing Junkie for more menu planning inspiration!

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Make a May Day Basket…bzzzt!

April 23, 2009 by Laura 13 Comments

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Last year, some friends of ours dropped off these fun May Baskets at our door. I declared them the cutest May Baskets I’d ever seen! The boys loved them!

May Day (May 1) is only a week away…so I just had to share these with you! Beecause these baskets are really beeautiful. (Sorry…you know I couldn’t write an entire post without some sort of silliness.)

Here’s what you need to make them:

black, yellow and light blue construction paper
glue stick
elmer’s glue
googly eyes
white pom-poms
black pipe cleaners
pencil
stapler

What to do:

Use elmers glue to fasten googly eyes to pom-poms. Allow glue to dry.

Cut black paper into a 9×9 inch square.

Cut off one corner into a curve.

Fold paper into a cone and staple ends in place.

Tear yellow paper into strips. Glue them as stripes onto the black construction paper cone.

Curve ends of pipecleaner around a pencil, fold pipecleaner in half, then fasten with stapler as antennae onto “bee”.

Cut a “heart” out of yellow paper for face, and a smile out of black paper for smile. Glue eyes and mouth onto face. Glue face to the rounded corner of the black paper, covering the staple used to attach the antennae.

You’ll find the pattern for the wings here. Trace it onto blue paper, then cut it out and staple it onto the back of the bee.

Fill “bee basket” with popcorn and other fun goodies.

Deliver them to your friends on May Day!

Aren’t these the most beecoming May Baskets you’ve ever seen?

Do you usually make and deliver May Baskets? Or, have you been the recipient of May Baskets before?

I really and truly think that it is one of my boys’ favorite “holidays”!
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The Dream

April 22, 2009 by Laura 32 Comments

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My mom died of ALS 4 1/2 years ago.

Last night I dreamed that I had my mom back. Not forever…just for a weekend. And in my dream I knew that.

I started out simply elated in my dream. She was completely healthy again and looked really, really pretty just sitting on my couch.

I was flitting and jumping around…only occasionally stopping for a second to let her talk. I was catching her up on all the things she’d missed out on over the past 4 1/2 years. There was SO MUCH to tell her! I got out pictures and showed her Malachi’s birth and all the boys and how much they’d grown.

Somehow in my dream, I had her all to myself for the whole weekend. There were no interruptions and I didn’t have to share her with anyone. It was incredible.

And then…suddenly the weekend was almost over. The reality of that hit me and all I could do was throw my head into her lap and sob. I couldn’t even talk anymore to tell her all the things I wanted to tell her about how much I’d missed her. I couldn’t even ask her all the questions I’ve been wanting to ask her about how much spice to put into a certain recipe or about how old I was when I first started doing certain things.

All I could do was sob.

My dream ended there. I woke up crying and couldn’t stop. So I got up and tried to put my thoughts into words.

I tend to think about her more this time of year. Her birthday is coming up in May…and well…so is Mother’s Day.

I miss her.

But now that I’m awake enough to think a little more clearly…I wouldn’t wish her back to this earth. Not even so that I could have her all to myself for a weekend. Not even so that she could see my precious boys and see how big and smart and handsome and amazing they are. Not even so that I could once more throw my head onto her lap and let her hold me while I cry.

She’s in the perfect place.

Knowing that is enough to stop my tears.

Or at least change them to tears of joy.

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