10 Ways to Lift Your Mood

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Every now and then life going to come at you with bad days, bad moods, and bad memories that threaten to tie weights around ankles and sink you faster than the Titanic.

For this reason I like to keep my trusty notebook, that is filled of things to do in any given situation. So with that, I give you.....

10 Ways to Lift Your Mood

1. Have a dance party

2. Grab a favorite beverage from your local cafe or coffee shop

3. Buy yourself some flowers

4. Grab your favorite take out or pint of ice cream

5. Take a nap

6. Do some yoga

7. Meditate

8. Cook or bake something

9. Watch a funny movie

10. Cry it out sometimes you just need to

Hopefully, one or a combination of a few these will lift your spirits and put you in a better mood.  If not, then hang in there, things will get better. I swear. 

 

Happy Homemaker Monday {5/15/2023}

Good evening everyone and welcome back to my blog. 

I hope every everyone had a wonderful weekend and are ready for the week ahead. 

It's almost 12:00am and I am just now sitting down to write this post. It's been a busy day with the usual house work and homeschooling (it's out last week, YAAAAY). I had a relaxing and fun Mother's Day yesterday. Mu girls gave me drawings that they had been working on for a few weeks plus a beautiful mug that they had picked out themselves. It was a day full of card games, chess, checkers, and a couple of movies.

Happy Monday and have a wonderful and productive week!

 

 

The weather outside is:

Today's weather was damp and muggy. It was 76 degrees with lots of clouds and some sunshine here and there. We have had a lot of rain the last few weeks and more to come this week

What we had for dinner tonight (instead of the breakfast plate):

Dinner salads and fruit

As I look out my window:

It's dark with some clouds

As I look around the house:

The living room needs to be picked up and then kitchen needs to be straightened and the last load of laundry needs to be folded and put away.

Currently reading:

No Way out by Fern Michaels

On the TV this week:

Right now I am watching Cobra Kai (season 5) Stranger Things (season 3) and rewatching 1883 and restarting Manifest on Netflix.

On the Menu this week: (I'm still figuring out the meal plan for this week)

Monday- Dinner salads with fruit

Tuesday- Roast with potatoes and carrots

Wednesday- ???

Thursday-Hamburgers and fries

Friday- Pizza and breadsticks

Saturday- Leftovers

Sunday- Beans and fried potatoes with cornbread

Inspirational quotes: 

 

Mother's Day 2023

 Happy Mother's day to all of moms! You are beautiful. Your are strong.

 

 

Currently {5/13/2023}

 

 

Time and place:10:20pm and I am in the dining room, typing up this post.

  
Eating: Nothing at the moment

Drinking: A big glass of water (always)

Watching:  Stranger Things on Netflix

 

 

Reading: I'm still reading Flowers in the Attic and plan on reading the entire Dollanganger series over the next few months.

Loving: Being able to sit down after a long day of housework and taking care of my family and read my book for a little while.

Working: I'm still working on my meal planner. I cannot wait to see how it turns out! I'm so excited for this new project. I am also working on a weekly planner insert that I am excited about and a note pad that I have been wanting to design for a while now. I am also working on a monthly/weekly planner (that's almost done and should be ready in the next few days. I can't wait to see how these turn out. We will be launching our 2024 Weekly Planner on Amazon the first week of July. So, stay tuned for that announcement. My Etsy shop is open and I am adding new listings every week.

 

Here is the link to my Etsy shop:

 

Pen To Paper Designs Inc 

 

Listening to: the TV.

Buying: Groceries for this month and stocking up on certain items that are needed. I'm also looking at clothes and other household items that are needed.

Planning: I have most of my posts planned for MayI just have to write and schedule them. I am working on setting up some deadlines for my meal planner and other planners that I am working on. I am also working on some planner inserts. This should keep me busy for a while!

 

I'm trying to plan out a work schedule for this month. Hopefully I will figure one out soon.

Wondering: can I pull it off? How will I pull it off?

Feeling: tired, but happy, always.

 

6 Basic Steps Towards Easy Meal Prep at Home

One of the best pieces of advice that I have for people in terms of saving money is to get into the habit of preparing your own homecooked meals at home – Restaurants are expensive. Takeout is expensive. Delivered food? Expensive. Prepackaged meals? Expensive. All of that stuff drains your wallet far faster than you might realize.

So, what’s the argument against cooking at home? Many meals require some degree of skill to make and although that skill level is often pretty low, it’s still present. There’s also the time issue and the energy issue and the equipment issue – each solvable, of course, but they again provide resistance against preparing food at home.

So, here are six basic things you can do to work towards effortless meal preparation at home.

1. Experiment when you have more time in the kitchen. 

The time to learn how to cook is not when you come home from a long day at work and feel absolutely exhausted, or when you just don't have the time and can’t afford anything going wrong. Often, people find themselves in these positions without any sort of cooking skills which makes cooking feel overwhelming or impossible.

2. Plan a little.

While it’s fun to imagine a home chef just throwing things together based on whatever’s in the cupboard, the truth is that it only really works if you have a lot of staples on hand, and if you’re reading this article, you probably don’t have a lot of staples on hand and also probably don’t have any ideas of how to use them.

That’s why, at first, it’s a really good idea to follow recipes carefully. A good recipe tells you what you need to have on hand right at the start, so plan ahead a little and make sure you have all of those things on hand. This will probably involve a trip to the grocery store, but it’s far better to do that before doing anything else.

3. Make a dump meal. 

This is about the easiest thing you can make at home. It basically just requires a slow cooker – it’s really the only kitchen implement you need for this. All you have to do is just put a small set of ingredients in there in the morning, turn it on low, and come home to a finished meal. Some of the ingredients might require a cutting board and a knife to chop up a vegetable or slice up a piece of meat, and you might need a can opener. It can’t get any easier than this – in fact, I find such meals to be less hassle than actually ordering food or going to a restaurant, and they’re cheaper, too.

4. Make macaroni and cheese.

 Almost everyone likes macaroni and cheese. It’s such a simple, pleasant food that can be made incredibly straightforward to please children or fancied up to please almost any palate. It’s also one of the easiest things on Earth to make, so I usually encourage people to make this as one of the first things they prepare in the kitchen. Each of my children – all of them pre-teen – have pulled this off with success.

5. Make scrambled eggs.

If you like to eat scrambled eggs at all, I strongly encourage you to learn how to make scrambled eggs. It’s an incredibly simple and flexible thing you can make for yourself or your family, it works with every meal, you can mix in almost anything savory, and it reheats well if you have extras.
Just crack a number of scrambled eggs in a bowl – however many you like – and beat them with a fork until they’re consistently yellow, a minute or two. Add a bit of salt and beat that in for a few seconds, then let the bowl sit.
Take a teaspoon of butter and put it in the middle of a skillet. Put it over medium heat and let the butter melt, then use a plastic spoon or a spatula to move the butter all over the skillet until the skillet is coated. Add the scrambled eggs and let them cook for a minute, then slowly pull that plastic spoon or spatula along the bottom of the skillet to pull up egg curds off of the skillet’s bottom. Do this over the entire bottom of the skillet, then repeat every thirty seconds until the eggs look like slightly wet version of the scrambled eggs you’d normally eat, then remove from the heat, wait a minute or so, and serve.
You can obviously mix lots of things into this recipe. Almost any savory vegetable works, as do most cooked meats and most cheeses. It all turns out delicious and with such little effort.

6. Handle Dirty Dishes the Smart Way

One of the big obstacles for many people in terms of cooking at home is dealing with the cleanup. If you eat at a restaurant, it’s done for you; if you get takeout or delivery, you can just toss the wrappers and other items. On the other hand, if you cook at home, you have to deal with all of that stuff.
A dishwasher makes it much easier, but even then, there’s some extra work involved. Also, many apartments and some homes (like my parents’ home) don’t have a dishwasher and don’t have space for one.
 Here are a few strategies I know from having lived most of my life in places with a kitchen too small for a dishwasher.

Have good tools. Have a strong scrubbing brush and a dish rag at your sink, along with good soap at hand. If you don’t have those things, it’s going to take far longer to wash dishes.

If you have a two bin sink, keep one sink full of water with a bit of soap in it. Just block the drain, fill it perhaps a quarter full with hot water, and add a bit of soap. Then, put your dishes right in that soapy water throughout the day, perhaps adding a bit more hot water once in a while. Just let the dishes soak. It’ll make it much easier to wash them when the time comes, and the other sink bin will be free.

If you have a one bin sink, get a large plastic bin, put it beside the sink, and keep your dirty dishes in there. This keeps the sink free of dishes so that you can easily start in with cleaning whenever you’re ready. Just toss dirty dishes in the bin for the moment, then wash everything in the bin at once when you’re ready. Since the sink is empty, you can dive right in. If the bin is watertight, you can put a bit of hot soapy water in there to soak some of the dishes, as noted above.

If something has caked-on grease or food pieces, pour a bit of vinegar, a bit of baking soda, and a bit of soap in it and fill it with hot water and let it sit for a long time, like a day. After that, it becomes really easy to wash. This takes care of basically every nasty caked-on grease problem I’ve ever faced.

Wash things in “streak order.” What do I mean by “streak order”? Start with stuff that will show streaks easily – glass items – then move onto silverware, then plates and plastic items, then pots and pans.

Have a drying rack beside your sink to put dishes in to dry, plus a ton of drying towels. Most things can air dry relatively quickly once rinsed, but a drying towel is great if you need something dry immediately.

Buy dish soap in bulk, then have a pump to dispense it. You don’t really want a bulk bottle of dish soap at your sink because it’s heavy and it takes up lots of space and when you pour it, it dispenses large amounts of soap. However, bulk soap is cheap.
These tactics turn hand washing dishes into a pretty easy task, even if you don’t have a dishwasher.

Final Thoughts 

If you can handle the things above, you’re already well on your way to cooking a wide variety of things at home. Move on to trying other simple dishes – pasta, for example, is incredibly simple – and try variations on the things you already know, like adding tarragon to the scrambled eggs.

 

 

May 2023 Goals

I cannot believe that it's already May and that we only have a few weeks of school left! We have some fun holidays that we are going to celebrate this month, Star Wars Day, Space Day, Derby Day, Mothers Day, and of course the last day of school.

We are just getting  into our spring routine and we are in the process of fine tuning it, so in today's post I would like to share my May 2023 goals with you!

 

 

1. Read one book this month (try to read two if I can).

2. Drink 100oz of water daily.

3. Start using my habit tracker in my bullet journal every day.

4. Eat more fruits and veggies (I have been lagging on this and I really need to fix it).

5. Walk 6 days a week and strength train 3x per week.

6. Have at least two at home date nights with the Husband. 

7. Organize the girls' bedrooms (purge old toys and outgrown clothes).

8. Have an at home spa night with my girls.

What are some of your May 2023 goals?

 

 

Happy Homemaker Monday {5/1/2023}

Good evening everyone and welcome back to my blog. 

It's May! I cannot believe it's May already/ Where has the year gone?! I hope every everyone had a wonderful weekend and are ready for the week ahead. This is going to be fun with all the fun holiday that we like to celebrate:

Star Wars Day- May 4th

Revenge of the Fifth- May 5th

Kentucky Derby - May 6th

 Mother's Day- May 14th

Chocolate Chip Cooking Day- May 15th

It's early evening and I am just now sitting down to write this post. It's been a busy day with homeschooling and working on some projects. Today, I have finished 3 loads of laundry  (the last load is in the dryer), cleaned the kitchen for the last time tonight (who loves a clean kitchen at night?), and I have finally picked up the living from a hard afternoon of playing and relaxing. I just hope my week will be as productive as this day has been.

Happy Monday and have a wonderful and productive week!

 

 

The weather outside is:

Today's weather was gorgeous! It was 76 degrees with lots of sunshine.

What we had for dinner tonight (instead of the breakfast plate):

Spaghetti and garlic knots

As I look out my window:

Dusk is approaching and it looks peaceful outside

As I look around the house:

The living room needs to be picked up and then kitchen needs to be straightened and the last load of laundry needs to be folded and put away.

Currently reading:

The Girl Who Survived by Lisa Jackson

On the TV this week:

Right now I am watching Fatal Attraction (Paramount +) Stranger Things (season 4) and restarting Manifest on Netflix (to get ready for the 2nd part of the last season).

On the Menu this week: (I'm still figuring out the meal plan for this week)

Monday- Spaghetti and garlic knots with green beans

Tuesday- Chicken potatoes and green beans (crockpot dinner)

Wednesday- Leftovers

Thursday- Han Solo Burgers, Vadar Tators, Wookie Cookies, Blue milk

Friday- Pizza and breadsticks

Saturday- Leftovers

Sunday- Beans and fried potatoes with cornbread

Inspirational quotes: