About Me

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I am a cloth diapering, breastfeeding, cosleeping, baby led weaning, extended rear facing, eco conscious, married mommy to two beautiful children. They have changed my view on the world we live in. It is now my number 1 goal to make it the best I can for them to grow up in. I find myself always rethinking how I want to live my life and often feel like sharing my findings and thoughts with others. So I guess here's my chance :o) I will talk about topics that interest me. If you dont like them or dont agree, well... there's nothing much I can do!

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

My giant cooking day

I have been wanting to do a "cook a bunch of meals in one day" day for a while now. With Keegan going away for 2 months, I have realized that now is the time! I bought a 1 month pro membership on Once A Month Meals. All the grocery lists, day before preparation, day of timeline, recipe cards and labels are all done for you. It's a great system

I chose 2 menus, traditional and kids paleo, and since I had the pro membership, I was able to swap out some recipes for ones I wanted. I wanted simple recipes that I know my family love to eat. Lasagna, pâté chinois (shepherd's pie), muffins, banana cookies, egg cups. Tons of yummy food. They recommend reading through cooking day to timeline early so that you fully understand all the steps (my first mistake). They also suggest prepping some meats and all your veggies the day before so that you aren't stuck doing all that busy work the day of (2nd mistake). Another mistake was probably trying to do 2 menus at the same time as well. 

Well I only got started around noon. I had my sister come over and hangout with the skids for the day because there was no way I could safely be in the kitchen all day with they (more on my first day "away" from Zachary here). I only got through about a third of what I had planned. 8pm came around, the kids were tired and cranky so I left the kitchen in a total disaster and went to bed. 


I still had fresh meat in the fridge so I had to prepare a couple more meals. I picked a coup,e recipes that didn't need too much in the way of ingredients to prepare and went to work. I made sure to have lots of interaction with the kids in between recipes. Zachary even had a 3 hour nap in my arms. Little guy just wanted to hang out with me. So all three of us cuddled on the couch and watched cartoons. The recipes I managed to complete:

PB oatmeal cookies
3 shepherd pies
3 apple pie pork chops
2 sweet sour chickens
Pumpkin flax cookies
Sweet potato chili
Beef stew
Bacon wrapped egg cups
Apple chicken nuggets
Meatballs 

I still have a couple more things to make but they don't need fresh meat so they can wait until sometime later this week. 

In the end, I'm super glad I did this. Grocery shopping was quite easy since I already had most pantry items. Our meat was local and/or pastured and the majority of our produce was organic. Will I do it again? Not any time soon! It is very difficult to take a whole day to get it all done. For the next while, when I make a meal, I will just prepare a bit extra or I will prep and freeze something some afternoon.

Now, it's time to meal plan for the month of March with all the yummy food in my freezer! Do you have large scale cooking days?

Sunday, February 23, 2014

My first day being "away" from my boy.

As I sit here in our rocking chair, nursing my son to sleep, I look back on our day and realize neither one of us really enjoyed it. Other than a quick fundraising meeting this morning, I spent the whole day in the kitchen cooking and preparing future meals to store in our big freezer. I asked my sister to come over and hangout with the kids since I knew I'd be busy. Well I was too busy. And I won't be spending another day like this for a while. 

With Keegan gone on his two month deployment, I find myself needing easy meals since it is difficult to prepare a large meal with two children running around near me. I decided to give Once A Month Meals a try. Great site with tons of recipes. When you become a member, you have access to detailed shopping lists, food preparation tasks, as well as a timeline for your big cooking day. I had 2 menus that I had planned on tackling today. Things went alright. I didn't make enough mashed potatoes and a muffin recipe totally flopped and I only made about half of what I had planned but that was ok. 

What wasn't ok was not being there for the kids. Abigail was ok since she doesn't need my attention for the whole day but my little Zachary, well he definitely missed his mama. Although he kept coming in and out of the kitchen and laughed ad played all day, I still couldn't get down and interact with him when he came to see me. I'd often ask my sister to come get him since it wasn't entirely safe for him to be around the hot oven. I believe I took two or three instances to sit for a minute and quickly nurse him since I knew it had been a while. That was all his real interaction with me all day long and even then, it didn't last very long.

So here we are passed their bedtime and Zachary is simply sad. All he wants is to be held by me. So that's what we're doing. I got changed in my pjs quickly so that there was no reason for our cuddles to stop as we go from the rocking chair to our big bed where we will both sleep cuddled up to one another and breastfeed several times during the night. I still have a lot of work to do downstairs in the kitchen but it can wait until tomorrow. And even then, each meal preparation will be spaced out with lots of genuine interaction with the kids. 


Tuesday, February 18, 2014

And so it begins - 59 days to go

It's a cold morning. I had every intention on going out for a run with Z while A was at preschool but those plans changed quickly.

I sit here looking around my disaster of a kitchen and I'm suddenly hit with the cleaning bug. Running can wait. This bug doesn't come around often. So a couple things on the go for today. 
-Clean the main floor
-Meal plan for the week
-Get caught up in laundry
-And look at the little love note that was sent to me this morning.



This will be my chance to put in place routines that will hopefully make our day to day running of the household much smoother. Making freezer meals a month at a time and figuring out a weekly cleaning/task routine are first on my list! And lets all hope that the next 59 days go by quickly!

What do you do to help everything run smoothly in your home?

Saturday, February 8, 2014

The next 2 months

Here we are, getting ready for yet another deployment. Who knew that I would become so accustomed to them. There really isn't any planning for them anymore. But this upcoming one is a bit different. Each time Keegan goes away, I normally spend a good amount of time with my parents. We have family meals a couple times a week. They would often take the kids for a bit so I could have a break. But this time, they are not around. They are actually gone away on vacation for the same exact 2 months!

There are a couple things I have had to do this time to prepare. Since now 99% of our meals will be had at home, I needed to stock pile our freezer with meat. We picked up a freezer box today that has tons of local chicken, beef and pork. And they wrapped it all individually so it will be easy to just use what we need to feed the kids and myself. I am also going to try meal planning for the month again. Since I will only have to regularly pick up milk, eggs and produce, our grocery budget should be quite small.

I am also continuing the quest to purge items in my house in order to make it our home. I would love to have that cozy feeling when I'm here and we are slowly getting there. With the help of So Damn Domestic, I am getting into the habit of doing small things daily. No more huge "20 chore Tuesday" since I was never really successful at completing the long lists of tasks. We have already made huge progress in purging out clothes as well  going through all the papers in the house, I'm just going to keep the ball going.

I'm hoping that by the time Keegan comes home, the house will be much different. I hope he likes it!


Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Wordless Wednesday - Cleaning house


Goal for 2014 - Just Do It. 


2 big bins of papers gathered from everywhere in the house. They have been hanging out for a while.


Diaper box for shredding and yellow basket for recycling (I really have no need for our 2008 hydro bills). 

I wonder what my next big declutter project will be.