Overall, nothing too bad…  The large yogurt containers are actually leftover whey from draining yogurt.  I had attempted a cheese-making experiment with the liquid, but it didn’t turn out, so I had stuck it back in the fridge until I could use it in something else.  And I forgot about it, of course.  One container had pink mold around the top but the other didn’t seem bad, so I diluted it and watered my plants with the mixture.  I’ve heard it’s good for the plants, but I’m a little nervous that it’s going to hurt my weak little seedlings.  They already seem to be teetering on the edge.  *crossing fingers*

On the left I have some leftover soup that I made when I was sick but it really wasn’t very good so the leftovers sat in the fridge.  Because I apparently haven’t learned that if I don’t like something the first time, it’s not going to get better with time…

Above that is some spinach that I had attempted to wilt and it ended up turning into unappetizing mush.  Of course I saved it, but again, I need to learn to cut my loses when something doesn’t turn out as planned.

Then we have a small container of penne with marinara sauce that I made for Allison.  But apparently she doesn’t eat pasta anymore.  Sigh.  Feeding this kid is such a battle.

Lastly, we have a few browned apple slices.  Leftovers from a snack that went unnoticed?  It’s tough to keep control of your fridge when you are at work 50 hours a week, so I decided they should be sent to the compost.

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I will tell you that it was very much an unintentional break.  I was on vacation last week and ended up spending most of the week in bed with a head cold and unable to put together cohesive thoughts.  So I decided to not try.

And you know what?  I kinda liked it.

I normally wouldn’t even have mentioned it except in my NyQuil coma I came to a realization.  When I’m at work, I don’t have time to live and when I’m home, I don’t have time to blog.

Let me explain.  At work, I have plenty of time to plan and write, but don’t have time to prepare posts, like make a recipe and shoot photos.  And when I’m not at work, I’m focused on DOING and writing about my activities falls off my radar.

And in this season in my life, I just can’t keep up with the demand.

I still love to blog.  And will continue to troll the Interwebs.  But for now I think you will be seeing a lot less of me because I need to focus on living for ME, not for blog fodder.

Please feel free to drop me a line anytime via email (dearmommybrain {at} gmail {dot} com) or you can always find me on Facebook and sometimes on Twitter.

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Last night was the first time that I actually cooked dinner this week.  I had this great idea of throwing the remaining broccoli and cabbage that had been languishing in the fridge for a while in our Mongolian beef/stir fry.  But when I pulled them out, they were a little brown and fuzzy.  Green bags actually do work, but I’m pretty sure four weeks is pushing their limits.

Speaking of things that have been in the fridge for four weeks.  That boiled cabbage from St Patty’s Day finally had to go.  I had good intentions of trying to repurpose it, but nothing that I saw really sounded too appetizing.

Grapefruit is not a usual purchase for me and this one was actually snuck in the cart by Allison.  And since Matt is the only one that likes grapefruit, it sat around for a while before being cut up and then sat around some more in the fridge.  Now it can sit in the trash because it’s moldy and I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to put grapefruit in the compost?

The two containers on the left are both noodles that were portioned out for Allison.  Except apparently she doesn’t like noodles anymore.  So after several attempts of feeding them to her different ways, I give up.

The last thing cleared out this morning was a little piece of veggie deep dish pizza.  It was a little small to take to work as a lunch and after a couple of days I totally forgot about it.  I hate wasting any food, but at least this was just a small amount of leftovers.

Our fridge is in desperate need of a thorough clean out, so I think my plan is to clear EVERYTHING out and it’s only going back in if I have a plan to use it in the next week.  Hopefully a clean slate can help me get a handle on all this waste!

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We dyed some eggs.

Matt gave me all kinds of trouble because I bought our usual brown eggs to dye.  He later had to eat his words because they turned out rather impressive.  Look at those vibrant colors!  It might have actually been the gel dyes that I used, but don’t tell him that.  I like to hear him say I’m right.

Allison was enamored with them.

There were baskets with chocolate bunnies and peanut butter eggs.

We did some egg hunting.

And I brought my tripod so I could actually be in a picture for once.

Allison’s first Easter we had taken a picture with her, me, and my mom.  It was time for an updated one.

Thank goodness I have better equipment now.  And I’ve learned a thing or two about photography since then.  Eek.

Overall, it was a simply awesome holiday.  Even without 15 craft projects that involve discontinued components to hunt down.

How was your Easter?

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I haven’t posted my meal plan yet because I’ve been staring at my calendar all day trying to come up with something inspiring for Friday.  Well, in between mentally starting another garden project that will probably only ever exist in my mind.  So, actually it’s been less meal planning and more unproductively searching for plants that will work in my morning shade/afternoon sun landscape.  BECAUSE ALL THE BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS LOVE SUN.  And I’ve got none to give.  Sigh.

But given that it is 4 o’clock, I figure I’m out of productive thought, so I might as well hit publish. 

Here’s the plan for the week. 

Monday:  Hand-tossed pizza, salad, maybe even some leftover pasta

Tuesday:  Leftovers

Wednesday:  Mongolian beef with vegetables, brown rice

Thursday:  Dinner at friends

Friday:  TBD (probably fish or something meatless because our meat reserves are running low)

Saturday:  An anniversary dinner of food truck fare

This was a grocery shopping weekend and normally I would show you pictures or some evidence of my purchases.  But Easter weekend had me out of my routine, so no photos.  But I can tell you that I spent $118 of the $120 I budget for groceries every two weeks.  $15 for eggs and some produce at the farmer’s market, $40 at Trader Joe’s (ground beef, salsa, nuts, goat cheese, and cookies), and about $60 at Aldi for the basics. 

We still need a few things from the regular grocery, so I bumped up the budget by $20 this week to cover those expenses.  Not something I would usually do, but I don’t think we can live for two weeks without bread or brown sugar.  And I hate using all the money on day 1 and having to scrounge for the next two weeks.  So that will provide a little cushion since we typically will run out of something mid-week.  Unfortunately this is becoming a more frequent occurence lately so I’m thinking we may need to make some adjustments.

How often do you reevaluate your food budget?

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All those fruit sauces I made for Allison’s rainbow flavored cupcakes?  Moldy.

Carrots from the garden?  Soggy.

Sliced red bell pepper?  Slimy.

Tomato?  Funky.

And then there’s the beet hummus that nearly had me crying as much as tossing the bison sausage.  I love beet hummus and these particular beets had come from my garden, so it was especially sad that it ended up in the trash rather than my belly. 

Oh, and there’s a little jar of yogurt whey that got moldy.  I have to say that it wasn’t much of a loss.  I have lots more.  Half a gallon in fact from making greek yogurt.  But because I’m not great at remembering to replace cooking liquids with whey, it will probably go towards nourishing my garden.

But I did have some food salvage this week as well.  I made applesauce from some mealy apples.  And I sliced up some bananas and peppers for the freezer because they were on the verge of going bad.

But then I found this in the beer fridge.

Whoops.  Kinda forgot it was down there.  I didn’t even open the bag because while there might have been some salvageable spinach in there, slimy greens kinda squick me out.

On the upside, the fridge is pretty well cleared out.  I still have some cooked cabbage as well as a little spaghetti leftover from a while ago that I hope is still good.  Although if it’s sat uneaten for this long, it’s not a good sign that it will ever be.

How did you do this week?

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Last month was our first month without making a single credit card payment!!  Well, unless you count that $4.91 in prorated interest, but I don’t.

Last month was also supposed to be the beginning of Operation Save.  But it wasn’t. 

You see, the combination of trying out a new banking system and going EXTREMELY over budget with Allison’s birthday kinda screwed me up.  We abandoned the cash system because I hadn’t budgeted appropriately (read: at all) and I’m not even exactly sure where I spent the money. 

I mean, I know WHERE (Hobby Lobby), just not what budget categories because should mini-muffin tins be categorized as party expenses or household?  What about party food that we ended up eating before the big day?  It all just got too confusing, so I threw up my hands and said to hell with it. 

And I’ve made my peace with that.

Sure, I’d like to have every month balanced down to the penny, but it can’t always be that perfect.  And while this extreme example should be avoided, it was definitely a learning experience.  Because next year?  I’m not serving a meal.

So, Operation Save got postponed a month because I have no clue how much we actually saved in March.  I’m pretty sure it was at least $4.  Maybe even more than $12.

photo credit

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So I let go of my dream theme and decided to let Allison choose what she wanted for her 3rd birthday party.  Except she’s 2.  And very little help.  All she could articulate was that she wanted a strawberry cake.

When I mentioned my lack of inspiration to a friend, she was quick to suggest a rainbow party. 

Now I know that the rainbow theme is EVERYWHERE right now and I have a tendency to run away from anything trendy.  (Except for salted caramel.  That is one fad that I. am. all. over.)  But the more I thought about it, it all just began to fall into place…

Allison would get her strawberry cake.  And orange cake.  And pineapple cake.  And tons of bright balloons.  And maybe even a little candy.

And I would get a theme that I could go so crazy with, I’d have to be committed when it was all over.

The birthday girl.  I ordered the embroidered rainbow shirt from K. Mae Designs and made that rainbow tutu in 30 minutes for $3.  She even kept in on for the ENTIRE party.  It was a birthday miracle.

I LOVE how the decorations turned out.  And all I had to do was spend $112 in assorted balloon packs because each bag was short one. freakin. color.  I went to Hobby Lobby so many times, I had to have an intervention.  True story.

We had hoped to set up the party outside since it was a rare 80º in March, but the ground was a little soggy since it had been raining for two days.  We were lucky that things dried out enough for us to move the festivities outside, but it was a last-minute decision.  So sorry to all the people who stepped in dog poop since we didn’t clean up the back yard.

The secret to a successful party is a piñata.  Apparently, beating things up with the payoff of candy is all that kids need to have fun.  Way better rate of return than the rainbow parachute, which occupied their attention for 10 minutes.  Which is highly unfortunate because I actually purchased two.  One from Amazon and a second one from Party City that was $7 cheaper.  I was going to return the Amazon one until I saw it costs $5 to ship it back, somewhat negating my initial cost savings.  I. just. can’t. win.

But a birthday party is all about obsessing over the details, isn’t it?  That’s why I spent 42 hours planning these bath-themed favors, including homemade rainbow soap, and served sandwiches for dinner.  Because favors live on forever.  Food is a distant memory within 36 hours.  Unless it’s leftovers in my house.  Because I still have fruit sauces in my fridge.

Which brings me to the cake.  Or should I start with the cupcakes?  The 12 DOZEN mini cupcakes that I baked in rainbow flavors, that pretty much all tasted like vanilla.  At least the orange and pineapple did.  The strawberry, blueberry, and green banana actually turned out pretty well.  I won’t even talk about the grape. 

What started as an innocent suggestion from my toddler, turned into an obsession.  While it may not have been worth the effort of spending two days recipe testing and baking more cupcakes than I could ever use for the sake of keeping manageable ingredient measurements, it looked damn cute.  And she got her strawberry cake.  So I have to say I’m pretty proud of the effort.

But the round cake was a masterpiece.  Because six icing colors and two decorating tip couplers did not make this a simple task.  But totally worth it.  I mean, check out those cake-writing skillz!  So much better than my first attempt.

I know all of this was more for me than it was for her, but I’m pretty sure she had a blast.  Look at that face!

Happy 3rd birthday, my sweet girl.  I love you more than words can say.

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Health Goals

• Finish weeks 5-7 in the c25k program.  I’m going to cut myself a little slack on my running schedule this month.  Especially since I struggle with running at home and I’ll be off for a week this month.  So the goal will be to complete 3 weeks of c25k in April.
• Complete 20-30 minutes of yoga 2-3 times per week.  Since I haven’t been putting yoga on my daily to do lists, I’ve noticed that it’s much harder to make time to do it.  So it’s on the list for today and I’m going to try to keep up the momentum.  And I’m sure it will help that I’m kinda achy today… 
• Review my supplement regiment and replenish supply.  I have a trip to CVS on my to do list this week, so I’m gonna bring my coupons and see if I can get stocked up on pills.  I’m debating if I should continue taking the fish oil, though.  I didn’t really notice much difference after taking it for two months.  But maybe it’s one of those things that you may not FEEL different, even though it’s helping?

Financial Goals

• Cancel credit cards.  Both Matt and I are taking some vacation this month, so I think we can manage a couple 5 minute phone calls then.
• Shop for a new home/car/life insurance provider.  I did call an insurance broker last Thursday (yay for public accountibility), so now I’m just waiting for the quotes to come back.

Family Goals

• Have at least two at-home date nights and maybe one real date?  Our wedding anniversary is this month, so I’m hoping we can at least get out of the house for that but our main babysitter is in Hawaii for 10 days, so that may put a crimp in our (already crippled) social life.
• Plan some fun “staycation” activities for Allison for when I’m on vacation.  I’ve got another shot at this staycation gig since I took off the week my babysitter is out-of-town.  And I’m thinking it’s time this kid visited The Arch.  I’m sure we’ll also try to plan some play dates and hit up storytime at the library.

Home Goals

• Clean out the playroom.  I do still want to clean out Allison’s playroom and put away some of the baby toys and donate items that she just has too much of.  Like play food.  I’m all about cooking, but she certainly doesn’t need 8 ice cream cones floating all over the house.  Plus we have to make room for the Barbie’s to come.  I’ve been saving these suckers for 20+ years and I’ll be damned if they sit up in the attic another year.
• Shred old paperwork from file cabinets and organize current files.  Okay, so I raked up some leaves and such for the compost bin so my idea of killing two birds with one stone isn’t really relevant motivation anymore.  But this item is going to stay on the list until it’s done.
• Work on a manageable cleaning schedule.  I thrive on routine and the things that I have managed to set up on a schedule are running so much smoother.  And when the house is running smoother, I’m a lot less crazy.  And when I’m less crazy, we’re all happier.  So even though I know I don’t need to have a spotless home in this season of my life, keeping up on household chores does make our home happier in many ways. 
• Plan a yard sale.  We still have some things that we held onto after last September’s sale, so we plan to make another attempt at getting rid of those items and also going through the house a little more ruthlessly.  Because I don’t even bake pies, so why do I need 5 pie plates?
• Regrout tile in hallway.  Again.  I knew I didn’t do a great job when I grouted because the mixture was really dry and crumbly.  But I hoped it might last about 6 months.  WRONG.  So it needs to be done again because little pieces of black crap are everywhere and making me stabby.

Personal Goals

• Pull out the (new to me) serger and figure out how to use it!  Then serge edges of diaper wipes.  This project has been nagging me for months and I just can’t give it up after all this time.  I know.  I’m stubborn. 
• Buy some new clothes that actually fit.  I started a closet clean out a couple of months ago but now that the season has changed (90º today??!), I’m thinking I need to go through my clothes again.  And make a new list of items to purchase.  Because I do so much better when I have a specific list than when I just go buy “cute” things only to find out that I don’t have shoes to go with it.  What I really need is Granamals for grown-ups.

Blogging Goals

• Take a self-portrait.  This is actually a personal and blogging goal because while I’m having fun playing around with my tripod, this is something I’ve been meaning to do for the blog as well.
• Write ahead.  I did this for a while and really liked having posts ready to go, but don’t always plan out the prep work in time.  For April I have a pretty solid blogging plan so I’ll be in good shape if I can just keep up with the projects and photography.  Plus, as I’m getting more familiar with my camera, taking photos is getting easier.

Well, I’m sure I could write a mile long to do list, but after last month’s disappointment, I better stop here.  I think 16 things is enough for now.  What are your goals for April?

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Another upside to entertaining was that everyone helped me clean out the fridge/freezer a bit.  Tuesday we finished off the frozen yogurt that I made for Allison’s birthday party and never served as well as made a dent in some of the fruit sauces (that you can come back Friday to see more of).  Wednesday I attempted to use up some leftover pizza dough by making bread out of it but it was pretty awful.  And Thursday I used up leftover cilantro and an opened can of tomatoes with chilis in mexican rice.  Two out of three ain’t bad.  (Name that song!)

We may have some slim pickin’s in the kitchen this week due to my slashed budget, but we still have things we can work with.  We just may be out of grape jelly sooner than later.  So let’s hope there isn’t an uprising because Allison can’t have her pb&j for lunch…

Sunday:  Dinner out with family

Monday:  Quesadillas, Applesauce

Tuesday:  Huevos Rancheros, Broccoli

Wednesday:  BBQ Chicken, Grilled Cabbage, Corn, Baked Potatoes

Thursday:  Biscuits and Gravy, Fruit Smoothies

Friday:  Baked Penne, Spinach

Saturday:  More chicken, I’m sure, but dish TBD

Do you enjoy entertaining?

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