Happy New Year!

It’s a New Year and I’m taking this time to  organize some goals for me to focus on for 2019. This past fall, all the kids started school or daycare. For the first time since I became a mom, I have a few hours to myself each day to work on projects. 

Some of the projects are new, like decorating my entryway, and some I’ve been putting off for YEARS, like making a baby book for my (now) 6 year old. 

The following is my list of goals that I would like to work on during 2019. My list is more of brain dump. I don’t expect to conquer everything on my list this year, but just seeing it on paper makes me feel good. I may or may not blog about all of the following projects as I attempt to conquer them.  I say this because I’m not sure what direction this blog is going. For now, as I stated in my last entry, I will be gentle with the blog and let it grow organically into what ever it is meant to be. 

My 2019 Goal list! 

Goals: 

Photos

Photo albums/Scrap book

Gallery wall or walls

Photos in frames 

Hobbies 

-Blog

-Photography

Decorating projects

-Possibly paint a TV console in the kid’s play room

-Mantle in the living/family room

-Furnish entry way

-Home office 

Momming

-Read more to the kids

-Meal planning

Organize

-Clean out attic

-Use my planner

-Home office 

Tech

-Updating my computer

-Learn how to use new computer programs

Self care

-Play more music 

-Dentist appointment 

-Physical

-Hair cut

-Use gift cards

-Work out 3 times a week

Blogging about Nothing?

Ok so as you may have noticed… meal planning isn’t working for me…hahaha!  Urrrrr I so want to blog but I have no idea what to blog about. I don’t want to blog about my kids because they aren’t old enough to let me know if they want their lives on display.  So there goes the mom blogging idea but all I really do is mom stuff.  Once in a while, I will think of something new to blog about and then talk myself out of blogging about it.  I’m just going to lower my standards and blog about nothing until I start blogging about something.  Lets see if the, "Work Begets Work" saying works for blogging.   

Bree's Short Week Meal Plan

Bree's Short Week Meal Plan
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Sunday	Fried eggs, Tomatoes &  Avocado	Salted Fish (Cod fish) Boiled Banana's & Cucumbers	Jerk Chicken Mango Salad	Plantain chips, Lara bars, Fruit, Cut Veggies…
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Monday	Boild Eggs, Tomatoes & Avocado	Jerk Chicken, Wild Arugula & Machango Salad	Jerk Chicken & Roasted Veggies
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Tuesday	Boiled Eggs & Roasted Veggies	Jerk Chicken & Roasted Veggies	Jerk Chicken Cobb Salad

4 weeks

Hey ya’ll ok its been 4 weeks so lets catch up.

Week 1:

Eating well went O. K.  I didn’t totally stuck to my menu because midweek, I realized my husband was going out of town. I basically stopped cooking on Wednesday and survived on left overs, corn tortillas, black beans and cheese quesadillas.

Week 2:

The following week, I planned to follow the same menu. Repeating the menu turned out to be a brilliant idea. I had most of the grocery already purchased and I didn’t have to spend time shopping or thinking of a new menu. Saving time turned out more valuable then usual because my kids got sick! First my daughter came down with what seems like a stomach bug and then my son has it.

Later we learned my daughter’s stomach bug triggered her first Asthma attack. We didn’t know DD even had asthma. The past couple of weeks we have been learning how to care for her with this new diagnosis. She is doing well now and is back in school.

Week 3: Things are finally starting to normalize. But I thought I could just reuse the same menu for a 3^rd week in a row. WRONG! Oh so wrong.  Half way threw the week I started to run out of grocery. Shopping and cooking the same day, what a waste of time. But I was still able to eat healthy because luckly I had some I previously froze for busy days that I didn’t have time to cook.

Week 4 (Easter Weekend): As you can guess, it all fell apart. I had too much fun over the weekend I didn’t make any meal plan. Guess what we ate. PIZZA! Pizza not once but 3 times in one week. By the end of the week, I was so bloated, someone asked me if I was pregnant! No, I am not pregnant.  At that point I just plain gave up. It was Easter weekend and ate a ton of Easter sweet.

Hello week 5: SALAD!!!! I’m now in the process of coming up with a meal plan for the next to weeks and my theme is Salad.  I’ll post my salad themed meal plan as soon as I’m done with it.

Bree's Meal Plan for the Week of February 26

I know it’s late, but here it is…my meal plan for this week!  I planned on posting last week, but life happened.  I had to deal with a sick kid, back pain, laundry, and most importantly I really just wasn’t ready to start eating healthy… but this week it’s on!!!    Bree's Meal Plan
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Sunday	Fried eggs, Tomatoes and Avocado	Nachos, (Quinoa & Corn tortilla) Cheese, and Turkey Chili	Turkey Chili  *Kids: Mac and Cheese with Roasted Veggies	Plantain chips, Lara bars, Fruit, Cut Veggies…
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Monday	Steal Cut Oatmeal with Dates and Almond milk	Turkey Chili	Nachos, (Quinoa & Corn tortilla ) Cheese, and Turkey Chili
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Tuesday	Steal Cut Oatmeal with Dates and Almond milk	Jerk Chicken, Brown Rice and Veggies	Jerk Chicken, Brown Rice and veggies
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Wednesday	Steal Cut Oatmeal with Dates and Almond milk	Jerk Chicken, Brown Rice and Veggies	Jerk Chicken, Brown Rice Plantains, avocado & veggies
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Thursday	Steal Cut Oatmeal with Dates and Almond milk	Tuna Salad	Jerk Chicken Salad
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Friday	Steal Cut Oatmeal with Dates and Almond milk	Black Beans and Rice with salad	Take out
	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Snack
Saturday	Eggs, blackbeans,  tomatoes, & avocado	Tacos with Fajita Meat (Chicken and Beef)	Tacos with Fajita Meat (Chicken and Beef)

Food

One of the things I’ve been working on over the past few years is cooking, especially learning how to cook healthy meals for my family. I don’t love cooking. Sometimes, I actually hate it, but we have to EAT! Boy, do we have to eat. One day I thought about it… We have to eat every day, a minimum of 3 times a day, and there are 5 of us in my family. So, that means 15 meals A DAY! 15 meals a day that need to be made by me and I don’t like cooking! My husband helps sometimes, but work keeps him pretty busy.  

To further complicate things, as I get older, I’ve noticed that I just can’t eat everything the way I used to. I’m not going to talk to you about nutrition, because I’m not a nutritionist. I’m just going to share my experience. I’ve noticed that what I eat doesn’t just affect my weight, or energy levels. It also affects my mood. Mood is so important because it can affect my entire outlook on life.  

I’m a mom. Imagine facing a 2, 3, and 5-year-old while in a bad mood… It’s so hard and it’s not fair to them or me. If I have low energy and I’m in a bad mood, I’m not the only one suffering. My whole family suffers, all because of the foods I have eaten. The food culprits are processed foods, but most notably SUGAR and FLOUR.

So, over the next few weeks, months and years, I’m going to challenge myself to avoid these foods.  Lucky for me there are tons of resources to find recipes that avoid these foods. Yet, here is the real challenge for me and I’m sure for some of you… finding the time to buy groceries, plan meals and actually cook these meals!!!

Stay tuned for tips on how to make the most of your time in my next post. Just kidding… Stay tuned and or join (please comment and add your own tips) me as I continue to learn how to feed my family healthy, low cost,  low prep meals.