Menu Plan Monday

I have been in a cooking rut for awhile now.  I have not been going by my menu plans at all, just throwing something together last minute (often making for a late dinner) and taking any opportunity to eat out.  It is awful, and with Matt leaving town again for work I think it isn't going to solve itself anytime soon.  I am determined to do better this week.

This is from 1 yummy meal I made last week.  Chicken Stuffed Shells with Roasted Asparagus.

Here is a look at our meals for the week.

Monday- Beef Tips with noodles (in the Crock Pot) and Asparagus

Tuesday- Stromboli (these never got made last week, but I did prep them and freeze them so it should be a quick dinner) with Penne.

Wednesday-Stuffed Pork Chops with make ahead mashed potatoes (recipe below) and veggies

Thursday- Make your own pizza night (just the kids and I)

Friday- No Meat, so we are having Shrimp Scampi with Salad

Saturday- Beef and Pepper Fajitas with rice pilaf

Sunday- Pot Roast in the Crock Pot

 Make Ahead Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:
4-6 Potatoes (depending on the size)
Milk
4 Tbsp. Butter
2 Tbsp. Sour Cream
Salt/pepper
3-4 strips of bacon
1/2 bag of shredded cheddar cheese
Green Onion

1.  Peel, Boil, and drain potatoes, then mash and add milk, butter, salt/pepper and sour cream. 
2.  Spread in a sprayed 9x13 in pan and top with cheese and cooked chopped bacon.  Cover and refrigerate. (you can bake them off right away as well.)
3.  Bake in a 350* oven for about 30 minutes until warmed through.  Then uncover add the green onion and bake an additional 5-10 minutes.

 Enjoy!

 

My thoughts about Pinterest.

Let me start off by say I L.O.V.E. me some Pinterest, and when joining last June, not even knowing what it was, I never imagined I would enjoy it so much.  The things I have learned from that site are amazing, and the (little traffic) my blog gets, Pinterest is a huge source of that.

There has been a lot of controversy around the legality of the site, and many people are angry about their images being posted.  This is the article that I first read about the situation, and then continued to investigate from there.  I would never want to get into legal trouble for anything I am doing online.

There are also many questions around Pinterest's Terms of Use.  I was starting to contemplate (gasp) deleting my account, but then read a follow up article on the same blog, found here and I am feeling more confident in my decision to keep my account.  This blogger actually spoke with the founder Ben Silbermann, and got some reassurance that she needed to keep her own account.  Pinterest also wrote a blog post 2/20 reassuring it users.

There are a few things I am going to do over the weekend and I would encourage others to do as well....

1.  I am going to go through my pins and delete anything that is no linked back to the ORIGINAL source.  I have gone through some pins and it goes to a site that isn't the original pin, but a pin of a pin (if that makes any sense.)

2.  This seems to be mostly and issue with photographers getting angry that copyrighted material has been pinned, so those are going to be deleted (I don't have many of those to begin with)

3.  I am going to stop doing my Pinspirational Friday, because I have seen that someone had pinned from my blog a pin that I had used and not my actual photo.

This is going to be a VERY long process and it is going to be very tedious as I am going to be making sure all my pins are legit.  But I will feel much better about it in the future.

Speaking of the future, I think that from now on I am only going to re-pin if I have checked the link back first.  Sometimes I don't have the time to do this (or am on my phone where it is an annoyance), so for that situation I will like the pin, and then re-pin once I check the link.

As for my photos, as long as they are linked back to me pin away!  It is great exposure, and a wonderful way to share ideas.  

Oh and you can follow all my boards HERE!

I am by no means qualified to give any actual advice about this subject, they are just opinions I have, and nothing more! 
 

Too Much at A Time.

Do you ever overextend yourself and then just break down because there is just too much going on at one time.  Yea, that is me right about now.  It isn't even anything extra, it is just my attempt at trying to do it all (the normal housewife stuff) perfectly. 

My name is Samantha, and I am a perfectionist.

I hate how if I am excelling at one area something else slips away.  Lately I have done a really good job of really sitting and playing "with" my kids, starting to teach my son how to read, and not saying not now when Lilly wants me to read 800 books a day.  With that comes dirty floors, and laundry that needs attention it is not getting. 

Finding balance is so difficult. 

Blogging is also something that I am trying to be perfect at, when there really is no such thing as the perfect blog.  I came into this new blog wanted to keep it fun, not worrying about followers and comments and pageviews.  But I find myself making this more stressful than it should be.  I am beating myself up over the fact that my blog isn't really focused on something in particular. 

I am sitting here thinking about the fact that my fridge needs cleaned, laundry needs done, my floors haven't been mopping in longer than I'd like to admit.....but me, I am off to the bookstore (something Matthew asked to do weeks ago, and we haven't done yet) to read, play trains, and do storytime, because I am so stressed I wouldn't know where to start.

But honestly my floors REALLY need some attention as well.

As for the blog.... I am so overwhelmed I don't know what to do.  I am so inspired (lately by amazing local bloggers) but am not sure where my blog fits.  There are so many things I love to do, that I wouldn' t know what to focus on even if I wanted to. 

Perfect isn't possible, and it wouldn't be that fun anyway, right!