Scary likeness

Joe is a Master Pumpkin Carver Supreme. An overachiever plus.
But he really did pull it off this time!

He carved these:















From these:

















Here's another photo using the night shot function for a spooky effect:

Weekly meal planning.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I loved Citymama’s genius idea of posting weekly menus. I finally decided to get onboard and do this myself. Another great idea, that I am stealing from this blogger is to hang up a chalkboard in our kitchen and write out the daily menus.

I find that it really saves me time and effort when I do a little planning ahead (duh, right?) There is nothing worse than getting home at night from a long commute and workday to be confronted with the dilemma of what to make for dinner. Inevitably, I end up sticking fish sticks in the oven and eating corn out of a can. Not healthy or appetizing. Although, Dylan does love fish sticks (or any fish for that matter).

We also end up saving a lot of money and time shopping. I take my shopping list to the store and if there are other items that are on special, I’ll adjust our menu to accommodate. Also, writing out my list really saves me from forgetting something and having to take another trip to the store. Because, every time I enter a grocery store I end up leaving with $50 minimum worth of groceries, even if the only thing I needed was a gallon of milk. It is dangerous territory!

We went to the grocery store on Sunday and were able to buy all the ingredients for 2 weeks worth of food for under $200 (that includes lunches!) Most of the meals I make actually have enough left over for 2 meals, so I can either freeze some or we eat leftovers, stretching our dollar even further.

This is our menu for the week.
Sunday: Vegetable Pie and breast of chicken patties (more about the vegetable pie in a later post!) **Follow this link to the recipe.

Monday: Turkey burgers, homemade potato fries (usually I do sweet potatoes, but I want to utilize the Russets that I had left over from the vegetable pies)

Tuesday: Oven baked fish, broccoli & peas

Wednesday: Chicken tacos & Mexican rice

Thursday: Highland Halloween Festival, so maybe we will have leftover taco salad

Friday: Halloween night! Chicken chili, corn bread and side of veggies

Saturday: Griffin’s Birthday party, so we probably won’t be hungry for dinner, but I have back up salad/soup/loaded baked potatoes

Sunday: Crockpot Spaghetti & Meatballs (the best marinara sauce ever from Everyday Italian, but I make it easy on myself and do it in the crock pot.)

If you have any easy recipe ideas that are great for weekdays (prepares and cooks in less than 40 minutes) I’d love to have them. I feel that our menus are limited to what the boys can/will eat. Which means really no spicy or too exotic. Bummer for me, I know! Now you know why I always want to eat Asian or exotic when we dine out.

Let me know what you're eating this week!

Photos Side by Side

Yay, I figured out the code to set photos side-by-side. It took a fair bit of Googling and some trial and error, but I have the basic code down.


For this exercise, I used photos of Matthew and Dylan both taken at about 5 weeks old. Can you tell them apart?

Yay! for me! I love all this computer stuff. Ha!

School Pictures

Here are the boy's school photos. I am really impressed that they managed to keep the kids clean until the photos were taken. Supposedly, Matthew didn't have his done until the end of the day almost. They kept him up too, so he does look a tad tired.

Dylan's clothes are huge on him. Next time I won't dress him in brand new clothes that are a size too large.

They have great smiles!

P.s. does anyone know the HTML code that allows me to set the photos side-by-side? thanks in advance!

Dylan the Artist

We have been saving Dylan's school art projects from day one and now have quite a large collection, which btw, I have no idea how to maintain. How do you store your kid's artwork? I think I will have to go buy a large plastic bin or box soon, before it takes over our basement!
Here is a sample from a coloring book he had at about 2-2 1/2 years old. (click on the photos to open bigger). I think I colored in the ice-cream cones but the rest is his work.

Looking through the coloring book I realized that he really liked coloring-in all the noses. Every nose was colored - in all the colors of the Crayola box! Funny.

He likes to pin point a certain thing and color it in, like Zoey's bracelet and hair bow (and nose, of course!)

Here is a current coloring book. Notice that he is really coloring in every square inch of the picture now.

He loves connect-the-dot the best. I couldn't find his connect-the-dot book (I think we might have left it at Nana B's house?). He is also a whiz at connect-the-dot on the computer. Loves all types of puzzles, coloring and other exercises on the computer and is really mastering the mouse now. He spends about an hour every night playing on the computer. (Is that too much? Let me know what the "healthy" amount of time is for a almost 4 year old).

And, if you would allow me another minute to brag, here is a sample of his handwriting.

He can write his name pretty well. Sometimes, he writes the letters all over the page in a random order and sometimes they are written correctly in a pretty straight line.

He has D-Y-L-A-N down, we are teaching him how to write his last name now. Thank goodness it is a short one, he lucked out there!

The most challenging thing for us is that he is left handed. We are both right handed. It is like I am learning to write all over again, but as a lefty. He uses the mouse with both hands but I think he is more comfortable with his left hand.

Yesterday, he created this fun piece of art at school. I've never seen him so proud of himself. He wanted to take it straight home to show his daddy. He didn't want to display on the walls at pre-school with the other kid's projects, and cried and cried until his teacher allowed him to take it home.

Fun stuff! We can't wait to see how he develops in another year.

Zoom Zoom

Matthew loves to play with Dylan's old walker/car (when Dylan's isn't dominating it). He has figured out how to climb on it and make it go..backwards. We are still working on going forward!




And who needs a gym membership when you have two boys to keep you fit.


Speaking of keeping fit. Matthew likes to do pull-ups (chin--ups?) on the kitchen drawer handles and the fridge door.

What a difference a few months makes!

Here are photos of the boys at the park on the first warm day of the year, taken in April.



And here they are today at the park.





I say it all the time, but man these kids are growing fast!

Mr. 11 Month Old

We are starting to gear up for Matthew's 1st birthday. I finally decided on the invitations today. I can't believe my baby is almost one! Weep.

He can take a few steps now but he's not really walking yet. It is too convenient to crawl - and faster too!
In this photo you can really see him coming out of the infant stage and looking more like a toddler. Boo hoo!

County Line Orchard

We packed up the boys and went to the County Line Orchard today. It was a very warm 85 degrees day, so definitely not fall-like but a beautiful day none-the-less to get out and enjoy the sun and fall colors.

We've heard so much about County Line and so maybe I had big expectations. Overall, it was a good time but I am not sure I would go back for a visit any time soon. First of all it was a very commercial place. Last year I took Dylan to Southlake Stables, which was a quaint little pumpkin farm with enough to do for the kids and much less expensive than County Line.

Because of the mild temps the place was totally mobbed today. Too many people, so many lines and very chaotic. It was really hard work to spend money there. I stood in line for 10 minutes to buy an apple pie and people kept cutting in front of me, I finally gave up and walked away from the pie counter. We wanted to buy so much more in the Big Barn store but it was impossible to navigate through there with a stroller and a wandering Dylan. We left without even buying a bag of apples.

Later, I stood in line for roasted corn on the cob only to get to the front of the line and be told that there was no corn for another 15 minutes. Ugh. I gave up on that too. We must have found someone to take our money though because we ended up spending like $80+ there. The bulk of that was $30 just to get into the place and about $30 towards 4 big pumpkins and 3 mini pumpkins. I could have gotten the exact same pumpkins at the grocery store for about $15.

Still, it was nice to pet some farm animals, go on an animal themed choo choo ride and try some amazing apple cinnamon donuts and apple cider. Dylan fed some goats and enjoyed shopping the Halloween decorated gift store. He is totally into Halloween now.

The biggest disappointment was that we never got to walk through the apple orchard.

I am a big believer of second chances, especially if it means that we can go back and try the pumpkin donuts next time. It will be awhile though, I got to save up some dough first!

Dylan the Gatekeeper

The thing about having two kids is that you are constantly juggling your time between the two. If one is content the other is usually demanding. It is non-stop. If Joe is home it is manageable. It's “man-on-man” coverage. He takes Dylan and I take Matthew. But if he isn't home, then it makes it almost impossible to get anything done around the house. Normally, I would just put the baby gate up in the family room to contain the boys if I need to get a few things done. But without fail, Matthew eventually will crawl up to the gate, try to climb it and end up hanging off of it crying and wailing until I save him. It's a time-consuming and an ineffective way of keeping him contained.

One night I asked Dylan if he would help me entertain Matthew while I got dinner together. I told him not to let Matthew into the kitchen. So for about 10 minutes, everytime Matthew would near the two stairs that lead from the family room to the kitchen, Dylan would pull Matthew by the feet, and drag him on this tummy to the middle of the family room. Of course Matthew would cry and protest and try again. I stepped in and asked Dylan if maybe there was a better way to keep Matthew from crawling up the steps. Like play with him, make funny faces, tell him a story, you know entertain him.

Dylan thought about it for a minute. I could see the little wheels turning in his head. Then he came up with this brilliant idea.

And it totally worked! Who needs $300 worth of gates when you can use the couch cushions as a barricade? Well done my little problem solver.

The $10 Meal Challenge

One of my favorite bloggers is Stefania Pomponi Butler of City Mama. Although I don't know her personally, I have been reading her blog for over a year now and I feel like we could totally be friends. There is a lot about her that I can relate to - she is a proud mother, wife and is part Asian, like me. She even has some Italian in her! She loves to cook - me too! I love her wit and her blog always entertains. Also, she has great recipe ideas, I can totally relive my childhood through some of her food posts. Her Monday Meal Planning posts are genius and I was thinking of adopting that idea in this blog especially since we have been increasingly tightening our belts, keeping an eye on our budget and overall trying to spend less these days.

Recently, she posed a challenge to her readers - to cook a family meal for less than $10. I was like, piece of cake! I can do this! Bring it on!

I had already planned my meals for the week and did my shopping last Saturday, so I had to work with what I had already bought. Usually I budget per week, not per meal so that was also tricky. Luckily, I had planned to make a classic Chicken Cacciatore on Monday night and decided to put my money where my mouth is and figure out if the meal would meet the $10 budget.

This Cacciatore recipe is from a 1970's edition of Better Homes and Gardens, New Cook Book, that I stole from my mom's house years ago.

Pricing the ingredients was the hardest part of the challenge. Not sure how to price the pantry items that I already had, but I took a stab at it.

Fresh ingredients:

3 lbs Chicken thighs - $5.58 (on sale!)

1 medium onion - (0.65 each or $2.49/lb)

2 cloves of garlic (0.69/head)

1 medium green pepper (0.89/each)

1/2 package of button mushrooms ($1.00 for half pkge or $2.00/package)

Pantry Items:

couple of glugs of olive oil

1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes ($1.99/can)

2 bay leaves

2 teaspoons basil and/or oregano

1 tablespoon brown sugar (optional)

1/4 cup white wine (optional - I used some leftover stuff I had in my fridge)

1/4 teaspoon of black pepper (optional)

1 teaspoon of salt (optional)

2 cups of brown rice ($1.00 for 2 cups or $3.09/box)

I estimated my dried herbs and seasonings totaled about $1.00. Overall I think I spent about $12.80 for the whole meal but there was plenty left over for another meal, so I think that I am in the clear. Yes? YES!

That was fun, but it did take planning. Worth the savings though! 

Ingredients. I only ended up using one can of tomatoes (the big one!)

Once the garlic and onions are cooked, set them aside while you cook the chicken.

You can use chicken breast, but I use trimmed and ready to cook thighs since they are cheaper and have more nutrients, plus less dry in my opinion and therefore tastier and more tender too.

Add the seasonings to the chicken, onions, green pepper, tomatoes mushrooms. Then simmer with lid on for 30 minutes before adding the wine and continue cooking for another 15 minutes with the lid off.

I like to serve the Cacciatore over brown rice. Ta da! 

My hubby thinks this dish is very tasty! 

5 Year Wedding Anniversary and Homemade Pizza - Now That's Amore!!

Today is our 5th wedding anniversary!

Five years ago Joe and I were married on a balcony overlooking the Italian Mediterranean surrounded by 27 love ones.  When I think of our wedding day and that time in Italy it seems like a surreal dream. We are looking forward to a romantic dinner tomorrow (sans kids!), but today we celebrated our wedding anniversary by making pizza with Dylan. It was very fun and yummy too. Dylan doesn't usually like pizza but he ate quite a lot of it tonight.

Growing up my mom would make pizza from scratch - making her own pizza dough and sauce and she always used the freshest ingredients. Actually, I don't think I ate a frozen pizza until I was in college. My mom was an amazing cook - everything was made from scratch, and can you believe that we didn't even have a microwave oven until 1986!

Tonight I kept the ingredients for our pizzas very simple - turkey pepperoni, mozzarella, black olives etc. but I was inspired to make one of the pizzas using this tomato goat cheese tart recipe. I substituted some of the ingredients (i.e. pizza dough instead of phyllo, onions instead of leeks etc) but the result was still delish! Next time I am going to add some zucchini to the mushroom/onion saute.

Very "rustic" but very tasty. The dough was Pillsbury Pizza Dough, which was a life saver, cause who has time to roll dough when chasing a baby around the house!

p.s. there are more photos in our Flickr album.