Life Stays Busy

We have been really busy lately, which isn’t at all unusual for us.  Between John’s job, which requires a lot of travel, and my three jobs, we don’t have much downtime.  However, even though things are busy, we manage to have some fun too.

Last weekend we went to our friends’ home for lunch.  Maria and Marius are expecting their first baby in a little more than a month.  They’re soon to be the proud parents of a new baby girl.  Because Maria wasn’t having a shower, my friend, Valorie, and I put together a basket set filled with all kinds of goodies for the baby.  It was very well received.  I also crocheted a blanket for the baby, which Maria loved.  Here’s some pictures.

Then, after lunch at M&M’s, we went to John’s father’s birthday party at Kim’s house.  The food was good and everyone seemed to have fun.  We were there way too late because John kept getting transfixed by new shows on the TV.

The following day, Sunday, we went to see Wicked at the Academy of Music.  It was absolutely wonderful.  We hadn’t seen it before, although we had heard the music.  John can’t stop singing the songs.  Believe me, as a mezzo soprano, he leaves a lot to be desired.

This weekend was a fairly busy weekend.  Yesterday we went shopping for groceries and insulation.  We bought everything we needed to reinsulate our eaves under the cape roof our house, except for the insulation itself.  We went out and bought that today.  John spent most of the day getting rid of the old insulation and getting new R-30 in place.  It’s going to be so warm when it’s finished!

What did I do this weekend?  While John spent the day in the storage space, I finished off a new hat that I started knitting on Friday.  I love it.  It is purple, which matches my parka, and it has a ton of cables.  Here’s a picture of the hat.

I really like the look of cables.  In fact, the next knitting project I want to start is a beautiful sweater that has both cables and lace.  It should be a lot of fun.  But, I can’t start the sweater until I get several more baby blankets finished.  It seems like everyone is having babies right now!  

I spent today making barbecued pork ribs and barbecued baked beans.  They are still in the oven, but I can’t wait for them to be done.  Only an hour left!  I’m also making banana cupcakes with molasses frosting before this day is over.  The recipes will be over in the recipe blog once I’m finished.  We meal planned yesterday and we have an exciting week in front of us:

Sunday: BBQ ribs, baked beans, and banana cupcakes with molasses frosting

Monday: Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce

Tuesday: Beef and Lentil Soup

Wednesday: Alabama White BBQ Chicken

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Gruyere, Sausage, and Bacon Omelet

Saturday: Steak Involturi

Busy Week Ahead

This week is going to be super busy for both of us.   John has a trip scheduled for part of this week.  For me, the spring semester starts at both Rowan and Temple, which means back to evening work for me.  The first week back is always the worst.  It takes at least a week to try to get myself reaccustomed to the school schedule.  Fortunately, this semester is pretty much a mirror image of last semester, which means that I can use the exact same lectures, quizzes, and assignments.  That will help things tremendously.  The upcoming weekend should be great though.  We’re going to see friends that we haven’t seen in a while, hit up a birthday party, and (most fun of all) are going to see Wicked at the Academy!

Here’s our meal plan for the week (well, it’s mine alone for a good chunk of the week!).

Saturday – Steak quesadillas

Sunday – Vegetable Soup

Monday – Beef and Mushroom Pasta Nests

Tuesday – Leftovers

Wednesday – Leftovers

Thursday – Honey Mustard Pork Chops

Friday – Beef Pot Roast

(Recipes)

We've Changed Things Up (Just a Little Bit!)

We decided to put all of the recipes that we use onto this second blog to make things easier on our main site.  We’ll provide a link every week, on our meal planning update, to the recipes that we use.  This way, if you don’t want to read the recipes you don’t have to AND if you just want the recipes they’ll all be in one place.  Hope this makes things a little more simple.

Here’s the link to the recipes  (Recipes) or if you are ever lost, just find the link in the Blogroll on the right hand side of the page and click it.

2010 – Not only Meal Planning, but Chore Planning Too!

Although we took a break for the holiday season, mainly because I was sick for a lot of it and John was traveling for a good portion of it, we are still meal planning.  It was working so well that we’ve decided to keep at it.  The best part of meal planning has to be the leftovers.  Also, we’ve found that we don’t waste nearly as much food this way.  Because we are planning out the menu in advance, we can arrange for things that will work off of the same food items.  For example, this week we needed mushrooms for the chicken, but we’ve carried them through with the risotto and the pasta.  No leftover mushrooms to go bad in the fridge.  This week’s meal’s are:

Sunday – Papa al Pomodoro

Monday – Balsamic Glazed Pork Chops

Tuesday – Leftovers

Wednesday – Chicken with Wild Mushrooms and Balsamic Cream Sauce

Thursday – Leftovers

Friday – Wild Mushroom Risotto

Saturday – Beef and Mushroom Pasta Nests

(Recipes)

Because of how well the meal planning is going, we’ve also decided to try try chore planning too.  Although a little different (since most chores don’t change week to week), it basically consists of a chart for each day of the week and what chores are to be done on those days.  Since John travels so much, of course a lot of this is going to fall on me.  It’ll be interesting to see if this works well.  Here’s the chart:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Dishes	Dishes	Dishes	Dishes	Dishes	Dishes	Dishes
Laundry	Laundry	Laundry	Laundry	Laundry	Laundry	Laundry
Clothes Away	Clothes Away	Clothes Away	Clothes Away	Clothes Away	Clothes Away	Clothes Away
Mail	Mail	Mail	Mail	Mail	Mail	Mail
Kitchen	Downstairs Bath	Dusting	Vacuum	Upstairs Bath	Bedroom	Living/Dining
Meal Plan	Recycling			Trash
Do at Least Once During the Week	Windows
	Sweep Floors
	Pick up Clutter
	Water Plants

Holidays

The holidays are over for another year.  Thank goodness!  There is always so much stress and it’s always so busy.  For Christmas we traveled to Pittsburgh.  We had a nice time celebrating on Christmas Eve with our godson, our cousins, my aunt and uncle, and my parents.  Our pictures are now up on our picture site.

On Christmas Day, we did absolutely nothing.  My parents’ TV in their upstairs living room (where John and I were hanging out) died, so we ended up spending the day without watching much TV.  Instead, I managed to read 4 books on my Kindle while John watched a bunch of movies on Hulu.  I guess we’re getting to the point where TV isn’t the main source of our entertainment.

We drove back to Philly on Sunday (after buying new TVs for my parents on Saturday).  Toby was so good on both the drive out and the drive in.  We were so happy with the way he behaved.  He was also really good with our godson, Eric (unlike Sophie who wouldn’t stop hissing and trying to scratch and claw him).

We celebrated Toni’s birthday on the 30th by going out to dinner at Longhorn, then back to John’s parents’ house for cake.

For New Year’s, we made reservations at Parc, Stephen Starr’s French Bistro on Rittenhouse Square.  It was quite good.  John had escargot, duck, and chocolate mousse.  I had onion soup, trout, and profiteroles.  Everything was really yummy.  We came home, John played Assassin’s Creed II, and I promptly fell asleep.  I don’t remember the last time I was up at midnight on New Year’s.