Menu Planning!

Alright my friends I am back to planning menus in bulk quantities because I hate the 4pm "what's for dinner oh we don't have the ingredients" time of day. And I spend way to much on random shit at the grocery store if I don't plan and we eat way to many carb heavy dinners because it is fast and easy. So on to the plan. I wasn't going to share, mostly out of the thought that no one would care what I am eating but I had a friend ask for me to message the plan to her and my camera couldn't take a clear picture and she couldn't read my quick writing scrawl so here we are!

Some of these are quick and easy  to fit nights we have activities or I am cranky and don't want to cook and some are hearty wintery meals and some are just because it was a new recipe I found on pinterest this morning.

I planned 26 meals but some will make enough for leftovers so this should easily feed us a month or more without me having to put more thought into it. Yay!

All of my meals will use meat and dairy free subs but I am using the meat names for convenience

• Panera Copycat Chicken and Rice
• Chili fries
• Spaghetti and shirataki noodles
• Rosemary and Red Wine Beef with gratin vegetables served with green beans
• Rice noodle Peanut Butter sauce stirfry with Beef and Broccoli
• Roasted Vegetable Tarte Provencale
• Baked Tofu and roasted veggies
• Sweet and Sticky chicken and veggies
• Grilled cheese and tomato soup
• Lightlife Lean sausage Meatloaf, Baked potatoes with Broccoli and cheese, garlic mushrooms and strawberry protein powder ice cream
• Bean and cheese burritos green salad with fresh pico and sour cream sauce
• Chickpea Buffalo chicken Salad Sandwiches with choice of ranch seasoned tater tots or green salad
• Pizza wonton cupcakes and raw veggie tray
• Bean soup with bacon crumble,cornbread,side salad
• Tofu fried rice
• Lasagna, garlic bread, marinated italian dressing veggies and olives
• Sesame chicken asian chopped salad and mini spring rolls
• Siracha tofu and stir fry veggies over shirataki noodles
• chicken, spinach and mushroom quesadilla and crockpot refried beans
• Seasoned meatballs in brown gravy, parsley potatoes, garlic butter green beans, and carrot, raisin, pineapple tidbit salad
• Protein waffles with fruit topping and lightlife sausage and smart bacon
• chicken, broccoli and cheese with caramelized onions and mushrooms stuffed into spaghetti squash or baked potato
• Boca crumble ground beef lettuce wraps and brown rice
• Zupa Toscana with tofurkey italian sausage, olive garden style salad and crusty bakery bread
• Stuffed green peppers
• Broccoli Cheese Soup and Biscuit sandwiches with peppered tofurkey, sweet hot mustard and banana pepper slices

While I was typing this up I thought of a couple more, Boca chicken Parmesan, Reuben Sandwiches or a reuben casserole and fries with lots of pickles, tofu egg salad served over spring mix and a silken tofu "egg" frittata loaded with veggies served with the cooked winter fruit compote I made back at Christmas

So there you have it friends. Many of these recipes I found on Pinterest and adapted to fit my food needs with my food sensitivities. Bon Appetite!

A Life Saving Infant Technology

my friends, today I have a very serious post. I will be sharing a face book post from a friend, a fellow mom of three. It tells her story and talks about a technology that literally saved her baby's life just recently. I cried reading it because I am a mama.  I am so very thankful her child is safe and sound today after having this experience.
 My oldest son had asthma and we had multiple very scary moments when he couldn't breathe and we had to rush him to the hospital. A baby turning blue is a horrifically scary experience. I wish I had this technology back then!

Here is the post from my friend, Melissa Hayes:

 I may sound a little like a commercial here, but I wanted to let people know a little more about what led to Adarah's hospital stay this weekend.

She'd had a bit of a cough for over a week, but sometime last week the sound of her cough changed and we got concerned. We called the pediatrician's office, but they had no appointments available to check her out until this week, and she seemed pretty okay at that point so we were going to wait.

On Friday night she popped a fever. In infants under 12 weeks of age, that requires a trip to the ER and initiates a battery of tests. They all came back negative except for one- RSV. A virus that is just a cold for older kids and adults, but can be very scary for kids age two and under, and most especially little ones who were born prematurely or have chronic lung issues like asthma. Adarah was a healthy full term baby though, so it was thought that she could probably recover well at home, but we were given a list of criteria to bring her back if she showed. Basically it was to look for dehydration or respiratory distress.

So in the wee hours of Saturday morning we brought her home. Josh was up most of the night with her, then I took over sometime in the morning to get him some rest. We decided to use our Owlet monitor all day instead of just when we were sleeping, and I'm still thanking God for the foresight there.

She was fussy all day, which is very unlike her. She didn't want to eat even though she was clearly hungry. It was frustrating, but she was always just under the line for when to bring her in. Finally after many hours of dealing with the screaming, she was exhausted enough to fall asleep. We put her down to sleep in the living room and took the opportunity to tend to other tasks. She was 10 feet away from us, but we were attending to everything else in the house/ other kids. We weren't just staring right at her, and I guess reasonably who would be.

At one point her Owlet monitor rang a red alert. I heard Josh's feet hit the floor upstairs and Vicki and I ran to Adarah. She was peacefully asleep, but her color was very pale and her lips were a bit blue.

We woke her up and her color got better, but we obviously took her back to the ER. At no point is blue an okay color for a baby! We explained what had happened and they rushed her back without any wait even though the waiting room was packed, and within 5 minutes a doctor (who was not a pediatrician) saw her and ordered supplemental oxygen. He advised us that he was seeing enough respiratory distress right there to admit, but a pediatrician had to make that call.

Now that she was pink and stable, it took a long time for the ped to come around, but she still saw significant respiratory distress even while on oxygen. (She was now having to work extra hard to pull air into her lungs). We were admitted for observation, and a few hours later when Adarah fell asleep, they cut off the oxygen to test and see if they could reproduce what we saw at home, and they were satisfied that her Oxygen levels were definitely dropping to dangerous levels when she was in a deep sleep cycle.

It all went downhill so fast, we put a sick but stable baby down for a nap, and only a few minutes later she was in big trouble. Without the Owlet monitor on her, she could very well have slipped quietly away in her sleep and none of us would have known until it was too late.

Seriously, best baby purchase EVER. I felt overprotective and silly buying this thing, but now I 100% recommend it to anyone! It's pricey, but it was my big splurge baby item and I'm so, so glad we got it! I'm not sure we would still have Adarah with us without it. 

Link to website for this product is below. 

http://www.owletcare.com

Christmas Sparkle Family Room: We Live Here

In every home there is a room that every one spends their time in, that you bond as a family in, that really embodies your family life. In our home it is our family room. We watch movies here, play games, eat dinner in front of our favorite shows sometimes. This is where we argue and the kids rough house and it is also the hardest room to keep clean. I have been known to refer it to it as a sock farm where smelly dirty boy socks seem to grow right out of the rugs and furniture. I mean seriously, where do all these socks come from and why are they always in this room??!!
 This is the room I have the hardest time decorating because it has to stand up to serious abuse! It can't be to fussy and certainly not delicate to withstand flying remotes tossed from one couch to the other, to withstand pizza paws on Friday movie nights and the wear and tear of muddy shoes and wet doggie feet.
 Delicate Christmas decorations and our cherished mementos do not feel safe in this room but it is where we will enjoy them most so I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to insure that we can decorate, enjoy our favorite things and the room will still function as it must.
 Today I thought I would share some of my decorations for this so so special area of our home.

The fireplace and mantel are the heart of this room and after last year's facelift with new surround, hearth tile and marble surround tile it is still looking fabulous! 

Our special family ornaments are all unpacked and ready to hang 

I know our gallery wall is a bit busy for most but I love family photos and all the memories they inspire! 

This is just a little wink to the past when my middle son was insanely obsessed with trains! 

The red truck seemed to be a big decorating thing this year, this is my version of it tucked in to our bookshelf in our drop zone.

I really loved the combination of white velvet wibbon, faux fur ribbon and red plaid that our family room tree had this year! 

Our family always waits to hang our special ornaments until we can do it together. Here are a few shots of my little helper elves! 

Well I hope you enjoyed my little tour of the family room. It is such a special place for our family. Merry Christmas to all from The House On Cover Ridge!

Cheers and Christmas Cheer! Dining Room Christmas 2016

Cheers my lovelies,
    Some years I go over the top with the decorating. This year I tried to practice a teeny bit of restraint. The dining room is one of the areas where I tried to achieve that goal. I went with a restrained color palette and I did not go overboard. I did a very simple tree this year. A adorable silver tinsel tree on a stand and very simply decorated.

I just love the way light colored trees glow! I only used gold balls on the tree and our beloved canvas photo ornaments I made a few years ago. I accented it all with a beautiful gold glass topper and some shiny red berries!

I love our family picture canvases on this tree. It just gives me warm fuzzies! 

I added shiny metallic red berries to tie in the touches of red in the living room and family room. I do love the warmth they add to my metallic tinsel tree. 

I think it works for our home to inspire happy Christmas memories and set the stage for all our holiday meals!

Tablescapes and Centerpieces for Christmas:Dining Room 2016

Trees, and pine boughs, stars and reindeer....it is so hard to decide what to add and what to subtract sometimes.  Especially in rooms that don't get used everyday. It is awfully easy to "overdecorate" and make it a little to fussy to be convenient to use it. This year I tried to keep our spaces light and functional even with all the excess of Christmas decoration. Our tablescape is simple too. A silver tray with an evergreen arrangement and two metallic Christmas trees. I kept the color scheme easy too with silver and gold and only small touches of red.

 And we are all set for a beautiful, easy Christmas brunch or a family dinner.

December....in Blue

Hey everybody, 

I know December is supposed to be full of happy posts full of elves and babies and pinecones and Santa but I have to be honest. This December is off to a crappy start. Our youngest child has been sick with pneumonia, we are on med #3 and he is still sick. Now hubs and I are both feeling the breath of this nasty virus on our necks. The middle child is dragging himself out of bed and off to high school. I have been stuck in the house waiting hand and foot on a tiny tyrant until I seriously want to grab the gallon jug of Fireball Whiskey and a bag of Oreos and make a run for it. Not to mention there has been no driving around to look at lights with cups of cocoa, we missed the Santa breakfast in town, we haven't ventured to the zoo for the Festival of Lights or even gotten our family Christmas card picture taken. I am behind on all my shopping and if I don't order something for my Secret Santa recipient tonite she may not get it before Christmas. 

Right now I am feeling the holiday blues and I just want to hop a plane to somewhere full of sunshine and warm breezes and booze. Plenty of the last item. Sigh... I know I sound Grinchy, not at all like my natural elf like disposition but today I am really struggling. And I feel like it is important to be real with my blog, my life, my friends. Today is a bad day. A no-good, rotten, yucky, sucky kind of day. Sometimes people message me and want to know how I am juggling so many balls and doing so much...all the more reason to have posts like this where I just tell the truth. My life is not a perfectly staged blog pic. It is hard and messy and I have bad days. Today I do not want to be the mommy, I do not want to hold the head of my vomiting child and soothe his fears and try to coax him to take his medicine. I do not want to be stuck in the house wondering how long this will last. I do not want to worry about my child until the tension leaves me with achy muscles and throbbing temples. I just want him to be alright, I want to go back to the normal chaos of my life where I am fussing about chores and homework and taking the dang earbuds out to listen to me!  

I know lots of people are sad at the holidays because they have lost family members and are just trying to get through the month and into January. My heart breaks for them and I know my problems are small in comparison but they are MY problems and they are a big deal to me. And right now all I want to do is turn off the Christmas lights and cry. 

Sure hoping my little one is feeling better with the coming of morning light and we can put this yuck behind us and get on with being merry. :( 

Christmas Baking.... a yes or no???

Hey everybody!
I was noticing that my Facebook On This Day app was telling me I am way behind this year. Typically I would have our cards ordered by now...we haven't even taken the picture and I just realized I have lost my list of picture ideas I spent hours making the other night. Sigh...Facebook also rubbed my face in the fact that typically I am either in full out baking mode or I am finishing by now...haven't begun.

As I was feeling the requisite mom guilt I realized that it seems stupid to make a ton of sweets and junk my family does not need to be eating. Hubs and I are trying to eat healthier and two of my kids really need to cut the junkfood back and focus on getting their veggies in! So am I not just sabotaging the good eating I have been preaching at all of them by filling the house with plates of cookies and chocolates and treats???

Last year my compromise was to make three things that are family favorites and one batch of each would be rationed out throughout the season. So I am considering this as a good choice this year too.
If you could only have three treat items the whole holiday feasting season what would your three treats be?

I think we will do home made peppermints, buckeyes and christmas mice this year but I haven't polled the troops to see if they agree with me, yet!

I would be happy to share our family favorite recipes with all of you if you are interested! But to be honest most of them came from Taste Of Home magazine when my kids were small!

A pic of my babes about five years ago now helping to make the Christmas Mice.