Menu Plan Monday (on Thursday...)

Just popping in to (finally) get my menu plan posted for the week.

I am so loving the Plan to Eat web site! It's really helping me a lot with my menu planning. I love how it creates a shopping list for me based on the ingredients in recipes I'm using, and I love having the recipes handy on my iPhone while I'm cooking in the kitchen. I just wish they had an app. Their mobile site works fine for me at home with WiFi, but when we go to my parents' house (with no cell reception for me), it won't be so great. Sure, I'll still be able to look up my recipes on their computer, but that's not nearly as handy as having them on my phone in the kitchen.

So here's the plan for the week:

Monday 7/11 - brats and hotdogs on the grill

Tuesday 7/12 - leftovers

Wed. 7/13 - Italian Chicken

Thurs. 7/14 - Crock Pot Chicken Thighs

Fri. 7/15 - Meatloaf, baked potatoes, corn, applesauce, and I might try Coconut-Pecan Sweet Potatoes

Sat. 7/16 - Chicken Crescent Roll-Ups

Sun. 7/10 - Crock Pot Bacon and Cheese Chicken with Garlic Mashed Potatoes


For more menu plan ideas, check out this week's Menu Plan Monday over at orgjunkie.com.

Getting organized...yet again

Yes, I neglect this blog an awful lot. But here I am, trying to hold myself more accountable to getting organized (yet again). Step 1 is to get back into the routine of making a meal plan every week. Doing it any other way (flying by the seat of my pants, what do I have that I can make for dinner tonight) just hasn't been working out so well.

A number of people that I follow on Twitter have mentioned the Plan to Eat web site in the past few weeks. I finally went to check it out, and signed up for the free 30-day trial. After just a couple days, I can't believe how much I love it! It's a recipe file, menu planner and grocery list maker all in one.

So I actually have a meal plan (dinners, anyway) for the week. And yes, I know it's Thursday, and I'm just getting a chance to post the meal plan I'm following this week.

Monday 7/4 - Chicken and burgers on the grill

Tuesday 7/5 - Brats and hotdogs on the grill (These were super yummy! I left out the mustard and sauerkraut.)

Wed. 7/6 - Grilled Turkey and Cheese sandwiches

Thurs. 7/7 - Sloppy Joes, baked beans, apples, chips

Fri. 7/8 - Tortilla Pepperoni Pizzas

Sat. 7/9 - French Dip Sandwiches

Sun. 7/10 - Crock Pot Chicken Fried Pork Chops

For more menu plan ideas, check out Menu Plan Monday over at orgjunkie.com.

It's Challenge Thursday over at the Trixie Scraps blog!

I love scrapping with templates, and I'm hosting this week's Challenge Thursday over at the Trixie Scraps blog, so I whipped up a free template for everyone.

Come play along with the challenge and you can be entered into the monthly prize drawing!

Here is a layout I made with the template for this challenge using Trixie's kit For the Girls and her For the Girls Glitter Styles.




You can get the template over at the Trixie Scraps blog. I'd love to see what you create!

December Desktop Freebie

Can you believe that tomorrow is the first day of December? Are you ready? I know it's a busy month for our family. To save you a little time, we've got this cute desktop freebie for you (made with the kit Santa's Workshop) over on the Trixie Scraps blog! It comes in two sizes: 1280 x 800 and 1024 x 768. Enjoy!

Manic Monday and Desktop Freebie

Hey everyone! Happy Monday! Trixie Scraps has a great way for you to start off your week today... a fantastic deal on a fantastic kit!

Today "The First Feast" is on sale for 50% off. But the sale is ONLY for today (Monday, November 1), so make sure you hop on over to one of Trixie's stores and grab it quick!



Trixie Scraps Store
ScrapMatters
Gotta Pixel
Scrapbook-Bytes

What a great time for this kit to go on sale with Thanksgiving coming up in a few weeks! This is definitely one kit you need in your stash for the holidays. Plus, you can hop on over to the Trixie Scraps blog and get this fabulous desktop calendar (made using "The First Feast") free!

Anti-Procrastination Tuesday

It's Anti-Procrastination Tuesday with Amy over at New Nostalgia. Now don't fall over just because I've had blog posts two days in a row! :) I figure if posting my weekly menu plan on Mondays can help me be more consistent with meal planning, then maybe participating in Amy's Anti-Procrastination Tuesdays will help me, well...tackle some of the tasks I've been procrastinating.

The to-do list is long, so I'm just going to start by listing a few short-term and long-term projects that I need to remember to work on completing. Then I'll come back and cross them out. So, in no particular order, here I go:

• Get bags of salt out of trunk and refill water softener. (I needed to start with an easy one).
  
• Clear off dining room table (aka storage space for stuff that needs a home).
  
• Buy photo albums and page protectors.
• Start printing out the backlog of photos just sitting on my computer. I can always do digiscrap layouts to add to the albums later. I need to at least have 4x6 prints in albums to enjoy.
• Calendar gifts to give at Christmas.
• Finish knitting youngest DD's baby blanket that I started knitting four years ago when I was pregnant with her. Didn't finish it before she was born, and, well, it's still not done.
• Finish making felted purse for my niece. (I want to be done with it by the beginning of December so I can give it to her for Christmas.)
• Knit and felt a pair of mittens for me. I keep making them for the kids, but have never made a pair for myself.
• Knit and felt a pair of mittens for youngest DD.
• Create family silhouettes to frame (see here and here).

I think I'll stop there. That's overwhelming enough for now. So what tasks/projects are on your to-do list that you keep procrastinating?

Menu Plan Monday

I've been trying to be more consistent about planning our family's meals. Life goes much smoother around our house when I don't have to decide what's for dinner on a nightly basis. And when the kiddos ask me the inevitable question, "Mom, what's for dinner?" at least I can give them an immediate answer (whether or not they like that answer LOL).

I've been following Laura over at "I'm an Organizing Junkie" for a few months now. My menu planning has been rather hit or miss (some weeks I do, some weeks I don't), so I thought if I started posting my weekly menu plan on my blog it might encourage me to be more consistent with my planning. Every week, Laura posts her menu plan for the week, and her readers link up to their menu plan blog posts. It's a fabulous resource for finding new ideas and recipes (which I seem to always need with all of the picky eaters in my house)! So this week, I'm finally joining in on the fun for the first time.

Here's my menu plan for the week:

Monday: Meatloaf

Tuesday: French Dip Sandwiches

Wednesday: One-Dish Chicken Bake

Thursday: Chicken Fried Pork Chops

Friday: Leftovers or sandwiches

Saturday: Breakfast for dinner (probably French toast)

Sunday: English Muffin Pizzas

Sometime this week I'm also going to try this pumpkin bread recipe. I already have a pumpkin bread recipe that I love, but this one caught my eye and is different from mine.

Do you know what's on your dinner menu for the week? Head on over to Laura's web site and check it out!

A new hat to wear!

I am thrilled to let all of you know that I was asked by Tracy of Trixie Scraps Designs to join her CT (Creative Team) as her Special Agent Team Captain! This happened back in August, but between being so busy getting started on her team, and going on family vacations, I just haven't gotten back over here to blog about it! I've always been a huge fan of Trixie Scraps Designs, and am having a blast working with Tracy and the rest of the ladies on her team.

You can find Trixie Scraps Designs at ScrapMatters and Gotta Pixel, and today is her grand opening over at Scrapbook-Bytes! And to celebrate, she is having a 30% off sale in her brand new store all month long!



As we get ready to head into a new school year, I've been doing a little scrapping to catch up on years past. I created this layout using Trixie's kit "Love My Guy" and the Back to School 4x6 photo template freebie I created for the 8/19/10 Trixie Scraps Stars team blog challenge.







I hope you've had a fabulous summer and are ready for fall. It's hard to believe that the summer went by so quickly! Our family had a great time, and one of my goals is to actually get some of our vacation photos scrapped sooner rather that later. I'd better get started because I certainly took enough pictures! We went on a week-long vacation, and even with two SD memory cards along (1 GB and 2 GB) I still had to find a Best Buy so I could buy another memory card for the last couple days!

Hanging up my design hat for now...

For the past few months I've been working on figuring out how to best balance everything in my life. I'm at a point in my life with my husband and kids where I need to re-prioritize, which means for now I've decided I need to step down as a designer at FaithSisters. If you use the coupon code farewellsale_54 you will get 65% off your purchase of $3.00 or more in my FaithSisters store. The coupon will expire July 31, 2010, as my store is closing at the end of July.

I have loved working with everyone over at FaithSisters! I will certainly still be out and about in digiland, just doing some of my own scrapping for now. I'm sure I won't stop designing altogether, so you'll probably see an occasional freebie or two here on my blog. And this poor neglected blog of mine will probably start to have posts on some of my other interests in addition to digiscrapping. So I hope you stick around!

iNSD sale 2010 at my FaithSisters store!

I hope you are enjoying iNSD weekend 2010! Just popping in quick to let you know that you can use the coupon code nsd2010_54 to get 50% off any purchase of $3.00 or more at my FaithSisters store through Monday, May 3, 2010!

Happy scrapping!

Enter to win my newest template set!

Well, I’m back from an unexpected hiatus, and I decided to give my blog a makeover. What do you think? Do you even remember what it used to look like since it’s been so long? I still may do a little more tweaking, specifically with the new header, but it works for now.

I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter a few days ago. Kelleigh and Pam wrote about speedcleaning on their blogs last week, and that was the final push I needed. As Kelleigh says on her blog, "The idea behind #speedclean is that you clean as fast as you can so you can get on to doing the stuff that you love to do. Just get it over with." So if you’re on Twitter, you need to check out #speedclean. And if you’re not on Twitter, go sign up so you can check it out!

This year I decided to give Project 365 a go. The idea of taking a picture a day for an entire year is a little daunting, but how cool will it be at the end of the year?! So far, so good…I’ve only missed a couple days. But now I need to scrap my January photos. Have you?

I just released Volume 1 of my 2010 Project 365 Template series. Just in time to get those January photos scrapped. Each set in the series will include interchangeable week and date specific page borders. So this first set includes a solid border, borders for weeks 1-4 and date specific borders for the first four weeks of the year (i.e. January 1 – 7, 2010).



You could win my new Project 365 Templates, Vol. 1. What do you need to do to enter? Two things:

1 – Follow me on Twitter.

AND

2 – Be sure to leave a comment at the end of this blog post with your Twitter username.

I will randomly select one of my Twitter followers to win on Saturday, February 6. And in the meantime, if you just can’t wait, Project 365 Templates Vol. 1 is 20% off until February 8, 2010 at FaithSisters and My Life and Scrap.

Challenges, Challenges!

I'm hosting some really fun challenges right now over at Faith Sisters and My Life and Scrap!

The current Mystery Lift Challenge over at My Life and Scrap goes through November 15.




And this week's Faith Sisters Template Challenge goes through November 11.

Homecooked Happiness...FS Blog Train

It's time for a FaithSisters blog train! We picked a theme and a color scheme, so as you go blog hopping to get each of the mini kits you can compile your own "Homecooked Happiness" mega kit! These will only be up for a limited time, and then they will all be turned into a collaboration kit that will be available for free with purchase at Faith Sisters!

With these freebies we are also doing a really fun recipe exchange. Everyone who participates will receive all of the recipes and recipe cards made by each of the participants.



LINK HAS EXPIRED. THE ENTIRE COLLAB WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON IN THE FAITH SISTERS SHOP.







And here's a map of everyone's blogs, in case you get lost. :)

Audra's Little Scraps: http://audraslittlescraps.blogspot.com
Busy Mama Designs: http://somuchtoscrapbook.blogspot.com
Designs By Angel: http://scrappingwithangel.blogspot.com
Dielle Designs: http://diellesdarlings.blogspot.com/
Digital Compilations by Cinda: http://blog.digitalcompilations.com/
Digital Designs by Lisa: http:/digitaldesignsbylisa.blogspot.com/ ***YOU ARE HERE***
Eyelet's Scraps Designs: http://eyeletsscrapsdesigns.blogspot.com/
Kris Mazy: http://www.Scrapwarrior.com/blog
Meredith Cardall: http://meredithcardall.blogspot.com
Robin Willson Designs: http://robin-giftsyoucanfeelgoodabout.blogspot.com/
Scrap Quest: http://www.scrapquest.com/
Sweet Tomato Designs: http://sweettomatodesigns.blogspot.com/
TMA Designs: http://themathematiciansassistant.com
Willro&co: http://willrownco.blogspot.com/

LAST STOP: http://faith-sisters.blogspot.com/

Speed Scrap and a freebie!

Anybody else have kids home sick lately? DS#2 is finally going back to school today after being out for four days last week. Fever, cough, stuffy nose... Thankfully nobody else in our family got the fever part. But it sure has been going through his class at school. If we're already doing this in October, I can't wait for winter. Sheesh.

I've been so busy and off kilter with him home sick that I completely forgot to blog about the speed scrap I'm hosting later today over at My Life and Scrap (Monday, October 12 @ 2:30 p.m. Eastern/11:30 a.m. Pacific). And I'm providing the participation prize, too! It's a fun little pumpkin alpha. (Each pumpkin is approximately 1.5" tall.)





And I also have a brand new freebie template for you! Grab it quick before it goes into my store! If you use it for any layouts, please come back and link me up so that I can see what you've created with it! You can download it here.

The new MLAS Mystery Lift challenge is up!

Come on over to MLAS and check out the new Mystery Lift Challenge for October 1-15, 2009! And be sure to check out the rest of the MLAS challenges here!

Speed Scrap tonight at MLAS!

We're celebrating all weekend over at My Life and Scrap now that the site is back up and better than ever!

It's almost time for tonight's speed scrap (9/25 @ 7:00 p.m. EST). The posting prize is by me, so go on over and win it before you can buy it. It will be in my store soon!



Plus there are more speed scraps this weekend, too:

Saturday, 9/26 @ 11 a.m. EST
Saturday, 9/26 @ 9 p.m. EST
Sunday, 9/27 @ 4 p.m. EST

And we're playing Bingo on Saturday, 9/26 at 3 p.m. EST.

Head on over for some fun!

I actually made some time to scrap!

I actually made some time to scrap using my Template #6 (scroll down to the previous post) and this amazing new collaboration between MKC and the Hybrid Kid. It's available starting today over at The Digichick.

MLAS update, challenge details & a freebie

Everyone is still working like mad behind the scenes to get My Life and Scrap back up and running. We've hit a few snags due to it being Labor Day weekend, so it's taking a little longer than we initially anticipated. But look out! When we come back up it will be EXCITING! You won't want to miss it! So stay tuned!

In the meantime, I don't want you to forget about working on the Mystery Lift Challenge. I know you will all be flooding the gallery with your Mystery Lift layouts in a few days when MLAS comes back up. (Scroll down to the post from September 2, 2009 for more info.) Here are the details about the September 1-15, 2009 Mystery Lift Challenge so you can be working on it over the next few days:

YOU WILL NEED:

* 1 neutral (solid, texturized) background paper

* 1 horizontal photo (Duplicate it two times and close the original.)

* Enlarge the first copy of your photo so that it covers the entire layout.

* Place the photo over your background paper.

* Play with the blending modes of the photo layer to blend the photo with the background paper until you achieve a look that you like (the "soft light" and "overlay" blending modes are often a good place to start, but don't be afraid to play!)

* Resize the second copy of your photo to 4x6 (horizontal).

* Put the 4x6 photo near the lower right corner of the layout.

* Tilt the photo slightly (left side down, right side up so it's not sitting perfectly horizontal).

* Put a frame around the photo.

* Add some elements, ribbons, ric rac peeking out from behind the photo and frame.

* Attach one element to the upper right corner of the photo.

* Attach two elements to the lower left corner of the photo.

* Then place a tag over those two elements. (One should be peeking out from above the tag, and one should be peeking out from below the tag.)

* Put your title on the tag.

* Begin your journaling in the upper right corner of the layout (2-3 inches from the edge) and continue down the side of the page, stopping slightly above the photo & frame. (The journaling is a 2-3 inch wide column of text, right-justified.)

* Don't forget to add the drop shadows!

And now that you've completed your MLAS Mystery Lift Challenge, you've earned a little gift! :) ***SORRY, LINK EXPIRED.***

I created a template for you to use to help pass the time while we wait for the site to come back up. Be sure to grab the template now because it will only be available as a freebie for a limited time. Then it will be going into my store. (***SORRY, LINK EXPIRED.***) Please leave me some love if you download the template, and of course come back and link me up to any layouts you create with it so I can see what you've done!

MLAS is growing so much...

...that we're bursting at the seams! You may have noticed that the site went down today. We've grown so much that we outgrew our old server and we're being transferred to our own dedicated server. Woo hoo!

As Carolyn, one of the MLAS owners, put it, "We're really excited about the transfer, we're just sorry that it happened unexpectedly and we couldn't give anyone any warning. We're anticipating 48 hours of down time, but these things are time consuming and it's possible it could take longer, so please be patient.  We're REALLY sorry for the inconvenience and we appreciate you're understanding while we continue to grow."

So there's the scoop. Be sure to check back for more info...and I might even be back with a freebie to help keep you busy scrapping while we wait for the site to get back up and running. :)

Contest winners, & new MLAS challenges

I'd like to start by saying a special thank you to KajunKJ, zeee and miss_mom for playing along in my August blog contest. KajunKJ was the winner of the $5 coupon to my store. And just 'cause I'm such a softie, zeee and miss_mom will also receive a little something from me as a thank you. :)

The new challenges for September 1-15, 2009 are up over at My Life and Scrap. Of course, I'm partial to the Mystery Lift Challenge, LOL, but they are all a lot of fun!

We have an extra special incentive attached to the Mystery Lift Challenge this time around. Linda (MLAS co-owner/site manager) has said that if we get at least 30 mystery lift layouts posted in this thread by September 15, 2009, she will walk up and down HWY 27 in Davenport, FL with a sandwich board that says www.mylifeandscrap.com and wave at the traffic while her DH takes photos!

I know I'd love to see those photos! How about you?!

So c'mon! Let's get going on those Mystery Lift Challenge layouts!