Weekly Recipe Organizer

I'm trying to think of a good way to organize my meal plans for the week.  I like looking ahead for the week and knowing what I'll be eating.  Plus, it also helps me get organized for grocery shopping trips over the weekend.  We have hooks on the side of our refrigerator.  I intended them to be used to hang aprons (and I hung my apron there this morning).  But, this recipe organizer looks like it could be hung from the other hook: Hanging Weekly Recipe Organizer

Sewing Project: Montessori Placemats

Right now Ben sits in his highchair at the table for most meals.  He seems to understand that it is a place for eating and generally does pretty well.  I know it'll be awhile before he's at a booster seat and actually AT the table with a placemat, but when that time comes, I think he'll be ready to help learn how to set the table - and I think placemats like these would come in handy - teach him where the plates and forks and cups go, and give him a sense of responsibility at mealtime. 

Homemade Baby Food

With a food mill and a food processor, making baby food at home has been really fun.  Frankly, it's also been a good way to get rid of some of those vegetables in my refrigerator that I can't eat on my own or figure out a good meal to make with.  But, I do need some inspiration - or a reminder of what new foods I should be introducing to Ben.  So, I wanted to keep track of a few websites.

Wholesome Baby Food
Homemade Baby Food Recipes

Vintage Bibs

I found a pattern for "vintage bib" on the allfreesewing.com site ..... it looks easy...famous last words.

Update (8/25/11):  The bibs have been sewn!  Photos coming soon - both with vintage ties and velcro closures.  My mom did an amazing job.  They are super-absorbent and Ben loves them!

Fabric For Sale

Just purchased some fabric scraps from a site called "Clothilde.com." Most of the packages contain 5" squares for quilting...but I found on that is 10". I hope it will work for either the letters or the blocks. And, I hope I like the patterns......

Vegan Treats

I went to the library to get a book on hold - Shimura Trouble; a Rei Shimura mystery that takes place in Hawaii (best of both worlds). While there, I scanned the new book shelf and found two books with promising vegan recipes: Veggie Burgers Every Which Way by Lukas Volger and Vegan Bake Sale by Carla Kelly. Don't know where to start reading!

Bibs out of Towels

Ben has been going through bibs like crazy lately.  Rather than spend a lot of money buying more bibs, I was thinking perhaps we could make bibs out of old towels.  I found this how-to: Bibs out of Towels - which is making me want to go out and search for really cool vintage towels - which would cost money and kind of defeat the purpose of getting bibs at a low price!  But, definitely an idea...on the look-out for used and cheap towels!!

Journals and Sewing

I've always wanted to start a journal ... so many beginnings and very few middles ... no ends. I hope this blog will keep me on track to ends. I've determined that the one thing I love doing is sewing. I've never had enough time and patience to become really good at it. But, I still love it....most of the time. At present I am working on the Amish Ball for Ben. It's a lot harder than it looked online. I think it's one of those "practice makes perfect" things. I hope Ben is happy with imperfection!

The Vegan Challenge

Jake and I talk about changing our eating habits all the time.  We need to lose weight, we need to just be more healthy - but at the end of the day, we've never made the time to learn about better nutrition or to cook healthy meals.  Then a good friend of ours found out that his brother has a very rare form of cancer. Because treatments were unclear, one thing he decided he could do was change his diet - he did tons of research and determined that a plant-based diet made the most sense.  I'm sure he also made a lot of other adjustments - and his wife, brother and his wife, and parents followed suit to lend their support.  After just 3-4 months, they all experienced incredible health benefits.  The major changes seemed to be the elimination of all aminal products (including meat and dairy), as well as the elimination or refined sugar.  They also pay close attention to the oils they use in their cooking, avoid processed food, and do many many other things.  They've all lost weight.  But, my friend's father was able to stop taking medication for high blood pressure that he'd been on for years...after hearing these very personal experiences first hand from a close friend - Jake and I decided it really was time to make our change.  And so I started reading more books about becoming vegan.  As a life-long lover of meat, and a foe of vegetables, this is a huge deal for me.  I've been borrowing cookbooks from the library, and we decided on two meatless days and one vegan day per month.  I signed up for a bi-weekly Farm Fresh to You produce box to help me explore new vegetables and inspire me to cook more.  Luckily, my mom has been around a lot - and given me the time, freedom, and inspiration to keep at it.  Chopping up all those veggies can be time consuming.  In the past 2 months, we've definitely cut down on our meat intake significantly, and increased our vegetable consumption.  I'm not attempting to cut out refined sugar yet...but the area I'm having trouble with is dairy.  The cheese and eggs are killing me.  I've found some non-dairy substitutes that work fine (butter, for example) and others that just aren't the same (cream cheese).  I may need to go cold turkey to just love my taste for it. Other than just general better health, I'm hoping that cutting out the dairy will improve the fertility challenges I've faced because of autoimmune irregularities.  I'm also hoping it'll help my mom with her arthritis, and both of us with high blood pressure.  But, we have to stick to it, of course. 

And that's where the 30-day challenge comes in.  I turn 35 on August 16.  I thought this would be a symbolically good day to start the challenge (well, maybe the 17th, so I can have my final indulgences - though I don't want to see the process of depriving myself or giving anything up - I want to view it as a positive improvement).  I've ordered this book, which I hope will be full of inspiration...and I hope to keep track of the really good recipes I find on this blog, as well as my thoughts on how this very big dietary change is affecting me, both emotionally and physically.  I'm a little scared!

Monthly Calendar

It's hard enough to keep track of my own schedule, but since Ben's birth, I've also had to keep track of my husband's big events, our joint events, Ben's appointments, and my mom's travel schedule. I was using just a regular month-to-month wall calendar, but I didn't have anywhere to put it. So, I kept losing it. And, then one day I left it on the living room coffee table, and Jake spilled water on it - and when it dried, all the pages stuck together. So, I had to throw it out. And come up with a new solution...I think making a calendar that I can put up on the refrigerator makes sense. That way everyone will actually look at it every morning - and we can all use it, instead of just me making notes on a calendar and having to remind everyone all the time of the dates. One of my favorite paper companies - Paper Source (http://www.paper-source.com/) has absolutely beautiful calendars. But, the truth is, I don't need to spend the money right now for that. So, instead, I think I can just print out a calendar...luckily there appear to be many free calendar sites on the web. I don't need anything too fancy, so it looks like this one will do the trick: http://www.myfreecalendarmaker.com/generateCalendar.do?type=2&date=09%2F03%2F201 - I just need to take the time to generate a calendar for each month. I'm inclined to do the rest of 2011 all at once, but the truth is I'd probably put August up on the fridge and then lose the rest...so perhaps I'll just do it month by month...