What's For Dinner: Week: 58

(manicotti)
For those of you are new  to my blog I write these weekly plans to help me spend less (I kinda of love grocery shopping, yea I know I'm weird), to save time and to try and help us eat in more often. Also I love knowing what other people eat so I thought it would be fun to share. For a while I'll be adding my plans for what greens. I'll be eating since one of my resolutions is to build a habit of introducing more green veggies into our diet. Maybe some day it'll be so normal for us that I won't have to mention them any more.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the pasta maker. I'll have to do a post about that later this week. I'm totally embracing the soup and crock pot weather now that I have time to enjoy cooking again. Have any of you tired some yummy recipes lately? If so I'd like to hear about them or see some links I'm looking for some new ideas.

Day	Main Meal	Goals (Veggies, Whole Grain, Fish)
Sunday	Manicotti w/homemade pasta	Grains and nuts: Sandwich, granola bars, ww pasta Veggies: salad, broccoli, peas Fish: Talapia
Monday	Red Wine Beefy onion stuff.
Tuesday	Chicken and Two Potatoes
Wednesday	Soupy Asian Noodles and Spring Rolls
Thursday	Grilled Talapia and Rice with Broccoli
Friday	Eat Out
Saturday	Chicken Tortilla Soup

Naughty TIme: Halloween Teaser

No T isn't going to be a ballerina, this picture is just to set the seen. Picture T in her ballet class a couple weeks ago with all the other little girls going around the circle sharing what they are planning on being for Halloween . You can picture it right a lot of princess, fairies, ect.

When it gets to her she says "A bull"
The teacher leans closer and says "A what" after all she is 3 and sometimes it's hard to understand what they say.
And with a look that says, are you dumb T says even louder "A bull"

Yes in all my evilness I thawted the naughty nieces dreams of being Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and convinced them that it would be so awesome for them to be bulls and for uncle to be a matador and that they cold gore uncle which would be the most fun. I love making my husband dress up and play with them: evidence one L's birthday invite.

To be fair, L already has a Cinderella dress that she wears almost every day and I told T if she'd be a bull I'd make her an Aurora dress for all the other days. But I think she's forgotten about that and fully embraced her bull-ness they were SO excited when I finished their costumes last night. The matador has a few steps left for me to finish but I will share pics next week.

Fitness Journal: Week 10

Are you totally amazed that I'm back posting my fitness stuff?Yes it has been OVER a month and I'm UP. My work load pretty much quadruples from the beginning of September to the end of October. My Halloween orders start coming in the end of July, yes you read that right. I think I mailed off between 300-400 costumes in the last two months. My family helped as much as they could but that's still a whole lot of work. Plus there were some gigantic paypal issues that made tons of extra work so I pretty much did the bare minimum (my 3 exercise classes a week).

Before I stopped posting I had my last month's eval where I set the goals to
1) Get in 2 days of strength training
2) Get in 3-4 days of cardio
3) Log all my food
4) Loose 1-2 pounds a week

I did number 1 and that's all and over all that time I gained weight. The total crazy got finished on Saturday and then I had a bit more catching up and sewing friends and family costumes still this week but it has definitely settled down. So I'm jumping back on board. I've logged my food starting on Monday, I'm back to being really conscious of my water but I still haven't gotten any cardio in (but then again, Halloween festivities are Saturday and I still have 4-5 costumes for family and friends to finish and regular orders). I'm hoping to be back to real normal next week. Here's to getting back on board.

Weight:

9/22/2010 147.4
10/28/2010 148.6
I'm 5'5 but have a small frame
(I think I'm going for 135 and we'll see from there)

Nutrition Breakdown:
Haven't logged food in a while but started back up so next week this will be back.

Exercise:
W Nothing
H Buddy Strength Training
F Nothing
S Nothing
S Day Off
M (nothing since swim class was canceled and I didn't do it myself)
T Athletic Conditioning Class

Tutorial: Boo Headband (easy and fast)

Need a last minute costume, or bit of Halloween flair? I made this to wear to Gardner Village's Witches Night Out (where hundreds of women dress up like witches). It was awesome but I think the headband would be great for the costume-less or for those of you who may have been focusing all your energy on others' costumes and just need some Halloween Spirit for yourself.

It's so easy and as with everything I make my default is to sew because that is what I know, it's easier for me than glue but really all of this can be done with glue.

What You'll Need

• thick felt
• headband (I love the elastic style ones)
• small pieces of fabric (I used purple and orange)
• sequence
• heat bond (ultra heavy) but you could probably just use glue
• glue

The Steps

• If you're going to use heat bond iron heat bond the letter fabric(orange) and the background fabric (purple)
• Cut out the letters (I used my Cricut but you could free hand it or trace them off of the computer screen)
• Cut out the background shape out of the background fabric I just did an abstract squiggle.
• Place the background shape on the felt and the felt so you can see an edge.
• Sew (or glue the felt onto the headband
• Iron (or glue) the background shape onto the felt making sure to leave a little room around the edges 
• Position the letters and iron (or glue)
• Glue on the sequence
• Wear and feel Fancy.

If you make any I'd love to see them. Hope you like it.

Giveaway: Mustache Set

I'm doing a guest giveaway over at Steals Deals and Heals. Winner gets to chose either the girly stache or manly knicker stache set. Be sure to read her directions when you enter. And for those of you who can't wait the mustache onesie and whatever bottoms you want to pair it with are in the shop now.

New Stuff In The Shop All Week

I've started adding a load of new goodies to the shop. A few new sets, new retro ruffles, lots of new wrap around (some are shown above) and regular ruffle diaper covers, some unisex jumpers and even a boy appropriate set. So fancy huh?

What's For Dinner: Week: 57

(Chili and Cornbread from a while back)
For those of you are new  to my blog I write these weekly plans to help me spend less (I kinda of love grocery shopping, yea I know I'm weird), to save time and to try and help us eat in more often. Also I love knowing what other people eat so I thought it would be fun to share. For a while I'll be adding my plans for what greens. I'll be eating since one of my resolutions is to build a habit of introducing more green veggies into our diet. Maybe some day it'll be so normal for us that I won't have to mention them any more.


I was BAD last week we ate out almost every day yikes. But I mailed out the last of my Halloween things and things are back to my normal, busy, but not necessarily frantic. So I'm trilled to cook again.

Day	Main Meal	Goals (Veggies, Whole Grain, Fish)
Sunday	Homemade Pasta with some shrimp cream sauce	Grains and nuts: Sandwich, granola bars, ww pasta Veggies: salad Fish: Shrimp
Monday	Oven fried Chicken and Garlic Mashed potatoes
Tuesday	Steak Salad
Wednesday	Zupa Toscana and Fresh Bread
Thursday	Carnitas Tacos
Friday	Acorn Squash and Sausage
Saturday	Lot's O Parties!

Customer Appreciation Pic and Shop Update

Custom orders are fabulous because sometimes when I'm tired, too busy or just having a creative lull it's like a breath of fresh air. That said, this little outfit is my current favorite thing I've made. Love her mom's vision! Ah I love it so much with the little bead eyes. And seriously how cute is this little birthday lady.

Anyways I've had a build up of a new things that I haven't gotten around to posting. Some boy jumpers a load of wrap around and regular style ruffle diaper covers a few new dresses and jumpers. It's going to be a big one. I'll start adding new stuff Monday and through out the week until I get all the stuff up. I'm excited. I hope you guys like them. Be sure to visit the shop to check em out.

Naughty Time: Little Fruits

  Okay I admit it I let my naughty nieces play with my dirty clothes in my closet while my mom and I were working like maniacs sewing and filling orders. I looked over and I just thought they looked like Japanese fruits and what's with the posing, seriously they're only 2 and 3!

Pebbles and Bam Bam Baby Costumes Ready to Ship and Available

 (this was maybe 1/3 of what I sent out this Halloween season, crazy I know!)

After getting all of these out the door I had a few left over.

I cut out extras on purpose just in case things happened along the way, if I miscounted, etc. of course all of that happened so there are only a few of each size. But if you didn't snatch up a costume while I was still taking orders check the store now there may be the sizes you want ready to go.  Click Here to go to the shop.

(yeah they didn't all fit in one bag)

What's For Dinner: Week: 56

(Red Iguana when Mel was in town yum yum)
For those of you are new  to my blog I write these weekly plans to help me spend less (I kinda of love grocery shopping, yea I know I'm weird), to save time and to try and help us eat in more often. Also I love knowing what other people eat so I thought it would be fun to share. For a while I'll be adding my plans for what greens. I'll be eating since one of my resolutions is to build a habit of introducing more green veggies into our diet. Maybe some day it'll be so normal for us that I won't have to mention them any more.

By this time tomorrow I should barring any freak emergencies have the last of my costumes for this Halloween season in the mail. Woohoo! That being said I have some plans:

• I will be trying out the pasta maker this week.
• I will call another appliance guy since the guy who was supposed to fix my main oven (back from when the fire happened) still hasn't fixed it nor gotten back to me after giving me some excuse about having parts sent to my house and me giving him time to check on it and let me know.
• I will eat better and slow down and enjoy food again.
• I will think about making another cheesecake, I know I've posted a bunch on the blog but it's been a couple months since I've made one so I'm due.

Day	Main Meal	Goals (Veggies, Whole Grain, Fish)
Sunday	Chicken and broccoli with rice	Grains and nuts: Sandwich, granola bars, ww pasta Veggies: salad Fish: Shrimp
Monday	Shrimp Ravioli with Blush Sauce w/salad
Tuesday	Oven fried Chicken and Garlic Mashed potatoes
Wednesday	Eat out?
Thursday	Carnitas Tacos
Friday	Baked Potato Soup
Saturday	Something experimenting with the pasta maker

Work in Progress: Costumes Now

 One more week, hopefully no more annoyances like the Paypal catastrophe of last week will strike again because I'm ready to slow down a bit, think about my own Halloween stuff and get all my costume orders out the door and onto cute little bodies filled with candy.

But for now everything looks like this.

Recipe: Turtle Cheesecake

 For the Crust

1 1/2 (about 1.5 C) packs of graham crackers (crushed)
1/3 C Margarine (melted)

For Cheesecake
3-8 oz pkgs Cream Cheese (room temp)
1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1/2 C Sugar
3 Eggs
3 Tbls Lemon Juice
1 Tbl Vanilla
3/4 cup Chocolate Chips
1/4 C Sugar
1 tsp Cornstarch

For Topping
1/4 C. mini chocolate chips
1/2 C. caramel sauce
1/2 C. hot fudge sauce
1/4 C. chopped cashews (or your favorite nut)

(if you want it to be good you MUST wait for the cream cheese and eggs to come to room temp. don't bother using light or fake cream cheese unless you have high quality artisan cream cheese use Philadelphia cream cheese the taste is worth the extra fat, cost, and time)

The Steps

• Break up the graham crackers (I like to stick them in a ziplock and mush).
• Melt the butter and mix with the graham cracker crumbs. Press them into a springform pan.
• Beat the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk until smooth.
• Add sugar, vanilla, and lemon juice until well combined.
• Add eggs one by one until combined.
• Remove 1 cup of mixture and set aside. 
• Melt chocolate chips until almost melted (be careful not to burn it). Do it 10-20 seconds at a time
• Mix the melted chocolate and cup of mixture
• Pour half of remaining cheesecake mixture into springform pan.
• Add chocolate mixture and top with remaining cheesecake mixture.
• Swirl with a knife being careful not to touch the bottom crust.
• Bake in at 300F with steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes (until outside is set but inside is still jiggly). Heat a dish while preheating the oven and pour hot water in the dish when you stick the cheesecake in.
• Let cool in the oven with door closed for at least 2 hours 
• Refrigerate for at least 4 hours I think overnight is best, the texture and taste are much better when it's colder 
• Right before serving top with caramel, chocolate sauce, mini chips and nuts.
• Cut with a knife rinsed with hot water between each slice

Take it to a party, have everyone ooh and ahh and make new friends. Let me know if you try it out!

What's For Dinner: Week: 55

(Ganache filled Brioche )

For those of you are new  to my blog I write these weekly plans to help me spend less (I kinda of love grocery shopping, yea I know I'm weird), to save time and to try and help us eat in more often. Also I love knowing what other people eat so I thought it would be fun to share. For a while I'll be adding my plans for what greens. I'll be eating since one of my resolutions is to build a habit of introducing more green veggies into our diet. Maybe some day it'll be so normal for us that I won't have to mention them any more.

One more week of costume craziness for me. Luckily for me my sister has been on baking binges every weekend so we've gotten to sample pumpkin scones, fried green tomatoes, chocolate brioche and more. In other news my pasta attachments for my kitchen aid arrived so they are basically the carrot dangling in front of me to finish the costume orders as fast as I can.

Day	Main Meal	Goals (Veggies, Whole Grain, Fish)
Sunday	Pizza with out of town family friends	Grains and nuts: Sandwich, granola bars, ww pasta Veggies: corn peas Fish:
Monday	Chicken with Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Tuesday	Chicken Soup and Rice
Wednesday	Enchilada Casserole
Thursday	Shrimp Ravioli with Spinach and Blue Cheese Sauce
Friday	?
Saturday	BBQ at the Rogers

It's how it goes

Sorry all, the turtle cheesecake recipe that I promised is going to have to wait until Monday.Paypal decided to update their website this week (which also happens to be my first HUGE shipping week) so it has been having very frustrating problems all week. Basically instead of being able to print 100 shipping labels at a time I'm having to print all my labels one by one waiting for everything to reload and refresh every time. It literally is 100 times slower than I'm used to. Yeah it's annoying and yeah I really do have a lot more than 100 packages to get out. And yeah it acts as if the faster way will work for a minute or so and then freezes and yeah I guess it's working fin for other people.

Any ways luckily my husband and I got through 75% of the labels last night and my family is coming to help me stick the labels to all the packages today. So I will still be on time for the orders but without time to type up the cheesecake recipe...so Monday I promise.

Guest Blogging: Making the World Cuter

Just popping in to say I'm guest blogging over at Making the World Cuter today while Tiffany is enjoying maternity leave. I shared my Oreo Cheesecake recipe. Stay tuned I'll be posting my turtle cheesecake recipe later this week.

Plus it's the last day to enter Halloween/Fall my giveaway.

What's For Dinner: Week: 54

(enchilada casserole, doesn't photograph very well but it was so yummy I'll post the recipe when I get a chance)

For those of you are new  to my blog I write these weekly plans to help me spend less (I kinda of love grocery shopping, yea I know I'm weird), to save time and to try and help us eat in more often. Also I love knowing what other people eat so I thought it would be fun to share. For a while I'll be adding my plans for what greens. I'll be eating since one of my resolutions is to build a habit of introducing more green veggies into our diet. Maybe some day it'll be so normal for us that I won't have to mention them any more.


I'm exhuasted. Tomorrow is the first big ship date for costumes, so yeah exhausted. I only stuck to the menu last week twice and the other days I made terrible choices. Oh well. I'm in survival mode for a bit.

Day	Main Meal	Goals (Veggies, Whole Grain, Fish)
Sunday	Shrimp Ravioli with Laurel's Marinara	Grains and nuts: Sandwich, granola bars, ww pasta Veggies: corn peas Fish: Shrimp
Monday	Sushi
Tuesday	Red Iguana w/Melissa
Wednesday	Beef and Veggie Soup
Thursday	Meatball Sandwiches
Friday	Fancy Ramen
Saturday	Oven Fried Chicken and Garlic Mashed POtatoes

Customer Appreciation Pic: Party Girl

Just wanted to take a second to share an few adorable customer appreciation pics. I love getting to be apart of fun 1st birthday celebrations via the clothing. How stinking cute is that crown, I definitely need to make a few for my naughty nieces.

Also check out the whole party over here, including an amazing homemade cake and some adorable decorations. I'm going to be in fully costume pumping costumes out all weekend with a short break to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. Hope you guys all have a fun weekend.

Oh and in case you haven't noticed I've got a new giveaway open but it closes in a few days. Check out the giveaway details here.