Been doing some thinking. Yep, I fully understand the scary factor there. My apologies to you for any harm that may come of it. 
That said…
I tend to place personal expectations too high. I think if I have a “plan” or if “it is scheduled” that it makes it easy as pie. Well, maybe it does, but the truth is – I’m not good at making pie. I’ve been working pretty hard on the upcoming Holiday Gift Guide and loving it, so that is my current focus {can’t wait til y’all see it!} and may do more stuff like it in the future.
I’m going to scale back on the memes, well scale back on my personal expectations of doing them, anyway. I think I am going to Menu Plan Monday and Wordless Wednesday. I’ll still post the Frugal Deals Roundup, but I am going to have to suspend the Friday Free For All, at least for now. I will still post Deal Alerts from time to time, especially as we get closer to Christmas. {Watch for those to help stretch your shopping budget!}
My menu planning skills are about the same way. I’ve overcomplicated and fell short of expectations. So, I’m starting from scratch. If you want to help in this endeavor, I’ll totally heart you. 
I am looking for recipes that are bare-bones, use basic ingredients, and are quick and easy. I’d prefer ones that use chicken breast, ground hamburger (or turkey), canned tuna, and sausage. I have a “meat & potatoes” kind of husband, so keep that in mind. Once I’m in a good rhythm with the basic dinners, I can try something a little different once in awhile and find things to add into the rotation. Little by little.
I also have plans to move the preschoolin’ stuff to a new blog, but that is a future project I’m not really working on at this moment.
You may like to visit me over at Simply Sensational Divas Review. I’ll be doing all of my book reviews there from here on out as well as some product reviews from time to time. It is a brand new blog and made up of 6 other awesome ladies. Please visit and say hello to each of them. We are having a lot of fun with it and there are great things to come.
It is actually feeling a little better now… typing it out… letting it go… refocusing…. Being realistic in my expectations (well, at least a little more so. It is a process, so I will continue to re-evaluate and allow myself the freedom to choose what is working and understand what is not. Happy, productive stress is one thing, stress-stress is something else and I don’t need to heap any of that on top of what there is already… We are an average family, raising a toddler, doing the best we can… you know some stress happens all on its own.
So.. here I go…
Simplify. Organize.
Oh, and did I mention I’m totally loving the LOLcats these days?
1 October 5th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I totally understand!
About the meals/husband thing, I have a meat and potatoes man, too. Literally. The ONLY vegetable he eats besides potatoes is corn. That’s it. Other than that, he eats things that had parents. No pasta, no rice, no sauces of any kind.
So, here’s my go-to, super-easy, I-don’t-feel-like-cooking-tonight meal:
Baked chicken!
I buy the bags of frozen chicken breasts with about 9 or 10 pieces. I take out enough for the meal I’m cooking (usually two for the four of us; they’re big) and put the bag back in the freezer. Preheat the oven to 350. Put the COMPLETELY FROZEN chicken breasts in a dish. I use Pampered Chef stoneware every time, but you can use a glass dish or square brownie pan; anything that fits the amount of breasts you’re cooking in one layer. Pour some Italian dressing (we use light or fat-free) on top of them, maybe a few tablespoons for each piece, then season them with whatever you want. Cover the dish with aluminum foil, and bake for an hour. The pan will be full of juice, the chicken will be baked through and juicy, and all you did was throw frozen chicken in a pan and forget about it for an hour. At the end of the hour, sometimes I put some rolls or cornbread in there, too, and just set the oven temp to whatever they need to cook. It’s the easiest recipe ever! We eat it a lot!
We ate it tonight, with steamed broccoli, (the kids and I, anyway!) corn on the cob and cornbread.
Tracye’s last blog post: How Am I Feeling, You Ask?
2 October 5th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Here’s another:
Cowboy Stew (it’s really good! I made it last week)
Cook ground beef in a dutch oven or stew pot. Throw in (DO NOT DRAIN THE CANS!) a can of french-style green beans, corn, black beans, (or butter beans are good, too) and one or two cans of diced tomatoes. Stir it all up and let it cook until the juices have reduced a little.
I serve it over brown (boil in the bag!) rice.
It’s another thing that once you cook the meat, you’re basically done with it. It gets better every day it sits in the fridge!
Tracye’s last blog post: How Am I Feeling, You Ask?
3 October 5th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Hi, well here is my menu planning at it’s finest. Sloppy joes, with french fries, baked beans and can of veggie (usually corn or green beans) talk about starchy but everyone likes it. Another favorite is spaghetti; fun shape noodles, sauce (jar), salad and garlic bread. depends on how you feel you can brown some ground beef or even put some italian sausage in it. Easy and quick. My husband is a big meat and potatoes man. I on the other hand LOVE casseroles. One dish wonders is my kind of cooking. But I also have a daughter with severe food allergies and most casseroles call for a “cream of” soup. So I have learned over the past seven years how to cook from scratch. I am not an organized person at all but I do make up my menu at the begining of every week and make my shopping list. Makes life sooo much more simple. Also double duty dinners are great. Last week I made pork roast in the crockpot, with cabbage and carrots, then when it was done, I made gravy on the stove top from the juices. I am the gravy queen! Any way the left over pork roast was shredded and added to homemade (simple) bbq sauce for shredded bbq pork sandwiches a few nights later. AND there was so much of that left over that I put that in the freezer for another night’s dinner in a few weeks/months. Basically it’s being creative, and don’t think too complicated, simplicity works best. Main dish, usually meat, side of starchy something (french fries, roasted potatoes) and veggie. Quite easy! E-mail me more questions if you would like. I also do the grocery game. Look it up, it is AWESOME! Gotta run and list some crap on e bay! I need some money for christmas!