Pan Roasted Chicken Caprese Salad

"Two salads and two fish," that is one rule of our weekly meal planning I'm trying to stick to. It's not too difficult to have a salad entrée when you focus on tried and true flavor combinations. Fresh is best, and this caprese salad with pan roasted chicken brings bold flavors while sparing us from an unhealthy meal.
  

Menu for the Week: 2 Salads, 2 Fish

Here is our menu from last week. You will see some of the same dishes as the previous week and that is because we had to skip a night so I carried Turkey Meatloaf over. Our new goals are to have two salad entrée nights a week and at least two fish nights a week. I feel like this menu meets all of our criteria.

Back to School Thank You Gift

It may be too late this year, but you can bookmark this idea for your child's teacher next year. I was looking for a simple, but creative craft I could replicate SEVEN times for Bryce and Harper's teachers at the daycare they attend. Yes, there are many wonderful helping hands at the school and I wanted each of them to have something handmade from us.

7 Tips for Serving Dinner 7 Nights a Week

On Monday I go back to work full time after being on maternity leave. Oh boy, this is going to be an adjustment. I've been asked how I'm able to cook every night for my family and so I thought I would put a couple thoughts down on the blog.

1. For one, I don't think I would do this if I didn't enjoy it. I absolutely love cooking, it brings me peace and makes me happy.
2. Make a plan. You don't have to stick to it, but making a plan the week before and shopping for everything you need will make pulling dinners together every night possible.
3. Stick with what you know. I add maybe one or two new recipes a week but mostly stick to recipes I've made before so I don't get slowed down following a recipe or trying a new cooking technique.

Repurposed Pajama Pants into Toy Storage

 

I've started 2015 off on a crafty foot. This project has been rolling around in my head for some time. I snagged one of the legs on these cute pajama pants about a year ago and put a huge hole on one side.  The fabric was too cute to throw out so I salvaged them long ago and tucked them in my sewing bin.

 

My original plan for these was to make shoe bags, for when I travel. I just hate putting dirty shoes on top of clean clothes in my suitcase. I thought it would be super easy to sew a few bags out of the legs of these pj's.

 

But then I had kids and well, things change! For Christmas this year, Harper received some great building blocks, but they were packaged in a cardboard box that didn't make a great storage container. My options were to find a bin (like everything else in the house) but then I would need to find a home for the bin on a shelf.

 

So here we go, I've photographed on my iPhone a quick tutorial on making a simple storage bag that we will use for Harper's building blocks.