Free Blanket Gift Printable

We made these super cute gifts for our teachers this year. The main gift consists of a simple $2.50 fleece throw from Wal-Mart. You can make it even more special be adding a handmade card or ornament (see how we made ours here) and a coffee gift card.

Watch the YouTube Video Here

We even made printable to hand out with just a coffee gift card.

Get your free printable here.

DIY Good Deed Tracker for the Holidays

Every holiday season it's always a good reminder to do good for others. This year, I felt like the kids were old enough to really understand the idea of service. During our North Pole Breakfast, I added a "Good Deeds Bucket."

I found this super cute printable full of good deeds here and cut them out and put them in a cute Santa bucket from the Dollar Tree along with some blank cards so we can add some new good deeds or "catch them" doing good deeds and praise them when we see them happening.

I found a cute Buffalo Plaid alphabet banner here and made a "Good Deeds" banner for us to pin up all of the good deeds we do this season.

I've created a simple PDF with the banner so you can easily print it out without having to resize or save multiple letters. Print it out here.

December Daily : North Pole Breakfast : Christmas Decorating

We don't do the Elf of the Shelf (because I don't need anymore cray in my life), but we have adopted the North Pole Breakfast tradition.

Every year, before we put up our tree, we have North Pole Breakfast or Breakfast-for-dinner (depending on when December 1st falls on a weekday or a weekend.) Each kid get their Christmas Pajamas so they have them to wear all month. This year they also got a matching ornament, a candy cane, and some stickers and reindeer ears (all from the Dollar Tree).

We made some super simple Snowmen pancakes (with powder sugar and whip cream snow, a jelly bean nose, and candy cane arms). Car was very adamant about everyone eating the "healthy food" before they ate the candy... But nothing about North Pole Breakfast is healthy food. Haha.

We also added some Good Deed cards to our North Pole Breakfast. This way the kids can grab a Good Deed from the bucket throughout the month and we can hang them up as we complete them. I found the way cute free printable here. I also like to make a big deal about awarding the kids a Good Deed card when we "catch them in the act" of being a good helper without being asked.

After breakfast-for-dinner, they all put on their matching buffalo plaid pajamas (thank you, Target store pick-up!) and we got out alllllll the Christmas decorations. Last year we were in the tiny townhouse so Christmas was very much understated. This year; however, is our first Christmas in the new house and we finally get to discover all of the things we've had packed in storage while we moved.

I used to be a "fancy tree" person, but since the kids have started preschool, it is so so fun to go thorough all of the cute little ornaments they have made for us each year. We make sure to have their name and year on the back of each one. And when they (inevitably) come home with more Christmas crafts throughout December, we just add them up on the tree to admire!

We had so much fun (after a bit of a rocky start trying to find different things...) and I hope the kids always have fun memories of the Christmas season.

Watch the fun here. (We also have added some way fun DIY projects so be sure to check out our channel here.)



Every Christmas we also always create a December Daily photo book. They are so fun to flip through every Christmas and to document the fun things we do each holiday. I put them together in my Project Life App and print them at the end of the month with Shutterfly. Easy Peasy. I take a lot of photos with my "Big Camera" but I make sure to take a photo of the preview to pop in my temporary album as a place holder until I get all the good pictures downloaded on my phone. This helps me keep on track with planning and documenting the pages without having to wait for them to get downloaded. And then I can swap them out for the real-deal easily and all at once.

Before (with back of the camera shots) 

After (to be printed in our Shutterfly book)

Amazon Fresh Review #4 : Our Final Order

If you've been following along, you know that we've been doing a month of Amazon Fresh. We've had some hits, but for the most part - we've had a lot of misses. And nothing was more of a miss than our very odd, totally strange, final Amazon Fresh Order.

You can read about our other orders here, here, and here.

Our order came in the morning around 9am just like usual. I unloaded everything onto the table and made a list of what was missing. And it was a lot this time. I sent an email off to Cory and he contacted Amazon about what was missing. They've been really great about refunding for missing product, but it's a big bummer when you order online delivery so you don't have to go to the store and then end up having to run out to the store anyway. We were especially hopeful this time since it was Cor's Drill Weekend. He wouldn't be home and having me grocery shop with all four is just not an option. Just. No. We also had problems with this order coming with smushed bread, smashed boxes, and a crushed milk. Womp Womp Womp.

So, we went on with our day. Playing and hanging out on a random Sunday until about 3 in the afternoon when a neighborhood kid came knocking on the door asking for the kids to play (yes! yes! go, now kids!) Except, he also had with him a single Amazon Fresh bag. I asked him where it came from. If he brought it (Was it delivered to his house? That would be odd? Was it already outside when he came? Probably. But who really knows?) When I asked him where it came from, he gave me a "It came from me." and that's about as much information I could get out of a 7 year old. I even thought that maybe I accidentally left it outside when the full order came. But thanks to this blog post and my intentional photo-taking to go along with my post, I'm positive that it was not delivered along with the rest of the order.

I'm thinking that this mystery box was redelivered after our original order. The problem is that it was ALL of our freezer foods. All of them. And they had been sitting on our porch for a good portion of the day. I didn't get a push notification that it was delivered (like I do when my original order is delivered) and no one knocked on the door to tell me it was there.

So all of our freezer food was just pretty much gross. Especially because Amazon also puts some produce in with the freezer food. Not cool. (no pun intended) Our cucumbers were mush and our mushrooms were barely salvageable.

One cool thing that is built into Amazon Fresh's free 30 Day Trial is an option to cancel on your end date without having to remember to actually go in and cancel it before they charge you for the service. So here's how to go about setting that up. We didn't have to worry about when our last day was, and we were never charged the subscription fee. Hooray!

Even with all of our issues with Amazon Fresh, it was nice to give it a try completely free. Different areas obviously will either have the initial problems worked out or still be working on figuring out how things work. If you're interested in trying it out. Give it a go! It's free for a month. Although our actual product wasn't the best, Amazon customer service was always amazing and refunded us whenever we had a problem.

Interestingly enough, we decided to go back to Aldi and shop a repeat list in store. And it was cheaper even though with Fresh we avoided buying things we saw that were off list. When we were ordering off of Amazon, we would still have to run out and get diapers and formula, which added up to what we were basically spending in Aldi before trying Fresh. We feel like we're getting more bang-for-our-buck in store. And now we know we can be conscious about staying strictly with what is on our list and not grabbing those extra treats we see in store to keep us more on budget. Maybe we'll try another pick-up service eventually. We'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

If you try it out, let us know how it goes!

Amazon Fresh Review #3 | A Month of Amazon Fresh

So, here we are again. Reviewing our order with Amazon Fresh. You can learn more about Amazon Fresh from there site here. You can also see our first two reviews here and here. We even added a video on our YouTube of our first unboxing, which you can watch here.

I'm not going to lie, ordering groceries from home, not having to lug children around a store, and being able to .. um.. get our drink on, is really really exciting.

Here's the rundown of how our third order with Amazon Fresh went.

Ordering was smooth sailing. We did find out that you need to double check your recently order items because prices do jump up. Cereal that we ordered before was now a whole dollar more expensive and we found a cheaper option just searching for more cereal. So keep that in mind. While it may seem easy just to click that reorder button, sometimes it won't be as cost effective.

We also had a problem when or order came this time. The quality of our lettuce was subpar and our green onions (scallions? -- call them what you want...) we're quite sad. One of our loaves of bread also got slightly smushed in transit. I'm sure Amazon would have refunded us for these items, but we just used half the head of lettuce and threw out the bad part and made the meals with these two items first since we knew they wouldn't last for the end of the week meals. We also got tomatoes on the vine instead of the roma tomatoes we ordered but this was a swap that was in our favor.

So here we are again. Here's a recap for those of you following along at home.
Order 1 - Missing items. Great customer service.
Order 2 - Perfect! Everything was great. No complaints here!
Order 3 - Quality issues. Womp.

So the more we keep doing this the more we may realize that it's just not worth it to Amazon Fresh our groceries (goodbye, online shopping with my trusty glass of white...) We still have two more shops on our free trial, so we'll finish it out and follow up with a conclusion.

DIY Recycled Wooden Boxes

So. We made a thing.

We had a ton of landscaping stakes left over after we put up our own fence (you can read more about that here). We needed some shelves for our bathroom makeover. We got rid of a medicine cabinet mirror and replaced it with a flat mirror, so we needed something to store little odds and ends and keep them slightly out of view and easy to access; we thought some cute wooden boxes would do the trick.

We had been putting off going to the hardware store for some wood when it suddenly dawned on me - all those stakes were just sitting in the rain next to our house doing a whole lot of nothing!

Cor went ahead and cut the tips off of each end of the stakes, wood glued them together (holding them with clamps while they dried) to make a bottom and sides, and boom. Boxes.

We used some L brackets to hang them as "floating shelves" similar to the ones we put in our main bathroom.

Pretty dang adorable. And super practical too!

Amazon Fresh : Review #2

Hey! It's our second week ordering with Amazon Fresh and here's how things went.

I look happy, don't I? I do! Because this time ALL of our food arrived and nothing was missing. Hooray!

Right now you can get 5$ off any order of 75$ or more with code 5MULTI during your 30 day free trail!

A few things we found out with our second Amazon Fresh order:

If you search for a product that you've already purchased, the recently purchased item will show up first - Kind of cool if you want to reorder something you liked in the past.

Some items are NOT Amazon Fresh items but are Amazon Prime items. Be careful when you order. One of our items was an Amazon Prime "add on item." Since we didn't buy anything else on Amazon Prime, that item got canceled in our order since we didn't buy enough Prime items (not including Fresh items) for it to ship with.

Watch size and remember that there's a drop down option for different sizes. We went to buy Olive Oil and were pricing out sizes for which was the best deal. One only showed up as a small size, but a larger option was available (for a way better value!) So make sure you click on the products.

Don't forget to put out your old totes when your new order is scheduled to arrive. They will drop off your new totes and take the old ones to use for other orders. Recycle, yo. The planet loves it.

***

We were way happy about our order this go around.
Missed out on what happened with our first order? Check it out here.

Weekly Meal Plan

We got our cookbooks (finally) unpacked and are excited about some new meals this week!  Yum!

Day	Dinner
M	Black Bean Tortas w/ Coconut Chipotle Mayo (Thug kitchen pg143)
T	Carrot, Sweet Potato and Ginger soup w/ Baby Bok Choy (FF veg pg33)
W	Winter White Bean Salad w/ spicy cilantro pesto (Forks pg73/24)
R	Vegan Cauliflower Bites with a simple salad
F	Lemon Asparagus Pasta
S	Potato Tacos with bean dip and rice
S	*Leftover Night*

Produce Dairy Packaged Goods Spices/Sauces

M

Coconut Chipotle Mayo

·         1 cup canned Coconut milk

·         1/3 cup hot sauce

·         ¼ olive oil

·         1 tablespoon ground flax seed

·         1 teaspoon lemon juice

·         Salt

Creamy Black beans

·         1 teaspoon oil

·         I yellow onion

·         3 cloves garlic

·         1 tablespoon chilli powder

·         ¾ teaspoon ground cumin

·         2 cans black beans

·         1 ½ cups vegetable broth

·         1 lime

·         Salt to taste

Torta trimmings

·         Crusty rolls

·         Lettuce

·         Tomatoes

·         Red onions

·         Avocado

T

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1-pound carrots
• 1-pound sweet potatos
• 1 bunch scallions
• ½ cup chopped celery
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger
• Salt
• Cilantro
• 1 lime
• 1 jalapeno
• 6 ounces baby bok choy

W

• 1 pumpkin or similar winter squash
• 2 cans Cannellini beans
• 1 medium red onion
• Salt and pepper
• Basil pesto

R

·    1 small head cauliflower

·    ¼ to ½ cup hot sauce (we use siricha or buffalo sauce & omit for kid ‘nuggets’)

·    ½ cup flour (whole wheat flour works fine, so does white flour)

·    ½ cup milk

·    1 teaspoon salt

·    1 teaspoon ground black pepper

·    ½ teaspoon garlic powder

·    1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

·    1 cup panko bread crumbs

Simple Salad: Spinach
Tomato
Cucumber
Croutons
Dressing

F
1 bunch asparagus (12 ounces), trimmed and washed

Sea salt and black pepper

2 lemons

Olive oil

3-4 large cloves garlic, minced (~2 Tbsp)

10 ounces (~5 cups) bow tie pasta (see notes if GF*)

2.5 cups unsweetened plain almond milk

3-4 Tbsp all purpose flour (sub another thickener if GF*)

1-2 Tbsp nutritional yeast (for a subtle cheesy flavor | optional)

S

bean dip
1 can pinto beans, drained
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 cup pepper of choice (anaheim, pasilla, jalapeno, etc), chopped
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp fresh lemon or lime juice
1 Tbsp olive oil

5 russet potatoes
salt
tortillas
tomato
avocado
lettuce

Rice

Amazon Fresh : Review 1

In case you were unaware, we have four kids ages 5 and under. To say we were EXCITED to try Amazon Fresh was an understatement.

The idea of ordering our entire meal plan online and having it all delivered at one time... Sign. Us. Up.

Here's more info about signing up, straight from Amazon.

Typically we have to run to at least two different stores to get everything for our meals. We do the bulk of our shopping at Aldi and then go to Wal Mart or our local grocery chain for any items we have left over or aren't typically available at Aldi (here's looking at you, tofu).

I sent Cor a dinner meal plan and he did all the ordering over his lunch break. Here's a few things about ordering you need to know.

Orders of 40$ or more ship for free (not a problem for us). Other orders ship for $9.99.

The service costs $14.99 a month for Prime members but is FREE for the first month.

There's a $25 off your first order of $100 or more coupon out there in the universe. Google "Amazon Fresh Coupon Code" to find one.

Cheapest items will NOT show up first. For example, when Cor searched for carrots, the first to show up were rather expensive. He scrolled right on down and found a less expensive option.

Check out the size of items. Crackers were buy one get one free. The photo made it look like a full sized box, but it was a smaller snack box on sale. Check the ounce size on items.

Keep an eye out on when items are (or are not) available. Honeycrisp apples would have delayed our order for a few days. Gala apples would allow it to be delivered the very next day.

Other than that, ordering on Amazon Fresh was just as easy as ordering on Amazon. There's even specialty sections like "Kid Snacks" and speciality diet sections like "Vegan" and "Gluten Free." And the best part, our order is saved and we can quickly and easily reorder an entire meal plan worth of ingredients to add or subtract from in the future. Oh. Em. Gee.

Our order was sent and scheduled for delivery the next day. Awesome.

Everything came nicely packed and iced via USPS right to my doorstep (no more lugging grocery bags up my exterior stairs!) The kids were thrilled. As was I. Watch us unboxing our order on YouTube.

The quality of items was great too. Our grapes looked nice. And I was pleasantly surprised by the freshness of our vegetables. They even took care to package bread on top and (while we didn't order eggs) I noticed an old "Take Care: Eggs Inside" sticker on one of our totes (Amazon recollects these and reuses them to cut down on waste.)

We got to work unpacking the 4 Amazon Fresh bags (they're huge). We put everything out on the kitchen table.

I really wish Amazon included a paper inventory sheet with each order. We were warned to go through our order because some people have had items missing. A paper inventory sheet just seems logical for someone packing groceries to literally check off as they go, but maybe they still do this electronically. Technology, yo.

Anyway, I pulled up our order and realized TEN items were missing. That's a lot. I almost felt like maybe the USPS guy missed a bag, but ours were labeled 4 out of 4.

Cor was at work so I sent him an email of what was missing and he contacted Amazon. Customer service was great. They got back to us same day and provided a refund plus an additional credit towards a future order.

But alas, the convenience of ordering online groceries was lost. Cor had to run to the store after work and get the things on the list. He then had to go back a second time when we missed something in the original check. In addition to an earlier quick trip for items that weren't available for next day delivery when we initially ordered. Additionally, some Amazon Sale items weren't included in our order. So we lost both time and money. Woooomp.

We get that this service is VERY new to our area and that there's probably a lot that they need to work out. We'll ride out our full month trial (3 more shops for us) and see how it goes (and let you know too!)

Weekly Meal Plan

We are SO excited about this week's meal plan. Not only do we have a ton of new Fall recipes to try out, we also tried something new and ordered from Amazon Fresh (more on that in a later blog post).

We've already had the Thai Basil Noodles and not a drop was left. Even the kids gobbled it up.
We added some chips with the rice, black bean, and avocado bowls that were recommended to us by a sweet friend - you're going to want to make that sauce and add it to everything. The whole thing was delicious.

Enjoy!

Day	Dinner
M	Butternut Squash soup
T	Rice, Black Bean and Avocado bowl with chips
W	Thai Basil Noodles
R	Mediterranean Stew (Veg CrockPot) w bread
F	Tofu Ricotta Stuffed Shells
S	Carrot Dogs
S	*Leftover Night*

Produce Dairy Packaged Goods Spices/Sauces

M

• 2 butternut squash cleaned and cubed.
• 2 Honey crisp apples peeled, cored and cubed
• 3 carrots peeled and cut into large pieces
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1-2 tsp curry powder
• 1-2 tsp red chili flakes plus more for garnish
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice*
• 4-5 cups vegetable broth
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup coconut milk the one from the jar
• salt and pepper
• pumpkin seeds for garnish

T
For the rice

• 2 cups brown rice
• 1 cup tomato puree/sauce (not tomato paste)
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon regular chili powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoons fine sea salt

For the beans

• 2  cans black beans, drained and rinsed well
• 2 teaspoons regular chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

For the Sweet Chili Mustard Sauce (makes 1 cup)

• 1/2 cup regular yellow wet mustard (120 g)
• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup (60 mL)
• 2 tablespoons regular chili powder (use 1 1/2 T for less heat)
• 2-4 tablespoons water

Garnish

• 1 medium avocado, chopped
• 1 cup tomatoes, optional

W

• 1 package of firm tofu , drained, pressed, and cubed 2-3 TB olive or sesame oil
• 1 small onion , chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 cups shiitake mushrooms
• 4 small bok choy
• 8 oz rice noodles
• 1/2 cup basil cut into ribbons

SAUCE

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 TB chili paste
• 1 tsp maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 TB rice wine vinegar

R

• 2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 eggplant, chopped
• 1 15oz can artichoke, drained and chopped
• 1/2/ cup kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
• 2 15oz cans diced tomatoes (we use low sodium)
• 4 cups (usually a whole box) Vegetable Broth (again, we use low sodium)
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• French Bread
  

F

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 16 ounces extra firm tofu
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 10 ounces frozen spinach, defrosted
• 1 box jumbo shells
• 1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce

S

• 2 large carrots
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 TB seasoned rice vinegar
• 1 TB sesame oil
• 1/2 TB apple cider vinegar
• dash liquid smoke
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp dried ginger
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/8 tsp granulated onion powder
• olive oil cooking spray
• 2 whole wheat hot dog buns