One Little Word

Creative genius Ali Edwards created the One Little Word challenge where you chose a word to center your life. Last year, she urged her readers to make their word visible in their life. I was trying to decide on a word when I first heard of the challenge in December. The first word that came to mine was: survive, but I somehow doubted that this should be the "encouraging" word I should focus on for the next twelve months. With two itty-bitties under two, it is sometimes all I can do to just survive through the day, or until Mr. gets home from work, or until nap time. It can be rouuuugh. However, I decided for 2014 I didn't want to just survive. Things are getting way easier (in some ways), but things are still hard with two little boys running (or crawling) around and exploring every little thing they can get their itty-bitty fingers on. I decided that instead of surviving the now, I need to live in the now. I need to enjoy the now because before I know it, the now will be fleeting. I won't ever have a curious two-year-old Big with his little nine-month old exploring companion again. But I do have that now.

So I decided that that is my word: Now. I need to learn to focus on the now. Appreciate the now. Love the now. Even in those moments when I am just trying to survive, I am learning to take a breath and know that this is just for the now. One day, Big will stop throwing his food on the floor at every single meal, but he will also stop making silly faces when he tries something new. One day, Little will sleep without waking up in the middle of the night, but I will miss the quite moments rocking him back to sleep. One day, I will miss these little moments, but right now, right now these moments are mine to treasure.

Sunday Meal Plan

It's Sunday again, and time for us to do our weekly meal planning, shopping, and prepping for the coming week. We love how we are feeding our family wonderful, whole foods. We found a great four week meal plan on the Whole Foods website that we used to start out, but now we have fun choosing our own meals and mixing in some of our own favorite recipes.

Last week was the first time we created our own meal plan. We focus on lunch and dinner and no so much on breakfast. I made a batch of banana waffles and froze them for the week, and Mr. M made some Quinoa Breakfast Muffins. Those and Oatmeal are our go-to's for breakfast.

Last weeks meal plan looked like this:

Day	Lunch	Dinner
M	Black Bean Soup w/ Cornbread muffins	Stuffed Peppers w/ chorizo Cornbread muffins
T	Stuffed pepper	Pasta w/ Tomato and Veggies
W	Black Bean Soup	White Bean Spinach Salad
R	Pasta w/ Tomato and Veggies	Veggie Burgers w/ baked fries
F	Black Bean Soup	Millet Loaf (FORKS/KNIVES)  with Tahini Mashed Potatoes and Mushroom Gravy
S	Veggie Burgers	Avocado and Kale Salad
S	Left Overs	*New Recipe Night*

Mr. M likes to try out new meals so we always save Sunday night for a new recipe. It works out well because it's the day do our shopping and can easily add things to our grocery trip for the meal. One of my favorite meal plan meals is Black Bean Soup. It is so easy to make and it makes a ton. It really is easy to keep it in the fridge for the week and spoon some out for lunch a few days a week.

Whole Foods' Black Bean Soup (see the original recipe here). 

Ingredients: 

• 1 pound dried black beans (about 2 1/2 cups), rinsed. (I'm not going to lie - We use two cans of black beans and call it a day). 
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 large red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped)1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1/2 ripe avocado, chopped

Method: 

Soak the beans overnight or 6 to 8 hours prior to cooking. Drain and rinse. (If you use cans, skip this step - Yay!)

In a large pot, bring 1/2 cup water to a simmer over medium-high heat. Add onions, bell pepper and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until onions are translucent and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Stir in cumin and chipotle and cook 1 minute, stirring. Add drained beans and 10 cups water. Bring soup to a boil, then lower to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until beans are tender. (Again, if you use cans, your beans are already 'tender.' I tend to just let the soup simmer for a bit, maybe 15 minutes, and call it good.) Remove 4 cups soup and carefully purée in a blender. Return purée to pot and stir in cilantro, nutritional yeast and lime juice. Spoon into bowls for serving and garnish with avocado.

Nutritional Info: 

PER SERVING:120 calories (25 from fat), 2.5g total fat, 0g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 15mg sodium, 20g carbohydrate (7g dietary fiber, 2g sugar), 7g protein

We serve it up with a easy cornbread muffin (I buy the box mix... Shhh). We usually skip adding the avocado since it's a heat-and-serve dish for us, but when we have extra guacamole, I toss it in and it is delicious! 

Enjoy!  

My Project Life

We had some snow in our sandy part of the world which gave me and Mr. M some time off work. I took the opportunity to play some catch up with my Project Life album.

Project Life is a pocket style scrapbooking system designed by Becky Higgins. You can learn more about the products and the inspiration behind it on Becky's blog. I love it because I can customize it for my own needs. Your albums can be as simple or as embellished as you see fit and it helps me keep up with documenting our family's life. Project Life is all about documenting the everyday. While it was originally designed to fit a photo-a-day, many Project Lifers do weekly or monthly spreads to document the entire year. I do weekly spreads and include a photo from each day of the little one's first year; however, my week numbers correspond to how many weeks old Little is, and not the week of the year.

For each of the little guys, I took a photo-a-day throughout their first year. I used Project Life for the first time to document Big's first year. Currently, I am using it to document Little's photo-a-day along with other little things that come up. I learned a few things when doing Big's album.

1. Stick to one set of page protectors. I use Design A for Little's album and I spend so much less time analyzing the photos and trying to decide which page protector will work best.

2. Use a Core Kit. It is easy to become trapped in an ever-developing, super stash of scrapbooking supplies. By sticking to ONE core kit, my color scheme is already picked out for me, and I already have different elements that match. It's as easy as sliding different elements into the pocket pages.

3. Set up your album in advance. This was a biggie and helped me keep up to date with Little's album for about six whole months until the holiday's hit. I took an album (I like the We R Memory Keepers ones), filled it with a stack full of Design A page protectors, and filled it with title cards from my Seafoam Core Kit. I pulled out all the title cards from the kit and shuffled them in an equal manner. Then I put each title card on a page for a week spread. This has helped so much because I spend less no time trying to match a title card to photos for a week. I use the title card as inspiration for the rest of the spread and just go with it.

4. Decide what is important for YOU. You are the scrapper here, you are the one documenting memories for your family, so you are in charge of what is important. For me, it is important that photos and journaling make it into my album. Embellishing is fun, but if it has to take a back seat to get things done, it does. I save decorating my title cards so I can do a bunch of them at once when I'm feeling extra creative or I'm caught up (or don't feel like editing) my photos. My theory is simple: If 30 years from now my boys are flipping through their albums, what are they going to miss? Will they miss if I didn't get around to putting some stickers, cut outs, or enamel dots on a title card? No. Will they miss if there are photos missing or my words aren't there to tell the story of the week, or the day, or the split moment? Yes, yes they will. So that is my focus.

Week 29 , Left Side

Week 29  , Right Side 

My style tends to be pretty simple. I like to use mostly Core Kit elements and will sometimes include a free printable card found from Pinterest (like the Family card) and add a few stickers. This spread even includes a QR code that links to a family video on our YouTube account. My philosophy is to keep it simple, and get it done.

Happy Birthday, Big!

Big is just a  little bit bigger today! I cannot believe that my itty bitty baby is already two years old. This year seemed to fly by and Big has been a super star throughout all of the changes the past year has brought to our family, like the addition of a whole new person.

To celebrate another great year, we had a party. I took Big to the dollar store and he found monkey cups and plates, pulled them down, and eek'ed and ooo'ed. That settled his theme. I made some banners and some toothpicks for some food using my Silhouette Cameo, and even made him a T.W.O shirt. We invited some of our favorite people and went bananas this weekend.

We kept food simple. I didn't necessarily intend to have a vegetarian menu, but things just worked out that way. The Spicy Black Bean Roll Ups are an adaptation of a recipe found here. We just subbed a can of refried beans for the chicken. 

Big turns two! 

Let's talk about cake. I made this cake here and it was absolutely delicious. I'm a "let's pick up cupcakes from the grocery store" kind of gal when it comes to birthday parties, so making his cake was a big deal for me. After a little bit of a mishap, I ended up making this cake THREE times. I made it once early in the week with great success, and then got a little too sure of myself and decided to skip some steps and baked a big soupy mess of a cake the night before his party. I literally finished his cake while people were still waking in the door to start celebrating. In the end, everything turned out fine and his cake was both delicious and adorable. I suggest using cream cheese icing. I melted a few chocolate chips to tint it brown and used the normal icing color for the inside of the monkey face. I made three cupcakes, two for the ears, and one for Big's special cake. I was pretty impressed with how well it turned out. 

All in all, it was so wonderful to be able to celebrate with Big and are family and friends. Even though I went crazy with decor and such, it was such a low-key, let's just hang out, type party. It was just our style and absolutely perfect. Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate with us! 

Preschool Goals: Revisited

Before the start of 2014, I spent a lot of time compiling Letter of the Day, Theme, and other preschool activities to start doing with Big three days a week. I had it all figured out. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we would sit down during Little's nap, sing our ABC's and count to 10 with a pretty little poster I made. Then we would do an activity surrounding a letter of the day. For the first day, we were suppose to color and glue five little apples to a cut-out "A" while singing some rhyme about apples falling off of a tree. After our letter of the day, we would do a themed activity. January's theme is winter and hibernation. Like I said, I spent a lot of time putting together activities. The first day's activity was playing with an ice cube in a bin while adding ice and warm water to see what it does. After the themed activity, we would have an awesome snack that was just cute enough to go along with our day. Day One's Snack: Sliced Apples and Peanut Butter.

Cute right! I spent so much time creating lesson plans. I am an educator; I know how things work. However, I am an adult educator and I realized quickly my mistake in planning Big's curriculum: He. Is. Two. He is basically in charge of his own life right now and very into being independent. After I found on that first day of home school preschool that I don't want to spend my day cutting out apples, I realized Big was just as happy to color one apple out of an alphabet coloring book I found for $2. I tried to switch gears and move on to our themed activity, but guess what, Big still wanted to color. Like I said, he's the boss and am I really going to fault the kid for wanting to color? No. Then the baby cried, and I had to nurse him. Mr. M had a fun time playing with an ice cube with Big, but I was lucky that he happened to be home from work and able to help facilitate my unrealistic preschool goals.

After that day, I realized that if I could just sing the ABC's, count to 10, and let Big color one of his alphabet pages for the day three times a week, we are winning at home school.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that he is two. Coloring a page, practicing pronouncing the sounds, and trying not to eat ALL the crayons is my new goal for him. And he's excelling. I predict all A's for Big this semester.

Coloring a banana while eating a banana: Now that takes skill!

Meal Prep: Whole Foods Style

Over a year ago, Mr. decided he wanted to try a vegan diet after reading about plant based athletes on The No Meat Athlete. I already didn't eat red meat or pork and was limiting dairy but was in no way ready to go vegan. He tried it for a week while he was away for work and came back deciding to adopt a vegetarian diet. This was a way easier adaptation of our current diets.

That being said, we decided to make a more conscious effort to incorporate more whole foods into our vegetarian diets while planning ahead. I found great, weekly meal plans on Whole Foods Market's website and stayed busy compiling them into documents, adding shopping lists, and adapting some recipes. Sundays are our shopping and meal prep days. So far, this has been working for us, and hopefully it is something we can keep going throughout 2014. 

You can find this weeks meal plan here. 

Sundays we pour a drink, watch some trashy TV (Hello, Juan Pablo!) and get to chopping. We split up different meals so we each have a few things we are working on. Sometimes whole meals are prepped in advance (like this week's sloppy janes that we made with tofu instead of turkey) and sometimes we just prep the veggies (like chopping the red pepper and garlic for the collard wraps and carrot, green pepper, and eggplant for the pasta sauce this week). 

Hello, Juan Pablo!

Sometimes we get a lot done, and sometimes we don't, but either way, we are spending time together and working towards our goal of feeding our family healthy dinners. I hope with time, our system will evolve and we will have quicker methods that will make meal prep even easier for us. 

Ain't No Party Like a Mouse House Party!

Big is about to turn the big T.W.O. and I am so excited about his party this year. Who am I kidding, I am excited to throw a party any year, but it is so exciting that Big actually "gets" it this year and is excited about helping pick things out. I was thinking about a monkey theme since he is an expert at making monkey noises complete with arm motions and everything. I took him to the store one day where he found monkey cups and began making EEEK EEKK OOO OOO noises in the middle of the store isle. That settled it. Monkey party it was.
I made up some quick invitations with a monkey clip art I found on Google Images and a rhyme I made up inspired by Big's adorable monkey sounds. It's not unusual for me to make invites and I love to let Big personalize them in some way. I usually let him color on the envelopes in his adorable, little kid scribble but I had an "I'm a genius and this should be on Pinterest it's so awesome" idea.

So, I present to you my "I'm a genius" Invitation Idea. It is so simple, I am surprised I haven't seen it anywhere before.

I went to Google Image search and looked up "Monkey Coloring Pages" and found this cute little guy:

I found this guy here.

I opened up a Word Document, went to Page Layout, and changed my size to a 4x6 page. I also changed the orientation to Landscape. With these settings, I now had a page that was the size of my invitation envelopes. I imported the coloring page, re-sized it to fit, added a text box, and typed in the names and addresses of my party people using a cute font. 

Font: Smiley Monster

I printed out each envelope as I finished. My Canon MP560 made it easy for me to re-size the paper to a 4x6 setting since I also use it to print pictures, but most printers have an envelope setting. 

After I printed all of the addresses, I picked out a few, carefully selected crayons to give to Big. I didn't want him using anything too dark, so orange, yellow, tan, and green were perfect choices. 

Big had a great time coloring the pages and making monkey sounds while doing it! I love that he was able to add his own personal touch to the invites we will be sending out. 

Genius, I know. 

Happy 2014!

With a new year, comes a new beginning for our little Mouse house. Mr. M and I have been toying around the idea of starting a family blog to document the things we do with our family. We have a lot of fun things planned for 2014 and we are excited to document our life with our new blog.

I will be documenting our lives for a third year with Project Life by Becky Higgings and I'm excited to have a outlet where I can share my pages and my process with others. Mr. M is training for his first Half Iron Man in June and helping me train for my first Half Marathon in November all while continuing to find and cook healthy, vegetarian meals for our No Meat Athlete family.

Our little guys have a lot going on too! Big will be turning two this month and we will be attempting to start preschool at home. As a college English instructor, nothing scares me more than trying to teach a toddler. It should be interesting to say the least. Little just turned 8 months (what!?) and is enjoying living out his babyhood by learning and discovering new things and trying to avoid the wrath of his older brother in any way possible.

Overall, our family is excited to welcome 2014. Bring it on.