My Journey to Become an Awesome Mom
Blogs about my daily life, including but not limited to; cooking, menu planning, house cleaning, family life, church, crafting, and pretty much whatever I want to share! Hopefully you will find something to make your life a little easier :)
Thursday, January 7, 2016
emails will be the death of me
This brings me to my next thought...
I have started the 40 bags in 40 days challenge! Basically its to get rid of crap you don't need in your house by donating it or throwing it away and organizing your house. I am on day 3. The first day I cleared my dresser and got a bag of trash and a bag of donations. The second day I got 2 bags of donations and a bag of trash from just going through some laundry baskets we had laying around my room. Today I have already purged my email (yes, that counts!) and I will also finish picking up the floor in my room. So far I have even had help from the kids! Z and K both have loved helping me, so far lol. Z is also (almost) potty trained! YAY! Now if we can just get her to #2 in the potty that would be great. Anyway, I need to go get something done. Peace out.
J
Friday, November 20, 2015
Blackberry Banana Bread!!
Thursday, November 12, 2015
A handful of peaceful moments
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Knee Deep In Chicken....
I was kind of dreading the pickup since I had never done it before. I had ordered a 40lb box of boneless skinless chicken breasts at $1.89lb. I wasn't sure how the pickup worked. Would I have to carry a 40lb box of raw chicken back to my car? Plus, I had a car full of little kiddos and grandma. Our pickup was between 2 and 2:30...if you were late, well, your chicken would probably be donated. I put the address in my gps. It was only about 20 minutes away so that's not that bad. To keep prices low Zaycon invites churches or other businesses to be a pickup location. I pull into the church parking lot and right away I see the Zaycon truck and a line of cars. To my surprise, I don't even have to get out of the car! I waited in the car line. When it was my turn I told the guy my last name and he got a box of chicken out of the truck. He put it in my car. Yay! He even laid a piece of plastic down before placing the chicken down. It was awesome! I thought I would be in a long line of people waiting forever but I was done in 5 minutes!
The chicken comes packaged in 4 bags. First, I took about 15-20lbs of chicken put them in two pots with onion, garlic, carrots, and celery and covered it with water. I put them on to boil. (Side note, these are some of the biggest chicken breast I have ever seen before!)
They had hardly any fat on them. They were very well trimmed which made it a lot easier on me. I trimmed the remaining fat and my mom wrapped them in paper and plastic wrap. We didn't weigh them but I guess that each breast was 1-1.5lbs each. We wrapped them individually because one would make a meal for our families. I did cut a couple of them into chunks. After we got all the raw chicken packaged and in the freezer I checked on the boiling chicken. I pulled the chicken out and put it in a bowl. Then I used the hand mixer to shred it. (It sounds weird but it really works!)
We put the shredded chicken into labeled baggies and into the freezer.
We used a slotted spoon to get the vegetables out of the stock. I put some cheese cloth over a strainer and poured the stock through it. While I waited for it to cool I set the containers out. I found these 16oz food storage containers on Amazon $13.95 for 36. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M9Z4SXY?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00 Great deal! My mom ladled the stock into each cup slowly. We got 19 16oz containers and 1 32oz!! Happy dance!
It took about 3hrs to do all this. I was very lucky to have my sister helping to watch the 3 kiddos :) My mom and I will split everything and end up with roughly 20lbs of chicken and 1.5 gallons of chicken stock each!
I loved my experience with Zaycon!! I haven't tasted the chicken yet but it looked like great quality chicken. I have already ordered my 40lbs of 80/20 ground beef! I definitely recommend Zaycon so give them a try! Here is my referral link... zayconfresh.com/refer/zf63553
Thanks for reading! :)
Jessica
Friday, November 6, 2015
Redoing a laundry closet on a budget! Step 1
Please ignore the crooked frames lol |
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Yay for preschool!
A couple days a week I get a short break from my oldest kiddos who both go to preschool. Its always hard to decide if I will spend the time relaxing or catching up on chores. Today I decided to do a little of both ;) T is usually a very laid back happy baby so he didn't mind running to Walmart to grab some cake supplies for all the up coming birthdays. I've already been on Pinterest (haha) and decided to make a peppa pig cake using marshmallow fondant for Z and a kit kat cake with a ninja turtle action figure on it for K. Pinterest always makes things look so easy so I hope it really is. Lol.
Since I was already at Walmart I decided to check out the toy isles. My daughter just loves peppa pig, as you know, and I wanted to see what toys they had. To my surprise, Walmart had no Peppa Pig toys!! What?! I thought this was a popular show?! Why are there no toys? I don't get it. Luckily I ordered her a few things already. I just hope they get here for her party.
The Lego table is coming along. My neighbors were nice enough to cut the hole for the basket and sand the top of it. I am so grateful for them! Once I get it back today I want to spray on the primer. I also decided to do another project. The kids have a train table that has seen better days, in fact, the leg is about to fall off. Lol. I'm going to prime and paint the frame blue like the Lego table and the top with chalkboard paint! I think the kids will enjoy drawing their own roads. My husband ended up buying a new piece of ply wood for the top.