Bringing Back the Blog

Yesterday as I was baking fresh bread and munching on homemade tortillas, I realized that I missed the blog-o-sphere.

If you notice, my last entry was November... right before the holidays! No one told me that being Santa Claus was so time consuming!!! :)

I am planning 1x/month entries because, well, time is precious and I don't know how those amazing daily blogging mamas do it! Clearly, they are not sleeping :)

#3 of 15: Easy Peasy Calzones

My hubby was hesitant when I told him I was making Calzones because for some reason despite how simple pizza may sound, every homemade pizza I have ever tried has ended in disaster. Serious disasters... barely edible, under cooked, burnt, disgusting, etc... and thus I have vowed to stick with delivery... or Digiorno. :-)

Luckily, my pizza curse does not apply to calzones and they turned out great. Not gourmet or anything, but an inexpensive, easy to throw together dinner that makes us both happy.

The under $1.50/serving recipe for calzones can be found here

I used Pillsbury pizza dough in the refrigerated section instead of frozen pizza dough. Less thaw time and delicious. I also cut the recipe in half and used pizza sauce for dipping.

We used Don Pepino's sauce - so yummy:



So far... how longs has it been? Two months? I have managed to try 3 recipes... I better pick up the pace if I want to reach 15 by end of the year!!!

Meal #2 of 15

For my second meal under $1.50, I tried "Almost Lasagna" this week and sadly it will not make it into rotation. I'm not looking for gourmet food from the Disney website, but this one was just a little too bland.


I like the idea of a pasta casserole that reminds you of lasagna but without all the special attention to the noodles. Something similar but with a little Italian sausage mixed in there would probably be great.

Meal Planning

Trying to keep it classy, I Googled "cheap family meals" and was excited to see that on the Disney Family website, there was a list of 15 recipes with calculations per serving already done for me! (less than $1.50/serving)

I plan to try all 15 and decide which I'll repeat and which ones I'll recycle (WMZQ reference, anyone?) Here is the link: Dinners under $1.50/serving

For my first kitchen adventure, today I made Creamy Chicken Primavera. The only ingredients I had to pick up from the grocery store were Italian Dressing, fat free cream cheese and frozen vegetables. I buy meat and pasta in bulk so I had plenty chicken and Rotini on hand.

I used Newman's Own Family Recipe Italian Dressing and 1/3 fat Philadelphia cream cheese. Newman's is my fav salad dressing brand by far.

The verdict is in and I deem it acceptable for repeat :) However, it's very rich so it's not going to be a weekly menu item. My hubby was full and happy after dinner, a sign of success. My baby spit it out immediately, just like he spits out all types of pasta, meat, and anything with sauce. And that is why he eats yogurt or cheese sandwiches for dinner.

Look at that, I finished another blog post! 2 in a row, I'm on a roll!!!

Change of Seasons

Tropical Storm Lee has brought many rainy days and the sun is setting earlier, so I am making less trips to the park and less trips out of the house in general this week. I even have time to blog again!

Life has been good since moving into our new home, but I hardly found time to do anything between summer get togethers, diapers, laundry, cooking & cleaning! I am living the 1950s dream... except with Facebook, a PS3, Netflix, & an iPhone to keep myself entertained.

I never got around to making my baby's birthday monster hat that I wrote about in my last entry... but luckily my cousin bought him the cutest little crown and outfit to match:





I guess I don't have time to do-it-all-myself... but I am still trying to do what I can! I didn't even make his cake because I was sick all week and didn't want to spread the germs. No one likes a summertime cold. Still, everyone enjoyed the Wegman's cake, including the birthday boy!

Birthday Monsters

I had almost forgotten about blogging with the move and waking up every two hours at night as my 10-month old's sleeping habits regressed :( But I'm back!! We are settled in to our home and have let the little man "cry it out." For the first time since before pregnancy, I am getting a FULL nights sleep! Yippy! This is seriously worth celebrating, seriously. But rather than celebrating sleep, we will soon be celebrating someone's 1st birthday.

I have picked out a theme inspired by my son's cute PJ's (as seen here from Kohls) - Monsters.

My first project will be making the perfect monster birthday hat. And then pray that I can get my little monster to keep it on his head long enough to take at least 1 good picture ;)

Inspirations that I found on-line:

The goal is bright, ridiculous, silly, and including a monster theme. I think googly eyes are in order.

...and a few updates since I have been gone a while -

1) Our radon test came back under 2 :)
2) I have kept up with the cloth diapers and added some prefolds into rotation
3) I am still going off my first batch of laundry detergent and I like it
4) Hubby is working on a DIY project (rebuilding the wooden steps to our front door) that I should totally be blogging about