Monday, April 9, 2012

Vegetarian eye candy

My favorite fruit and nut salad

 Kale chips


Quinoa Patties 


Kale chips recipe:

Step 1.Rinse your kale.


Step 2  Cut the leaf part off the spine.

Step 3 Cut it into bite size pieces and place onto a cookie sheet.

Step 4 Spray with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic and salt or whatever spices you like. Be creative.

Step 5  Bake in  the oven at 300 degrees for about 20-25 minutes. You'll feel the edges becoming crispy.you don't want it to brown and burn. Kale cooks best at a low temp for a long time.


Step 6  Eat the whole pan. It's only like 50 calories. The only calories are from the oil. I use my Misto to reduce the amount of oil I use.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Queen of my castle.




So here's the thing. As a wife and mom I'm supposed to be the manager of my home.My idea of a home is a place of relaxation for my husband to come home to. There should be a certain peace about it. A feeling of comfort. A place where we can all feel happy and healthy. You get the picture. But here's the thing. My house has been nothing but that lately. My husband comes home to a messy house, cranky kids and a miserable wife. The man works two jobs and he comes home to me yelling about how I can't do this by my self. I don't like it and I'm sure that he doesn't much enjoy my ranting either. This whole time I've been thinking it's because my kids are all young and we're so busy with school and church stuff. I pretty much was making excuses for myself. I'm missing something. There's something that I was doing wrong. Then a couple weeks ago while I was on a long run, it was clear to me. The title "Manager" was the key. Managers don't do everything all by themselves. They create a way for everyone to take a piece of the job that needs to be done and they all work together till it's done. So when I got home I got to work. I revamped my schedule that I put together way back in September and realized that it was not the schedule that I've been following. You see the thing about a schedule is it's useless if your not following it. So here I've realized my second problem. It's "Consistency". I need to stick to this new schedule. Because let's face it, my life is crazy without it. I also realized that my kids current chore lists were not working either for that same reason. They have also gotten older since I made them and they need to be redone. So I searched around on Pinterest and online for chore chart ideas and nothing was exactly what I was looking for. Only 2 of my 4 children can read so I needed something with pictures for them to follow. I used "chorebusters" for a while before and I really loved the pictures and on the back of the card it had step by step instructions on how to complete the chore. BUT, I didn't like putting the five cards in there individual slots every morning. Which worked out to be 20 cards every morning because I have four kids. So this is what I came up with in the end.



This is my oldest sons chart 


These are the 3 younger kids chores.Try to ignore the typo on this first one.
 They have morning chores to be done before breakfast and evening chores that are done after dinner.

The morning chore list also includes 2 chores to be picked out of the chore can by each child.





 This is my chore can made complete with a "Happy Heart".

So I've done all the leg work and the system is working great so far. Now for the hard part keeping it in place. Any ideas??