Goals: January 2016

Yesterday, I shared my goals for the entire year of 2016. Today, I'm here to share my goals for January. I want to be intentional about everything, and focusing on getting things done and making myself a better person is a great start.

Here goes...

1. Get the house back in order. 

We traveled a lot over the holidays, and I REALLY need to get decorations taken down and put away and give the entire house a nice cleaning. It's tough to find time, but I'll try to do it while Annabelle naps each day.

2. Run one mile without walking. 

Okay, so I ran a marathon in 2014. Then I injured my leg... and then I was pregnant and couldn't run because my heart rate would skyrocket every time I tried... so here I am, four months post-partum, and I'm running again. But I'm also walking a lot. And to reach some of my bigger running goals this year, I need to start small and simple.

3. Read one book.

This one is also small... but only because the book I have chosen is REALLY long. Well, it's over 500 pages... but it's for book club, and I've been so excited to finally read it. (All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr). Book club meets on January 26th, so I'll start another book by the end of the month. Maybe I can read two next month.

4. Type 30 recipes for my cookbook.

Since one of my big goals for the year is to completely finish my personal cookbook (with room to add to as I find recipes we love, of course), I need to really get ball rolling with getting recipes typed up. I have a giant basket with random recipes printed off from the Internet... so I will start there.

5. Complete one of my 30 Before 30 tasks.

I have already completed most of the "small" and "easy" tasks... so now I need to get my butt in gear and really start accomplishing some of these. I'm not sure which I'll do this month, but I do have an idea.

• What do you think? Are my goals reasonable?
• What do you hope to accomplish this month?

    

A Month of Freezer Meals

In order to prepare for our baby girl's arrival, Dan and I decided to make a bunch of food and freeze it. We have no idea what our days will be like once Baby Cookie is here, and we want to be prepared so we don't grab fast food every night.

To do so, I compiled a list of recipes that we already enjoy (and a couple new ones for fun), typed them all out, made a giant shopping list, and we got started! *You can find a free PDF download at the end of this post, which includes the meal plan, all of the recipes, and a shopping list!

We ended up making 15 recipes, and we doubled each one so that we will get a full month out of them! It's just the two of us eating, though, so if you are feeding more people, you'll only get half a month out of these recipes unless you make more of each one!

In total, we went to three grocery stores (Sam's Club, Aldi's, and Kroger) and spent a total of $110. Not bad for a whole month's worth of dinner, right? Keep in mind that we already had most of the basics, like spices and most sauces.

Some of these recipes were SUPER easy to prep - literally just gathering the ingredients and dumping them in a gallon sized Ziploc bag. Those are the recipes that will simply be thawed and placed in a crock pot to cook. The ones we put in foil baking dishes we had to cook ahead of time, which definitely took more time (but will be well worth it later!). If you only have a little time, you could make the freezer bag meals one day and the foil pan meals another time.

Here's a list of what we made -

HELPFUL TIPS

• For bagged / crock pot meals: I highly recommend writing the meal name and cooking instructions on the bag in Sharpie BEFORE putting the ingredients inside. Also, lay the bags flat in the freezer so they will take up less space when frozen and be easier to grab later.

• For foil dish meals: Use a Sharpie to label each meal on top, AND write the cooking instructions so you remember what to set the oven to and how long to cook it for. On some of mine, I even wrote suggestions (like serve with garlic toast, etc.) We let ours partially cool before stacking them in our chest freezer.

• To make these meals vegetarian, simply replace the meat with other veggies or your favorite brand of mock meat products, and of course replace the broth with vegetable broth!

To download the free meal plan, recipes, and shopping list, CLICK HERE to get it from my Dropbox!

Do you make freezer meals?
What are your go-to easy recipes?
Did you stockpile dinners before your baby was born?

    

Making a Cookbook

Once upon a time, I wanted to make a recipe book. It was my senior year of college, and I tried. I really did. I used a plain white binder, Microsoft Word, and my cheap printer, which printed black as gray and really light colors.

That was in 2010.

Now, I REALLY want to make a nice one. I have so much on my plate right now with the end of the school year wrapping up, though. I am making the yearbook for my 8th graders and a big slide show (plus 30 copies on DVD) to be played at their ceremony. OH - and my wedding is a week after school gets out, so I'm crazy busy doing last minute planning for that too. I probably shouldn't even be spending time blogging. Oops.

That said, I have BIG PLANS for making this recipe book once we move to Ohio after our honeymoon and get unpacked. It may be mid-August before I actually get to begin, but I'm excited. I am planning what I want it to look like right now since I can't find any I LOVE on Etsy. I want a fabric covered binder with lots of categories inside with BIG tabs that make it easy to find what I want. I want to create a template for my recipes to be typed into so they are uniform. Maybe I'll even sell my creation in my Etsy shop if I like the finished product enough!

For now, though, I'll have to just daydream abut this recipe binder and continue organizing my recipes when I have a spare minute here and there.

• Have you ever made a recipe book?
• How did you do it?
• Or do you just keep your recipes stored on the computer?