Resolve

Disclosure: This is potentially incredibly boring.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I decided that I need more structure in my life. I am free to do whatever I want each day which usually ends up with me wondering what exactly happened with all of the time. I do one or two scheduled tasks and then suddenly it's time to make dinner. It doesn't take all day every day to do one or two things--really. So...

The things that usually hold me up? 

Blogs

and

Planning 

I read a few blogs, ok, maybe a lot. Some are about crafts, a lot are about families, food, and meal planning.

I'm constantly searching for ways to get food on the table each night and save money on groceries.These experienced mamas say that one of the first steps to meal planning  is creating a list of the top 15 or 20 recipes your family likes to eat.  So therein lies my problem. I've been married for almost 3 years and don't have 15 reliable recipes to draw from. 

Peter and I are no longer students--well, Peter still is, but that's a totally different story!

Because we were busy students and only 2 people, Peter and I tended to eat like college students. I cooked once, sometimes twice a week, and then we had leftovers, cereal, and sandwiches until I cooked again. While in school, I assured myself that as soon as school was over, I'd be the perfect housewife: we would always have dinner, our house would be sparkling, and I'd make cookies for neighbors and friends pretty much every week. Obviously, this isn't so. There's not really a good reason as to why this little dream of mine can't be a reality.

My problem with meal planning is that I usually end up with rotting meat or produce in my fridge that was used once and then forgotten--but not really forgotten, I probably just didn't have any other ideas as to how to use the stuff. Because we are only two people, I can't really cook every night without expecting some things to go bad.

But no more excuses.

This is my public proclamation of resolve. I've read enough recipes and tips that I should be capable of actually accomplishing something worthwhile in the kitchen. Now it's time to put those things into action and start developing my own list of delicious and easy meals. One day, hopefully in the not so distant future, I will be able to plan my meals so that they coordinate with each other and actually use those random ingredients.

Goodbye blogs; you will be missed.

Plan of action:
Don't go online
Make meals

Haha, that's all I've got so far. I figure that if I stay away from the blogs, I won't get lost in them as I usually do. And hopefully that will leave me more time to actually work on making meals--not thinking about or planning them, but actually doing them.

We'll see how it turns out.

My Handy Man

So a couple of weeks ago I had an incident with my oven that made it clear that our pans needed a permanent home, FAST!

Upon moving into this apartment, I quickly realized that our cabinets are pretty much useless.

I cannot fit my 12" pan inside of any of the drawers or cabinets--except under the sink--in any way or form. (The smaller pans didn't fit too well either and I really like keeping similar things together.) So the temporary solution was to keep them inside of the oven. Bad choice, I know. I realized the risks in doing this, but I hated having all the pans on the counter, and there really was no where to put them.

We ordered a hanging pot rack. This one to be exact. It was nice, but there's a firewall in the ceiling above our kitchen. Also, the studs are un-cooperatively placed and, therefore, the hanging pot rack was a no-go.

I was generally pretty good about remembering to take the pans out of the oven before I started preheating it, but it only takes once to make a catastrophe. 

One night Peter called and asked me to start pre-heating the oven in 20 minutes for the Costco pizza he was bringing home. He reminded me to take the pans out before I turned the oven on. So I had 20 minutes to go and get the mail, read through it, and generally tidy up before turning on the oven.

I turned on the oven and went back to reading the mail.

Just so you know, Peter and I are fine, and Nothing was damaged.

Also, as a means of protecting the teflon, we lined our pans--which were nestled--with drawer/cabinet/shelf liner when we weren't using them. Genius, unless you keep the pans in the oven where it potentially could get hot: like say if you started pre-heating the oven with them in there!

Anyway, to sum up this rather long story (sorry) I noticed after probably 10 minutes that something smelled funny, realized that it was the pans, turned off the oven, took out the pans, and proceeded to wave baking sheets at the smoke alarm to keep it from beeping until Peter arrived home at which time he started doing the same thing.

We now have a pot rack that hangs on the wall, thanks to my handy husband, Peter!

We used peg board which has to stick out from the wall in order to get the pegs in. So we glued on some wood.

Peter, figuring out all the specifics of how it goes together

We screwed the back board into the wall--thankfully there was a stud close to where we wanted to hang it!

It's hard manually pushing a screw into a stud, so I helped!

Then the cover board was screwed into the wood pieces on the sides.

We added some molding and hooks and now have a place for our pans!!!

Peter thinks that one day I'll laugh about this whole experience.

That day hasn't arrived quite yet.

Grades are IN!

So, only one pre-Christmas and After Thanksgiving post to say that the grades are in and I've GRADUATED!!!

SCREENSHOT!

There's lots of white space after the grades, but yay!!!!
I improved my GPA by .01!!!
I'm graduating Magna cum Laude!
YAY!!!

So, as far as my baking desires and plans, all is being fullfilled.
Mom and I are mking oreo and cake balls, some coconut chocolate bars, various cookies, apple and pumpkin pie, and who knows what else.
It's going to be great!

So until Christmas, have  great time preparing for Christmas!