menu plan monday: 23|05 to 29|05

Today finds me one day before my due date and still no baby. Looks like this one wants to bake, which is perfectly fine. I believe babies come when they are ready. I was expecting this one to be a week early like my son was but apparently not.

We've spent the weekend and this Victoria Day Monday working like crazy to get the house cleaned up and my boxes put away. We've done well and thrown out a entire pickup truck load of stuff too. There is still a bit to do - finishing up the dining room table, mopping the upstairs bathroom, and thoroughly cleaning the downstairs laundry/bathroom but in the grand scheme of things, those last jobs are all that remain of the iceberg. They will be the project for tomorrow.

Menu Plan Monday rolls around each week and it's that time again. I did well sticking to last week's meals. I have no idea if a birth will play into this week's plan or not but we'll make adjustments as needed if needed. For now, the week's meals look like this:

Monday: Lentil Burritos, Caesar salad

Tuesday: Macaroni and Cheese

Wednesday: Tortellini Primavera

Thursday: Creamed Peas on Toast

Friday: Pizza Braid, Caesar salad

Saturday: The Best Whole Chicken in a Crockpot, garlic bread

Sunday: Garlic Lime Chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, roasted brussels sprouts

I've posted my menu plan over at Orgjunkie. Check out Laura's blog and the Menu Plan Monday links for hundreds of other meal ideas and recipes.

FOM'd

As the week marches on towards my due date next Tuesday and as I was sitting in front of the shredder with a box full of papers and waiting on the shredder to cool down enough to be run again, the parcel delivery guy pulled up in front of the house. I'm expecting a woven wrap (for babywearing) to arrive as well as a couple of other things so I met him at the door. He handed me a small box and though one of the items I'm expecting (empty pill capsules) will be fairly small, this did not look like it had shipped from across the border. I brought the box in, opened it up, read the first line of the enclosed note, and started to get tears welling up.

I belong to an amazing message board (Diaper Sewing Divas, linked in the sidebar) full of amazing women. One of the things that these women regularly do is send out small but meaningful gifts as a random act of kindness. We call it being FOM'd, in which FOM stands for Fairy Odd Mother. A few days ago, I had replied to a message in the Buy/Sell/Trade forum in regards to a couple of Snappis being offered free for shipping. Enclosed in this box was indeed a Snappi but also included were several diapers and a diaper cover.

Clockwise from the top is a bamboo velour pre-fold, a Katrina diaper cover with PUL body and fleece bands, the Snappi, a Pea Pods fitted diaper, a Hippy Hippy Snap fitted (I've been wanting to make one as I've heard they're very trim), and a prefold-turned-fitted diaper. I can't wait to use these on the Bean!

menu plan monday: 16|05 to 22|05

It's been about two months since I last posted and the blog has a new look. I'd like to think that it will help me pay more attention to it, neglected as it has been, but I don't know that it will. I'm going to try. I do miss blogging, however I haven't been taking very many pictures or doing very many projects of late.

At the moment, I'm one week away from my due date with this Belly Bean. I moved in with my boyfriend in mid-March and just the other day I signed the papers to sell my house, which has a closing date in mid-July. Most of my stuff and furniture will go into storage as it's going to be hard to cram a whole house worth of things into his house, which is already fully furnished and full of his things. We will be looking for yet another house in the very near future though as with the baby, my son, and my step-daughter, we are a bedroom short. For the time being, Bean will have to sleep in a bassinette in the corner of our bedroom, which is not something I want to do longterm. This week, as we wait for Bean to make an appearance, we are scrambling to get the house into some sort of order so that we can have a homebirth. There are numerous areas that need to be unpacked and cleaned in order for both of us to feel comfortable having extra people (ie: the midwife, family, etc) in the house.

One of the things that we need to get back into in order to simply things, including simplifying this week, is to get into meal planning again. I've been saying it in each of the past few sporadic posts and it only gets more and more true. It should be no surprise by now that this post, the first after another long absence, is one for Menu Plan Monday. 

Monday: tacos (using tortillas)
Tuesday: chicken and rice in the rice cooker, corn on the cob
Wednesday: Potato and Ham Soup (with carrots and corn added), crusty bread
Thursday: Bruschetta Chicken, brown rice, green beans
Friday: Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Pancakes, fruit salad
Saturday: Breaded Dijon Porkchops, mashed potatoes, carrots
Sunday:  Saucy Crockpot Chicken with Beans and Rice

Menu Plan Monday is hosted each week by Laura over at I'm an Organizing Junkie. Head over to add your own blog link or just to check out the hundreds of meal plans provided this week by other bloggers.