2012 One Word Goal

I guess I missed the boat on doing a big 2011 year in review and what I learned, blah blah blah. I found the idea for "2012 One Word Goal" here.  I love the idea of picking one word that encompasses your goals for the new year. The blogger describes the goal as:

"not with things that we’ll end up forgetting.
But real things. That you can really accomplish.
And I promise you’ll feel amazingly inspired by it!"

                                            

The word I picked is

Nourish encompasses everything I want to accomplish in 2012:


Nourish my body:
We have a tendency to eat out a lot and that obviously isn't the best fuel for any of our bodies. I've committed to cooking 6 out of 7 nights of the week in order to nourish my family's bodies with healthy food. Also trying to be healthy by working out consistently.


Nourish relationships:
I learned the hard way the effects of quantity versus quality with a few relationships last year. This year I'm making it a priority to nourish the quality relationships that I have been blessed with and see people through my own lenses versus letting others tint how I view people.


Nourish my spiritual life:
Spiritually my life has been dry in the past few months, I'm trying to reignite the flame by reading the bible daily. It's something I have always want to do, but have never made the effort until now.


Nourish my mind: 
I've toyed with the idea of going back to school for a few years and finally took the first steps this week by applying to the local community college. I'm not sure where I want to end up, but for now want to get my general ed completed. I'm excited at the future with this.


I really like the idea of picking one word vs many goals that end up becoming frustrating and thrown aside which in turn makes us feel like failures. Although it's 31 days in, I'm looking forward to what 2012 brings.

New Recipe: Crockpot Buffalo Chicken

One of our resolutions is to eat dinner at home more often so I'm making it a priority to try new recipes, which I will share here.  If you follow me on Pinterest, you might also see the recipes there as well.

Crockpot Buffalo Chicken is seriously one of the easiest recipes I have ever made, so wonderful and convenient to throw together in the morning on a day that you know will be busy. It definitely will be perfect when baseball starts up again and there is just no time to cook a meal on practice or game nights.

Details:

• 3lb bag of frozen chicken breasts
• 1 bottle Original Frank's Buffalo Sauce
• 1 packet Ranch Dip Mix
• 2 TBSP Butter

1. Put frozen chicken, wing sauce and ranch dip mix into crockpot
2. Cook on low at least 6-7 hours
3. Using two forks, shred chicken and return to crockpot
4. Add butter
5. Cook on low an additional hour (I set a timer for 1hr before the meal would be done and did steps 3-5)

What I loved about it: 
- You put the chicken in frozen.  FROZEN! How fabulous is that?
- The chicken shreds so easily - I seriously hate shredding chicken, but this came apart simply by touching it.
- The chicken was moist and flavorful
- It makes a ton of chicken which is great for leftovers. We had it as a protein for a salad, but it would be great with rice, in taquitos, in a sandwich, I really think the possibilities are endless on this one.

What would I change:
- I think it could have been spicier. The original post talks about using the buffalo wing sauce instead of original Franks and I think I might that next time.

New Polish

We were at Valley Fair the week after Christmas to redeem a box Andrew could fill for free at the Lego store, and I needed some make up so we also swung by Sephora. The line was incredibly long, but they have the adult "candy" for you to browse while waiting (you know how grocery stores have all the cheap impulse buys right at checkout? Sephora has that for adults with little make up doodads, perfume, etc). Near the register was a bin of SEPHORA by OPI nail polishes that looked to be the holiday line, but really could work any time of the year. My eye was caught by a gorgeous copper with medium and chunky glitter and it was only $5! Definitely a steal.  

Finally got around to using it on Sunday, while it's gorgeous on it's own, I decided to layer it over a teal polish and it looked awesome! 

If you are interested, the $5 sale is also on their website, this color is called Don't Be Eggnog-ious.

Weekend

This past weekend was again amazingly gorgeous. I don't remember a January every being this beautiful, each day hits between 65-70 with bright blue skies. We went for another walk along West Cliff and Andrew decided to ride his bike. So fun (and somewhat sad) to see how quickly he is growing up and to think that just this summer he still had training wheels. The time goes by so fast!

Olden Days

Sunday Andrew went to church with his Gram and Gramps as a special treat and after they took him to lunch and a little farmers market type thing downtown.  While browsing the tables they came across a man selling old school marbles. These things are legit glass and beautiful. It was fun to see Andrew slow down and play games like kids "from the olden days" (as he said). 

Making Slime

I absolutely love Pinterest and have found so many cool things and ideas on that site. I was browsing it this morning and saw a link on how to make slime and thought what a great thing to try with Andrew once he got out of school!

One thing I wasn't crazy about with the link was that the recipe was at the bottom, so I'm going to give it to you up front (if you decide not to look at our pics, it's your loss ;).

We learned a few lessons from mistakes, and those are included at the end.

Homemade Slime aka GAK

1 teaspoon borax powder

1 1/2 C water, divided

4 oz (1/2 C)  Elmer’s glue, clear or white

food coloring

Add borax powder to 1 cup of water and stir to dissolve.  Set aside.  Pour glue into a medium mixing bowl and add 1/2 C water. Add a few drops of food coloring until desired color is reached and then stir to mix glue solution until smooth.  Pour the borax mixture into the glue mixture and watch the solids start to form.  Stir for a few moments and then use your hands to gather the mass.  The mixture will be very soft and wet.  Keep kneading until it firms up and feels dry.  Discard excess liquid in bowl. The more you knead and play with the slime the firmer it will become.  Store in a ziplock bag or air tight container and the slime will keep indefinitely.

patiently waiting for mom to get the camera ready

ingredients (plus water which isn't shown)

take a cup of water

add a teaspoon of borax and mix until it dissolves

in a separate bowl add 4oz of glue (you can use clear or white)

add half a cup of water

and food coloring

mix until smooth

add in the borax solution

if you did everything right, you'll immediately see the solid matter starting to collect

he actually wanted in a picture!

using your hands, gather all the goopy, icky slime and start kneading it 

(he is literally saying "eeeewwww!")

it is pretty nasty!

remove all the goop from the water

and keep kneading it until it dries up some and doesn't stick so badly to your hands

once you have it out, you can toss the leftover water

so stretchy!

definitely a fun and quick activity to do with your child!

What we learned:

1. Read carefully - I had read online that 4oz is 1/4 cup and proceeded to use that measurement for our glue. Truth is, the bottle of glue is 4oz. We didn't discover that until after making our first batch which didn't work.

2. Have extra glue on hand - Just in case you mess up.

3. Do NOT use the gel food colors - for the first try we put the gel right in and it didn't "take" at all combined with the extra water to glue ratio. Once I realized where we went wrong I halved the water and also mixed the food coloring in water separately to create a liquid food coloring. The color wasn't nearly as bright, but did work somewhat.

4. Have paper towels near by, it's messy, but worth it!

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year!  The weather has been insanely gorgeous the past couple weeks, so we decided to go for a nice walk along West Cliff drive on New Year's Day. It was close to 70 degrees out and clear blue sky, doesn't get much better than that.

Andrew being a boy

The family

"pick me up mom!"

Andrew under the surfer statue

Collage of pics from the day

We live in such an amazing place!