New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year's Eve! So it is the time of year to make resolutions that will generally be broken not long into the new year and I will admit that I'm guilty of doing it. However I have already gotten a jump start of sorts on my resolution which is to eat healthier and to keep the costs down. Now I have to say that I love making meals that I can freeze and reheat and enjoy later, but I have very limited space. Or at least I did, until I realized that my brother doesn't actually use his freezer other than the ice maker and keeping a frozen pizza and bagel bites that he got when he first moved to the city something like 6 years ago and when he was in his first apartment. I'm trashing them and invading, he only lives a few minutes away and I can store the mass of the frozen there and about 6-7 servings at my place. If he wants to eat some of the frozen food, no problem My brother has been gone for the past few days on vacation and doesn't get back for another week so while I'm holding down the fort (collecting the mail and newspaper) I figured it might be a good idea to get a jump start on making meals. I also like when I can just go into the fridge and find something to eat. This also means that I have a basic menu that I can go to at any point during the week that will keep me from picking up food to go or just grabbing the first easy thing in the fridge/pantry.

Messy kitchen

 Ok, so it doesn't look too messy in this picture, but what you can't see is the flour, milk, butter, oil, water, salt and goodness knows what else all over the counters and the floor.  I have perfected the art of making a mess without trying,  oops. Oh, and I took the picture after I put a bunch of stuff in the dish washer, I think it is half full.

Lunch of fettuccine alfredo with leftovers in the freezer/fridge

The list of things that have been made over the past two days: pasta, alfredo sauce, marinara sauce, boiled eggs, mini cupcakes (for new year's party), black beans and kidney beans. Of course not everything is going in the freezer, but the sauces and beans are cooling off to be stuck in there. I really wanted to make some grilled rice balls, but I'm going to wait until my mom sends me my rice ball makers. I've tried making them by hand, but they tend to fall apart and the bear/star/heart shapes are too dang cute!

Another healthy eating goal for this year is for me to make a weekly menu and try to stick to it as best I can. I say if I can because sometimes I don't know what nights I will be nannying until an hour ahead of time if something has come up and I end up eating whatever the little ones eat. Still healthy, but a deviation from my menu. My plan to working on keeping to the menu is to only by what I need for the week based on my menu plus a few small healthy snacks.

Oh, and what to do while the cupcakes were cooking or when I needed a break?

Please excuse the pile of scraps

I brought a bunch of fabric over to work on cutting out. So far I have eight zipper pouches cut out, the picture was taken yesterday with only three in the lower left cut out. The purple pouches are going to be lined with the other purple fabric, but I think I want to line the blue/green fabrics with light blue and green fabrics which I need to dig up. There are somewhere...Or I might line them with white or a light grey. I'm also am going to make neck warmers out of the purple and tea wallets out of the blue/green leftovers. My friend will be getting six little sipper pouches with a tea wallet or two. There is also enough of the Nicey Jane fabric to make six more zipper pouches which I'm going to do who knows what with. 

And again...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!