Menu Monday

Ok so last week was a busy one for me. I had a lot of little projects on my desk that needed to be finished and completed before this week started. At the same time I had to start all new projects for this year’s expectation at work. But it was so nice to come home and know what I was going to fix and knowing that my husband could help or fix the dinner too! So here is this week’s menu:

Monday - Pizza
Tuesday - Hamburger Helper & Green Beans
Wednesday - Leftovers/Frozen meal
Thursday - Hamburgers, Fries, Corn or Asparagus
Friday - Leftovers/Frozen meal
Saturday - Fazolis
Sunday - Southwest Cheesy Chicken & Green Bean Casserole

Last week I made 2 new recipes that I would like to share with you:

Pizza Meat Loaf
1 envelope Lipton Onion Soup Mix
2 lbs ground beef
1 ½ cups fresh bread crumbs
2 eggs
1 small green pepper chopped
¼ cup water
1 cup Ragu Pasta Sauce
½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl combine all ingredients except ½ cup pasta sauce and ½ mozzarella cheese. In a 13x9 inch baking pan, shape meat mixture into loaf. Top with remaining ½ cup pasta sauce. Bake uncovered 50 minutes. Sprinkle top with ½ cup cheese. Bake an additional 10 minutes or until done. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

My variations – I used 1 cup bread crumbs and 2/3 cup oatmeal and I also added mushrooms.

Oven Barbecued Chicken
1 cup Ketchup
½ cup diced onion
3 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
8 chicken pieces (4 boneless skinless breast halves and 4 drumsticks)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine ketchup, onion, brown sugar, vinegar, mustard and Worcestershire sauce in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until mixture begins to boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Coat a 13x9 inch pan with cooking spray and arrange chicken pieces in dish. Brush or spoon prepared sauce over chicken. Bake chicken 40-50 minutes and when thermometer reads 170-180 degrees.

My variations – We tried this with 3 drumsticks and 3 chicken tenderloins/strips and didn’t like the drumsticks at all but loved the tenderloins/strips. Next time we will use all chicken tenderloins/strips instead.

Both of these recipes came from “Easy to Bake, Easy to Make” by International Masters Publishers

Hope you all have a fantastic week.

Menu Monday

Menu Monday


So one of my 2010 goals was to get my recipes in order and start creating a menu for every week. There are many reasons that this would benefit my little family. First of all it would make grocery shopping easier and less expensive. Secondly, my husband lately has shown an interest in cooking more meals. So I am going to try to incorporate at least one meal he can cook or make. Thirdly, I would like to try at least 2 new recipes each month and this is a good way to not only incorporate it but make myself actually try. I have a tendency to pick or print one and then never try it. Lastly, I would really like to create my own Family Cookbook. Blurb.com & Publishers.com is a great resource for creating your books. Blurb has a function just for cookbooks that I would really like to try.

So here is to week #1:

Monday – Smoked turkey sausage and sliced cooked potatoes

Tuesday – Frozen Pizza

Wednesday – leftovers or frozen meal (husband has EMT class, so he won’t be home for dinner)

Thursday – Pizza Meatloaf*

Friday – leftovers or frozen meal, husband at EMT class

Saturday – Weber Grill with both sets of parents

Sunday – Bar-b-q chicken*, mashed potatoes & green beans

* New recipe



Now for more updates on my 2010 Goals:

1. Transferred some small balances to 1 card, which brings our total to 2 cards with balances!

2. I made a schedule for housecleaning and so far my husband & I have kept with it. This doesn’t mean a deep clean each time but at least swiffer around the room and sweep. We are on our 4th week and I think we are both starting to like it.

3. This is my first week to actually put a meal plan together.

4. I have started my husbands anniversary gift, I have 3 ideas. One is just to place an order, then I have one that will require lots of time putting together and then I have a third thanks to JP Ryan that I would like to work on soon.

So I hope you all had a great weekend. I know I did. My Kentucky Wildcats are now #1 in the polls and my Colts won the AFC Championship and are off to the SUPERBOWL!!!!!!! I am so excited and its going to be a great game.

2010 Goals

So I have lots of goals for 2010 and I plan to keep most of them. I have spent the majority of the week thinking about my goals for this year. Hopefully this weekend the husband and I can sit down and go over these goals together and create more for our family. So here they are:


1. Become more debt free! – Now without giving too much away, we hope to only have 1 car payment, camper & house payment and only 1 credit card bill. This is our biggest goal for this year!

2. Become a better wife – this includes several of this years resolutions and I need to be more supportive.

3. Keep up with housework – my husband has high standards and I want to try to meet those standards.

4. Start & Keep a budget – this is something that my husband & I show do and follow.

5. Start a meal plan – this will make grocery shopping easier and less expensive

6. Finish Wedding scrapbook

7. Be a better friend & meet new friends – I’m not entirely a shy girl but I do keep myself reserved until I know someone better

8. Be a better blogger – I love blogging but want to make it a more often affair, which is what my husband calls it.

9. 1 year Anniversary gift!!!!!!!!!!!!! – This is a big one for me this year. 1st anniversary is supposed to be paper and I really want this to be special. I have an idea but would love more ideas from you guys that I might be able to use.

10. Start a Christmas Fund – this would be great for the end of the year to not have to worry about the money.

11. Take more pictures! – I don’t feel like I take enough pictures to document our life together.

12. Get my recipes/cookbook together – I have a massive amount of recipes pilled away and I probably print a bunch of recipes each month and they are in no order.

13. Lose some weight – this is another big one for me as well. I really need/want to lose at least 30 lbs.

Well that’s my lucky number, 13! I hope to come back and blog each time I achieve these goals.
Happy New Year!!!

I like to ride my bike!

I just read a very interesting article on The Indy Star about an Indianapolis man who decided to get rid of one of their family vehicles and ride his bike.  He not only rides his bike to work, which is 8 miles away but he also takes his daughter to school every morning and runs errands around town.  On a slow week he rides about 100 miles on his bike.  Not only is this is guy staying physical fit but he is helping the environment!

This guy not only makes me jealous but inspires me all at the same time.  I would love to live closer to Indianapolis so that I could do the same.  I am not sure that I would be as hard core as he is about it considering my job right now would be about a half hour away from Indy.  Indianapolis is slowing working to become a more cyclist friendly city; they still have a long way to go.  One of these days we will move closer to Indy!

Random thought - why doesn't blogger have Spell Check on the new version?  i hate typing my blog on word to then have to transfer it over.

Holiday's are in full swing at the Marvin Household

I know that I don't blog as much as some people and I am not a scheduled blogger like some are. I choose to blog when and what I want to blog about. This explains a little of my lack of blogging lately but honestly the biggest reason is that the Holiday season is gearing up in our house.

This past week I planned out the food items that I will be taking to my in-laws and to my Aunt's house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have Thanksgiving all figured out but I am still tossed up on Christmas. My first dilemma is my MIL is a great cook and always has tons of food ready when we arrive. So what ever I bring is good and everyone has some but its nothing compared to what she has ready! My second dilemma is at my Aunt’s house where there are a total of 21 to 30 people at one time. Most of the food is carried in by the other family members. So when I bring something its not usually noticed or missed if I decide not to. This will be the first year that I will make the first full hearted attempt to make sure to bring something at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Here is my plan for Thanksgiving:
In-Laws – Zesty Sour Cream Ranch Dip with veggies, chips & crackers
Aunt’s – Marbled Bark (I will post this recipe closer to Thanksgiving)

Here is my plan for Christmas:
In-Laws – Spinach Dip with crackers, bread & veggies or Bacon Dip (?)
Aunt’s – I have no idea?

Anyone have suggestions? I will need something easy.

In the last few weeks my husband & I have been shopping around for a new TV for our living room, our old TV will go to the basement/mancave. This is part of semi wedding present to my husband. My husband is a Volunteer Fireman for our local town and state law states that they are to receive a stipend every year. So as we exchanged our wedding presents to each other I told him that we could buy a new TV with some of his check instead of it all going to bills or savings. While in the midst of this whole process I forgot what all this will include. Finding a new TV stand for the TV is proving to be harder than picking out the TV. I’ve decided that I want one with drawers and I also want it to match the rest of the living room furniture, talk about hard to find! Then there is the TV, my husband is stuck on Samsung but I am partially convinced that every other TV looks better than Samsung. I have a feeling he will get his way on the brand. Then last week my husband made the small mistake of taking a tape measure and showing me how big the TV would look compared to our old one! HOLY MACARONI!!! My eyes got so big he realized his mistake right off the bat. I was like no way will that fit our living room without moving furniture around but our living room is really small and it will look hideous when the time comes to sell it. I will give my husband credit; he conceded quiet quickly and didn’t bat an eye about it. I could tell he was really disappointed. But after a few days of thinking about it, I realized that when it came time to sell the house we could switch the old & new TV’s.

This past weekend we also started Christmas shopping and have several people done. This has to be the earliest that we have started.


We have also looked around to figure out how to add more lights or decorations for Christmas. I think one of these days we are going to be the Griswold’s! 

So that is what we have been up to.

Berlin Wall

20 years ago today the Berlin Wall fell down. I was 8 years old at the time and I don't remember much. I do remember that my parents wanted to make sure we watched the news and understood the importance of the event. Also during this time I discovered MTV and I remember more about MTV's coverage than I do the news. I know that I have always felt that this wall was kind of like our segregation in the early 20th century. To this day I have friends from Germany and they will stay say they are either from the west or the east.  I remember watching them break that wall down with anything they could find.  The energy that was projected just from the TV screen was amazing and seemed so surreal at the time.

I took German in High School mainly because everyone else was taking Spanish and I wanted something different. During my senior year our teacher held a contest and the prize was a piece of the Berlin wall. I won that contest and I still have that piece, even though it’s no bigger than my thumb nail.

Someday I hope to be able to travel there and see some of these sites.  Now here are a couple of photos I found.

Segments of the original Berlin Wall are displayed outside the European Parliament in Brussels.

Tourists cross the old line of the Berlin Wall near "Checkpoint Charlie" in central Berlin, on Saturday.

Photos by http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

Google Doodles

I LOVE Google Doodles!  It always seems to put a smile on my face when Google has spiffed up their name with something.  Its all about Sesame Street this week, which is so cute.

Isn't that just so cool! Sorry I am not a very crafty or creative person, so to me these are great!

They will have someone different on the home page until November 10th, Sesame Street's 40th Anniversary.

Have a great day!

Images by Google