Daily Challenges Monday 10-31-11

Happy Halloween! I don’t know about everyone else but my house has definitely suffered from a busy weekend. How does it get so messy so fast……

The challenges for today are:

• The 20 item pick up. Start at one end of the house and go to each room and pick up 20 items. If a room doesn’t have 20 items to pick up or clean move on to the next room. If a room has more than 20 items don’t worry we’ll come back to that later.
• The 10 minute tidy up. Go back to the room that needs the most work. Set a timer for 10 minutes and clean in that room untill the timer goes off.
• Do a load of laundry.

After your done with your challenges you should see a big difference in your house.

You can do it!

Daily Challenges for Sunday 10-30-11

No chores today, today is family day! It’s the day before Halloween, so today we need to make sure we are ready…. Costumes are ready to go and candy is bought. Let’s do our best to make it a fun and special day.

• Today we will be carving pumpkins and roasting the seeds.
• Later I will make the kids hot dog mummys (will post that recipe later) and if we have time I would like to bake something (something with pumpkin).
• Break out some Halloween books or a Halloween movie.

Have fun! You can do it!

Daily Challenge for Saturday 10-29-11

Good morning everyone, happy Saturday! Today I have a very busy day ahead. I have a soccer game to go to, a fundraiser for the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and we still have to carve our pumpkins! The amount of time I have to spend on the house today is very minimal, but I will do my best.

Todays challenges are:

• 10 minute tidy up. Set a timer for 10 minutes and clean where ever needs it the most until the timer goes off. (everyone has 10 minutes at some point in the day right???)
• Have the kids pick up their rooms
• Do a load of laundry

Have a wonderful day! You can do it!

Carnitas Hash

This last weekend the family and I went out to breakfast. My husband ordered Carnitas Hash. Neither one of us had ever tried this before but the waitress said that it was one of her favorites, so my husband decided to try it. He really liked it and asked if I could try to make something like that at home for him. This is what I came up with.

• Package of Carnitas (I found this at Costco and all it needs is to be heated. The great thing is that this package comes with two pouches of carnitas. I can use one for my husband’s breakfast and the other I can make burritos for the kids for a quick dinner on a busy night.)
• 1 large potato (I microwaved the potato for 2 minutes before I peeled and diced it. This lessens the frying time of the potato.) peeled and diced.
• Diced onion (as little or as much as you would like
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Oil to fry the potato and onion in

1. First I fried the potatoes and onion on medium high heat until they started to get a nice brown carmelized color. This is the point where I seasoned with salt and pepper (remember the carnitas comes seasoned so don’t over do it).
2. In a second frying pan I fried up the carnitas until it was heated through. Then added it to my potatoes and onions.
3. In the same frying pan as I used for the carnitas, I fried up some scrambled eggs in the bit of pork fat left from the carnitas. Topped the eggs with some cheddar cheese and served it all with warm flour tortillas. That way my husband could make a breakfast burrito if he wanted to.

Daily Challenge for Friday 10-28-11

Happy Friday Everyone! Friday is the day when we must prepare ourselves for the weekend. Friends and family might stop by to say hi, so let’s be ready with a clean house!

Our challenges for today are:

• Clean the kitchen appliances inside and out. (I’ve been ignoring the inside of my microwave for a while) If you have stainless steel, get out the cleaner and shine them up. I know this is not a fun task. I normally put this off, but today it is going to get done.
• Sweep, mop, and/or vacuum at least the front rooms. (the ones that people see the most)
• Do a load of laundry

You can do it!

Daily Challenge for Thursday 10-27-11

Good morning! The house is still dark and quiet, my coffee is warm and delicious. I’m taking a moment to enjoy this……..Soon the kids will be up and it will be a mad rush to get everyone out the door in time for school. Kiss good-bye to my babies who are not babies anymore and are growing up way to fast! Then it’s time for my daily challenges. Todays challenges are:

• The 10 minute tidy up. Set a timer for 10 minutes (I use my oven timer) and clean until the timer goes off. You would be amazed at what you can accomplish in 10 minutes.
• Empty all trash cans and take the trash out.
• Do a load of laundry.

You can do it! Have a great day!

Deals at Target today

I wanted to share with you a couple of good deals I got at Target today. While I was there getting a birthday gift I grabbed a couple of things that were to good of a deal to pass up. The first thing was 2 bags of bagels. Go on to targetcoupons.com and print the coupon for $1.00 off two Market Pantry breakfast items. The bagels are regularly $1.24 so after the $1.00 off 2 coupon they end up costing only $0.74 each (must buy 2). While you are on the Target website also print the coupon for the $1.00 off of 2 packs of Extra gum. If you combine that coupon with the $1.00 off 2 packs of Extra Gum manufacturers coupon (found in the smartsource coupon insert in your Sunday paper on 9/25)  you will get both packs of gum for free! So for $1.48 you can get 2 bags of bagels and 2 packs of gum! Not Bad!

Monster Sandwiches

The kids had their cousins over after school today. When my kids get home from school they are always hungry. So since we are in Halloween mode, I thought that it would be fun to let the kids make Monster Sandwiches. I got the idea for the sandwiches out of a little cookbook that I have called Silly Snacks. We didn’t follow the recipe, but I let the kids get ideas from the picture. What I did was put all of the ingredients out in the middle of the table. Each of the kids had their own plate and roll and they made their sandwich how they like it. We used:

• Mayo
• Mustard
• Ham
• Cheese
• Lettuce (curly so that it looks like hair)
• Black olives (for the eyes)
• Small pickles (for the horns, I used kosher dill petites made by Mt. Olive)
• Mini Red Bell Pepper (from our garden)
• Round Rolls
• Toothpicks (for holding the olives and pickles in place, remember to tell the kids to take the toothpicks out before eating)

The good thing about this recipe is that you can use what ever meats, cheeses, and condiments that your family likes. Have fun with this one, we did!

Daily Challenge for Wednesday 10-26-11

Alright its Wednesday, already middle of the week. Before we know it the weekend will be here!

We still have family from out-of-town here visiting and they might stop by at any time to visit so I cannot let my house get away from me.

Today our challenges are:

• Lets do the 20 item pick up. Start at one end of the house and work your way around to all of the rooms in your house (Living, Family, Kitchen, Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Laundry, Ect. ALL the rooms). Some rooms might not have 20 things that need to be picked up, move on to the next one. Some rooms might have more, that’s O.K. we’ll come back later. I have found that doing this every day helps me to keep up on the whole house.
• Clean and declutter our desks. Throw away old papers and trash, organize!
• Do a load of laundry.

You can do it!

Worm salad

I was looking through an old Halloween issue of Taste Of Home and I came across this recipe. I thought it looked like something that the kids would enjoy, and with a little tweaking this ended up being something that we all enjoyed. The ingredients are:

• 8 oz. uncooked bucatini pasta or thick spaghetti (I used spaghetti)
• 1/2 Cup hoisin sauce (the hoisin sauce was a little overpowering so I would use less)
• 1/3 Cup rice vinegar
• 3 T. orange juice concentrate (I didn’t have o.j. concentrate so I used 4 T. fresh o.j.)
• 3 T. soy sauce
• 1 T. sesame oil
• 4 oz. fresh snow peas (I had sugar snap peas so I used them)
• 1/2 Cup julienned carrot
• 1 small onion, cut into thin wedges (I had fresh green onions from our garden so I used that instead)
• 1 T. canola oil
• 1 garlic clove, minced

1. Break the bucatini (or spaghetti) into thirds; cook according to package directions.
2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk hoisin sauce, vinegar, orange juice concentrate, soy sauce and sesame oil. Drain pasta. It says in the recipe to add the pasta to the hoisin sauce mixture, but I put the pasta in a bowl and then added the sauce mixture to the pasta a little at a time to taste. I did not use it all and I’m glad I did it this way because I think it would have tasted to strong and overpowering for the kids. Toss the pasta and sauce and set aside.
3. In a large skillet, saute peas, carrot and onion in canola oil for 2 minutes. Add garlic; saute 2 minutes longer or until crisp tender (I added my green onion with the garlic). Add to pasta mixture toss to coat. Serve warm or chilled. (You could make this dish more hardy by adding chicken or shrimp. I didn’t this time but I think I will next time.

With the changes I made , the kids really ended up liking this recipe. I think that they even liked it more than I did. Considering taste and that it is fun for the season I give this recipe a 4 out of 5 stars.