Weekly Menu

Here's what's on the menu at the Hive this week.

Monday - Te-Man was sick...So we literally had french fries for dinner.  I thought about feeling guilty about this...and then I thought screw that. :)
Tuesday - Salads, Homemade Roasted Garlic Whole Wheat pretzels (Keeper? Wolverine says yay...I say nay.  We'll see if I can make them better.), and Plant Based Spinach Artichoke Dip
Wednesday - Red Beans and Corn Bread (I'll take a picture tonight and post this one soon!)
Thursday - Black Bean and Quinoa Burgers with Oven Baked Beans and salads
Friday - Coconut Curry Noodles (this one is amazing! I can't believe I haven't posted it yet! Soon!!)
Saturday - Vegetable Pot Pie
Sunday - We're going to the Rams Game!!!

What are you eating this week?

Do you have any tricks to share about how to make dinners throughout the week easier?  I love freezing a second dinner's worth of meals - it is awesome to know that a simple opening of the freezer door means dinner!

You know how they say to have all of your basic veggies and fruits washed and prepped for easy meal prep.  They aren't kidding!!!  I have started recently dicing/slicing/cubing/etc peppers, onions, cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, etc. on the weekend so that during the week all I have to do is grab the containers from the fridge.  This week I took it a step further and actually combined all of the vegetables in the specific amounts each recipe called for.  Then I just labeled the top with some masking tape and a marker.  So I have a container marked Red Beans, Baked Beans, Curry, and Pot Pie.  Then all I have to do is grab the one dish and add the remaining ingredients.  So awesome!!!
I do this with my granola bars, cookies, and pumpkin bread too.  When your recipe calls for sometimes 10 different types of nuts, seeds, oats, etc. it can be a pain digging everything out of the cabinet each time.  So I just pre-measure all of my dry ingredients into sealed containers and then when I want to make something I grab it back out, add the maple syrup, applesauce, etc and BAM into the oven! :)

I also dice and freeze left over fruit before it goes bad - instant smoothies or Popsicles!

I have also been lately cooking off three to four times the amount of beans I need and then freezing them in 15oz portions so I can just grab a bag of beans without having to have the forethought of soaking them the night before.  I guess normal people would just use a can though....so not really a time saving tip unless you're looney like me. :)

Have a wonderful week!!

Be in Love...

With Your Life...Every Minute of It.

I need to have this tattooed on my arm.  I so often fall victim to the I'll be happy "when" sickness.  My life is amazing - right now.

I need to stop worrying if have met all of my imaginary deadlines, if I accomplish everything on my completely ridiculous to-do list, if I have "done enough" today, if I have done enough for everyone else.

I need to start doing more for me, being in the moment, realizing our world will not end if things get put off until tomorrow, next week, or never get done, realizing that doing things with people is usually better than doing things for them.

Today, there were probably 15 things my brain was telling me I "should" be doing...but instead I took my blanket and my coffee outside and sat on the bench in my yard surrounded by my garden and the birds and watched the sunrise.  It was awesome.  Then I walked around the garden and inspected all of my beautiful seedlings that are just coming through the soil....it might not have been the most productive activity in terms of getting my to-do list done....but it definitely was productive in filling my soul with the beauty around me.

:)

Be in love with your life...every minute of it.

Komen Race For the Cure

Wolverine's mother lost her battle with Breast Cancer when she was just a few years old that I am...my heart aches every day that I will never get the chance to meet the mother of the most amazing man I have ever met.

This October, I am doing my part.  I am donating 25% of my Premier Designs jewelry sales and my Honey Bee Bottoms sales to Komen Race for the Cure.   If you spend $100 on jewelry or diapers, I will give you a Courage bracelet as my thank you to you!

If you are interested in seeing a catalog for the jewelry or have any questions, please feel free to contact me!
Let's all do a little to make a BIG DIFFERENCE!

Thank you!
Melissa

Wow - Chipotle Nails It!

This video is amazing.  Makes me cry every time I see it.  I feel like this is exactly what I want to scream from the top of my lungs every day!

Watch it.

Watch it again.

Share it.

Talk about it.

DO SOMETHING!

Chipotle's The Scarecrow

First Day of Fall

Happy Fall everyone!  It is officially my favorite time of the year!  I could sit here and list all of the reasons for you, but that would take FOREVER so I'll just highlight a few.

My Anniversary with Wolverine - it'll be 5 years this year. :)
Annual camping trip with the Super Parents to Tellico Plains, TN
Hiking/Camping
APPLES
Halloween
Ze-Ra's Birthday
Thanksgiving
General Fall Awesomeness! :)

I'm going to try to be on here a bit more...definitely been neglecting the blog these days.  I guess all the summer activities got in the way. :)  I'll do my best. :)

Have a wonderful fall!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen....are your paintbrushes ready?

Because we are about to get our PAINT ON! :)

I had tons of random pieces of wood in the garage that were driving me crazy...but the hoarder in me couldn't throw them away - so I had to find a use for them.  In comes pinterest. :)

The projects were all super simple and I did all three of them in about a day and half and that's only because I had to wait for paint to dry. :)

I'm sure you've all seen this one online - I LOVE it! :)

This one I painted based off of something I found in a magazine years ago and I kept the page this whole time....I decided I just needed to DO IT! :)  It hangs in our kitchen right next to our back door. :)

These I made this past fall for Halloween.  I am too much of a cheap-skate to buy Halloween decorations, so I made a few of my own...I think they looked pretty cute out there with the pumpkins and gourds. :)
I just free handed everything - but it was so fun!  I put tea-lights inside of the mason jars and they looked great!

Then this last one I think is my favorite.  We each have a name board - I screwed little eye hooks into the top edge and then it just sits on 2 nails in the board.  I did try to make my own chalkboard paint, which was a HUGE mess - not sure what I did wrong, but my paint was the consistency of play-dough.  I made sure I added the exact amounts and then....who knows what happened, but I totally went with store bought.  :)
Anyway, it is so fun to see what Ze-Ra and Wolverine write on here! And I see everyone check it in the morning when they come downstairs. :)

I would love to see your craftiness!!!  Feel free to post away on the Facebook Page or even send me an email and I can post it if you'd like! :)

Cave Fort

Have you seen the pictures on pinterest of the sheet/fan fort?  It looks pretty awesome and I was thinking that of course, the Z-Squad needed to have one. :)

I went to thrifting and found some sheets - in fact, I got a california king set and 2 flat full sheets for less than $4. :)

Then I went to sewing.

First, I sewed the two full sheets together along their "long" side.

Then, I laid the king sheet out flat on the floor and laid the sewn together full sheets on top of it.  They didn't quite match up, the full sheets were a little longer, but I figured that's ok because the fort will just have more space, so I kind of "pleated" the top fabric...I just folded it over every once in a while to pick up the extra slack so that when I got to the corner they matched up. If you are wanting your fort to be beautiful or your sheets have patterns, you might want to make sure that you have the "inside"sides facing.

Now....just sew 'er up.  You'll want to leave a space of about 3-4' un-sewn at one end to allow access (by people) and to allow room to fit in your fan.  

Spread the fort out, put in the fan, and BAM Instant FUN!!

We had a little picnic, did some reading, even had a small pillow "fight".  Lots of giggles and all kinds of fun memories!

**Of course, any time kids are involved with something like a fan - parental guidance is necessary to protect their little curious fingers! But who wouldn't want to hang out in a fort all day? :)
:)

Happy Anniversary Hit Girl!

Yay for wedding anniversaries!  Today is Hit Girl and The Flash's one year anniversary!  Their wedding was awesome (how could it not be with Hit Girl involved!?)  I am so honored to have been a part of their amazing day.

I know I normally don't post on Sundays, but I thought that you all needed to see a few of the beautiful pictures and help them celebrate! :)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Oh my goodness - she is BEAUTIFUL!!!

Ze-Ra doing a little pre-wedding clowning. :) 

 Gotta make sure those pearly whites are sparkling!

 Baby brigade! That's Wolverine and Te-Man on the left, my cousin Captain Planet in the middle (the little one on the far left is also her's), and my sister-in-law Wonder Woman.

 The Amazing Aunt P, her husband the Horse Whisperer, and Cowgirl Bride! :)

 Ze-Ra and Te-Man tearing up the dance floor!  How did I luck out with such photogenic kids?

 Look out....the Te-Man is coming for you! ;)  

Side note...look how much he has changed - I took this photo yesterday!!! Crazy

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Check In

I posted this picture on Facebook last night and it is just really near to my heart right now.

If you'd like to read about our decision to switch from primal to plant based you can check out this post from the beginning of April.   Once my (typical and yet ridiculous) concerns about protein were addressed, I was 100% on board.  I mean how can eating more plants be bad? :)

I would say that we stick to eating plant based about 85-90% of the time.  There have been a few occasions where we've made some meat from our freezer, ordered a pizza, or went out for ice cream - but definitely less frequently than the 1x per week we were planning on when we started.

It has now been 2 1/2 months since we started and I have lost over 15 pounds and my blood pressure has gone from 130/80 to 102/70.  I feel fantastic, my skin looks fantastic, I am never hungry and this is by no means a "diet".  We eat AMAZING foods!  The reclaimed produce definitely helps to make it a cheaper way of eating, but we are so blessed that we actually get more produce than we can eat and share it with not one but at least two different families! :)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are still living Plant Strong here at the Hive and LOVING IT!!!

Now...I'm out to the garden to take some pics for all of you beautiful people!!! :)

Waiting for the Trifecta.....

You know how they say that bad things come in threes?  Well this past week, Wolverine's phone just completely stopped working.....and not to be outdone, our laptop promptly died just 2 days later.  What will the third item be?  I do not even want to venture a guess!

Well, this means it's Christmas in May for the Hive!  Our phones should be arriving today and then we'll be getting new computers in the next few weeks.  We decided that if we're ordering computers, Wolverine and I should both have one to reduce the "fighting" for computer time once the kids go to bed, so Christmas it is!  Now we're just going to have to make sure that we don't spend our evenings with our faces in a computer instead of engaged in quality time together!  I'm feeling mandatory scheduled tech free time every day. :)

This means posts will be few and far between in the next few weeks, which is a shame because I have some great plant based recipes to share....but I guess this just means I'll have even more when I get back up and running!

I hope you all enjoy the beautiful weather that comes with spring and if you have any plants under your care - I'll be hoping for some wonderful rain and sunshine for you!

WHOA! Where has the time gone?

Can you believe I haven't posted in just over a month?  That is crazy and wow I have missed you guys!

Things around here have been so hectic - keeping up with Te-Man, helping Wolverine maneuver through life in pain and with only one wing, and keeping tabs on Ze-Ra. :)  We've gone on a few incredibly fun outings, the Super Parents came to visit, and I also have my entire garden planted - ye haw!  I'll be posting pics this week for sure!

Also over the past 2 months - I have lost 10 pounds!  WHAT?!  I am so excited....if I'm being honest that's only about 1/3 of what I want to lose, but I'd be content with only losing 10 more. :)

Also, we are now embarking on our third week of eating a plant based diet.  This is probably an entire post all on it's own - but we really feel like it's the best choice and have been really happy and feel great!

Wolverine has not been medically cleared to drive yet, so I am his chauffeur - taking him to work and all of his appointments. :)  So I'd better run and get things together for today.  I'm trying to get a batch of grape nuts and a batch of tweaked graham crackers made this morning before we head to Ft. Jackson this afternoon.

I hope you all had a WONDERFUL weekend and are ready to start a great week! :)

Meal Planner

Do you (some of you I'm sure, do) know how much I hate asking, "What sounds good for dinner?"?!  I HATE it! I love cooking and baking, but I do not always like being the one to come up with what we eat.  I mean....sometimes, can't a girl get a little help?

  

You know what you need to do?  Make a menu board and get everyone to pitch in with what they want....makes life a breeze!

Yesterday, I decided the menu board I made last spring* has been hanging out behind the couch for far too long! In fact, it's been there since we moved here in August (that's a tad embarrassing!)

I told Ze-Ra to go grab a piece of lined paper, number it 1-30, but a Z next to lines 1-7 and a D next to lines 8-16.  She was then told to write in what she wanted for dinner in the next month on lines 1-7, she got so into it, she even came up with a list of side dishes she wanted so she made a second list on the back.  Wolverine then filled in his lines, 8-16.  I then filled in the rest with what I wanted, a few left over nights, and a few "adventure" nights for new dishes.

Now, all I had to do was find all of the selected foods on the cards I made last spring - but there have been some new additions to our menu since then, so I used some blank ones, and some backs of other cards.  I got all 30 main dishes set out and set to laying them out on the calendar.

Then I went through the side dish cards and paired them up with a coordinating main dish.

All in all, it probably took me about 30-45 minutes start to finish, but I also went through and organized all the unused cards (because I have a sickness). :)

Now....I can plan my grocery list out and always have what I have on hand.  I NEVER have to say, what do you want to eat?!  I know we usually end up moving a few things around and there might be some food that gets bumped to next month due to a large amount of something in the reclaimed produce boxes, something coming up, or just a massive craving, but it feels so liberating!!! :)

Do you plan your meals in advance?  What system do you use?

*Here's how I made mine:

How to Make Your Own Menu Board 

Step 1:  I took a piece of plywood we had laying around the house, covered it with quilt batting and stapled around the edges.
Step 2:  I then covered the batting with a fabric scrap and stapled that on as well.
Step 3:  Using ribbon, I divided the board into a "calendar".
Step 4:  I then also used ribbon to make a loop for hanging it and three loops for hanging the food cards.
Step 5:  I used scrapbook paper cut into squares for the cards and I just punched a hole in the corner to then thread them onto a binder ring.
Step 6:  I used mini clothes pins from Hobby Lobby to make sure the cards don't slip from behind the ribbon.

I thought I'd include a picture of the back so you could see what it looked like in case you were curious.

A Day in the Life of Te-Man

I was feeling very picture happy yesterday and I thought I should share a little of yesterday's fun here at the Hive.  It was rainy and gross, as it has been for DAYS.  What's today's forecast you ask?  Rain, 100% chance.  Yippee! :)

Seriously though, here's some of the fun we had yesterday.

During our morning walk, we did a little singing in the rain

Then after lunch, Te-Man took a glow bath

Followed not long after by a nap with his snuggle buddy, Mr. Frog (SuperMan actually gave me that frog in 5th grade!)

We rounded out the evening with a lively rendition of "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night", which Te-Man rocked.

I obviously didn't capture everything, but did get a few of the highlights.  I sure do love that little dude. :) 

Attack of the spices!!!

My spice cabinet has exploded and is threatening to take over my entire kitchen!!!

Seriously - we are having clean-a-gedden here at the Hive this month.  The coat closet that was over-flowing onto the arm chair is beautiful - even organized by person - there's even space for extra hangers in case a visitor would actually like to hang up a coat!

Yesterday I organized the cabinets, but wouldn't touch the spices.  That is today's project - anyone have any procrastination ideas? hahaha

Or maybe an organization tip?  I'm thinking about just doing alphabetical order....but then I was also thinking about doing baking/cooking sections....but then what do you do with the ones that overlap?

I'm gonna go take Te-Man and Roland on a long walk and pretend the kitchen fairies will take care of this for me.
:)

Where does your food come from?

I have always been an advocate for animal and environmental rights.  I feel that it is our responsibility as human beings to take care of every single thing, living and non-living, on this planet.  It's almost like the line from spider-man - with great power comes great responsibility.

I woke up 9 years ago and I had the sudden realization that I had disagreed with the way animals are raised for meat consumption in this country for years and I had spoken out about it to my friends, family, etc...but I felt powerless to really do anything.  So, I had done nothing.  I was eating that very meat every day.  I was a hypocrite.

From that moment on, I have never eaten another bite of meat that I didn't know where it was raised, how it was raised, and where it was slaughtered.

Yes, I partially do it for my own health.  The likelihood of me, or my family, eating unnecessary hormones, antibiotics, etc is very low.  But for me, it's about the animals.  Yes, I love meat - but I don't love it so much that I am willing to eat it from animals that have been treated in ways that I can not even write about without crying.  Makes me sick.

What do we eat when we go out?  Well, we eat fish or we eat meatless meals.  Does that severely limit our options? Yes, but no more than a vegetarian.

How do we afford it?  Yes, it is quite a bit more expensive than just getting meat from the grocery store, but that's okay because we try to eat more fruits and vegetables anyway, so this just makes sure that the meat isn't always the star of the show.  And, it is awesome knowing that the money we do spend, goes to small local farmers.  In fact, we hand them the money in person.  That feels great!

Feel free to stop here, or you can continue reading the article that prompted this soap-box rant of mine.

Warning....this link contains disturbing material...but maybe that's what people need to make them wake up to what's going on with their food supply.  Do you think this is the only farm where this is happening?  Do you think they'll stop so long as people are buying their meat?  When people start caring about the animals instead of getting meat for $0.99/lb, maybe something will change.

http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2010/12/smithfield_pigs_121510.html#.UNC7qzxTnUM.facebook

Package Presents

This year I decided I wanted to do something a little different for wrapping the presents.  I saw this on, wait for it....Pinterest! :) haha. Of course.  Well, I thought it was awesome and just had to find a way to do it myself. :)

Now, this was a project that I had grand plans for, then was ticked off that I'd gotten this far into it and met brick wall after brick wall, wanted to quit, got pretty irritated, pushed through, and was THRILLED with the results.  Just goes to show ya that the Super Parents knew what they were doing when they taught me to finish what I started.  Great job guys and Thank You!  :)

There are plenty of vintage stamps available for purchase on Etsy or Ebay, but when you're a procrastinator like I am, that might not always be a viable option.  Instead, you have to go to google images, do some image hunting, dress them up in your favorite photo editor program, print them out on some fancy shmancy sticker paper, and put your paper cuter to work! Sometimes you just gotta take things into your own hands. :)

 As for the red and white striped twine - I went to six - SIX - stores to find it and was still empty handed.... well, I gave up and settled on the red and white ribbon.  I'm still a little disappointed that I never did get the twine.

I'm also a little disappointed that I didn't get the postage stamp stamp.  I looked at only 4 different stores for that one.  I wasn't even able to find a blank one online - I did find a bunch that had the north pole on them, but I'm not on the presents are from Santa wagon, so I decided to just use a different type of "to/from" sticker.   I found the one I used here - Vintage Shipping Label.

My goal was also to use freecycled paper bags - I thought, what a great way to reuse those paper bags!  But unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) not many people have paper bags these days.  So instead, I headed over to Aldi and picked up some there for five cents each. Couple that with the half price ribbon, all in all, I spent about $8 on all of my wrapping paper supplies this year.  Not too bad when you think about how pricey that fancy wrapping paper is. :)

This **** is BANANAS, B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Roasted Garlic Potato Bread

Smokey Mountain Smoked Bacon

Sharp Cheddar

Reclaimed Tomato

Vidalia Onion

Bibb Lettuce

Duke's Mayo

Best BLT EVER!

Am I Crazy?

Yes....yes I am.

When you sit back and ask yourself what you need in your life, is the answer ever really - more things to do and more things that will provide interruptions and unpredictability?  If your answer is yes, then you must be in the market for a puppy.

Meet Roland Kingsley.

He was one of 9 Australian Shepard mix puppies that were brought to the shelter in November.  He is adorable and so sweet.  We met him on Saturday and heartbreakingly had to leave him there until his vet appointment Wednesday.  They'll fix him and give him a thorough once over to make sure he's all set and then he'll come home to this house of madness! :)

He already has brand new toys, a dog bed, collar, leash, puppy chow, and 2 very excited children eagerly awaiting his arrival!

I sure hope I feel this excited about him in a few weeks...at 3 in the morning when I'm outside in the 25 degree weather begging him to pee. hahahaha ;)

Thank you USO

Saturday evening we were given the opportunity, by the ever generous folks at the USO, to go to the ACC Championship game.  Florida State vs Georgia Tech.  We had such a great time!  There were even a few surprises along the way.

Wolverine's Brother-In-Law is a HUGE Georgia Tech fan and he drove out from ATL to join us at the game! We all downed a tasty dinner of Brats, Kraut, and Mashed Potatoes and then headed out for Charlotte.  Traffic was completely reasonable - which was unexpected and yet AWESOME!

Parking was super reasonable and not very crowded.  As we're getting closer and closer we can hear some music - Little Big Town is doing a concert before the show.  I thought Ze-Ra was going to go ballistic!  She was so excited!

The game got underway and things were going great - well, not for Georgia Tech, but the kids were behaving really well and everyone was having fun!

Then....let's just say we had an interesting experience with Te-Man that involved the need to remove his onesie and overalls and use my jacket as pants.  Hahaha.  We decided we're going to keep that story in our backpocket for future use ;)

Te-Man made it almost until half time before he conked out.

Ze-Ra on the other hand, was going strong until 2am, no way was she not going to make it to the french fry party at 1:30! :)

I'd also like to mention that apparently Charlotte's city planners have it together.  There were people and cars everywhere but we were on the interstate moving at normal speed within 15 minutes of reaching our car....and we stayed until the very end.

We had such an awesome time!  We have been able to attend a few events thanks to the USO and it never ceases to amaze me that so many people contribute to making that possible all because of their gratitude for my husband, other service-members, and their sacrifices.  So, this morning, a HUGE THANK YOU is going out to the USO from the Land of Honey.