This was one of those weeks when I had a difficult time narrowing down what to share with you this week.  There is just SO MUCH great stuff out there this week!  Hopefully I found a little something for everyone!

I’ve never really been one to decorate for Valentine’s Day, but this Felt Heart Wreath from The Idea Room is so pretty!

Susana from My Family, My Forever presented her kids with not one but three different Snowmen Snacks this week.  I can’t wait to try some of these with The Littlest Apple.  So cute!

Meg’s kitchen makeover is nothing short of amazing.  I love everything about it!  I like my cherry cabinets and wouldn’t dream of painting them, but I adore the look of a white kitchen.  If we ever move, I’m putting my foot down for white kitchen cabinets.

I’m still trying to cut back the use of paper towels around here, but it is a badly ingrained habit.  This post from Simple Mom on How to Create a Paperless Kitchen helped me to renew my focus!

Enchiladas are a favorite dish of ours when we go to Tex-Mex restaurants, but I haven’t found too many enchilada recipes that I like to make at home.  These Chicken, Black Bean, and Spinach Enchiladas from goodLife eats sound promising!

I am eagerly awaiting the release of Steady Mom’s new book Steady Days.  She recently posted an excerpt from the book about a tool to help maintain your enthusiasm for mothering on day to day basis.  This is definitely an exercise I’ll be incorporating into my daily routine!

McMama (a mother of 4 under 5 with another baby on the way!!) shared an amazing post on how she stays so calm with four young children.  I loved this post!!

Okay, fellow worriers, Stop Obsessing from Marci at Overcoming Busy was written just for you (and me)!!

The Littlest Apple’s GI checkup is tomorrow morning, and I’m more than a little anxious about it since it is clear that his medicine has made no difference whatsoever in the last two months.  I’m going to distract myself with this frivolous post about house stuff.  (I’ll report in sometime in the next few days about how the appointment goes.)

Our downstairs is decently painted, decorated and furnished (though I’m already ready to repaint!).  The playroom is well on its way.  The Littlest Apple’s room is painted, furnished and decorated.  His bathroom makeover is also looking better.

One room we’ve sorely neglected is our bedroom.  There are so many things to love about our bedroom.  It is large (for the size of our house) and gets great light from a wall of 3 windows.  The master bathroom is a good size, and our closet is a huge walk-in.

This room has so much potential, but we’ve really ignored it so far.  We don’t have much in the way of bedroom furniture.  We’ve got 2 night stands, a chest of drawers, a bed (no headboard), and a bookshelf way too small for all of my books.  That’s it as far as bedroom furniture goes.

Because this is such a big room, our bedroom is also currently home to The Giant Red Couch (formerly in the playroom…our first purchase from our apartment days) and the matching Giant Red Chair and Ottoman which are awaiting their fated trip to Goodwill.  I love having a giant chair in the room as a reading spot, but the giant red pieces have GOT to go.  Although they are comfortable, they are oversized, faded, scratched from our cat,  and have no business in our bedroom.  They also completely clash with the color scheme I have in mind.  One of spa-like, serene blue-gray and white.

A couple of years ago, I bought this bedding for our room:

Cole Stripe Silk Duvet Cover from Pottery Barn

I LOVE the colors of this bedding.  Love it.  This is the color palette I want in our bedroom.  But the duvet ripped (though I’m hoping to repair it).  Not sure why this picture is so dark…it really does look as pretty as it does in the image above!

And now I’m thinking maybe I like the idea of having all white bedding, like this:

image from Pottery Barn

I”m particularly liking this:

image from Pottery Barn

I have been going round and round with what color to paint the walls of our bedroom.  In fact, shortly after we moved in over 3 years ago, I started putting paint samples up on the wall.

Some blues….

And a couple of browns, because at first I wasn’t sure I wanted blue walls….

THREE YEARS LATER those paint swatches are still there. THREE YEARS, we’ve been staring at those swatches on our bedroom wall!! We like none of them.  They are all too dark.  Finding the perfect blue-gray is tricky.  Yet another reason I want to switch the bedding to all white is so I’m not trying to match (or coordinate) the wall color to the striped bedding.

So the search for the perfect paint color begins again.  I’m looking for a blue-gray that is serene and subtle.  I’ve seen quite a few colors on blogs that I’m going to track down, but you never really know what it will look like in your OWN room, you know?  I’m hoping to start painting (or at least pick a color) this weekend.  Wish me luck!

In the past when I’ve made chicken soft tacos (which was seldom), I used a store-bought package of taco seasoning.  Last week, as part of the Eat From the Pantry/Freezer Challenge, I made do with what I had on hand.  These were the most flavorful chicken tacos I’ve ever made, especially with homemade tortillas!

Chicken Soft Taco Filling

recipe by Cara

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 2 cups cooked chicken, chopped or shredded (I used leftover Perfect Roast Chicken)
• 1/2 can  Rotel
• 1 teaspoon cumin

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Cook onion until soft.  Add garlic, cook for 30 seconds.  Add chicken and cook for 5 minutes.  Add Rotel and cumin, cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Serve with homemade tortillas.

The Littlest Apple is 28 months old.

I am so excited to be getting back in to the swing of Tot School!  We’re still easing our way back in to things, so we only did a small portion of the activities I planned.  I’m using the Itty Bitty Bookworm Curriculum, and our theme right now is Snowmen.

The Littlest Apple played with his new See & Spell, a Christmas gift from Mommy & Daddy.  We haven’t done too much work with lower case letters yet, but I’m already seeing some progress by using this new toy!

We explored different hot and cold items, including a heating pad, an ice pack, some warm water, a soda can, our fireplace, a ziplock full of ice, and some freshly popped popcorn.

Since we were stuck inside all of last week due to the extra cold weather, I tried to incorporate some physical activities into the mix.  I set up this hopscotch in the living room with painter’s tape, and planned to use it with letters, numbers and shapes to incorporate some learning.  It was a big FAIL, even without the letters/numbers/shapes.  I had such high hopes for this activity for my energetic son, but all he did was run around it like a maniac, get dizzy and fall down.  Silly boy!

I used our new magnetic chalk/dry erase board for several activities this week.  I drew some shapes on the board and asked The Littlest Apple to match the correct numbers.  We also did some lower/upper case letter matching.  Most of all, he just wanted to use the chalk and the dry erase markers and eraser.

We also used bubble wrap to paint.  This is something I’ve been intending to try for a while, but it was perfect for our snowman theme since it looks like snow!!  I put the bubble wrap on the bottom of a cup with a rubber band so it would be a circular shape (perhaps to make snowmen?).  The Littlest Apple got FURIOUS at me when I started demonstrating.  He saw the cup, and expected that I was going to put some water in it.  See his pouty face the picture?  This kid has got some very serious ideas about how he wants things to be done, and if they don’t go as planned he freaks out.  (Cups are for DRINKING out of, Mom!  Duh!!) After the initial tantrum, he enjoyed this activity and went through quite a few sheets of paper.  He was very proud of his snowmen paintings.

We played with the winter sensory tub frequently, but the snow dough was the biggest hit of the week.  The Littlest Apple asked to play with it every single day.  Now if I could only teach him not to tear the dough into a million tiny pieces….

The Littlest Apple enjoyed watching lots of the alphabet videos on Starfall.  We also watched several of the beginning reader videos, even though we’re not quite at the learning to read stage.  He LOVES watching those videos!

As usual, we read many books.  Here are a few of our favorites from last week.

In the kitchen, The Littlest Apple helped make tortillas.  He really enjoyed this, and they were delicious!

I’m hoping to have a more organized Tot School post next week (and with more photos).

For the month of January, I’m joining in the Eat From the Pantry Challenge hosted by Money Saving Mom and FishMama.  Though I’m just now posting about it, I’ve been working on this challenge since the beginning of the year.  Last week, I didn’t go to the grocery store.  AT ALL.  On purpose.  I was forced to be creative and make meals out of what we had on hand in the pantry and the freezer, and I actually had a lot of fun doing that.  There was one meal in particular that I was quite proud of, made up on the spot: shredded chicken soft tacos made with homemade tortillas, Mexican rice and refried black beans. (recipes coming soon!)

Although our pantry and freezer are stuffed to the gills, I was more than ready to get back to the grocery store today to get some fresh produce and other things we were out of completely (milk, eggs, and yogurt, among other things).  My list for today’s trip seemed like it was a mile long, but even skipping last week’s grocery shopping and planning a full week of dinners for this week, I still managed to spend less than normal (and less than the weekly budget) on groceries!  I decided that for this month, I’ll only go to the store every other week.  My plan is to only do menu planning for ONE week at a time, grocery shop for ONE week at a time, then be creative and eat from the pantry and freezer the following week.  So this week was a grocery store week, and my menu (below) reflects it.

I will note that this plan doesn’t include dining out.  We’ve got a separate line item in our budget for dining out (though it is limited to once a week or once every other week).  Last week was fairly easy because we used a gift card to dine at Ruth’s Chris Steak House for our anniversary, had dinner with my parents on Sunday night, and ordered pizza for our “dine out” for the week.  That’s pretty atypical.  We’re usually eating at home more than that.  I’m really only trying to address our grocery bill with this challenge since I think there is still lots of room to cut back!  If all goes well (and I’ll report in with a summary at the end of the month), I may continue this!!

Here’s our dinner menu for this week:

Monday: leftovers from anniversary dinner at Ruth’s Chris

Tuesday: Beef Stew, Ciabatta Bread

Wednesday: Chicken Etoufee (new recipe), Brussels Sprouts (new recipe), Bread

Thursday: Turkey Enchiladas with Pumpkin Sauce (new recipe), Mexican Rice, Refried Black Beans

Friday: sandwiches or leftovers

Saturday: Dine Out

Sunday: Lasagna (new recipe), Caesar Salad, Garlic Bread

I’m also sharing this post with Menu Plan Monday at I’m an Organizing Junkie

Let’s dive into something a little deeper today, shall we?

The Worry (with a capital W) is taking over my life right now, and this is NOT a good thing.  My mind has been filled nearly constantly with worry.  The more I think, the more I worry.  As a mostly rational human, I understand that many of the things I worry about are completely out of my control.  I don’t really discuss my faith here, but I am indeed praying about these things and trying hard to realize, as I said before, that it’s mostly (all?) out of my control.  But that doesn’t keep me from worrying anyway.  I feel like all of that CHANGE I mentioned is coming at me way too fast.  For someone slow to change, any change is way too fast.  The bigger issue is too much CHANGE at once.  Too many things to worry about that are all on the horizon.  As much as I try to just worry about one thing at a time-the most important, the most imminent problem for now-I can’t help but worrying about how THIS thing will affect that OTHER thing that I’m not supposed to be worrying about just yet.  It can so easily turn in to an all-consuming downward spiral of Worry.  If that makes any sense at all.  If you, too are a Worrier, then you are probably nodding your head, thinking that this all makes perfect sense.

Unless you are like The Picky Apple.  In which case, you’re thinking I’m just a wee bit nuts.  That’s okay.  There’s probably some truth to that.

The Picky Apple is the anti-Worrier.  He is the complete opposite of me.  In response to things I say, he frequently says, “I’ll worry about it when I need to.” or “I’ll worry about it when that happens.”  He considers things, but doesn’t worry about things.  On the one hand, that’s what I strive to be like.  It is quite admirable to be able to do that.  To live in the moment.  On the other hand, as a Worrier, it drives me more than a little crazy.  Because how can you NOT be thinking about these THINGS that are on the verge of happenning?!  Doesn’t he even CARE?!  (Of course, the obvious answer is that he does care.  Just as much as I do.)  Again, I know he is indeed thinking of these things.  Just not worrying about them needlessly.  But sometimes this results in his responses to my worry not being what I was looking for.  Because he doesn’t get it.  Or more to the point,  he does get it, and he’s consciously trying not to fuel my worry any further.  That’s probably for the best.

The other night I unloaded much of my Worry on The Picky Apple.  I went on for hours, I kid you not.  “What if? What if? What if? What IF? WHAT IF?!”  At first, The Picky Apple was kind and reassuring.  Then he was just annoyed with me.  His advice (which he has repeated countless times, like a broken record), is to focus on whatever problem is the most immediate.  Not only because that’s what he really believes, but probably also because he can see that telling me not to worry altogether is a lost cause.  I know I shouldn’t have unloaded on him like that the other night.  It was just one of those days where I had been bottling up all the Worry and exploded.  I (hopefully) won’t be doing that again.

Last night, we had a nice anniversary dinner out at a fancy steakhouse.  In the car and at the beginning of dinner I was struggling to avoid the topics of Worry that aren’t the most imminent ones.  Surely a married couple of 6 years can come up with something to talk about, right?  And we did.  It was wonderful.

I’m struggling right now to live in the moment.  To focus on my daily To-Do Lists.  Cleaning and decluttering.  Cooking.  Running errands.  This will be our first full week of our regular schedule and routines, and I think that’s going to help immensely.

Most importantly, I’ll be spending quality time with The Picky Apple and The Littlest Apple instead of spending time with Worry.  Although The Littlest Apple is a very challenging two year old right now, he’s also saying and doing some of the most amazing things.  (Amazing to us, anyway.)  Things I want to remember forever.  Like the other day when I hurt my foot and he patted me and said,” Don’t worry Mommy.  It’s going to be ok.”  Things like that I don’t want to miss because I’m too busy Worrying.

Since it’s been freezing out and we’re stuck indoors, we’ve been reading lots of books.  Here are a few more books The Littlest Apple got for Christmas that we’ve been reading over and over and over again…

Knuffle Bunny, by Mo Willems: A cute story from the author of Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.  A little girl named Trixie goes to the laundromat with her Daddy, loses her stuffed animal, and says her first word.  My son thinks the baby talk in this book is hilarious!

Hug, by Jez Alborough: What I love most about this book is the expressiveness and emotion conveyed with just a few words, the main one being “Hug.”  The Littlest Apple adores this book…he made me read it to him about 5 times in a row yesterday, a record for any book (and you know how much he loves his truck books!!)

The Little Dump Truck, by Margery Cuyler: I found this one day at the bookstore when I wasn’t even looking for more books for The Littlest Apple.  It’s got great retro-ish illustrations that show the dump truck going to a construction site then taking its load to the landfill.  Lots of other kinds of trucks are shown too!

Finn Throws a Fit, by David Elliott:  Could this book BE any more perfect for my Finn?!  A little boy named Finn has such a big tantrum (over peaches, or is it something more than that?) that his tears flood the house, lightening in the kitchen, an earthquake rocks the world, etc.  Any parent will certainly appreciate this one!  It’s a good story, but obviously there’s an extra connection here because my son shares the character’s name.

For such a routine oriented person, I seem to have trouble sticking to any sort of posting schedule for this blog.  Yes, I’m posting daily (or almost daily), but I’m kind of all over the place.  I try to rotate topics, so I’m not posting too many recipes, tot activities, or books in a row, but I don’t really have a set schedule (recipe on Wednesday, books on Thursday, etc).  I want to try to make my Apple Picks posts, at the very least, a little more regular!  I’d love to know what you think…is my randomness driving you crazy?  I’ll be posting a little survey soon to address that too.

For now though, here are some great end of 2009 summaries and posts to help you get 2010 off to a great start:

Joni at Cote de Texas posted her list of the Top 10 Renovations of 2009.  I find all of the before and afters so inspiring!  They’re all amazing, but I’m particularly in love with Layla’s beautiful cottage!

One of my goals for the new year is to include more vegetables in our diets.  (Okay, this is always a goal, but sometimes I focus on it more than others.)  Jenny from The Nourished Kitchen posted a great article on Five Winter Greens You Don’t Want to Miss.

I’m still trying to sort, organize and store all of The Littlest Apples new Christmas toys, so this article from The Creative Mama on Managing Post-Christmas Toy Overload couldn’t have come at a better time!

This list of 101 Ways to Cut Your Spending This Year is amazing resource from Being Frugal.  So many excellent (and simple) tips to save a few bucks this year.

Cassie from Cassie Craves shared her list of the Best Sweet Stuff of 2009.  I want to try every single thing on her list!!  Yum.  Also, she’s having a baby boy tomorrow!  Congrats, Cassie!

This is something I have wanted to try for a few months now.  I purchase fresh (made in the store) tortillas from my local HEB almost weekly, and we usually wind up throwing a few away that go bad before we eat them.  I had read several places that making your own tortillas isn’t that hard to do and much cheaper, so I finally tried it.  The result?

It’s so easy a 2 year old can do it! No really.  My 2 year old practically DID do it, except for the last step (cooking in a hot skillet for 30 seconds on each side), and they taste great!

(Please ignore the choppy hair on the back of The Littlest Apple’s head.  I love all of his mop top hair, but the mullet had to GO.  It was my first time trimming his hair, an act of desperation, and my first “snip” wasn’t well received by TLA.  Hence the big chunk missing behind the ear shown above.  The other side looks way better, I promise!)

Back to the homemade tortillas:  They were WAY better than any store bought tortillas.  But if you want them to be more circular in shape and of relatively uniform thickness, I wouldn’t recommend actually letting a 2 year old make them.

One more thing to mark off my list of 31 Things To Do Before I Turn 31!

Homemade Tortillas

Recipe from Rick Bayless, via Chowhound

makes 8 8-inch tortillas

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 cup lard  (you can find this near the shortening on the baking isle)
• 2/3 cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon salt

Cut lard into flour. Dissolve salt in warm water, then add gradually to flour mixture. Mix until dough begins to form. Turn onto floured surface and knead about 3 minutes. Divide ball into 8 smaller balls (for ~ 8-inch tortillas). Cover balls with plastic wrap and rest at least 30 minutes.

Heat cast iron pan over medium/medium-high heat. On floured surface, roll out ball until about 8 inches or so in diameter. Grill in dry pan, maybe about 30 seconds on each side or until they look done.  I flipped mine back and forth a couple of times, until they looked done. Keep the tortillas warm as you cook them by placing them in between two towels on a plate or pizza stone and then placing in the microwave or a warm oven.

Our lovely part of Texas is about to get really, really cold.  The coldest it has been here in over a decade.  So we’ll be spending lots of time indoors, hopefully reading books by the fire, and drinking warm drinks.  The Littlest Apple loves hot cocoa.  Or at least, he likes to pretend he does.  Really, he just likes to stir it.  As for the actual drinking of the hot cocoa, not so much.

Me?  I’ll be drinking lots of this Spiced Tea while I stay bundled up inside this week.  Let me state for the record that normally, I HATE tea.  Iced tea.  Hot tea.  Green tea.  Black tea.  Sweetened tea.  I HATE IT ALL.  I’ve tried to like it.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  But I just can’t bring myself to drink it.  I will not drink it in a box.  I will not drink it with a fox….you get the picture.

But THIS tea?  THIS tea, I LOVE.  Probably because it isn’t really tea at all, though it does have a teensy bit of instant tea as an ingredient.  But that teensy bit of tea is offset by wonderful citrus flavors, cloves, and cinnamon (not to mention a hefty dose of sugar).  This tea tastes delicious, smells divine, and reminds me of winter.

This recipe is courtesy of my mom, who keeps making me more of this tea whenever I run out, even though I’m fully capable of making it myself.  Thanks, Mom!  I’ve yet to actually make this tea for myself, but it’s easy y’all!   I’ve seen similar recipes in lots of magazines and cookbooks.  You can substitute Splenda and sugar free lemonade for a lower calorie version that still tastes wonderful!

Spiced Tea

recipe from my mom (who got it from one of my grandmothers, I think)

Ingredients:

• 1 1lb 2 oz container of Tang (21.1 oz)
• 3/4 cup instant tea
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 2 packages lemonade mix (or 2 tubs of Crystal Light)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar (or Splenda)
• 1 teaspoon cloves

Mix all ingredients.  To serve, heat up a mug of water, then add approximately 1 1/2 tablespoons of Spiced Tea mix and stir.