menu plan monday - 01.28.08

Two weeks in a row!  I’m on a roll!  ;-P

Monday:  monterey chicken, thanks to Carol for the suggestion a couple of weeks ago.  We tried it once already and loved it, can’t wait to have it again!  Mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas on the side.

Tuesday:  balsamic-honey pork chops.  One of my all-time faves.  Served with mixed rice and green beans.

Wednesday:  breakfast for dinner!  Jason makes pancakes from scratch (inspired by Alton Brown) with bacon and/or sausage on the side.

Thursday:  beef fajitas.  top sirloin steak, seasonings, peppers, onions and all the fixin’s on the side.

Friday:  chicken lo mein.  This recipe.  New recipe for us.

Saturday:  spaghetti and meatballs.  Easy meal - noodles, sauce, meatballs and some bread on the side.  Salad, too.

Sunday:  hamburgers on the grill.  Never got to these last week and we need to eat up the buns before the go bad!  Baked beans on the side, or maybe a pasta salad if I get around to making one.

Bonus meal:  homemade chicken nuggets.  I bought an extra pack of the chicken tenders at the store last week, so if we need them, they’re there.  If not, they’ll be on the official menu next week.  Mmmmm.

valentines for kids

  

Season wrote up a little thing over at Photojojo Uncut about the Valentine’s Day card I made for Jag’s class last year.  Making the cards is super easy, and I promise you will get a ton of compliments from the teachers and other parents!  She gives a good explanation, but if you have any questions specifically about how I did mine, feel free to drop me a line.  (I’ve included a copy of the back of the card above as well - he went through a stage of loving knock-knock jokes, so it made perfect sense to include one.)

holga fun

I’ve had a couple of Holga cameras for years now, but I’ve never had anyplace locally to get the film developed.  I miss the toy camera look, so I picked myself up some Holganizer actions for Photoshop this week.  I know, I know… not the same thing.  I really do know.  But they’re fun and they keep me satisfied.  For now. 

I need to dig the ‘ole Lomo Supersampler out…

parents of little train fans

I don’t know if this is common knowledge or not, but it’s something we’ve just recently tried and I’m so tickled with how well it’s worked out, I’m going to post about it just incase there’s someone out there who hasn’t tried this yet.

We’ve always kind of despised all the Thomas train and Plan City sets.  I mean, they’re so cute.  And we went through the trouble of building our own wooden table to set it all up (darn nice, if I do say so myself, with a flipable table top hand-painted by moi).  But those tracks - argh, those tracks!  Always getting knocked over or bumping out of place.  Every few minutes it was, “Moooooooommy!  The tracks came apart!  The bridge fell over!  The road broke!”  It got to the point that either Jag would give up and move on to something else (usually playing with the trains or cars on the ottomans instead), or *I* would get fed up, box the entire sets up and put them back into the closet.

WELL, a friend of mine a while back suggested earthquake putty.  I bought a pack, but that was right around the time that we were getting our house in order to sell (long story - we almost moved to Austin, TX) so we had put the train table in storage and the putty got shoved into a cabinet.  Fast forward to this past weekend… Kat has recently discovered Thomas.  She loves playing with the “choo choos” so we thought we’d dust off the ‘ole table and dig up the putty.

Let me tell you something - that putty WORKS!  It’s awesome!  It’s strong enough to hold the tracks, roads and pieces down so that they aren’t bumped or knocked by little hands, but not so strong that the adults can’t pull the pieces up (NO damage to the table top!) and change the track around if we need to.  Seriously - it’s fantastic and it’s made the train sets and Plan City sets so much more fun.  We’ve had it set up since yesterday, the kids have been playing with it non-stop and there hasn’t been a single instance of track or road coming up or moving.

YIPPEE!

meal plan monday - MLK Day edition

Haven’t done this in a long time.  I have a million excuses, I won’t bore you.  I’ll keep it short and sweet.

Monday:  Beef stew.  I use this recipe, it’s simple and delicious.  I sometimes change it up and use some red wine, or throw in mushrooms if we have them.  But even without additions or changes, the basic recipe is perfectly fantastic.

Tuesday:  Asian skewers.  This recipe.  We can’t get enough of this meal.  Love it!

Wednesday:  Homemade chicken tenders.  Jason makes them, he’s got a certain recipe he uses (one he came up with himself and won’t write down for me) for the breading that, I swear, makes them better than any I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  I always look forward to these.  Sometimes we have them with Frank’s hot wing sauce, sometimes we have them plain with dipping sauces.  He always makes little popcorn sized pieces for the kids and they scarf them down!

Thursday:  Baked ziti.  Simple - sauce, noodles, cheese.  And garlic bread on the side.  This is one of my easy, toss-together meals for the week.

Friday:  Grilled chicken over salad greens.  Normally we do a caesar salad w/ grilled chicken, but I’ve taken to a more cobb style myself.  Mmmmmm!  This is a pretty easy, toss-together meal as well.

Saturday:  Chili.  Another simple meal.  Ground beef, store bought seasoning, tomatoes, chili beans, maybe a splash or two of beer if we want to get fancy.  ;-P  (I also like to throw in any other veggies we might have leftover from other meals - peppers, onions, maybe a little corn or something)  Jason likes saltines with his chili, and I have never cared either way, so saltines it is!

Sunday:  Chicken pot pie.  This recipe.  This is our new recipe of the week - we haven’t tried it before.  It looks good, and easy, so I’ve got high hopes.

Bonus meal:  Hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill.  With baked beans and steamed veggies on the side.

using today to learn

I’ve posted before about Jag and his interest in history.  He spent months learning and talking about all the Presidents of the United States (could tell you facts about many of them, and recognize most of them by their pictures - even refused to ride anything at Disney World until he did the Hall of Presidents first!), he spent some time interested in all things Mozart, he finds anything related to battle and war fascinating (he’s currently into the American Revolution and Civil Wars)… so it shouldn’t surprise me that on our way home from school on Friday, he told me the dozen or so little facts he learned in class about Martin Luther King Jr, and said “Mommy, I want to learn more about him!”  He doesn’t ask to read books or watch movies about Spiderman or Power Rangers - nope, my boy wants to spend time reading about Martin Luther King Jr..  God I love him!

So I thought I’d share our plans for today.  He brought a couple of MLK coloring pages home from school Friday, so we’ll do those, but I also found a few sites with age appropriate activities:  @KinderTeacher, @EnchantedLearning and @Danielle’sPlace.  I bought him a couple of books:  Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. and A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr..  And for Kat (since she is wanting everything her brother has these days), a boardbook:  The Story of Martin Luther King, Jr..

I also set the DVR to record a couple of age appropriate-ish (rated PG, nothing more) specials on Martin Luther King, Jr.  He’s watching one now that aired on CNN last night.  It’s a little slow for him, but he’s catching the gist.  Every once in a while he comes in a tells me a little fact that he picked up.  How much do I love the fact that he wants to watch this instead of cartoons?!

shutterbudd

Honestly?  I need another photography/social networking site like I need a hole in the head.  But this one seemed kinda cool, so I signed up.  You can set up a virtual camera bag with the gear you have, make a list of gear you want, share pictures and label them with the camera/lens you used and also do some good ‘ole shop talking.  All that and I’ve only just barely dug into the site!

BTW, here’s where you can find me over there.

tennies and tutus

I skipped the copyright text on the image, but I’m gonna put it here.  © St3fani Gr33ne.  All rights reserved.  This photo is not free for the taking.  If you’re interested in using any of my work, please contact me for written permission.

time outs and stuff

I saw these time out spots on Jon & Kate Plus 8 (anyone else addicted to that show?  does it not make you feel like you’re on vacation with your own family?) and thought they were a brilliant idea.  And so cute!  I’ve been debating whether I’d buy one or try to make my own - finally just broke down this morning and bought one (the pink spot for Kat since we’re getting to the point of needing it).  How dopey that I’m so excited about a time out rug!  ;-P

Totally uneventful weekend here.  Didn’t get much of anything done (Kat’s pink paint is still in the can, sitting on the counter in the laundry room - doh!), but I guess we got some rest.  Here’s the thing - I h-a-t-e sitting around doing nothing on the weekends.  It drives me crazy, I want to be out doing STUFF.  Whatever, anything - just something, ya know?  Jason, on the other hand, wants to lay low and relax after a long week at work.  So we sort of clash every weekend.  We usually compromise and spend one day out and one day in, but I’ll admit that our one day in usually leaves me really frustrated and grumpy.  I’m thinking I should find a part time job one day a week - maybe I should look into assisting wedding photographers on Saturdays or something.  I don’t even care about getting paid (although play money would be nice), I just want to do something fun!

Enough of that blather…

I’m going to go watch my DVR’ed Scott Baio is 46 & Pregnant, then find some motivation to get stuff down around the house this afternoon!

black and whites

It’s time I shut my trap about kid and family stuff, and yammer on a bit about photography stuff!

My long-standing struggle has been black and whites.  I’ve tried the in-camera settings (bleh), pre-made (by others) Photoshop actions, gradient map, channel mixer… all with different formulas and tweaks.  I’m still left feeling unsatisfied and searching for just the right way to get a final look that I’m happy with.

I’d love to hear from any readers/photographers what your favorite method(s) are.  I’ll share one I took yesterday and share what I did.  I’m afraid I’m going to upload it and it’s going to look muddy, but here goes…

(sorry for the copyright - I’m paranoid and feel the need to make it absolutely.completely.withoutadoubt.clear that my photos are not free for the taking)

I shoot in raw, so I did my raw processing (purposely over-exposed a bit) and converted to jpeg.  For this particular shot, I used gradient map, and then used a curves layer to brighten the brights and darken the darks.  That’s it.  Resized, copyright stamped and done.  It’s looking muddy, isn’t it?  Any tips for that?

Edit:

Okay for the sake of comparison, here’s the same shot, processed in raw the same way, but I converted to b&w using the channel mixer and a curves layer.  Slightly better?  It might be the magenta cast I’m seeing that bugs me, not sure if that’s a calibration issue on my end or a result of my AdobeRGB -> sRGB conversion, or something else altogether.