What's for Dinner?

– When we first married I used these little calendars from Woman’s Day magazine often to help me plan different and delicious meals – and then when the boys came along it continued to help me plan balanced meals for them. It was a sad day when they discontinued them [in fact, I may have stopped my subscription about then] 

– so, even though I don’t cook nearly as much as I used to, I was happy [[HAPPY!!]] to see the return of these menu ideas. Honestly, I’ve never had a month where I cooked every single meal on the calendar, but it is a great planning tool to cook balanced meals, and use the left-over’s wisely too. This month, I think we’ll be having the cool chicken and noodle salad [27^th – recipe in the issue,] chili dogs [14^th - crock-pot – used to do these when we were camping! – yum!] And yogurt chicken kabobs [17^th] with tomato salad sounds good – might have to add the shrimp & zucchini [13^th] kabobs as well! Check them out here!

I read FIVE books in May – am truly enjoying The Kindle – so handy. And the free books I’m told about over at Faith,Creativity, Life are a great way to add to my library! And we watched three movies this week too!

As I walk through the “31 Days of Praying for Your Husband” [I mentioned it on pinterest a couple of weeks ago -] I realize that I am so truly blessed with a wonderful man! My continuous prayer for all my guys is that God will guide them and protect them in all areas of their lives – spiritually, physically, and mentally. It’s a good way to intentionally pray for that man in your life – link above.

These last two weeks I’ve made the effort to drink a cup of soy milk every day – it’s my attempt to get more calcium into my system [I am sooo NOT a milk drinker] – and I like it [vanilla.] But I didn’t read about how you need to introduce it slowly to your diet [and I’ll add especially if you have IBS – ha] so I ended up with a bit of a problem. But, I’m giving it a go again, only… I’ll be drinking it every OTHER day for a week or two…

 We’ve been contemplating a little fence for Emma Lou for a while now – want it close to the house where we can just let her out and watch her from the kitchen window on occasion – and especially at night when we have trouble seeing her up on the back part of our yard where the wild critters lurk [seriously, coyotes have been seen a couple of blocks from our house…] And it will be nice to sit outside with her without always wondering if she’s wandered off to parts unknown. So we finally decided that this month’s mileage check would go to The Fence.

[It butts up against the fire pit [full of mint and paper from the fencing at the moment] deck - love that I can sit out here and still be 'with' her but not worried about her... it goes across the back of the house and will end just past our patio cover...] Found a perfect one at Home Depot that was small enough on the bottom that she couldn’t squeeze through – it wasn’t as tall as I’d hoped for, but we bought it [all 25 pieces and fence posts,] brought it home, unloaded it, and discovered that a few panels were broken or bent... Since we’d bought all our local store had we traveled to the other store in town to replace it… and, you guessed it – I found one I liked even better – small openings so she couldn’t get out [and rabbits can’t get in – I counted TEN in our neighborhood yesterday!] – And tall enough to feel like a real fence [does that even makes sense? I mean it is A FENCE. LOL]. And it kind of, sort of, reminds me of the fence around my yard as a kid… Even better – it puts up without fence posts – and the panels can act as a gate, if we want [= less $$$] – so we drove home, loaded up all the original, & took it back to buy this new stuff. Then came home and unloaded [again – it made me think of our youth mission trip to Ohio when we moved those clothes from one location to the other {All. Day. Long.} – those who were there remember it well, I’m sure!] AND, we were able to put five panels up before the torrential rain drove us inside. Yay! [Did I mention I’m blessed to have wonderful husband?!?]
 

And I picked up a couple of more flower baskets [on sale] to hang around the patio - separated and re-potted them and set them out for a good soaking Sunday night...

Okay – lastly – I’m a little disheartened that the recipients of my Once a Month [old stuff] Giveaway for the last couple of months have not sent me their addresses to receive the box… so I’m thinking of doing things a bit differently and instead of choosing randomly each month, I think I’ll just send the box to the first person who emails me [Judy-at-faithbasedpages-dot-com] their snail address after the post goes up. There’s a couple of rules – US Residents only -- sorry – and you can receive the box once every six months – Sound good? And why not give it a try today? The first person who send their address to me [at the email above] will have a box in the mail this week. [Also, don’t forget to check the PAGE TAB above to see if you won for May or April -] 

Have a good week everyone…