On Stocking the Freezer with Meals

This past spring I decided to stock my freezer full of easy dinners I could pull out and serve. I was hoping that I would be getting pregnant soon and fully anticipating I would have another rough first trimester, making cooking dinner a huge struggle. I researched some meals that would freeze well, but what I mostly found were crockpot "dump" meals. Those aren't always my favorite, because they're either too creamy or just don't have enough of an interesting flavor. Below are links of the recipes I ended up making, if you're interested in stocking up your freezer! We started eating these in June, and I have just a few left. We obviously don't eat them every night, but it's been such a great filler for the days that I've been too tired or too sick to cook! It would be handy to stock your freezer with these if you're pregnant, will be having a newborn soon, have a busy work schedule, or even just for a stress-free dinner!

• Chicken Spaghetti - I made two pans of this and each pan lasted for several meals for the three of us!
• Quiche - I made three, which I served with a tossed salad for dinner or had for easy breakfasts or lunches. 
• Calzones (I used this technique with this filling) - I ended up making 8 calzones, and we found that 1 calzone for each of us was plenty. I wrapped them individually in aluminum foil. When it was time to eat them, I thawed a couple in the fridge for a few hours before baking them in the oven still wrapped in foil. 
• Chipotle Lime Chicken - I made one recipe of this, which fills two freezer bags, and each bag is enough for a meal plus plenty of leftovers. This crockpot meal is a tried and true favorite of mine!
• Chicken Squares - I made a double recipe, which is 8 chicken squares. I baked them completely and let them cool before wrapping them individually in foil. To serve, I baked them on a baking sheet still wrapped in foil until they were hot through. 
• Meatballs in tomato sauce - The recipe I ended up using wasn't my favorite so I'm not linking it here, but it made a ton and has served a good number of meals. Make your favorite recipe and then divide it up into containers. Thaw in fridge overnight and heat on stove before serving.
• Sloppy Joes - I made one batch of this recipe and then divided it up in several containers. I let it thaw in the fridge overnight then reheated it on the stove before serving.
• Lasagna - I made my mother-in-law's recipe and divided it into two 8x8 pans rather than one large pan. I assembled both lasagnas but didn't bake them. When I was ready to serve them, I let it thaw in the fridge/counter, then baked it covered with foil until it was hot through and bubbling. 

Hope you find this helpful if you're looking to stock up your freezer and want to avoid a ton of crockpot meals! These meals have been a huge help to me! Now that we're getting into fall and soup weather, I plan on stocking up on a bunch of soups and chilis! Do you have any tried and true recipes that freeze well?

How to make strawberry jam

Making homemade strawberry jam is a little spring tradition I've had going for the past six years. We absolutely love it, and I usually make a lot because I don't like the taste of store-bought jam anymore (even when I was hugely pregnant last year I managed to crank out 5 batches!). Homemade jam is one of those things that sounds hard/annoying/intimidating, but this recipe is not! No sterilizing of jars is required! With the right tools and a good system, it is really easy (though a bit time consuming). I use my sister Lauren's recipe (also the recipe inside of the Sure-Jell package), which is below along with my tips.

Strawberry Jam
2 pints strawberries (we get ours from the local berry patch)
4 cups sugar
1 box Sure-Jell fruit pectin (near the jello + pudding in the grocery store)
3/4 cup water

Rinse and hull the strawberries. I use this strawberry huller which is a huge time-saver! Place hulled strawberries in a large bowl and mash with a potato masher. It's best to use a potato masher instead of a food processor, because you don't want the fruit to be puréed.

Measure exactly 2 cups of the crushed strawberries and put into a large bowl. Add exactly 4 cups of sugar. Stir to combine and let it sit for 10 minutes.

While the berries and sugar are sitting, add 3/4 cup of water to a small saucepan. Add in the bag of fruit pectin and stir to combine. Cook on high heat, stirring constantly, until it boils. Once it boils, stir and cook for 1 more minute. Remove it from the heat and add it to the fruit mixture. Stir together for about 3 minutes, until all of the sugar dissolves.

Divide the mixture into clean jars (no need to sterilize!). These Ball mason jars are the ones that I always use. They are pint-sized, freezer safe, and wide mouth, which helps keep things a little less messy. I highly recommend getting a canning funnel as well! You do not want this sticky jam mixture getting all over your jars or your countertops. Pour the mixture into the jars, leaving about 1/2 inch at the top so it can expand in the freezer. Tightly screw the lids onto the jars and let them sit on the counter for 24 hours. Store jam in freezer for up to a year. Thaw jam in fridge when you're ready to eat it. This recipe will fill 3 pint-sized jars.

Also, if math isn't your thing, there are 8 pints in a gallon. So, if you pick a gallon of strawberries at the berry patch, you can make 4 batches of the above recipe, which will fill 12 of these Ball mason jars (which is one pack).

Decorating the Nursery

This post is included in Wayfair's campaign #NurseryTale: sharing the story behind my favorite nursery pieces. Find more great nursery pieces at Wayfair.com

Several months ago I shared Madeleine's nursery reveal, but today I'm sharing a little bit more about the story behind some of the pieces in Madeleine's room and my tips on decorating a nursery.  The entire nursery was a labor of love, and it was such a joy to bring together my vision for the room as we anticipated the arrival of our precious daughter.

Choose a theme or a color scheme. There are a ton of nursery theme ideas on Pinterest you can browse through, or you can simply choose a color scheme you'd like to go with. I wanted Madeleine's nursery to be a space that was calming and feminine, and one that she could continue to enjoy and grow into, so I decided to choose a color scheme rather than a specific theme. I chose a soft pink for the walls, white furniture, and accents of gold and black. If you've chosen a rug, curtains, bedding, or something else that has the specific colors you'd like to incorporate, choose your paint color after you've picked out those items. It is much easier to find a paint color to match the room than later trying to find curtains that match already-painted walls!

Pick out the big pieces. It's easier to decorate and fill in the spaces around the furniture, so we worked on selecting the furniture for Madeleine's nursery first. We wanted a crib that was a little bit more modern, and we love the convertible crib that we selected. After much searching, we finally found the perfect glider at Wayfair. Caleb designed and built both the bookshelf and the dresser/changing table, and we hope that Madeleine will be able to use these pieces for years to come. Think beyond the initial baby stage and choose furniture that can be used for several years, whether it's a convertible crib, a dresser that can also function as a changing table, or tables and shelves that can be used throughout childhood.

Incorporate handmade items. We really wanted Madeleine's room to be filled with very intentional pieces, which resulted in a lot of handmade items decorating her room. In addition to the furniture that Caleb built, the basket of blankets on Madeleine's shelf is full of handmade blankets, made by one of Madeleine's aunts and one of her great-aunts, as well as several that I made. The hairbands that sit on top of Madeleine's bookshelf were all made by family and friends at one of my baby showers. The tassel garland was made by one of my friends and was used as a decoration at one of my other baby showers. I love looking at these pieces and remembering how our family and friends were so excited for us and showered us with so much love as we were expecting our first baby, and as Madeleine gets older it will be special to share with her how much love went into her room and the pieces in her room. Handmade items are what can set your nursery apart from others' nurseries, and it's also fun to think about the time, effort, and love that went into creating each item.

Make it personal. The wooden signs that hang in Madeleine's room are also very special to me. The signs above both the crib and the changing table are custom pieces made by a dear friend who runs Olive + Grey. Above the changing table are three signs that say baby in English, Chinese, and French. This has great significance to me as I lived in China for several years as a child and have spent many years studying and speaking Chinese. I also studied French for several years, and Caleb took me on a dream-come-true trip to Paris several years ago. My degree is in international politics and I love for traveling, so it's only natural for me to hope that Madeleine will love foreign languages and appreciate foreign cultures like I do.

Make it practical. Even though as an infant Madeleine can't really get into anything, I still wanted to set up her room in a way that would function well when she is mobile and getting into things. The shelves are open and low so that she will be able to reach for her toys and books, but the top shelf is reserved for items that she shouldn't be getting into (headbands, the lamp, etc.). We left a good amount of floor space in the room as well, so that as she gets bigger and enjoys playing, there will be plenty of room for her to spread out and play on the floor.

Let the room grow with the baby. I had planned on making Madeleine a mobile before she was born, but she was (thankfully!) born a little bit early, and I never got to make it. Now that Madeleine is in a stage where she loves playing and enjoys watching anything that moves, I finally got around to making a simple ribbon mobile for her to look at while she nurses. Now we just need to hang it up! It will be fun to continue to incorporate new items that Madeleine will enjoy as she hits new developmental milestones and continues to learn and enjoy new things in her environment.

What tips do you have for decorating a nursery? Decorating Madeleine's nursery was definitely one of my favorite projects I've ever done! Thanks for taking a peek into her room. All sourcing information is below!

sources: paint: Behr in "Hush Pink" | curtains: Land of Nod | crib: Target | crib bedding: Target | blanket: crocheted by me | wooden signs over crib: Olive + Grey | glider: Wayfair | pillow: Target | Love Never Fails print: Lindsay Letters | bookshelf: designed by me + built by Caleb, inspiration from Oeuf + CB2 | tassel garland: made by a friend as a baby shower decoration | lamp base: Target | lamp shade: Target | | gold flower bowl: Home Goods | hairband organizer: Home Goods | floral heart print: Rifle Paper Co | piggy bank: Target | black rugby stripe bins: Amazon | wooden rainbow stacker: Melissa & Doug | wooden birdie stacker: gifted | wooden alligator: Buy Buy Baby | wooden zebra: Pottery Barn Kids | dresser: designed + built by Caleb, inspiration from Pottery Barn Kids | white + black basket: gifted | changing pad cover: aden + anais | wooden signs over dresser: Olive + Grey 

DIY Painted File Cabinet

Last summer my big home project was redoing the craft room + office, which I wanted to be full of bright and fun colors. We still needed it to be a functioning office, which meant we still needed a file cabinet. I had in my mind that I wanted a yellow file cabinet, and I had my eye on this particular one (which I still love!). However, I couldn't justify spending $300 on a file cabinet, and Caleb definitely was not on board with that. Instead we decided to try to paint the black file cabinet we already had. It looked very similar to this one: 

To start, we removed the drawer pulls. Then I scuffed the entire file cabinet with Scotch Brite scouring pads, to roughen up the surface and help the spray paint to stick. This took quite a while, as there was a lot of surface area to cover. Once we felt like the cabinet had been roughened up enough, we wiped down all of the black dust the scouring had created. We made sure the file cabinet was super clean and dry before starting to paint. Caleb is the spray painter in our house (I always have so many drips!), so he then primed the file cabinet with spray paint primer. After a coat or two of that, he took to spray painting it with the yellow spray paint. It took several coats to cover up the black, but it was worth it! I'm so happy with the way it turned out, and for about $20 we now have a yellow file cabinet.

If you're looking for a colorful file cabinet, I would suggest trying to spray paint an old one first! It really was an easy DIY project, and you can find cheap file cabinets on Craigslist if you don't already have one. Let me know if you try it out!

(black file cabinet photo via)

How to get rid of fruit flies

Do you have a problem with fruit flies in your kitchen during the summer? Of course it is during the summertime that we have more produce sitting out: tomatoes ripening on the windowsill, cantaloupes or pineapples on the counter waiting to be cut, etc., but I cannot stand the pesky little fruit flies! 

Thankfully I've found a solution: fill a glass jar two-thirds of the way full with apple cider vinegar. Secure plastic wrap over the mouth of the jar, and poke several holes in the plastic wrap. Leave it sitting out on the counter, and watch how many fruit flies you will collect! The apple cider vinegar attracts them, but then they get stuck swimming in it. I could not believe how many fruit flies filled the jar in just a day. It is a definite summer lifesaver for me. Let me know if you try it out!

How to (cheaply) print your Instagram pictures

I don't know about you, but more and more I am reaching for my phone to take pictures rather than my DSLR. Grabbing my iPhone is just so handy! Oftentimes this means I have pictures on Instagram that I love and want to print out. I've looked into different printing options and thought I'd share what I've found:

Artifact Uprising offers 25 prints for $21.99, plus $7.99 for shipping - coming out to $1.20/print

Prinstagram offers 24 prints for $12, plus $7 for shipping - coming out to $0.80/print

Sticky9 offers 27 prints for $16.99, with free shipping - coming out to $0.63/print

Foxgram offers a minimum of 10 prints for $4.50, with $2.99 shipping - coming out to $0.75/print, or if you spend $25, the shipping is free - coming out to $0.45/print

Surprisingly what I've found is that Walgreens offers prints for $0.39/print, that you can pick up in a store and pay no shipping! I have been really pleased with the print quality from Walgreen's, and I'm happily sending all of my Instagram images there for printing!

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. Just sharing a helpful tidbit! 

How to Hang a Gallery Wall

One of my favorite parts of my newly completed craft room is the gallery wall. I had a lot of fun looking through shops on Etsy to find prints of things or words I loved. The part that I was not so looking forward to, though, was the actual hanging of the prints. With different sized prints and different orientations, I really wanted the frames scattered around in a somewhat random clump rather trying to arrange them perfectly (which would totally be my OCD tendency).

I debated several methods of arranging and hanging them, but I ended up using the steps below. I'm sure there are lots of gallery wall hanging tutorials out there, but what I ended up doing was truly foolproof. I made no extra holes in the wall, and I managed to arrange and hang all of the frames all by myself! Having never even used a hammer before hanging this gallery wall, I was pretty proud of myself:) Here's how to hang a gallery wall the easy way:

1. Using kraft or butcher paper, trace and cut out templates for each frame. 

2. Place the template on the backside of the frame and line up the edges.

3. Carefully lift up part of the template to find the hanger or wall mount.

4. Holding the place of the hanger/wall mount with your finger, use a nail to make a hole in the template where it would go as if hanging on the wall. 

5. Place frames on the floor or on a table in the arrangement you would like them on the wall.

6. Using the arrangement of the frames you previously made, tape the templates to the wall using painter's tape. Once you are pleased with the arrangement, hammer nails into the holes made in the templates in step #4.

6. Remove templates and hang the frames.

sources: frames: Michaels & Bed Bath & Beyond | Paris print: Laura Amiss | flamingo print: Wren's Roost | grass is greener print: Brim Papery | work hard print: Maiedae | donut print: Ann Shen | umbrella print & stamps print: Kate Spade

How to learn any foreign language

How many languages do you speak? I have always loved foreign languages, and I just finished this fascinating new book on how to learn a foreign language and actually remember it. I've studied four foreign languages but would only say I am proficient/can remember anything in one, and I truly believe it's due to how I (tried) to learn them and how often I practiced speaking. For Latin (kindergarten - grade 4), we sang songs and learned conjugations; for French (grades 10-12) we did projects and watched movies; for Arabic (one semester in college), we learned vocab and took so.many.quizzes; for Chinese (grades 6-9, and then in college), I lived in China for three of those years, had a tutor who didn't speak any English, spoke it every single day, and then later spent three months in an intense immersion program with no English allowed. Not surprisingly, I remember a couple of songs in Latin, I know enough French to order food, I can say thank you in Arabic, and I can actually speak Chinese.

The methods described in Fluent Forever are very detailed and provide all the information and resources you would need to begin tackling the language you'd like to learn. Some of the methods from the book are:

*Never translate. Cutting out English (or whatever your native language is) allows you to actually think in your target language. You can use pictures at first to learn words, slowly graduating to simple definitions and fill-in-the-blank flash cards. This allows you to learn the vocab and grammar of your target language without having to translate back and forth. This will help you attain fluency rather than just the ability to translate.

*Make personal connections. We can remember a concept with a personal connection 50% more easily than a concept without one. For example, if you can connect the word for dog in your target language with an image of a cute little dog, you'll probably be able to remember that word pretty easily. But if you can connect the word for dog in your target language with the dog you had growing up, it will be essentially impossible for you to forget the word.

*Study using spaced repetition. This is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between reviews of previously learned material. The intervals are specifically chosen to have you recall material at the optimal time to push them deeper into your long-term memory.

*Choose the right vocabulary. Pick up a frequency dictionary to begin studying your target language by learning the first thousand most frequent words. Beyond that, target the specific type of vocab you need, whether political, academic, financial, etc.

If you're interested in learning a foreign language, or want to delve back into one you studied years ago, I suggest picking up this book. It has motivated me to get back into regular Chinese study, incorporating some of these techniques I've not tried before. If you don't want to read the book, you can also check out the website here for more information on the tips and techniques.

What do you think? Will you try to learn a new language? Would you want your kids to be bilingual?

Disclosure: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my review. I picked this book to read + review, and I absolutely loved it. All opinions are 100% my own.

How to add fiber to your diet (that tastes good!)

A couple of weeks ago, I had such terrible stomach pains. Caleb was out of town (of course) and I was on the couch crying, absolutely convinced I was going to die (or have an appendectomy or some other horrifying medical procedure). Thankfully, the intense pain subsided after a while and I was able to get in to my doctor's office the next day. My doctor did an exam and had x-rays done and concluded I had had a strong reaction to something I had eaten... resulting in violent spasms of my colon (hence the pain) and... other intestinal difficulties (I'm really not trying to get all TMI here, so sorry!). The funniest part was that I came home from work to a big package filled with the new Fiber One cookies to taste and review. The timing just made me laugh! I was pleasantly surprised to find the cookies actually tasted good! They are soft and chewy, and the double chocolate and chocolate chunk ones are my favorite. Thankfully, I am feeling MUCH better these days. We'll just never know if it was the medication, the spinach salads I was eating twice a day, or all of the Fiber One cookies. But if you're looking to add some more fiber to your diet, I suggest these cookies... they go down much easier than the alternative :) You can find them at Publix and here is a coupon.

Disclosure: The information and prize pack were provided to me by General Mills through Platefull Co-Op. All opinions are 100% my own.