Climbing Out From Under My Rock!

Wow!!! I can't believe it's been a month since my last post! The end of the year was truly a whirlwind. With testing, testing and more testing, I have been so busy helping teachers that I had nothing interesting to blog about (and was lacking the energy as well!) Today is day 1 of my summer vacation and I am excited about doing fun stuff with the twins! Of course I have grand plans for us, we will see how much gets done!!! Today we will be enjoying a lazy day at home and swimming in the pool. They LOVE to swim (in 2 feet of water) and have been waiting for this day for weeks.

We also have booked our Disney Trip for September!!!! The girls are going to be so excited! I had no clue that Disney offered free dinning during the fall! We have almost always been to Disney in July, can you say HOT! As we were beginning to make plans a friend told me about free dinning in the fall and I began to investigate. Depending on which resort you stay at, you are eligible for different dinning packages- FOR FREE!! We are staying at Disney All Star Movies Resort. We have never stayed on the Disney properties, always opting to stay at a condo or house off property, thinking it was cheaper. Not the case when you have free dinning! We were eligible for 2 quick service meals and 1 snack a day, we upgraded to 1 sit down meal a day. This means we are doing a character meal Every.Single.Day. Stay tuned for more info on our trip later!

The best news is the trip is already 100% paid for! Yes you read that correct. I am using money made selling Pampered Chef this month to pay for it! I became a consultant a little over 3 months ago and God is blessing my business!!! I am doing something fun and enjoyable and getting paid to do it! I have also added a link to my PC store right on my blog, so if you need something and don't have a consultant, please use me!!! Items can be directly shipped right to your home! Right now PC is offering something they have NEVER done....FREE new consultant kits!!! You can try out Pampered Chef for nothing this month! If you want more info on making extra money, getting free products, or just being recognized for the work your doing, I would love to talk to you about this wonderful opportunity!

Well I'm off to play in the pool with my girlies!

Quick Cooking Meals

 How many times have you been faced with this question???

Well I have the answers that can hopefully help you!  I have been on a new cooking kick called Power Cooking.  I buy hamburger and chicken in bulk and take an hour during the weekend to cook it and portion it into Ziploc bags. After portioning out the meat, I add various spices and sauces depending on what is needed for the meal.  This makes week night cooking a PIECE-O-CAKE! 

I can have dinner on the table in less then an hour and most nights, I don't even turn on my stove!  

So here is my weekly menu for this week and all include approximate cooking times!  Power Cooking has freed me in the kitchen!!!  

So for those of you who would like to begin your own Power Cooking, here is the basic recipe for make ahead beef:  3 lbs ground beef, 3 onions, 3 cloves of garlic.  Cook it up together and then portion it out in 1 pound bags.  When measuring it out, 1 1/2 cups equals 1 lb.  After you portion it out you can freeze it as is, or add spices to it.  

Here is an easy example: Zesty Taco Salad, take 1 pound make ahead meat and add 2 Tbsp of Southwest Seasoning or a Taco packet.  Mix up and freeze.  When you are ready to make the Taco Salad, defrost your meat, cook for 5 min in the Microwave, chop lettuce.  Arrange lettuce on a platter, top with meat, cheddar cheese, and sour cream mixed with salsa.  Yummo!!!

I plan on posting my menu weekly and adding in new recipes.  I hope Power Cooking will help you get meals on the table quicker for your family!

Cooking up Deliciousness and a Freebie

Wow, it has been a week since my last post!  My New Year's Resolution was to be a more active blogger, this week, that was a fail!  Good thing I have such dedicated followers who forgive me a keep reading my ramblings!

My Pampered Chef business is in full swing and April is going to end strong!  I am even lucky enough to have booked a party with my bloggy and real life BFF Amber!  We are doing BLT Salad and Yummy Chocolate Lava cake.  This cake is like crack!  It is made in the Deep Covered Baker in the microwave.  After mixing up the batter you simple scoop the icing over the batter and microwave 10 min and heaven on Earth is served!

It seems that I'm not the only one on a recipe kick lately.  My FB has been overloaded with food for the past month or so.  I started up a page to contain all my Pampered Chef recipes and ideas.  If you would like to join, click here and you will be taken to the page https://www.facebook.com/groups/pcelisabeth/

It was suggested by a fellow blogger that I do a post about Power Cooking.  Most people are eating at home more, but don't have much time to do so.  Enter Power Cooking, taking 1 hour a week to cook up large amounts of ground beef and chicken to use as bases and freeze them.  You take them out as you need them, defrost, add to your meal, and dinner is done!  Look for a more in depth post to come about this!  

I love Grumpy Cat and he pretty much sums up how I feel about Mondays!  I couldn't resist sharing some of my faves!

My week is looking chaotic already!  Ugh does Monday really have to come!!!  I have a data meeting all day Tuesday and then Wednesday I will be heading back to the hospital for my baby Raegan to have another surgery.  :(  We went Tuesday for a follow up appointment and didn't anticipate hearing anything but good news.  Well her Dr. is not happy with the way one spot on her head isn't healing and thinks that her body isn't accepting the suture.  She wants to go back in and try a different suture.  I, of course, was a nervous mess at the Dr, and was so glad the hubs was with me to do the talking.  I may as well have been mute during the meeting!  I said nothing!!!!  If you think about it, I would appreciate any prayers for my sweet baby, Raegan.  I will be staying out with her through Monday, so work is on hold for the rest of the week.   

Tomorrow is Earth Day and to celebrate, I whipped up some free word center games you can use in your classroom.  Click here to download a copy!  

Hope your week is great!

Where Oh Where Has My Weekend Gone?!?!?!?!?

This is the song I find myself singing every Sunday night!  It is like the week DRAGS on and the weekend ZOOMS by.  What.Is.The.Deal.  I know all of you agree with me, right????

I haven't talked much about my new Pampered Chef business lately, but I had 2 parties this weekend!!  Yes I have money crazy written on my forehead!  Friday night was all about Power Cooking.  If you are like me, your busy.  I am a mom of twins, full time teacher, and now working PC on the side.  I always tried to make weekly/monthly meal calendars so that we would eat in more.  Well that always went by the wayside when I was late getting home, passing fast food, or just plain out didn't feel like cooking!  Anyone with me???  Bueller...Bueller...anyone??  Enter Power Cooking!  It seriously changed the way I cook.

You start with 3-6 lbs of hamburger and 4lbs of chicken.  The idea is to make up hamburger and chicken bases to freeze and pull out during the week.  I created sloppy joes, taco salad base, and busy mom's lasagna base.  I didn't leave the chicken out!  I made up chicken Parmesan soup, chicken tortilla soup base and something else I just can't remember!  (bad I know!) So that is 6 meals that will last my family the whole week!  I simply pull out the bag, defrost it, and Viola' dinner is served!  I usually take an hour on Saturday or  Sunday to Power Cook.

I have been working on my latest product all week too!  It has been one of my most difficult products to create because I struggled to find graphics that I thought fit the topic and was cute!  So here it is hot off the presses...my Natural Resources Lapbook.

Making the product I did learn things about Natural Resources that I didn't know.  I am embarrassed to say that I honestly never understood what fossil fuels were!  After reading about this topic, I now know!  Please don't judge me!!!!!  

There is a freebie of one of the minibooks in the preview download.  I am also giving away 2 copies of this over on my Facebook page.  If you haven't liked my FB page, make sure you click here to enter for your chance to win!

Ugh!  Does Monday really have to come so quickly!

Yummy in my Tummy and Winners!!!

So many of you know I took the jump into the Pampered Chef world.  Well my launch party was this week and went great!  We had Chocolate Lava Cake, Mini Pesto Pizzas and fresh Salsa....are you hungry yet????

Amber  from Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher dropped in the frosting for our lava cake!

This cake was made in the microwave in 10 min!  Shut the front door!!!!  It was moist and delicious.  

Fresh Salsa made in the Mannual Food Processor

Power Cooking!!!!!

We used the Simple Slicer to create these yummy Pesto Pizzas.  I'm here to tell you, eating one isn't an option!

I started a Pampered Chef group on FB to share these yummy and quick recipes.  What is your go to product???

Thanks to all who entered my Lucky Numbers giveaway!  The Winners are Tamera and Aimee!!  Congrats ladies, I am sending your prize to you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Well I'm heading off to see Lucy Calkins after church in Columbia, SC with Amber  and some other teacher friends!  I am so excited I can't wait!!!  Are any of you going to be there? If so, we could have an impromptu Blogger Meetup!

Pampered What!!!

FYI this post is totally not teacher related!!  One of my best mommy friends asked me to attend a cooking demonstration where we would learn how to make freezer meals ahead of time for like 2 weeks at a time.  Being a mother of twin 2 year olds, I said sign me up!!!!  The demo was Saturday and she forgot to mention it was PAMPERED CHEF!!!!  I must confess I am a self proclaimed connoisseur of all things Pampered Chef  PC!  As we were sitting in our cooking demo, I was flipping through the book and showing my best mommy friend BMF all the products I already own.  I began thinking of how fun it would be to sell this stuff!  What the world!!!!!

I already had my marketing presentation in mind to convince the hubs to let me do it.  The discounted free product, the fancy trips, extra income.  What's not to love??????  So I am obviously in need of a reality check and you are just the ones to do it for me!  I am looking for the good, bad and ugly of doing PC.  Give it to me straight .....BE HONEST!  If I am crazy, tell me so!  If any of you have experience in this type of thing, I would love your feedback.

Oh, we did walk away with 10 freezer recipes to use, so it was a total success!  Freezer meals, check, measuring spoons I needed, check, possible extra income, possibly!