The New Year and Meals

Welcome 2015!

I love the beginning of a new year. I say that every year, but so far every year my fondness for this time doesn't change.

Obviously in life we can give ourselves a fresh start anytime we please, but something about the new year and resolutions and picking a word for the year and all of that makes it seem more official.

We had a crazy fun and crazy busy December, which I hope to recap at some point. We did a lot together and I want to journal it. However if I don't get around to it I always have my instagram as backup.

Luke took the week after Christmas off of work because we planned to go on a trip, but last minute we decided to just stay home and take it easy.

He ended up working two days out of the week but for most of the week it was all of us at home together. I loved every minute of it.

We were able to accomplish so much and randomly decided to completely redecorate our office. For some reason we had THREE desks in our office, which made the room seem so small. As we were cleaning the office we kept commenting on how silly it was to have three desks in there. Craziness.

So we got rid of some desks got a new desk, added some more functional pieces and boom we have a new office. It is already so much better. Don't you love when you  make a few changes and it just feels so refreshing?

Last week was our reinstatement week back into the real world. Luke went to work. Eli went
to his two days of school, and I ran around the house trying to get it clean but complaining that I'll never have a clean house. Same ole same ole.

We also got back to eating at home. The week after Christmas we had no groceries so we ate out everyday. At one point Eli said "I just want mama to cook, I miss mama's cooking". Well that made me feel GOOD. It's nice to know he likes my cooking.

I'm going to try and share our menus as much as possible this year. So here is our first week:

Monday: One Pot Enchilada Bake 
This was so good. It was a little bit different than a normal mexican dish because it calls for biscuits in the pot but still really good and filling. I will make this again.

Tuesday: Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken
This recipe and the above recipe are from Damn Delicious and they were so good. She has a ton of Asian inspired recipes on her blog that I highly recommend you check out. We made this into a bowl meal with brown rice and broccoli and it was a hit with everybody. SO good.

Wednesday: Crockpot Salsa Chicken
I needed to go to the grocery store this day, but never got around to going (I didn't want to interfere with Annie's naps and it just never worked out) so around 1:00 I threw some chicken in the crockpot, topped it with taco seasoning and salsa, a can of black beans, chopped green chilies. Towards the end I added some frozen corn. We ate it on tortillas with a veggie. It's a nice easy meal!

Thursday: Luke and I had a work party this night so we ate there.

Friday: Paula Deen Taco Soup
My absolute favorite soup. I think maybe Luke is sick of it but I could eat it every single night.

Saturday: Spinach Stuffed Shells
I love Skinny Taste. Gina is the author or the website and she has the BEST recipes. I've never made a recipe I didn't like. She just came out with a cookbook that I really want to get! We ate this with salad on the side.

Sunday: Leftovers

I've been working on my grocery list for this week so hopefully I can stay on top of my meal planning and cooking again this year!

Happy {a little late} New Year!