Shake it, Shake it, Shake it like a Polaroid Picture!

Ok so my blog post actually has nothing to do with this title but for some strange reason Outkast’s Hey Ya song is on repeat in my head and I couldn’t resist a little slight shoulder shimmy as I write this post.

Something about it just makes my Monday a little better…you should try it.  Go on, no one is watching…give a little shimmy and shake it out like a Polaroid picture!!  (Insert pause for timeout to shake it!) Don’t you feel better?  Haha  Ok, now that we have that out of our system…on to my eventful weekend.

As mentioned in my earlier post here, I have made a declaration to get back into shape.  Along the same lines, I also have motivation to get back on track with eating healthy.  The thing I have found about eating healthy is that it has to be planned.  Whenever dinner planning has been pushed aside and we find ourselves looking at each other asking “What’s for dinner?” at 8pm, you can pretty much guarantee that whatever food we inhale after that phrase will not be the healthiest of options.  Not to mention it also puts a dent in our wallet.  So, I have been doing some research on how other mom’s get it all done.  Lucky for me, there are hundreds of thousands of people blogging now and many of them are Moms like me who have been blogging about ways to be more efficient at home.  The problem used to be finding these helpful blogs but not since Pinterest has come around.  For those of you who are not familiar with Pinterest…let me introduce you to a website that will most likely begin to consume your life internet surfing.  Basically it is a place where you can create dream boards of anything you like.  I really cannot explain it in few words, just go to the link and explore it.  That being said, I have found several different blogs that offer all kinds of recipes.  I found this one blog where this woman does something called “once a month cooking” where she cooks one day a month and freezes all the meals.  This process usually takes up an entire 10 hour day which is where I was turned off because that sounded like the most awful day ever. Haha  Then she posted here how she came to an epiphany and cooked her once a month cooking in 3 hours by putting together crock pot bags.  This is when my excitement started to soar!  I could actually do this! So I decided to tackle this project over the weekend.  With the Sunday football games (we won't even mention the Falcon's game) rolling in the background I began the process of cutting up vegetables.  Having to stop occasionally to feed Eli caused, what took her 3 hours, me to take 5 hours but still much better than the 10 hours she referred to earlier!  I used the exact recipes that she mentioned in her post.  The reason I chose to use her recipes first was because of all the vegetables she used.  I have a very hard time consuming the proper amount of vegetables each day and by overloading them at dinner I might be able to stay on track.  I cut up so many different items that my hand is actually physically bruised where the knife sits against my finger.  Good thing I shouldn’t have to do this for a couple of weeks at least.

My finished product- The sauces in the bags looks kind of gross, I should have snapped the picture prior to shaking the bags...oh well!

 So today is the first day of the crock pot meal trial.  The first one we are trying tonight is called “Healthy Mama’s BBQ chicken”.  I hope that my 5 hours on Sunday were not wasted on something that doesn’t turn out well.  I am pretty hopeful though because when I walked in the house after work it smelled AMAZING!!! Did I mention that during the 5 hours of cooking, Eli got to spend some precious time with his daddy?  He was a good boy and took a good nap during the day.  I was even able to take a little snap shot of his classic rump in the air sleeping pose.