February Goals In Review

Kids:

• Do a fun food treat and/or special activity for Valentine's Day. We made French toast with Valentine's Day M&Ms on top for breakfast, and got treats at Caribou (coffee for Jesse and me, and a muffin for the boys to split).
• Make Jonah some Lego busy bag patterns, as well as a few more busy bags for when Matthew is napping. I participated in a busy bag exchange, for which I made bead and pipe cleaner bags.

Crafts:

• Make one of these travel toothbrush holders from a towel. This didn't happen. 
• Finish the remaining 40 sides of my Advent Calendar project. I finished these by February 5 or so, and spent the rest of the month working on another stitching project, which was a nice change of pace.
• Organize my paper scraps in a pretty box with cardstock dividers. and organize my extra greeting cards in a pretty box by category. You can see both of these here.
• Make my file folders in the bill paying center pretty. I picked out papers, but didn't get to putting them on the file folders yet.

Personal:

• Read a personal devotion every day. I read through Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow.  I didn't read every day, which I think was because I didn't designate a specific time for it.  I'll be working on being more consistent with it next month.

Blog:

• Add a photo to my Menu Plan posts each week. Not the greatest quality photos, but I have started adding these to my menu posts.
• Learn more about my ads, and look into affiliate links for coupons and Amazon. I played around with this a little bit, but didn't get to the affiliate links.
• Continue to do at least one "content" post per week besides my day-specific ones. I thought this would be easier this month, with all of the projects I had planned, but I ended up not working on most of those until the end of the month, which made it a bit trickier.

Food:

• Find a good granola bar recipe. I started testing some recipes out, but since I'm doing one at a time, this will carry over into next month at least.
• Research alternatives to canola oil. We bought some coconut oil at the local co-op, and have used that a few times, plus we use butter and olive oil regularly.
• Try at least 4 new recipes this month.  I have boards and boards on Pinterest, as well as some torn out of magazines.  We really should try some. I've discovered that I have a different palate than my family the majority of the time, so usually when I think something is really good, no one else likes it, or vice versa.

We tried these new recipes:

• Pasta with White Bean Alfredo (so-so, but kind of bland)
• Homemade Hummus (pretty tasty, but was too garlic-y for the rest of the family, so I ended up throwing some out)
• Black Bean Brownies (really tasty! and definitely a keeper)
• Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls (I ended up using a bit of all-purpose flour, because I ran out of whole wheat, but these were moist and delicious, and a great side for our soup)
• Easy Potato Pancakes (the boys turned up their noses at pancakes that aren't sweet, but I thought these were really good)
• Black Bean Taco Soup (super easy to make, and a good, filling soup for lunches)
• Spinach Ricotta Shells (I thought this was good, Jesse thought it was okay, and even when I pureed the sauce and called it "green dinosaur sauce", the kids wanted nothing to do with it)
• Easy Whole Wheat Bread (This was still pretty dense, but it tasted good and sliced well for sandwiches and toast) 
• White Bean Burgers (I liked these better than our usual black bean burgers, but everyone else disagreed with me)