Sunday Meal Prep

Hey everyone! Welcome to another meal prep Sunday! I’m sorry for my mostly-absence for the past two weeks. My injury is mostly better, but it really did throw my schedule and plans completely off. Come September, I will be back on top of things and better than ever!

With that out of the way, onward to this week’s meal prep 🙂

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Not a very big prep this week. All of the regulars are there: Peanut Butter Banana Oat Muffins, Sweet Potato Banana Bites, Breakfast Burritos and Buffalo Shredded Chicken Salads.

For our main courses, we went pretty basic and oddly, all rice based this week. That wasn’t really intentional, but we did enjoy it! Two of the dishes were no recipe, thrown together dishes: Chicken Stir-fry and Cabbage Veggie Saute If you want the recipe, let me know and I will try to recreate it. They were delicious! We also tried a new recipe this week: Saucy Pork Chop Skillet. We like pork chops, but I can never seem to find new ways to prepare them. This one seems like a winner!

That’s it for this week! What are you cooking in your kitchen?

Sara (1)

Want to get started meal prepping yourself? Check out these posts for my top tips and my staple recipes!

Need some extra inspiration? Check out last week’s meal prep for other recipes and ideas!

Sunday Meal Prep

Hey everyone! Welcome back to this week’s meal prep!

First off I want to apologize for my absence this past week. Last Saturday night I took a bit of a fall during my workout and ended up spending a few hours in the Emergency Room. I wasn’t too badly injured, but I didn’t really feel up to doing much cooking on Sunday. It’s times like this that I am very thankful for having some freezer meals built up! Though we did have a couple pizzas over the week too 🙂

But now, with my suture removed and feeling much better overall, I am back at it! So without further ado, on to this week’s meal prep!

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Not a huge meal prep this week.

Baking: Sweet potato banana bites, peanut butter banana oat muffins and cinnamon bread. Nothing surprising here, but still some of my favorites!

Main dishes: Salads, cut veggies for Tuscan White Bean Soup, and Italian Meatloaf. The meatloaf is a new recipe and delicious! Though probably not the most healthy version and we probably won’t make it very often.

I also made up a green bean side, some hard boiled eggs for snacking, cut up some red onions for sandwiches, and froze the remaining shredded buffalo chicken from the salads.

All in all, not a bad meal prep! I hope your week went better than mine and I’m happy to be back! What are you cooking this week?

Sara (1)

Want to get started meal prepping yourself? Check out these posts for my top tips and my staple recipes!

Need some extra inspiration? Check out last week’s meal prep for other recipes and ideas!

DIY Painted Dresser: My First Time Painting Furniture!

Hey everyone! I am really excited to bring you this DIY project: a painted dresser for my basement art studio! I am currently working to pull together different pieces of furniture (mostly stored in my basement) and making them nicer for my in-progress studio. These pieces are mostly left over from old roommates and a lot of them were originally from thrift stores.

I could go on, but basically what I am trying to impress upon you is that these are not nice pieces of furniture 😛

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Beautiful, am I right?! 🙂

One of the reasons I picked this dresser is that I am trying to get my studio set up and need more storage. But probably the main reason I picked this for my first project learning to paint furniture is that it’s a pretty simple dresser. No carvings, straight lines, etc. It’s a good piece to learn on!

I started out by taking out the drawers and removing the handles. (What of the handles were left to be removed) As you can see, I have plenty of projects to work on after these are done too!

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I sanded down all of the surfaces I planned on painting, then moved on to filling in the original handle holes with wood filler.

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Once the wood filler was set, I sanded the filled areas down, wiped down the dresser with a clean cloth and then painted it with primer.

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The day after the primer was painted, I painted the dresser a deep grey. I ended up putting on two layers, using a fine paint roller, with a paintbrush for the few tricky spots.

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While it still needs hardware, it ended up looking pretty nice! Not bad for my first project trying to paint furniture! It’s pretty plain, so I’m trying to find some colorful, fun hardware to install. Maybe a trip to Hobby Lobby is in order? 🙂

Do you have any projects you are thinking about trying that are new for you? Have you ever painted furniture? I still have a lot to learn about this and would love to hear some tips and tricks!

DIY Painted Lamps: Adventures in Spray Painting and Budget Remodels

Hey everyone! This week is the first of hopefully many (but at least 4) weeks of DIY projects for the home! While I have always loved doing DIY projects, I have never taken much time to develop any real skills at them. At least ones that aren’t art-related.

Now I find myself really getting into them and wanted to learn some new skills as well. We have been working on remodeling our house for a few years now and I have started to get a little frustrated at the lack of cohesion in the decor. Most rooms are a mash-up of items from my childhood, ones given to me or left by past roommates, some art projects I’ve made and a few art pieces I’ve collected.

Continue reading “DIY Painted Lamps: Adventures in Spray Painting and Budget Remodels”

Fitness Update

As I stated in my July Review, I kinda fell off track with my workouts for a couple of weeks. So I didn’t make much progress last month 😦 But I didn’t really lose any progress either. Over my fitness journey, I have learned to accept that some weeks don’t go as planned.

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June Progress Pics
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BBG Starting Day Pics

Continue reading “Fitness Update”

Sunday Meal Prep

Hey everyone! Welcome to another installment of my weekly meal prep. I am very excited to say that unlike last week, this week was much better and more fun for me! I don’t know what was going on with me last week, but I’m glad it’s over!

This week was pretty fun for me, including one of my favorite stews 🙂 I know that it’s a bit warm out for a heavier stew, but I saw it when I was deciding on the menu for this week and it just sounded too tasty to pass up. Check out the recipe at the bottom of the post! Continue reading “Sunday Meal Prep”

July In Review and August Goals

Due to a visit from my parents and a sewing machine that just wouldn’t cooperate, this post is coming out a day later than I planned on.

July went pretty well overall as far as life goes, but my goals for July went decidedly less well. The month started off well enough, but after a very minor shoulder injury I fell off track on pretty much everything for a couple weeks. While I did get back on track with my workouts, I would have to say I failed at all of my other goals for this month. This failure really has had me examining how I set goals, what caused me so much difficulty and what I can do differently from here on out to help myself succeed. Continue reading “July In Review and August Goals”