Meal Prepping and Planning

In order to stay on track with my eating, make healthier choices and meet my goals, I started planning and prepping parts our meals. This has been a huge help to me, so I thought I'd share a few simple recipes and things you can do to make your meals easier to manage. Just because it's healthy, doesn't mean it can't taste good!

Back to School Tips

For some around the country, you have already packed the lunches, stuffed the backpacks and sent your dear ones off to school. But for us in the Pacific NW, we have a few more weeks of summer.

As we gear up for school routines, early wake up calls and a new schedule, I wanted to share some helpful tips that are inspiring me to get organized.

Here are three back to school organization tips...easy and totally do-able.

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Mornings are always crazytown here. 

No matter what time the kids wake up, early or late, it never fails that someone can't find their shoe, a permission slip needs to be signed, someone's chocolate milk got spilled in their backpack from the day before, homework is missing and usually at least one child is crying for one reason or another. 

So, breakfast is usually a piece of bread with some peanut butter slathered on it...on a good day! 

Or a granola bar as we run out the door.

In an effort to make sure everyone eats a decent breakfast, here are a few make-ahead, grab & go breakfast ideas I'd like to try:

Pancake muffins...the kids would love these!

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One of our favorites...Berry Peachy Smoothie

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I like the idea of smoothie packets too

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Pre-made oatmeal in jars. Just microwave and go.

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Mini Frittatas

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These breakfast burritos are yummy!

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PB and Banana Muffins, with only 5 ingredients...the perfect simple breaky.

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Eggs Benedict with homemade Hollandaise sauce, green salad and freshly-squeezed oj...hahahaha just kidding. 

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Ah, yes...lunches. Towards the middle of the year, I get in a rut. This post is sure to free me of that! I mean, come on! 2,250 lunch combos?! With a printable?! Awesomesauce!

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I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to School Lunches. You can check it out here.

And to stay on track for dinners, here are a bunch of easy crockpot recipes:

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And last, but not least, here's a little laugh for your Thursday

How do you stay on top of everything during the school year?

Recipes for Shredded Chicken

Last week I scored a great deal on boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ended up with almost 6 pounds. While I could've frozen them for another time, I decided to boil them up to make multiple meals for the week.

I've found that boiling chicken gives the best results for shredding. It only takes about 45 minutes and doesn't require any time hovering over the piping hot stove.

So out of my nearly 6 pounds of chicken, I got 8 heaping cups of shredded chicken.

Here are a few of the recipes (or similar meals) that we made or plan to make:

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Chicken Tacos via

Hawaiian Smokey Sweet Pulled Chicken Sandwiches *drool*
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Another yummy lunch via

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What are YOUR favorite chicken recipes?

Dinner is Planned

I can't tell you how many times 6pm has rolled around and we're digging through our pantry looking for something to make for dinner. I recently found out about emeals.com. It's a menu planning service that offers weekly menus, grocery lists and savings at the stores that we shop. We just signed up this weekend and I'm excited to start trying the recipes this week!

Sure, I could make my own menu, but I've been telling myself for months that I'll get to that. Emeals has done all the work for me. And they have lots of different meal options: low carb, gluten free, portion control, Paelo and many more!

We signed up for the Clean Eating option. I considered the Simple Gourmet too, but I'm hoping the clean eating will kick me into gear, since I've been eating so bad lately. However, we can change our plan at any time, so we can switch it up if we want to.

It's also very affordable (Dave Ramsey even recommends it)! It's $5-7 a month, depending on length of subscription. Plus, I was able to find a coupon code for 20% off too! If you're interested in trying it out, seeing sample menus and learning how it works, click on the banner below and use LUNCH as the coupon code.