Tagged this post with week in review as well as Five on Friday but I honestly can’t remember much about the past week. Ever have weeks like that? Where it just seems a bit like a blur? And I wasn’t even really all that busy.

Maybe I’ll blame it on Wednesday’s weather! Monday and Tuesday were just normal days at home (I think). I do know I stayed up too late watching tv on Tuesday night knowing I had to be at work at 7:30 in the morning on Wednesday. Possibly making a few jokes to the boys about our crazy winds being caused by a certain blowhard. You can read about Wednesday (mostly a work day) in the post I linked.

Yesterday was another working day. A long unplanned one where I worked 9:15 to 6. Mostly good until the end of the day. Kids were (mostly) fun anyway. The end of the day stuff was 100% not kid related.  And I did feel loved starting my day as the teacher I work with a lot, called me in a panic as I pulled into the parking lot. She thought the shift I covered started at 9 and was worried because “you are never late!” Oh my, if she only knew the Jean from the 1990’s who was always late. Of course, that me had a very different job she didn’t like much. Lots of sweet hugs and hellos from the kids to start my day as well.

And now, we’ve made it to FriYAY! Here’s how I’m planning to spend this warmer weekend:

ONE: Outside Yard Work

Hey, look what I saw in the corner of the driveway this morning! I noticed the buds as I left for work yesterday and today, flowers! I pushed away the dead leaves to get a good photo of the flowers. And in doing so, saw lots of green shoots. Raking away the leaves from the flower beds is on the weekend agenda.  I’ll give them another week before I mulch them up with mower (needs to dry up a bit anyway).

Not quite time to dig holes (unless you’re a mole, very happy in our yard, ugh) but some calendar wisdom here:

TWO: Finally, Take A Walk 

Blue skies, not quite as windy, and better temperatures mean I definitely plan to get out there and go on a trail somewhere along with my “real” camera. I do have to consider the mud but I know some places with mostly paved trails.

THREE: Household Chores

Figuring out what to do with a panic buy of 10 pounds of sugar is on the list. We were out and I was worried about prices. I knew we’d use it (hummingbirds go through a lot of sugar water in the summer!) but didn’t think through the storage. SIGH. Or I could bake lots of batches of chocolate chip cookies? Hmmm…

Also, need to do the usual clean ups around the house and water plants. My poor plants in for the winter are barely hanging in there. So ready to move them outside where they thrive.

FOUR: Bookstore Visit and a Spring Break Planning

I finished this last night so my older son and I could go see the movie. It opens today. Of course, he’s busy all weekend so we’ll probably make plans to go see it during spring break (week after next). This weekend, I’d like to perhaps visit a bookstore and just browse, maybe pick up a couple books to add to our collections. Also, this book apparently has a sequel.

FIVE: A Few Random Things 

First housekeeping: I tried a new hot chocolate this morning. Pretty basic but I like it.

For the record, I mixed it with my coffee and added a bit of milk. It’s not quite the same flavors as the Starbucks Caramel Macchiato but close enough for me.

Sadly, I think it may be time to call it on the day after Valentine’s Day flowers. Maybe I’ll keep these until the end of the weekend. Will I replace them? Not sure. Happy to have outdoor flowers again and a local garden center just opened back up for the season, so maybe I’ll see if they might have hanging baskets of pansies yet. Ending this post with a close-up of the cheerful yellow crocus:

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What are your weekend plans?  Also, don’t forget to go check out The Friday Catch-Up (new name, I like it!) over at My Creative Life.

Thought for Five on Friday (er, Five on Saturday Morning), it might be fun to share things I didn’t do this week.

Just kind of random.

ONE: I Did Not Throw Away My Valentine’s Day Flowers

Not until this morning anyway. And I still have a few in a new arrangement going strong:

Do you like to do that as well, see how long you can keep the fresh flower arrangements before tossing them?

TWO: Quit My Job

Oh, I did think about it! And I did check out my options. I’m still thinking about it. It’s definitely (mostly) not the kids though this year’s group is a bit needier than years past. It’s all the other stuff. A certain lack of support when dealing with some of the kids. The passive-aggressive, micromanaging e-mails….ugh.  And I’m a sub so really don’t even need to deal with it much. However, it’s also that grouchy time of year…things might improve with the weather. Who knows.

THREE: Cook Every Meal on the Grill

However, we did grill on on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday! The weather’s been so nice.  Yesterday, I didn’t cook so everyone scrambled for their own dinners. By the way, the Spicy Korean chicken pictured up there is one of our favorite go-to recipes. Everyone likes it! Highly recommend. Usually just keep it simply and serve with rice. Sometimes though I’ll make spring rolls with it.

FOUR: Go on a Walk with the Real Camera

Decided to rest instead. After being sick all last weekend, I didn’t really want to push myself. So, I stuck close to home. We did have a hoot owl in our backyard one evening so I grabbed the real camera to try and grab a picture of it. It wasn’t really light enough but you can see the outline.

Also, I did go to the library! That outing kind of helped me decide to rest up a bit more before venturing off on a walk.

FIVE: Put Away Winter Sweaters and Clothing

I thought about putting away those winter sweaters this week with no jacket/short sleeve weather going strong. However, I made myself wait. Of course, yesterday I planned to wear a short sleeved sweater to work and changed my mind opting for a tee-shirt instead. So glad I did that as it was very warm in the afternoon!

Older photo above but this morning I did finally take down the Chiefs garden flag and replace it with the Spring one.

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We have dinner plans this evening but I’ll probably spend today not reading all those great library books (my e-book holds keep coming up as well) and instead cleaning/putting out spring decor.

What are you not doing or doing this weekend?

Don’t forget to go check out My Creative Life for the Five on Friday link up!

How about two favorite Midwestern topics for today? Especially during the winter months, the main topics tend to be weather and food (also, television and sports but let’s save those for now).

So for my Five on Friday, a recap of our crazy weather week along with mostly pictures of what we ate for dinner each night. Before we begin though, a random picture of my Valentine’s Day flowers still going strong.

Okay, onto tidbits of the week, the weather, and what we ate. Oh, and by the way, I didn’t follow the menu plan from Monday at all.

ONE: Monday we ate tacos!

Monday was a holiday here but my husband and G still had to work. Honestly, I can’t remember much about the day but I know we had tacos for dinner. And we were watching the weather because of winter storm/extreme cold warnings. The time of the storm kept shifting.

TWO: Tuesday I tried new recipes. Pork Chops and rice plus applesauce bread!

With the storm starting and the cold temperatures, I knew I wanted to use the oven a lot this week. So I decided to give this Easy Baked Pork Chops and Rice recipe a try. Everyone seemed to enjoy and it was a nice cozy meal for a crazy cold, snowy evening.

As an added bonus, earlier in the day, I made this applesauce bread as well. I knew I was making pork chops but hadn’t decided on recipe yet. Apples always compliment pork.

Random fact about our family: We all with little exception hate applesauce. Apples are yes, applesauce is a NO. However, sometimes I have some in the pantry and found 3 containers on a pantry clear out. (probably leftover from when the husband had dental work and there are only so many soft foods…)

THREE: Wednesday was an unexpected working day for me so I put the husband in charge of dinner!

Hotdogs and onion rings were an odd meal on a freezing cold night. The real temperature was 8 degrees while he was out there grilling! And yes, without a coat. Welcome to living in the Midwest!

Since my work day was unexpected (I only said yes because a teacher had an unexpected loss in her family), I had put together a French Toast Casserole the night before planning to cook it for breakfast and freeze the leftovers for future quick heat and go breakfasts.

Also, unexpected, lunch at work on Wednesday: hot dogs! SIGH. Had no idea that’s what we’d end up with for dinner.

They have that meal too often at my work. I’m currently not scheduled again until next Friday and guess what’s on the menu for lunch? Yep, hot dogs! I’ll be taking my lunch but I do feel for the kids. It’s one of my current gripes, the menu has gone downhill in an effort to cut costs, I get food’s expensive but come on, do better!

All that to say, I ate French Toast Casserole for dinner on Wednesday evening as I didn’t want hot dogs twice in one day. G had some French Toast Casserole for dessert as well.

FOUR: Thursday was the coldest day yet and another (this one scheduled earlier) half-day of working for me. I settled on stuffed peppers for dinner.

I made sure to take a screenshot of the temperature when I woke up to show the crazy cold.

Oddly, I was actually warmer at work yesterday than on Wednesday. I think because I was in the other classroom with a smaller front door. It’s weird when you go outside to go home and 12 degrees feels warm! Once home, I debated on dinner for a bit before landing on stuffed peppers mainly because I remembered I’d bought peppers (on sale!) at the store on Sunday for that purpose.

Orange ones because the red ones didn’t look to be in great condition. Plus they reminded me of sunshine and warmth. Finished product, I was hungry yesterday and almost forgot to take a picture!

I just use the classic Betty Crocker recipe for stuffed peppers only changing it slightly. I like my peppers crisp so I don’t parboil them and also, I use colby-jack cheese as opposed to mozzarella. Did you know as a kid I was not a fan of this meal at all but now I like it.

FIVE: Better Weather, Spring Cleaning Bug, and No Idea About Dinner

Happy Friday! This morning a cat paw in the face woke me up right on time though I didn’t need to go to work. She used to just sit on the nightstand and purr but she’s figured out that pawing at my face works while purring loudly works really well to make a person get out of bed and do her bidding. Sometimes her bidding is she just wants me to sit in the living room while she looks out the windows. SIGH.

So,cat paw until I got out of bed. Then, had to go to the downstairs for milk since we were out upstairs and oh, yay, stepped in cat puke on the steps. Was I barefoot? Yes. That really wakes a person up fast!

Perhaps, that’s what triggered my spring cleaning bug. Started a bit, as soon as I finish up this post, I’m back to that. Right now, some scented candles going in attempt to refresh things a bit.

And sticking with the food theme, still not sure about dinner but thought I should show a couple healthy things consumed around here. Just so you know it’s not all Oreo hot chocolate all the time.

And of course, I still have no idea what we’ll end up with for dinner tonight.

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Whew! This turned into a long post! Thanks for making it this far if you’re still reading. Wanted to give a shoutout to Rachel over at Living Better One Day At A Time for inspiring this post with her pictures of what we ate this past week on her Monday posts. I always enjoy seeing the plates of food. And to Carrie over at Northwoods Scrapbook for her Wordless Wednesday post mentioning weather as a conversation topic and of course, for introducing me the amazing French Toast Casserole. Finally, I can’t leave out Cathy from My Creative Life for bringing back Five on Friday as well as her kitchen post from last week which also inspired this post.

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Happy Valentine’s Day! We don’t do much for it around here. Today, it’s just a normal workday for most of us though the preschool kids have their “party,” a pretty understated affair at the school. A special treat and then an exchange of Valentine’s day cards using brown paper bags the kids decorate themselves mostly with stickers.

Here at home, I planned on a simple dinner of waffles (they vetoed the idea of chocolate waffles!) and bacon. However, my husband was mentioning something about pizza last night so who knows. I did pick up some slice and bake cookies on sale so probably going to make those into cookie sandwiches (Why do we have so much marshmallow creme in the pantry??)  along with some chocolate covered pretzels I promised J. Maybe we’ll all watch a movie or have a game night, clearly our Valentine’s Day is not planned out very well.

What is usually somewhat planned out is the annual Galentine’s Day adventure with my close friends! So I thought I’d share about that for this week’s Five on Friday hosted by My Creative Life.

ONE: Friendship Gift

While the gift of having a group of amazing friends for almost 25 years is certainly enough, we usually exchange small token gifts of friendship at our annual Galentine’s Day dinner. Here’s a glance at what I gave:

What’s in the bag?

Chocolates (Of course!) and some photos, one of which I framed. Then, I wrapped the framed photo in some Valentine’s Day tissue paper before putting them in the cloth bags.

TWO: Outfit

I like to dress in something somewhat Valentine’s day related if only through the colors. I picked my red sweater (Chiefs fans tend to own lots of red, LOL!) and some black velvet pants.

THREE: Location

Since we’ve started celebrating Galentine’s Day, we’ve met at The Cheesecake Factory on the Country Club Plaza. It’s expensive, yes, but typically we only go once a year. J gave me a gift card for Christmas so that was nice. And it’s always been very good. I typically get the spicy vodka pasta, a cosmopolitan, and a slice of classic cheesecake with strawberry topping.

An added treat this year, they decided to leave the Plaza lights on until Valentine’s Day so we also got to see those.

(Dear Cheesecake Factory, you need to clean your windows!)

Thankfully as well, the weather held off until late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning as a winter storm moved into our area.

FOUR: My Amazing Gifts

A funny thing happened this year as 3 of us had the exact same idea to do photo related gifts, framed photos and a picture coffee mug!

The other friends went a self-care route, we know each other well after almost 25 years! And some of us are very talented on top of that, look at the beautiful cardinal print my friend made for me.

FIVE: Thankful for Friendship

I’m thankful for all the friendships in my life whether they are new or life-long, work, in person or blogging friendships made over the Internet. I hope all of you reading this have many great friendships of all kinds as well!

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Happy Valentine’s Day, Friends!