Shannah, Author at My Suburban Kitchen

WTCW #34

January 11, 2012 By Shannah 1 Comment

Whew! It has been a crazy week in our house. I don’t have much time (back to the organizing task at hand) so let’s get started. Oh, and don’t forget to enter the $50 Restaurant.com Giveaway currently going on!

[Polish the Stars], [Recipe Girl]

Sunday: Our tacos and enchiladas are normally filled with chicken but this time we’re going for the other white meat with shredded pork tacos.

Monday: Chicken makes a comeback for Monday with apricot balsamic chicken.

[Recipe Girl], [Sweet Basil]

Tuesday: I love black eyed peas but often struggle with what do with them. Tex Mex black eyed pea casserole seems like a good answer to that question.

Wednesday: You typically don’t see many sandwich style meals around here but grilled chicken and avocado napoleons looked so good that I just had to add them to the list.

[Skinny Taste], [Framed Cooks]

Thursday: Mathlete hates onions (I know you are wondering how we stay married with such culinary challenges!) but doesn’t mind leeks so much. So, I’m hoping for the best with chicken with leeks and sun dried tomatoes.

Friday: It is no secret around here how much I love soup. This week I am going to give Italian meatball soup a try.

Saturday: Still in a soupy frame of mind, this chicken chili verde with poblanos and sweet corn caught my eye.

It’s My Birthday…Help Me Celebrate?

January 10, 2012 By Shannah 2 Comments

Ok, so my birthday is actually just over a month away BUT I am starting to plan now!

I have a tradition of taking time off when my birthday rolls around each year and I am hoping to extend that little vacation to the blog as well. So, in celebration of my fast approaching {February} birthday, I am looking for a few guest bloggers to come and share a post/project.

Here are the deets:
1) For 2012, I am working to increase my posting to closer to 2 times per day. That means, I am looking for up to 8 guest posters to help me celebrate my birthday! {I will still be running WTCW and the Fabulous Friday Linky Party}
2) Posts will go live during the week of 6 February with one at 9:30am and one at 1:30pm.
3) HTML for the guest post would be needed, via email, no later than the end of the day on 1 February 2012 to participate.
4) Even though I am on “vacation”, your guest post will still be promoted on the Just Us Four Facebook page and Twitter feed.
5) Your blog button will appear in the right hand column beginning on 1 February and remain until the end of the Guest Post Week.

Interested?
If you want to participate, please send me an email to justusfourpartners @ gmail.com {no spaces} and I will get you signed up for a date!

P.S. In case you needed another reason to consider participating, guest posting is consistently listed as one of the top 10 ways to increase traffic to your blog! I would love to introduce my readers to you!

Basement Planning

January 9, 2012 By Shannah 3 Comments

Remember Mathlete and his planning bug? Well, we are moving right along with those plans! Over the holiday break, Mathlete went over and picked up our building permit.

Yep, sorry neighbors…we are those people with the bright orange poster in the window.
While he has dreams of lumber and electrical wiring, I have my little mind churning on what will go in the rooms once they are all built. Want to see a few?

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A Superbowl Snack Worth Eating – Cayenne Candied Bacon

January 9, 2012 By Shannah 22 Comments

Ok, I know the Superbowl is still a little ways away (5 February for those non-sports folks) but a great Superbowl Party requires planning! It takes a lot to keep a group of football crazed fans happy.

Let’s start with food! Now, normally, besides What to Cook Wednesdays, I don’t really do a whole lot of recipes around here. BUT, I have a snack that is going to change your party. What is it?
Cayenne Candied Bacon

It’s ok…I’ll give you a minute to let that soak in. I did say bacon and candied in the same sentence after all.

Now, ready for how to make it? Good! I’ll share the steps with the help of Junior who first introduced us to this life altering treat.

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Basement Reno – Blocking Cold and Sound

January 7, 2012 By Shannah 1 Comment

Plans for the basement renovation (i.e. turning it from an unfinished storage area to a finished space) are well under way. After we had the floor plan all mapped out, we started talking about other details of finishing the space. One of the big questions: how much insulation do we need?

[Must Know How]

Of course, since our space is mostly underground, we need to add some kind of insulation to serve as a protector such as a thermal block. We planned to have insulation installed in the walls but weren’t completely decided on whether we would need to add it to the ceiling area as well.

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More for 2012

January 6, 2012 By Shannah 1 Comment

This has been a busy week for us. I’ve upped my efficiency level and cleaned out and re-organized my closet! Of course, in all that cleaning out, I was left with a much smaller wardrobe. That isn’t always a bad thing but I like to have a decent sized collection of cute tops and sweaters. With winter fully upon us, I definitely lean more towards sweaters right now but that doesn’t keep me from dreaming about spring by way of a few cute lighter weight items.

Since we’re all about sharing resolutions here this week, here are my clothing related ones:
1) Make sure my key pieces are covered! You know the ones that will go with anything: black pants, crisp white shirts, etc.
2) Refresh the lbd! Sure, I have a few that stayed around but I think it is a good time to update my go-to little black dress to be more current.

[Little Black Dress Magazine]

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Fabulous Freebie Friday #11

January 6, 2012 By Shannah 1 Comment

After a brief hiatus, Fabulous Freebie Friday is back in action!

The “rules” of this party:

1) Be sure to link to your specific giveaway post and not to your overall blog.
2) Put the name of your giveaway and an end date in your link title.
3) Please put my button (found over on the right side of your screen!) or a link back to here in your post so your readers will know where to come find yours and other fabulous giveaways each week.

Prepping for 2012!

January 4, 2012 By Shannah Leave a Comment

How is the first week of 2012 going for everyone? I have spending a lot of my free time getting organized and prepped for the year ahead! We have a ton of projects on our to do list {including our big basement reno} so I really feel the need to start the year out on the right foot.

So, what have I been doing?

1) Meal preparation and planning!
One of the biggest downfalls for us during the Christmas holiday was lack of meal planning. I know, I know…how can that be when I have a weekly meal planning post?! Honestly, I just got a little overwhelmed and didn’t follow my own plan.
So, my solution to that was to have more back-up meals in case life gets crazy again. I spent New Year’s Eve in the kitchen cooking and freezing a ton of meals for this purpose. I get asked a lot about what resources I use for this so I thought I would share a few here. I have a few books

in addition to websites that I frequent such as My Recipes and Skinny Taste.

[The Paperless Blog]

2) Purge the paper!
I go through all of our papers and get rid of anything that we don’t need and ensure anything that we do need is filed in its proper place.

[3) Sort and or Purge our clothing!

If it hasn’t been worn in a year, it goes into the Goodwill or Consignment box. All the remaining items get sorted and put away. For example, I sort my closet by pants/tops/dresses and then by color within those categories. The kids, though, get their clothes hung in outfits. I use color coded hangers for them for a little fun in their closet.

[Flick River]

4) Tackle the Toys!
Yeah, I definitely wish our playroom looked like that on a regular basis! I do try to reduce the size of our toy collection and make it more organized any chance I get. The addition of new Christmas toys makes the New Year a perfect time to work on that task. All the “extra” toys go to Goodwill or get boxed up for the semi-annual consignment sale.
The remaining toys get assigned a zone within the playroom based on who it belongs to and what it is. All the little toys (hello, Polly Pockets!) get individual storage containers like these

The larger items either go in the drawers under the play table or in larger baskets .
We also keep two baskets like these

in the family room for easy toy storage. They just slide right on the shelf under each of our side tables.

[Western Michigan]

5) Check the calendar!
Keeping everything straight for all the people in our household can be tough. We all have Google calendars that link into our phones (obviously H and E don’t fill their out their own) but I need a physical calendar too. The physical calendar is a place where I can write out our meals for the week, plan out my blog posts and keep every one’s upcoming appointments too! I also do one big once over on our calendars to make sure all our important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) didn’t get lost.

So, how do you prep for the new year? Any big organizational projects you tackle?

WTCW #33

January 4, 2012 By Shannah 1 Comment

Welcome to the first What to Cook Wednesday (WTCW) of 2012! I’ve got some super yummy ideas to share this week so let’s get to it.

[Crepes of Wrath], [Framed Cooks], [Picky Palate], [3 Boys and a Dog]

Sunday: I got an ah-mazing gift of a Le Creuset French Oven from Mathlete for Christmas and I’m all psyched to use it. I think I will start with Boeuf Bourguignon to break it in the right way!

Monday: Now that the holidays are over, it is back to work which means back to slow cooking it on Mondays (and typically several other days!). I’m going to give slow cooker creamy chicken with biscuits a try this week.

Tuesday: This chicken, black bean and rice enchilada bake is a nice twist on the standard chicken enchilada.

Wednesday: I love all the ingredients in this Asian beef noodle bowl so I am excited to give it a try.

[Framed Cooks], [Erin’s Food Files]

Thursday: Pasta…on a Thursday…we really are back to business as usual! This week we’re going to up the vitamins in our pasta with fettuccine with sweet potatoes and bacon.

Friday: It’s the weekend. Time to party!! Or, at least eat party type foods. These spicy whiskey bbq sliders sounds like a great way to finish out the work week.

Saturday: We have had a pretty mild winter until just this week. The cold weather setting in means that pumpkin tortilla soup will make the perfect meal for a Saturday evening.

What have you been cooking? Slowly getting back into the groove of things after the holidays or still wishing for more time off?

Thank You!

January 3, 2012 By Shannah 1 Comment

2011 was a great inaugural year for Just Us Four thanks in large part to some really great blogs that sent people this way. So, as we begin 2012, I want to say a big

to my top referring blogs:
1) Someday Crafts
2) Young House Love (love the Pinterest Challenges!)
3) Bower Power
4) Decor to Adore
5) Romantic Home

Of course, this blog would be pretty lonely without all the lovely comments! So,

to all the lovely readers who take the time to comment and to the most frequent commenters here:
1) Jennifer from Vintage Gwen
2) Sherika from Passionately Perfect
3) Mindie from Bacon Time
4) Marilyn from The Artsy Girl Connection
5) Kelli from The Turquoise Piano

When you have a moment, please be sure to visit these lovely and extremely talented ladies!
And thanks again for being so supportive of Just Us Four!

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