Preparing for a Road Trip!

 Travel Time

I am about to embark on a road trip with three kids 7,5,2, my Mom, her dog and my husband, am I crazy? Probably....or at least I might be after this trip lol! We are super excited to be travelling through 4 provinces, but that does not come with out a lot of preparation! So I thought I might share some of my travel tips with you all for your next road trip. Plan ahead, plan absolutely everything you can! List's are my best friend when planning a trip like this, and I will show you how I make them all work for me.

-Travel entertainment: Before we embark on a long road trip I always stop at a Dollar Store and get the kiddo's a few new things to keep them busy during the trip. I also picked up a few books and replenished our Itunes account for the adults in the van. As for the kids it is important that they don't see the items or even know they exist, because if they know they will not stop bugging you for them and may have expectations, this way it is all just a happy surprise. This doesn't have to cost you a lot, you can spend as little or as much as you want. I wanted to make sure they all got a new pair of sunglasses, I don't know about you, but our kids are always losing their sunglasses and then while we are travelling they groan about the sun in their eyes, now that is one less thing for them to complain about ;) Below is a picture of all the little things I picked up to help keep them entertained. One of the items you see are 3 cookie sheets, they are so handy for eating on coloring on and playing with magnets on, when they aren't in use they are sleek and can slide under any chair. Do not give them everything at once, they will rip through it all in no time, save some for different times throughout the trip and don't forget the way back too. If you are feeling super ambitious you can gift wrap each item, but really don't we have enough to do?

Road Trip Entertainment

Movie's for the Van DVD Player

We have two tv's in the van, they are a life saver, I purchase them a few new movies to help keep them entertained and of course head phones so we can get some peace and quiet sometimes. I purchased this movie for 5$ it has 8 full length movies on it, that is so perfect, I was really happy to find that deal! We try to limit screen time at home, but when we travel we kind of go with the flow. We also try to stop at park's along the way to give the kids a break and let them run around a bit, you can even enjoy your lunch there if you like.

Our Lunch Containers

Pre Packaged Snacks

-Food: We make an effort to put good food into our bodies and so most restaurants don't work for us, so we are packing our lunches, we got these awesome containers, one for each family member and they will fit our lunches. Some of the food's I will be packing are sandwiches, wraps, English muffins, fresh fruit and veggies, granola bars, home made muffin's, cheese home made granola bars etc. 

We also pre-purchased snacks so we won't be tempted to buy over priced gas station snacks. Each person in the car has a red solo cup with their name on it and their snacks go in the cup, they pass the cup up to the front when they are done or if they want a refill. Since we are travelling over many days we will need to stop in at local grocery stores to pick up more supplies as we go, so I am packing easy squeeze condiments so we can buy a loaf of bread and some chicken breast and make our own sandwiches as opposed to buying 6 individual deli sandwiches, which will also save on cash. Win, win! When we are stopping in at grocery stores all throughout our trip I will have a list of items I am looking for, here is my list;

Grocery store list:

Quality Bread

Quality sandwich meat

Quality Cheese

Mini cucumbers

Mini Carrots

Hummus

Grape tomatoes

Raisins/Craisins

Nuts

Crackers

Granola Bars

The list is kept in my wallet and then anytime I am running in a store I know exactly what to look for, no running around not knowing what I am looking for, get in and get out. I am basically looking for anything that is easy, not to messy and decently good for our bodies, the last thing you need is a bunch of people in a van needing a bathroom every 30 minutes because of too much fast food!

-Packing: I usually make a list of clothing things we need, and then non clothing things we need. For clothing we usually pack; Warm clothes, Cool clothes, Undies, Socks, PJ's, a dressy outfit, bathing suits and in this case we will be packing running shoes and having them wear their rubber boots on the trip they are easy to slip on and off themselves and then we don't have to pack big boots, win, win! Travelling in Canada at this time of year you really have no idea what to expect. So I try to be prepared as best I can for all of it, but at the same time I don't want to over pack. But in case I do we did purchase a travel bag for our roof top, hopefully it is a success! We will also be bringing a play pen for our 2 year old and our collapsible wagon. The kids each bring one stuffy along with them in the car, this way I don't need to pack it in a bag and they have it to cuddle while we travel.

The Roof Top Travel Bag

As for non clothing packing, well the list is long lol, I do like to be prepared, but I limit myself to the amount of bags I can bring and if I can't fit it all then something stays behind. Hair stuff, Make up and jewelry, my Purse, Cooler for our food and waters and juice boxes for the kiddo's. My Camera (including extra batteries and chargers) the Ipad and charger, the kid's have leap pads etc so we pack those and their chargers, our cell phones and chargers, itinerary, motel confirmation #, Children's medical information and travel documents if necessary, a little bit of cash for parking etc, medications. In their seats we will place; Sweaters to be worn on the trip, much less bulky then having to wear a coat, and also one less sweater I have to pack, travelling pillows so they can rest, their stuffy, sunglasses and their water bottles.

Before we leave there is always so many things to do, I like to make myself a list so that I won't forget anything and also so that I can put it out of my mind knowing it is written down. Here is my list so far for this trip:

To Do list, things to do before our Vacation

Make Morning Glory muffins

Make Granola bars

Make English Muffins

Make wraps

Make Sandwiches (Thankfully my Mom is making us home made buns for our sandwiches!)

Go shopping for groceries

Make lunches

Pre chop veggies & fruit

Clean out purse, my purse is always a mess with receipts etc and while we are travelling it only gets worse, so I like to make sure it's clean before I leave so I can make room for more junk lol!

Pack everything

Load Van

The night before we leave we like to have everything ready to go, everyone showers/baths the night before, outfits all laid out for each family member, we always travel in comfy clothes, sweats, t-shirts with a sweater, this way you can take off your sweater if you are too hot and easily slip it on if you get chilly. This way we can wake up early, brush our teeth and leave, breakfast is already in the cooler ready to go :) Usually everyone is so tired on the way home it is not as much work to keep everyone entertained, they are usually more than happy to zone out with a movie and process the trip. Vacations are fun, but they are also exhausting, so the way home is usually much more mellow, for us anyway, everyone is sleepy and quiet.

Of course I know what you are thinking, 'you really don't need all that' and you're right, but it makes the trip fun and it makes me happier, and the kiddo's too. We are so excited to take off, only a few more days left now! So that is how we plan our trips to keep everyone sane! We plan mostly all our trips like this, sometimes we are on the road for 4 hours sometimes it's 4 days, but we just adjust the basic plan to make it work for our family, I hope this helps you with your next road trip! 

Bon Voyage!  

Repeating your weekly Meal Plan

Repeating your weekly meal plan

Spring is finally here and summer will be here before you know it. As the beautiful weather rolls in our lives seem to get busier and busier! Baseball, school, camping, family reunions, weddings etc, it is a really fun and exciting time. But all those fun times means less time at home, to plan out your family meals. Summer is usually a more expensive time for everyone, more activities and traveling etc, so we always try to save money where we can. Eating at home whenever possible is one of those ways. So I came up with an easy and simple meal plan that we will repeat every week. I picked meals that my family loves, cause no one wants to spend a beautiful summer night fighting with their kiddo's to eat their supper! So here it is, our meal plan: 

Monday - Panini's and Soup

Tuesday - Breakfast for supper (pancakes, waffles, crepes, (serve with fruit) pan scramble)

Wednesday - Crock pot (any crock pot freezer meal we have kicking around)

Thursday - Spaghetti (or some other pasta dish) garlic bread, salad

Friday - Pizza and salad

Saturday - BBQ (Hot dogs, steak, smokies or burgers) Baked potato's, veggies

Sunday - Chicken dinner (Chicken, potatoes or rice, veggies)

Before choosing the meal plan I ran the list of choices past my family and together this is what we came up with, I am so excited to get started! I made sure to choose super easy meals that don't take up too much time. My plan is to stick to this order, but sometimes things change and you need to learn to roll with the punches, so we will make changes as needed. Eating this way can also save you money, you can now buy things in bulk cause you know you will use all of it. It can save you time because you will no longer be running to the store every day, doing your weekly or bi-weekly shop should cover everything, so you should already have everything you need at home. Also not running to the store every day can save you money, it can save you from buying things you don't really need.

So this is our plan for the summer, we will see if this works for us, maybe it will feel too repetitive, but maybe it will work beautifully for us and our busy family! We shall see, either way, I am excited to get started! 

Let me know if you plan to try something like this, what meals do you think your family would like? Let's try this together and simplify our lives! 

Monday Panini and Soup

Tuesday Breakfast for Supper

Wednesday a Crockpot Freezer Meal

Thursday Spaghetti Night

Pizza (Homemade, store bought, order out, whatever works) and Salad

BBQ Night baked potatoes and veggies

 Chicken with rice or potatoes with veggies

All of these meals really work for our family, maybe they will work for you too! 

*** UPDATE ***

We are heading into our third week and so far so good, everyone is enjoying the meals, it doesn't feel too repetitive yet. It is so nice to only shop for the item's I need and that saves me a lot of time too! We have however had to switch around what gets eaten on which day, so we have find of thrown that part out. The meals remain the same, but if panini's don't suit us on Monday then break out the pancakes lol whatever works and makes your life simpler, right?!

Have you tried this? Is it working for you and your family? 

We are all still in love with the plan! 

Organizing the House Part 2 small freezer & bathroom cabinet

Once in a while, I take the time to think about all the spaces in my home that need some organizing, I tackled a couple more of those spaces today. First the little freezer above my fridge, it can become a place where we toss everything and you never know what is hiding in there! 

This only took a few minutes and the results are great!

I used a few baskets from the Dollar Tree, they are super handy! 

I store my peppers in this one, now I didn't use any labels because my needs for my little freezer are always changing, this week I have lots of peppers, next week I might not have any and want to use the basket for other things.

This one holds my sliced lemons and cranberries, I like to add these to jugs of water, it makes it look pretty! 

We use hashbrowns often in this house, so now they have their own basket and you can clearly see when they are starting to run low.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now onto the Bathroom cabinet

We have one large cabinet in the bathroom and we store everything in it.

This is the largest part of it. It seems to just collect everything, stuff gets tossed in there instead of placed, and then we close the doors, it needed some help, lol!

With just a bit of time and a couple baskets, I found something that will hopefully work for us, the bottom shelf of  the small shelf is empty so there is room to grow! 

This is the before of one of the shelves, it did have some organization in the back, but so much junk was getting put in front of it, it wasn't working anymore. So I cleaned it up and organized it a little differently to make things work again.

Before

After, now everything has a place again, you can see everything and it all looks neat and clean.

Now I forgot to take a before picture but this is of our laundry soap section, the reason why there are all the juice jugs and old laundry jugs is because I make my own laundry soap and I just refill those jugs. 

I also have my Norwex products which I love!

Speaking of Loving Norwex, here is how I hang all my cloth's, this way they are always in reach, I can always see what is clean, I love this system, everything is easy to grab!

Everything feels so much better when it is organized, now if only I can get my kids and my husband to put things back where they belong and we won't have any more problems!! LOL! 

Let me know if this inspires you to change a space in your home that has been bugging you! 

Organizing the house! Part 1 Deep Freezer & Pantry

Recently I have been thinking about our home, what area's could run more smoothly? What area's are messy? Which area's need help? I sat down and made a list of a few area's in the house that needed some help, today I got two of those areas cleaned up, here are some pictures of the progress we made today!

My Husband helped me clean out our big deep freezer, it was such a mess, we never knew what we really had available to us in there and often bought things we didn't need to, simply cause we couldn't find them.

Here are some pictures of our messy freezer!!

My hubby made me a "Freezer stick" so it can hold the big heavy door open for me! 

We had a few milk crates in the freezer already, but we needed more, we came across a pile of them in black at Walmart for 3.77$ such a great price! If you can manage to get these for free or second hand, even better! These work perfectly, they are tough enough to withstand the cold, they have handles so you can easily lift them in and out and they are big enough to fit a lot of stuff in them. 

So I made up some labels out of stock paper I had on hand and we tied them on with some string we had, these are easily removed and replaced with something else. Everyone's freezer will have different needs, in our case we used the following labels: Fish, Chicken, Beef, Deer, Veggies, Bread, Fruit, Freezer meals, Chicken Pot Pies. 

Now the crates aren't quite as long as the freezer so I used reusable grocery bags to fill the rest of the space, in one bag I have all frozen items for school lunches, muffins, and a small one for sandwich meat! Here is hoping this system works for us, if it doesn't we just have to change the labels and move things around. 

It looks so nice and neat now! 

I hope this inspires you to tackle a space in your house that just isn't working for you right now!

Now on to the Pantry

I am so happy with the after result, it will function so much better now! We call this our pantry, but technically this is a closet in one of the bedrooms that we have turned into a storage room, my hubby added all the extra shelves, to make the pantry work more efficiently for us!

I got all of these containers at the Dollar Tree, I know who knew you could get so many great containers for such a low price, each basket was 1.25$ that is awesome and some of these are really sturdy! These labels are also from the Dollar Tree, they are chalk board stickers, and it even comes with its own chalk, I love this idea, cause our pantry needs are always changing, just erase it and re-write it with whatever you need it to say!

These big baskets are perfect for the big items, chip, pretzels, and also I have plastic cereal containers in the kitchen, so I always have leftover bags of cereal, this big basket is perfect to hold all of them! 

I love for everything to have a place, I am so happy I tackled these projects today, everything looks great and functional!

Let me know if you do any organizing make overs to your home, and if you do try out the dollar Tree containers, let me know what you think! 

Freezer/Slow cooker Meals on a Budget!

These are the spices I used, i didn't count them in the price break down. Most everyone has these spices in the pantry.

The End Result:

At this time of year, everyone is on a Budget, with so many special things needed/wanted for the holidays this is the perfect freezer meal plan! These ingredients are all pretty cheap and I will break it all done for you. This is a great way to eat cheap this time of year, and it is all moderately healthy too.

All these recipes are from Pinterest, I chose the ones I like and I make two of each recipe, 2 bags, 2 meals, per recipe, everything doubled.

First:

Lasagna Soup

·      1 lb. ground turkey

·      1 onion

·      1 bell pepper

·      3 cloves garlic

·      32 oz. chicken broth

·      2 tbs. seasoning combination (basil, oregano, crushed red peppers)

·      1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes

Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3 hours. Thirty minutes before done add dry pasta (2 cups) and garnish with Parmesan cheese.

Recipe adapted from Guide 4 Moms

To start we cooked up around 5 or 6 pounds of beef and about 4 pounds of ground deer, each meal has beef in it, so this makes it easiest. So for the Lasagna soup, i used beef instead of turkey. I also buy pre-chopped onions and peppers from the store, it saves on time for sure! So this recipe has a few dollars worth of beef, maybe 1$ in onion, garlic and peppers. Canned tomatoes I always buy when they come on for a 1$, pasta 1$ so for around 6$ you have a nice easy meal, we are a family of 4 and always have left overs for lunch the next day.

Second:

Goulash/Beef Stew (2 Bags)

(1) Green Pepper Chopped split between bags

(1) Chopped Onion per bag

(2) Carrots Chopped per bag

(2) Chopped Garlic Cloves per bag

(3) Ibs Beef Stew Meat Split Between Bags

(1) 6oz can Tomato Paste per bag

(2) tsp Paprika per bag

(1/4) tsp Black Pepper per bag

*Cook for 4 hours on HIGH or 8 hours on LOW in a slow cooker. Add (1/2) Cup of Sour Cream about 10 minutes prior to serving. Serve over Egg Noodles

So here we have a few dollars worth of beef, 2$ in veggies, and tomato paste I buy 2 for 1$, so that is only 50 cents, Sour cream 50 cents, pasta 1$ the whole meal cost 7$

Third:

Slow Cooker Pizza Pasta Bake

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
• 1 medium onion (optional), diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 8 oz sliced pepperoni
• 4 oz (1 cup) shredded mozzarella cheese
• 8 oz (2 cups) shredded cheddar cheese
• 12 oz Rigatoni noodles, cooked
• 15 oz pizza sauce
• 26 oz Spaghetti sauce

Instructions

1. 1. Brown the meat, onion and pepper in a frying pan.
2. 2. Drain the grease and add in pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce.
3. 3. Combine all ingredients in a large slow cooker lightly sprayed with cooking spray.
4. 4. Cook on HIGH for 30 minutes and then LOW for 2 or 3 hours until the cheese melts.
5. Note: This makes a lot of food. You can freeze half before cooking it. Later it can be thawed and cooked in the slow cooker as directed above.

Again a few dollars in beef, 1$ in veggies, the pepperoni was 3$ and I used half a package per recipe so 1.50$ for the pepperoni. Pizza sauce 75 cents. Spaghetti sauce 1$, 3$ for cheese, Pasta 1$ this meal is 11.25$ and makes a large amount to feed a large family or for plenty of left overs!

Fourth:

Parmesan Garlic Pizza Pasta
serves 8

• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 cup sliced pepperoni (about 4oz)
• 1Tbsp dried minced onion flakes
• 1T Garlic
• 4 cups marinara/pasta sauce
• 3 cups water
• 8oz shredded mozzarella, divided
• 16oz uncooked rotini or other short cut pasta
• 1 gallon size ziplock freezer bag
• 1 sandwich size freezer bag

Place ground beef, pepperoni, onions, garlic bread seasoning, pasts sauce, water and half of the mozzarella cheese in a gallon size ziplock freezer bag. Place remaining mozzarella cheese in sandwich size freezer bag. Freeze.
When ready to cook: Remove sandwich bag of mozzarella from freezer and place in refrigerator to thaw.
Place contents of gallon sized freezer bag into slow cooker. Cook on LOW for 6 hours. Break up meat with spatula.
Add uncooked pasta. Cook for 15-20 minutes longer, until pasta is cooked. Top with remaining mozzarella cheese. Cover and let cheese melt, 5 minutes.
This meal again has a few dollars worth of beef, 1/2 a pack of pepperoni 1.50$, veggies 50 cents, pasta sauce 1$, cheese 2$, Pasta 1$ totals 9$

Fifth:

Mushroom Goulash:
1 1/2 lbs beef
2 cans of mushrooms soup
Fresh mushrooms
1/2 cup corn
place in slow cooker for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low, serve with pasta or rice
3$ in beef, 2 cans of mushroom soup 2$, fresh mushrooms 1$, veggies 50 cents totals 6.50$

Since I doubled all the recipes this totaled 80$ all together, that works out to 8$ per bag and our bags always last us a supper and a lunch, so 4$ per meal, that's 1$ per person, per meal. That is awesome! Great savings! I hope this helps you get through December with a little extra cash in your pocket for other fun things!

Back to School Freezer Cooking!

That time of year will be upon us before we know it, back to school, life is always busy and heading back to school doesn't make things any easier. Last year I made a few freezer recipes to help with the back to school lunches and they were so handy! This year I really want to stock that freezer and make sure I have lots of nice homemade goodies for all those mornings when I have nothing to send to school. So here is my list of goodies I plan to make before school starts. Hopefully, I can accomplish all of them, but whatever I accomplish I am still ahead of the game, as long as I get some done I will be happy. So this time I thought I would share my list ahead of time, in case any of you would like to do this along with me. 

Here is my list of recipes:

Chocolate chip zucchini mini muffins:

I like to make mini muffins cause they go a really long way, I always send two of them in each lunch and I individually wrap them to make them an easy on the go treat!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip muffins!

1 c oil

4 tbsp cocoa

½ buttermilk (You can use regular milk and add 1/4 tsp vinegar)

1 1/3 c white sugar

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

2 ½ c flour

2 eggs

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

1 bag of hersheys milk chocolate chips

2 cup shredded zucchini or squash

Mix ingredients in order they appear.

350 degrees 20 mins makes 24 muffins can also be made into a 9 x 13 cake and bake 35 to 40 mins! Good luck, enjoy!

Banana Chocolate Chip Mini or Regular Muffins:

I am not sure yet if these will be mini's or regular, we will wait and see what I feel like doing at the time, mini's take a long time, you can make 300 mini muffins out of one double batch, without a convection oven it can take a long time to cook them all.

Best Ever Banana Chocolate Chip muffins

2 cups flour

1 c rolled oats

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 ½ c sugar

2/3 cup oil

6 mashed bananas

2 eggs

1 bag Hershey chocolate chips

Fill muffin paper ¾ full

Bake at 350 for 25 mins makes 24 muffins

I have turned banana chocolate chip muffin haters into lovers with this recipe! Try em!

Small ham and cheese quesadillas:

There really isn't a recipe for this, but I plan to get the small tortilla's and make ham (of course you can use anything you like, the sky is the limit) and cheese quesadilla's and sneak in some veggies in there too if I can! Warm them in my panini press, or you could bake them in the oven, wrap them individually and then put them all in a big ziploc bag.

Easy Pancakes bites:

I got this recipe off of Pinterest, here is a link to it here.

http://afewshortcuts.com/2014/07/easy-pancake-bites/#_a5y_p=2015556

I plan to make them in a regular muffin pan and I plan to use raspberries and make raspberry pancakes, I think these will be so handy for those days when you don't know what to serve! 

Crepes:

I did this last year and what a hit! My daughter loved getting crepes in her lunch with fruit and whipped cream! I plan to make a big batch and toss them individually wrapped in the freezer, super easy for those mornings with nothing to send.

Grandma's Crepes (not my Grandmas but someone's Grandma)

1 cup flour

dash of salt

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup milk

splash of vanilla optional

whisk by hand till smooth (I use my kitchen aid, my momma didn't raise no fool!)

Batter should be thin, fry in a hot griddle or frying pan, until golden brown, use oil to cook, margarine will burn to fast! Enjoy!

So best of luck filling your freezer, I chose these recipes cause they are simple, they freeze well and are totally do-able! I have all of August to get these done, so wish me luck! I hope some of you follow along and fill your freezers too, it sure makes life easier! I plan to post updates as I go along. And if you don't have back to schoolers these would all be nice for adult lunches too!

***UPDATE***
So I decided to tackle the "easy pancake bites" recipe, this was a first for me, but I thought it would be perfect to have lots of little pancakes ready to go for the school year. Now I am not sure what happened but they rose up high like muffins lol, they were supposed to stay flat like a pancake does, lol oh well, not a total fail as they still taste great, I guess we will just cut them in half and use them that way lol.  I topped each one with a raspberry/rhubarb jam. I will be freezing them individually, when it is time to use them just top them with maple syrup and some whipped cream if you have it!

The final result looks like a nice muffin lol! I greased my pans well but they all still really stuck, probably cause of the fruit, maybe I will try something different next time! Super handy to have in the freezer, we made 60 of these today! 

Thanks for tuning in, I will continue to update as I get these recipes accomplished! 

***UPDATE*** #2

I decided to make these pizza muffins here is the link to the pinterest page I got them from: http://inspiredbyfamilymag.com/2013/09/02/pizza-muffins-freezable-recipe/

I decided to make these instead of making crepes, after making 60 pancake bites yesterday, I figured I had enough Pancake/crepe type foods for now lol. Today I made a little over 60 of these pizza muffins, they are so delicious and my house smells like a wonderful Italian Bakery! Who doesn't love pizza right?! I think these will be a lunch box hit! I will freeze them in baggies with 2 muffins per bag, I think that would be a nice lunch size for my daughter. These were so simple! I quadrupled the recipe to get over 60, 

Here is the original recipe: (my changes are in the brackets)

Pizza Muffin Recipe

• 2 cps flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbl baking soda
• 2 tsp of Italian herbs (I used parsley, basil and oregano, enough to make up 2tsp)
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 2 tbl olive oil (I used canola cause it is what I had on hand)
• 1/2 cp of milk
• 1/2 cp pizza sauce (I used spaghetti sauce)
• 1 tbl honey
• 1 cp of mozzarella
• 3/4 cps diced pepperoni (I used Ham, my daughter likes that better)
• 3 tbl parmesan (I omitted this and added a little extra mozza)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Spray a muffin pan with non stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients up to the garlic powder.

Then whisk in the wet ingredients up to the honey.

Finally, add in the mozzarella, parmesan and pepperoni. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Stir the batter and divide among the mini-muffin cups. Bake 10-12minutes, or until puffed and golden.  Eat plain or use pizza sauce for dipping!

Perfect for freezing! I was able to make 18 normal size muffins.

here are a few mini's I made with the rest of the batter, these pans are perfect for when you just have a bit of batter left, not enough for regular muffins.

Here they are baked, they are beautiful #nofilter

So; beautiful and delicious and easy, how can you go wrong!? 

***UPDATE*** #3

It's chocolate chip zucchini day! YUM!

These muffins are awesome, right now we are lucky enough to have many huge zucchini growing in our garden, I made 60 regular muffins and 75 mini's the regulars are for our home to enjoy as well and family and friends, the mini's are all getting frozen for school lunches! 

I did a triple batch to get this many! 

Making all these muffins makes me extra grateful for my Kitchen Aid Mixer and my Pampered Chef Scoops! 

***UPDATE #4***

Today is quesadilla's making day, this was so easy and simple, I wish I would have thought of this last year! 

There is no recipe for this, you can put anything you want in between two tortilla's! My daughter likes ham and cheese, I asked her to pick a veggie and she chose peppers, now let's hope she doesn't pick them out at lunch time lol! 

This was super easy the only thing that took any time is shredding the cheese! 

We have a panini press, that is what I use to warm them up, it worked perfectly, you can use your oven too. I cut them with a pizza cutter and let them cool. 

Once they cooled I bagged them all, I made 4 large quesadilla's all together, 2 wedges per meal is a good size for my 5-year-old, add more or less as you see fit. In the end, I have 12 lunches! These will be perfect for those days when I have nothing to send!!! 

Ready for the freezer! 

***UPDATE #5***

Today I made Pineapple zucchini muffins, I wanted something with lots of fruits and veggies and I found this recipe online and really wanted to try it.

Here is the link to the recipe

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pineapple-zucchini-muffins/

I made a few changes, I removed 1 of the cups of oil, because that seemed like a lot and I replaced it with 1/2 cup of applesauce and 1/2 a cup of chopped apples, so now we have even more fruit in there, these are really yummy! I also added an extra 1/2 tablespoon on cinnamon, but that was just my preference.

In total this made 48 regular muffins and 12 mini's, I wrapped up some for school lunches and some we will keep out to eat now, YUM! This is a great recipe for all the nice zucchini that are everywhere right now! 

***UPDATE #6*** Final Update!

Today I made banana chocolate chip muffins! 200 in total! I am so sick of looking at muffins!! LOL! But my freezer is full and I love it! This is a really great banana chocolate chip recipe! Kids love them too! I am so happy to be done with the back to school baking, I now have more than enough to last the whole school year! 

I did package some muffins in packages of 9 for after school snacks when all my daycare kids are here, these are always so handy! 

Well, I hope you enjoyed my back to school baking ideas, and I hope some of you were inspired to do some back to school baking of your own! All together this month I made over 500 muffins! 

Thanks for following me along this journey!