Meet Unorganized Momma

I really hate “About Me’s” because I never know what to write. I enjoy reading them, but I never feel I have anything interesting to say. So grab a little caffeine so you stay awake through mine. ;)

My name is Shanna (Shanna, like banana and I have seen Shanna’s Show a couple of times but only learned about it a few years ago). I am a 26 year old work at home mom. I’ve only been staying home for about a year now, so I consider myself a newbie to it still. I’ve been working from home for about 6 months now. I work for a great web design company in Texas called Pithy Productions, Inc. I do their customer service, some project management, and whatever else they ask me to do. My boss is great and she is from Minnesota just like me! She also authors ebooks about the open source ecommerce programs, so if you are in need check out osCommerce Manuals.

I am from Minnesota and have lived here my whole life. I was born in the southern part of the state but have lived in the northern part of the state for the majority of my life. I married my high school sweetheart and we have one son Ashton who is 2.5 and another boy due to join us in November (he’s due right before hunting opener so hopefully he’ll come just a little early). We moved back to the town we grew up in last August so I could stay at home. We bought a little fixer-upper that has kept us my hubby busy.

I love frugal living, couponing (though I am still learning), blogging, and otherwise avoiding housework. I am no domestic diva, but I can cook! I just need to get better about the cleaning, but then again I do call myself “Unorganized Momma” for a reason.

I just finished a move back to Blogger so there’s still a little dust in the corners and some cobwebs to clear out. Feel free to leaf through my old posts if you have time. Please do check out my “Top 10 Reasons I am Excited to Stay Home with My Family this Coming Weekend.” post and PLEASE, PLEASE pretty PLEASE leave a comment. I’d LOVE to win the $100! I have the details about how you can participate in the fun in that post so there’s even more incentive to check it out! :) Also, please check out my Journey for Jess post and feel free to spread the word about the journey. She was a very special little girl.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you stayed awake and if not, I COMPLETELY understand! I'm participating in NotAtBlogHer09, Blog Hop 09, and Happy Blog Nerd Bash. Join in on the fun!

Journey for Jess

Journey for Jess is a cause near and dear to my heart. Jess is my husband’s cousin. She lived a very short  life but made an impression on so many people. Here is her story:

Jess Marie was born on January 7, 2004 weighing 8 lbs, 7 oz, almost 3 weeks early.  Her first months of life were filled with lots of sleeping and eating and she was a pretty simple baby to take care of.  At about 3 months of age, unbeknownst to us, Jess had her first small seizures.  On September 1st, 2004, at about 8 months of age, Jess had a 17 minute tonic clonic seizure that prompted her first ride in an ambulance and visit to the ER.  Thought to be a simple childhood seizure, she was discharged home with an appointment to have an EEG done in a week.  Two weeks later, she had her second tonic clonic seizure, the same day her EEG report reached her pediatrician's office. The report indicated that Jess' brain did in fact have a seizure pattern.   She was started on a seizure med, spent the night in the hospital and was discharged to home.  November 5th, 2004 Jess had an uncontrolled tonic clonic seizure that led to the administration of multiple medications, spinal tap, and eventually a referral to a pediatric epileptologist and her first Life Flight airplane transfer.

Over the next months and years of Jess' young life, she experienced countless head drop seizures and a few more tonic clonic seizures, including a six hour  tonic clonic  that left her dependent upon a ventilator to breathe,  for two days.  She tried over a dozen ant-seizure meds, a special epilepsy diet, had two brain surgeries resulting in a complete corpus callosotomy, and through all of these interventions, she continued to have daily seizures.  All without a known cause,  as her brain structure was normal and there were no signs of infection or inflammation.

On June 15, 2007 we awoke at 5AM to find that Jess had been seizing in her sleep (a time that she usually was seizure free) for hours.  Over the next two days we would learn that Jess' brain was deprived of adequate oxygen for an extensive period of time, and was dying.  Jess Marie was pronounced dead on June 18th at 9:39PM.  Her heart and kidneys were donated to a baby and a grandma in need, and our angel girl went to sit in the lap of Jesus and be our guardian angel forever.

Jess' life was filled with so much more than seizures.  She taught us the importance of cherishing the moments we have with those we love.  She taught us how important hugs and moochies and cuddling are, and the power of a smile and a laugh. She was the most perfect gift we could have received for those three and a half years, and we will never forget, and never be the same because of her love and her life. 

Jess’ parents and brother Noah have been on their Journey for Jess for 2 weeks now. To follow their journey, check out journeyforjess.blogspot.com.

Cherries!!

Aren’t they beautiful!? I have never purchased or even cooked/baked with fresh cherries, but they looked so good at the grocery store the other day that I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately I didn’t get around to popping them in the freezer quick enough, so I lost about half of them but I did make a pretty good cobbler out of the other half.
Here’s the recipe:
Fresh Cherry Cobbler
4 cups fresh pitted cherries (about 2 lbs uncleaned)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon butter
FOR THE BATTER
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
Combine in a large saucepan the cherries, 3/4 cup sugar, corn starch and water. Let stand at least one hour and up to several hours, stirring occasionally. Cook and stir till slightly thickened and bubbly, about 5 to 10 minutes at a good boil. Add 1 TBS butter and set aside. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Put the 1/2 cup butter in a 9 X 13-inch glass baking dish and put the dish in the preheating oven. While the butter is melting, mix the batter by combining flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and milk. When the butter is completely melted, remove the pan and pour the batter into the melted butter. The batter will immediately begin to cook, which is what you want. Carefully spoon the cherry mixture evenly over the batter. Return dish to oven and bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until batter sets and is browned. As the cobbler cooks, the batter will begin to rise up around the cherry mixture. Serve warm (or at room temperature) with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

I also made Triple Chocolate Cherry bars. I’ve been slowly accumulating all the ingredients. I never had them on my shopping list at the same time, so it took a while for me to remember to get all of the ingredients. I did have to make a couple of substitutions because I didn't have the EXACT ingredients to follow the recipe.

Triple Chocolate Cherry Bars


1 box Devil's Food cake mix
1 can (21 oz) cherry pie filling
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 bag (12-oz size) semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup) I guestimated instead of measuring.
1 container Betty Crocker® Whipped chocolate frosting

Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan). Grease and flour 15x10x1-inch or 13x9-inch pan, or spray with baking spray with flour. In large bowl, gently mix dry cake mix, pie filling, eggs and chocolate chips with rubber scraper; break up any undissolved cake mix by pressing with scraper. Carefully spread in pan. Bake 15x10x1-inch pan 25 to 30 minutes, 13x9-inch pan 35 to 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely, about 1 hour. Frost with frosting. For bars, cut into 8 rows by 6 rows.

**I made mine in a 9x13 glass pan and it really would have benefited from being in a 15x10 pan. They are pretty high like cake and it would have been nice for them to be thinner like bars. They are still delicious though. ;)

Success!!!

One thing I really wanted to accomplish with my move back to Blogger was to have the ability to use an offline blogging tool like Windows Live Writer. I was having trouble getting it setup to work with my Wordpress blog and my browsers weren’t liking the latest versions of Wordpress so I found myself in a pickle. I am no programmer. I can pick apart code a little bit, but when the PHP is giving an error in Internet Explorer, I am lost. So now I am a happy camper. :) I have a new template, I have the ability to post from my browser, and I can use Windows Live Writer. There does seem to be an issue with the template I am using and how Internet Explorer 8 views it. I am working on that, so bare with me please. You can always subscribe to an RSS feed to get around that. Also, with the move I made I lost comments to blog posts made while I had the Wordpress blog. I apologize to those of you who took the time to visit and leave me a comment. I’m hoping to figure out a way to migrate that data over, but for now it’s lost. :( I’m still migrating posts over and cleaning out the cobwebs, so bare with me. This is still a work in progress.

I'm Back!!

I'm back on Blogger! Something went wacky with my Wordpress on my GoDaddy account and it was extremely difficult to post easily. I decided I'd go back to my roots and go back to Blogger until I can figure out a better solution, so pardon the dust! I'll be migrating my old posts that I couldn't export from the WordPress blog over here and updating things around here. So I guess this blog is officially like my house... a work in progress! It's unbelievably nice to be able to post normally again. It was worth all the hassle of changing DNS settings. I'm a true DIY gal so the only help I utilized was Blogger's instructions on IP addresses. I love the sense of accomplishment that comes with doing something successfully!

Baked Spaghetti

I don't actually have a "recipe" as I always wing it each time, so this is just a rough guideline of what I put in my Baked Spaghetti.

Thin Spaghetti Noodles (cooked)- amount is up to you, I just grab a handful or so and throw it in the pot.

Can/Jar of Spaghetti Sauce - adjust the amount of sauce as you like. I like to keep it saucy so that the leftovers are not too dry.

Diced Tomatoes - Sometimes I need to make the sauce stretch a little farther so I add in some diced tomatoes to do that.

Sugar - I use Hunts spaghetti sauce (or sometimes store brand) and I find that it benefits from a little sugar

Seasoning - I add fresh Basil & Thyme from my garden and anything else I feel the sauce needs

Ground Beef/Pepperoni - This varies each time. Sometimes it's meatless, sometimes I include one or both of these.

Mozzerella Cheese - Use how much ever you want.

Mix everything together except for the cheese and put into a pan. My batch tonight is pretty large so it's going to go in a 9 x 13 pan but usually I use a smaller pan.

Add the cheese and put in the oven to get everything hot and the cheese all melted. I usually use 350 and I would guess it's in there for around 20 minutes.

Tonight I'm going to whip up some garlic toast since I have some extra loaves of bread on hand. I mix a little butter, garlic powder, and salt together and spread on slices of bread. YUM!

Menu Plan Monday 7/20/09

Wow! It has been ages since I did a MPM and I am long overdue. I have been majorly slacking on my blogging and it's time to get back on the horse. I'm 6 months pregnant, so if I don't do it now I'll never do it! :) I will post recipes each day. I'm not organized enough to have them with me when I organized MPM! I am an Unorganized Momma for a reason. ;)

Monday: Tuna Noodle Casserole

Tuesday: Chicken Enchiladas

Wednesday: Baked Spaghetti

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Chicken "burgers"

Saturday: Pork Loin (haven't decided how I'm going to prepare this yet)

Sunday: Leftovers

Treats for the week: (I think I'll do a baking day this week so stay tuned for that!)
Cherry Cobbler
Triple Chocolate Cherry Bars - I'll be putting these in the freezer for when company drops by.
Blueberry Bread/or Muffins - I got a great deal on blueberries at the grocery store so I'd like to do something with them.
I MAY make some grape jam/jelly since we are running low and I have the ingredients, but we'll see how the day goes.

For more Menu Plan Monday, visit Org Junkie!