The Sensible Mom

Food, DIY, Chicago Mom Blogger

Archives for February 2012

Cornbread Recipe: Sweet, Moist, & Delicious

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I love cornbread.

And I like it sweet.

Not too sweet, but with just the right amount of sweetness.

Don’t get me wrong, I like cornbread without sugar, too, but I much prefer it when it is delightfully sweet and prepared in a cast iron skillet.

Mmmmm……

cornbread

Here’s my recipe:

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Sweet Buttermilk Cornbread

Ingredients

  • 8 tbs. (1 stick) Butter
  • 3/4 Cup (plus 1 tsp. for sprinkling) Sugar
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1 Cup Buttermilk
  • 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
  • 1 Cup Cornmeal
  • 1 Cup Flour
  • 1/2 tsp. Salt
  • 1 tbs. Shortening

Instructions

  1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees, and place cast iron skillet in the oven to heat.
  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Once melted, remove the butter from heat and whisk in sugar. Add eggs one at a time stirring the mixture after each one.
  3. Add the baking soda to the buttermilk and whisk. Once incorporated, add the buttermilk mixture to the saucepan with the other ingredients and stir.
  4. Whisk in cornmeal, flour, and salt to the mixture.
  5. Open the oven and remove cast iron skillet - very carefully! Add shortening to the cast iron skillet and wait until it melts. Then add the prepared cornbread batter to the cast iron skillet and place in oven.
  6. Bake in preheated oven for about 25-35 minutes or until a toothpick is inserted in the center and comes out clean.
  7. Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes before sprinkling with 1 tsp. of sugar.
https://thesensiblemom.com/2012/02/cornbread-recipe-sweet-moist-delicious/

I think you will really enjoy this recipe! It’s definitely a favorite in our home.

happy cornbread eater

*Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com

10 Goals for the Week

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10 Goals to Tackle This Week

I’m going to jump right into my goal progress for last week. πŸ™‚

Here’s how I did with my goals:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Make a new school plan for Breanna. We are adding in some new programs and removing some things. I didn’t get this done, but we started a very cool new program for reading and spelling for the kids, which they absolutely love. I can hardly believe it, this program has been an instant success. We even started our newest homeschooler, Isaac, on the program for kindergarten. He was pretty upset when he was told he couldn’t do school on the weekend. That’s how good this program is. We did end up letting him do school on Saturday. I can’t wait to share more about this program from Readingeggs.com with you in the next month or so.

2. Write in Nathan’s, Isaac’s, and David’s baby books. I did put a few pictures in Nathan’s book, but I didn’t get any writing done in it like I did for Isaac and David. I’m glad to be able to invest time in their books, because I know they’ll be treasured for a long time to come.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk for 30 minutes 3 days this week and do strength training 3 days with my exercise band. I have failed in exercising as I should the last few weeks, because I’ve been busy with projects. See this week’s goals for how I plan to change this. πŸ™‚

4. Finish readingΒ WordPress Web Design for DummiesΒ by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. Done! I’m so happy to have finally finished this book! Now I need to go back through it and review and try out some of the things that were interesting or helpful for either this blog or my blog design website.

5. Wake up by 8:30am every morning. Done.

Home Management Goals:

6. Organize the bathroom shelves. Done.

7. Organize my desk. Done.

Business Goals:

8. Post one blog post each day. Sadly, no. Hoping for a better week, though!

9. Create graphics for a giveaway next month to be hosted on another website. I didn’t get to this, either, but I did download some images I may use for the graphics.

10. Rework my sidebars. Done! I’m enjoying the new looks of my sidebars and hoping to work on them a bit more as time allows.

And now for this week’s goals…

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Make a new school plan for Breanna.

2. Write in Nathan’s baby book.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk for 1 hour 7 days this week. I started this today, and for the next 7 days, by God’s grace, I want to spend 1 hour on the treadmill each day praying and reading the Bible as I walk. We have some pretty big decisions coming up, and I need to be praying…..a lot.

4. Catch up on my online graphic design class & take the quiz that’s been assigned plus complete the weekly discussion question.

5. Wake up by 8:30am every morning.

Home Management Goals:

6. Clean the bathroom floor.

7. Vacuum the whole house.

Business Goals:

8. Post one blog post each day.

9. Create graphics for a giveaway next month to be hosted on another website.

10. Work on the footer area for The Sensible Mom.

What are your goals for the week?

 


10 Goals for the week

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10 Goals to Tackle This Week
Last week was a good week. Although, it may not have been the best week goal-wise. We’ll see what I can cross off my list.

I was busy with a website design project last week that kept me sitting A LOT. I also did some redesigning here on The Sensible Mom that took time away from other things. It was worth it, though. I’m happy with my new blog design and glad I finally got a good start on it. I still have some work to do in my sidebars, and I’m hoping to get to that by the weekend.

I’m looking forward to sharing the website I’ve been working on, too, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Here’s how I did with last week’s goals:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Cook with Nathan.Β Done. Nathan and I made the yummiest homemade brownies. I also ended up making pancakes and oatmeal cookies with David, who skipped his cooking day with me last week.

2. Write in Nathan’s, Isaac’s, and David’s baby books. I didn’t get to this.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk for 30 minutes 3 days this week and do strength training 3 days with my exercise band. I did exercise last week, but I didn’t make my goal. I’m hoping this week will be better, and I’m off to a decent start with 15 minutes on the treadmill so far today.

4. Finish readingΒ WordPress Web Design for DummiesΒ by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. I haven’t yet finished this book, but I made good progress. I have less than 100 pages left to go.

5. Wake up by 6:00am every morning. I didn’t make my 6:00am goal at all last week. I keep thinking if I can just set my alarm and push myself to wake up when it goes off, I can get up before the kids and not feel behind or overwhelmed the minute I step out of my bedroom. The reality is that most nights I don’t get to bed until at least 11:30pm and then I spend the night nursing the baby whenever she wakes up. To top that off, she is sick and was sick all last week. It seems that David caught a cold somewhere and it was passed to the baby. Elisabeth has been dealing with a stuffy nose, sneezing, coughing, and she’s spitting up more than usual for the last week. Poor girl. πŸ™ I am extremely thankful, though, for the 7 weeks our family had sickness-free right after Elisabeth was born. At least now she’s a bit older at 2 months and has been handling her first cold pretty well.

Home Management Goals:

6. Organize the bathroom shelves. Didn’t get this done.

7. Clean the kitchen floor. Done.

Business Goals:

8. Post one blog post each day. Not quite, but each week that I post this goal, I’m progressing. πŸ™‚

9. Implement regular Office Hours for both my business and blog time and start new client project. I am doing design and blog work at night after the kids go to bed, but last week I ended up also doing a good amount of it during the day with the kids around. My desk is in the living room, so I worked there while the kids played with LEGOs, did school, etc… I stopped and took breaks to do the everyday stuff like clean and cook meals.

10. Add more plugins for functionality to The Sensible Mom. Done. See my post on which plugins I added.

Now for this week’s goals:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Make a new school plan for Breanna. We are adding in some new programs and removing some things.

2. Write in Nathan’s, Isaac’s, and David’s baby books.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk for 30 minutes 3 days this week and do strength training 3 days with my exercise band.

4. Finish readingΒ WordPress Web Design for DummiesΒ by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

5. Wake up by 8:30am every morning.

Home Management Goals:

6. Organize the bathroom shelves.

7. Organize my desk.

Business Goals:

8. Post one blog post each day.

9. Create graphics for a giveaway next month to be hosted on another website.

10. Rework my sidebars.

What are your goals for the week?


8 Useful WordPress Plugins

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One of my goals last week was to add more more plugins to The Sensible Mom to make it easier for everyone to use. This has been a long time coming. I have procrastinated adding more plugins for functionality to The Sensible Mom for way too long, and I finally took the plugin plunge and added many that I’ve never used before. All of these plugins are reliable, relatively easy to use, and highly recommended (which is very important when it comes to searching for plugins – not all plugins are created equal).

Most of the plugins that I added are fabulously free! But there are a couple that do cost money. These are known as Premium plugins. I purchased the PluginBuddy Developer Suite because of the great plugins that they offer for both bloggers and WordPress blog designers. As a WordPress blog designer, I thought the best bang for my buck would come from the PluginBuddy Developer Suite. It includes all of the PluginBuddy plugins plus I can use it for my client sites. That’s a major plus.

The most exciting plugin in the suite for me is, BackupBuddy. Not only can I back up my own blog with this plugin, but it’s going to shave a lot of TIME off of transferring a client’s site from my testing area to their actual domain and web host. This was a MAJOR factor in choosing to purchase the PluginBuddy Developer’s suite. Another bonus was that I got to use a coupon code to bring the total for the suite down to only $110 from the regular price of $197. πŸ™‚ And I used recent blog design earnings to buy the suite.

Now for the actual plugins that I added….

Free WordPress Plugins:

Comment Luv – displays a commenter’s last post from their blog (I love commenting on blogs with this plugin installed)

All in one SEO Pack – great for search engine optimization

Print Friendly and PDF – adds a button to the bottom of your posts that allows readers to easily print your content

Subscribe to Comments – allows readers to subscribe to individual post comments and helps to keep the conversation going on your blog

Share This – allows readers to quickly share your posts with others via social networks and email

WP Security Scan – helps to make sure your blog is secure and lets you know if your blog is vulnerable to a security breach

Premium WordPress Plugin$:

PluginBuddy Mobile – for viewing your website on mobile devices (the huge plus with this plugin is that you can customize how your website shows up on different devices, such as the ipod, ipad, android, iphone, etc…)

Backup Buddy – backs up your pages, posts, theme, etc… and it’s also a very useful tool for WordPress designers to have in their toolbox

These are not all the plugins that I use on my site, but they are the newest. I’m hoping to write more posts in the future to get into the details of these plugins and breakdown further their benefits.

If you are new to WordPress and don’t know how to add plugins, just head to your WordPress Dashboard and go to “Plugins” then click on “Add New” and search for your desired plugin. Once you find the plugin you want, click on “Install Now”, then click “Activate.” After you’ve activated the plugin, see if there are any settings you need to change in order to get the plugin enabled and working on your blog. This part is usually pretty easy, too.

Are there any plugins you can add to this list that you find particularly useful?