Covered in Bees!

Where my Eddie Izzard fans at? Did you get the reference in this post's title? So, last month's pick for the bookclub was The Bees by Laline Paull (link below) and I've been obsessed with bees ever since.

1. In today's society, you almost can't think about Burt's Bees when you think about bees, am I right? Anyway, I really love this lip color.
2. Look at this beautiful necklace by LeChaim! I love it!
3. I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but help the bees out! Go gorilla gardener with one of the bee seed bomb packs!
4. This shirt is pretty cool, I like the vintage bee illustrations on it.
5. If you are crafty, you'll love Paperdoll Digital's downloadable paper patterns. This pack is very bee-autiful. See what I did there?

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LINK LOVE:

• If you haven't read The Bees by Laline Paull, you need to. It's the best book I've read in a long time.
• Want to know what we're currently reading in book club? Join our group on GoodReads!
• Hot Dog Princess is my spirit animal.
• I want to read the new comic book Finding Molly after reading this review over at Common Room.
• Want to help the bees? Check out this post about making a bee friendly garden.
• I'm red; what color are you?

New Line Up

Hi friends!

Just a quick post about what's coming up this month on the blog.

What I'm Loving is moving to Fridays starting next week! It's going to include links to things I've been digging online as well.

Lazy Cleaning is now going to be on Mondays. Yes, as in EVERY MONDAY. O.o I know. But I need to get my butt in gear when it comes to keeping a clean house. For reals.

On a similar note, Lazy Cooking is going to be EVERY. FREAKIN. WEDNESDAY. Uh huh, you read that right. It kicked my butt in the past when I did it every week, but we got some good food out of it. Some posts will not be ground breaking, I can promise you that; but it will be entertaining if not delicious. I hope.

And of course, Goal Getter will still be every Sunday. Going strong and keeping me on task.

As for things like Once A Month Gamer and the gift guides I do, plus the free planners I've been making, those will still be going up, just on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday.

So, that's it. Just wanted to let you know what's up and what to expect. Hope you like the new Lazy Lady.

Lazy Lady tries Freezer Cooking

Last week, I took a few days off from my day job (but because I had vacation built up that I had to take or I'd lose it). I decided to scratch something off my bucket list, and tried my hand at freezer cooking.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, this is when you prepare X amount of meals (a week's worth, a month's worth, whatever you need) in ONE DAY. I decided to do a week's worth, because I'm not a coupon queen and I'm not made of money. So, I found 5 recipes online that sounded like something Mr. LL and I would eat and that also came with freezing before cooking instructions.

Now, all the bloggers that are experts on freezer cooking advise to do your grocery shopping on a different day than your prep day. Well, I was strapped for time (I had a website to launch!), so I broke this rule. It isn't the end of the world, but it does make the process much more exhausting.

Getting all my ingredients for five different meals ready to be prepped and put into my freezer.

I actually only ended up spending my max grocery budget for a week. I always strive to spend $60-70 on groceries a week, max, but I budget $100 just in case (I included pet items and toiletries in my grocery budget).

I had made a game plan, per the advice of freezer cooking bloggers, and it really helped. Since it was Monday, I realized it was dumb to put all five meals in the freezer so one of them I just made for the night instead of prepping it to be frozen (it was taquitos that had to be basically fully made before frozen anyway, so it made since to just do the final step of popping them in the oven to crisp up and have a delicious homemade meal). 

We ended up only eating three of the five meals I prepped/made that day. It is just the two of us, so we were able to have leftovers from the two meals I pulled out of the freezer and some lunches too. This week, I don't have to do nearly as big a grocery store run, which is nice, because I have two dinners ready to go in the freezer. And the meals will keep for three months from the day I put them in there!

From the freezer (to the fridge to thaw over night) to the oven!

One of our favorite meals from the recipes I tried was these mozzarella stuffed meatballs. The day we ate it, I pulled the pan out, unwrapped it, and popped it in the oven. Toward the end of it's baking time, I made a pot of pasta with some red sauce. It was delicious, and Mr. LL said it was like something his Italian grandmother/aunts/great aunts would make and bring to a family get together (HUGE complement). Here' a link to the recipe from New Leaf Wellness.

This recipe is a definite keeper!

Even though the day of prepping all these meals is a lot of work, and anything BUT lazy, I still look at freezer cooking as lazy cooking. One afternoon of work to be able to just throw something in the crockpot or oven and have a delicious home cooked meal every night of the week? Yeah, my little, lazy heart digs this idea. Will I be doing it again? Sure...maybe. I was lucking in that I had a four day weekend, so I was able to work on things and have some extra time, but most weekends, I'm pretty booked up. If I make it a priority, maybe.