Hey guys! How’s it going? Wasn’t I doing so awesome on my blog schedule up until this week?

Yeah, I know.

But, I have a good excuse. I finished the umpteeth first draft of Clouded…at a pace of 5,000+ words a day. I had nothing left in my brain. Plus, I would have probably blogged in the voice of my main character (although that could have been interesting!)

I will be back next week with a recipe and book to share. Today, though, I’ll leave you with this…

Weekend Inspiration

(I need to pick a name for this series and stick to it.)

Have you heard of Highbrow yet?

“It’s your personal knowledge hacking tool. Highbrow expands your mind in just five minutes a day via bite-sized courses delivered to your email inbox every morning. It’s never been so easy to broaden a mind. Use the link below to sign up and learn more. Link to website: http://gohighbrow.com/”

(I don’t get any sort of kickback from this, btw, it’s just awesome.) I’ve done Ted-Ed for Writers and am now going through the Most Famous Works of Art course. They’ve got everything—these are the categories:

• ALL
• ART
• HEALTH
• HISTORY
• NATURE
• PHILOSOPHY
• PRODUCTIVITY
• PSYCHOLOGY
• SCIENCE
• STARTUPS

This was one of the first recipes I ever made up all by myself. It was based off a pasta with vodka sauce recipe that I found somewhere, and a dish that one of our friends in Nashville made us for dinner once (I’ve never gotten my chicken to taste as good as Emily’s did, though.)

• 4-4 oz Boneless, skinless chicken breasts 
• 1/8 tsp Salt
• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 small Onion, minced
• 1 Garlic Clove, minced
• 1 1/2 cups fat-free, low-sodium Chicken Broth
• 2-7 oz jars Sun Dried Tomatoes in olive oil
• 4 cups Fresh Spinach, chopped or shredded
• 1T Basil
• 4 Cups Penne Pasta
• 1/4 Cup grated Parmesan Cheese
• 1/4 Cup crumbled Feta Cheese

1. Cook pasta according to box directions. Meanwhile…
2. Cut chicken in 1-inch pieces, sprinkle with salt and pepper
3. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken, onion and garlic.
4. Sauté 5-minutes, stirring frequently.
5. Drain most of the oil from the tomatoes but do not rinse them.
6. Stir broth and tomatoes into skillet.
7. Bring to boil for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
8. Add 2 cups of spinach, cook 2 minutes or until wilted.
9. Divide remaining spinach among 4 plates.
10. Serve pasta over spinach, topped with chicken.
11. Sprinkle with Parmesan and Feta cheese.

Project 333 has gotten me pretty addicted to cleaning and simplifying, so when I saw this quarter’s Tranquility Du Jour Book Club pick, I grabbed a copy from the library and devoured it. Sort of. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing has a lot of great information in it. It really does. But oh my is it repetitive. But, it’s well laid out with headers and lots of highlighting, which makes it really easy to skim.

A lot of what she talks about, getting rid of what you don’t need, is what’s fueled my current clean-out. But she takes it a step further and says to only keep items that actually bring you joy. That’s kind of huge. If you’re indifferent, you don’t need it.

The most intriguing section of the book for me was about how to fold your clothes. Yes, I know I’m a nerd. But it’s pretty revolutionary: you fold everything so it stands on the side. You don’t stack anything, so you can always see everything you have. When I was putting our laundry away yesterday, I gave it a try. (Here’s a bunch of videos about how to do it.)

Hosiery

Workout clothes

Tops

Pajama & lounge wear drawer

I must admit, it didn’t take that long to get the clothes looking like this, and now that I’ve got this much empty space, it’s kind of tempting to go shopping. (I won’t, I’m just saying…)

I promise not to blog about this much more, but it’s been pretty exciting to see how much easier it is to keep the house clean and find what I need when I need it. I’ve got two more bags of stuff sitting by the back door waiting to be donated, my “random but not junk” drawer in the kitchen is organized for the first time ever. I took two evenings and skimmed through two years worth of magazines, ripped out what I wanted to read (a total of 5 articles) and sent the rest, four grocery bags worth, to the recycling. (We also learned that Mpls/St. Paul Magazine and Minnesota Monthly are basically the same, except MN Monthly mentions Brainerd and Duluth once each issue.)

I take thirty minutes or so each weekend to plan out meals for our family and make a shopping list. We have a few recipes that we keep going back to, so I thought I’d start sharing them with you.

We get a meat CSA each month. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, we prepay a farm directly for a big bag of meat. They deliver it, we don’t get to choose what we get, but it’s all amazing, grass fed, organic, and humanely raised. And the price is phenomenal. One thing that we get a lot of is pork shoulder. I’m not a huge pork fan, so I let these build up in our freezer, not sure what to do with them. Until I found this recipe.

I’ve adapted it a bit and make it in the crockpot for those nights that we don’t get home until it’s really time to be getting the kids ready for bed.

Ingredients:

• Approx 3 lbs of pork shoulder
• 2 juiced oranges
• 3 juiced limes
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 2 Tbsp cumin
• 2 Tbsp coriander
• 1 Tbsp dried cilantro
• Tortillas (I’m gluten free, so I have to have corn. But, according to my husband, it’s great with either corn or flour.)
• Whatever toppings you like on tacos

Directions:

1. Put it all in the crockpot, cook until the meat is done (around 6 hours on low.)
2. Serve on tortillas with your toppings

It’s SO GOOD.

Guys! The comments on my site have been broken and I don’t know how long it’s been going on! I’m so sorry!

THANK YOU for all of the emails I got about the planners (and the fact that you couldn’t comment on the post, or actually download the planners. Again, so sorry!)

I’m trying to figure out why everything with the site seems to have gone so wacky (my pages are out of order, comments, etc.) so thanks in advance for your patience. Now, on to the good stuff.

Writing

So I generally don’t talk about my current, in process writing too much, but I thought I’d go ahead and share a little update, since it’s the beginning of the year:

Stealing the Ruby Slippers and Finding the Ruby Slippers are both available for sale everywhere digitally and in select indie book stores in Minnesota. Both books are getting really good reviews and sales, and I’m super happy with how things are going. If you’re a blogger or reviewer and would like a copy shoot me an email.

I have a completed book, Home, that I’m shopping to both agents and publishers. I am still considering the self-publishing option, but this book is so different from the Ruby Slippers series that I’d really like a larger team behind it. The premise is this: Ashley is an accidental agoraphobic: she worked a super stressful job that basically ran her life for years, and when the job went away, she took full advantage of the ability to stay home for a while, relax, and focus on creating a life she really loved. But now, it’s been four years, and she hasn’t left her house, and her sister, Megan, has a critical kidney disease. Megan needs a transplant, and Ashley is the only option. But, even if she can overcome the crippling panic attacks and get to the hospital, she may not be able to pass the psychological exam to donate.

I’m currently re-writing (for the millionth time) Clouded. The main character’s name has changed, as have most of the details. The big plot points remain: It’s about a girl who moves to Nashville and lands her dream job in the music industry. But things aren’t nearly as dreamy as she thought. After she gets fully integrated into the industry, she’s not sure who she can trust. Or whether she’s even trustworthy herself.

Short Stories: I’ve got three in-process short stories, and ideas for several more. Nothing I really want to share yet though.

What are you reading? What are you writing/creating?

I’m addicted to planners.

Paper, electronic, whatever. I don’t care. I feel like there has to be the perfect solution out there to make me productive, rich and famous. (Okay, maybe not the last two. But they might naturally grow out of productivity, right???)

I’m also all about taking recommendations.

• Michael Hyatt ran a great big company and has branched out on his own and seems to be doing quite well for himself (he’s was named one of Forbes Magazine’s Top 10 Online Marketing Experts To Follow In 2014.” He used Nozbe. I grabbed the free version, loved it, and pounced on the huge sale they did at Christmas that gave us two accounts for the price of one. I got Chris using it. Then I realized that it didn’t really work for me either. (Luckily, they have a 60 day money back guarantee, and incredible customer service.
• Erin Condren Life Planners are pretty. I know a lot of people who swear by them.
• I’m a huge fan of everything Kimberly Wilson does. Back in the day, she was a huge proponent of the Planner Pad. A few years ago, Kimberly started putting out her own Daybook.
• Etsy has a TON of options. Last year I downloaded this one.
• The company I used to work for did everything through Microsoft Outlook (and later, SharePoint) tasks.

The thing that all of these had in common was: they’re awesome, but not for me. (And they’re rather expensive.)

(This may be my ego talking, but I don’t think so. Feel free to leave me a comment and tell me I’m wrong.) I think, as a creative professional who has to devote a lot of time each day to just producing work, but not necessarily crossing things off a check list, I have a special set of needs when it comes to organization. Back when Kimberly was promoting the Planner Pad I used the basic structure to make something myself. Last month I spent most of the week before the kids went back to school (when I wasn’t cleaning out closets and drawers and generally purging) creating a new planner system for myself. Half-way through the first month, I’m pretty happy with it. It is based on goal setting and creating monthly and weekly plans before digging down on the daily level.

It’s very specific for me: I know I can’t focus on too many things each week, or each day, so I’ve left limited room to list things. I want to be reminded of my reading and art goals, because they’re the ones I tend to shove off to the side. I don’t usually have a lot of appointments, so a skinny schedule column works.

There are a few things I know I’m going to need to change.

• In the monthly reading column I need to add a line for the inspirational book.
• I have forgotten about the Gratitude list, so I need to set a reminder for myself on my calendar.
• It’s not super pretty. I use colored pens to fill it out to give it some pizzazz. But if I had the time and talent, I would like it to be a little more designed.

Because I love you, if you want I’ll give you the planner pages for free. Just put your email in the cute box below. I know it probably won’t work perfectly for anyone else, but if it helps, that’s great. And if it doesn’t…well…it was free. 🙂

This has been working sporadically, and I’m not sure why. If you don’t get it right away, send me an email: me (at) amandamichellemoon (dot) com and I’ll send it to you directly until I get the glitch worked out.

Do you have a planning system? What do you use to stay organized?