Monday Menu Planning 2/18/2019

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You will notice lots of easy and quick meals on the menu this week. I still want to busy week we have scheduled I am saving most of the experiments for the weekend. I did make some changes to this weeks plan because we ended up eating left-overs on Friday night and I will be in a meeting until late on Tuesday night. I am planning to grind up a shoulder roast to use as the meat in the shepherds pie. I will also probably make extra mashed potatoes for the freezer and to use in the shephards pie on Friday.
Breakfast- Saturday– Biscuits- Sunday-Bacon omlet Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday– Choice of any available left-overs, oatmeal, grits, cereal, toast or eggos waffles. Wednesday- baked oatmeal either peanut butter/chocolate chip or strawberries and cream to use up the heavy cream at the house.
Lunch–Saturday-Crock pot mac and cheese Sunday-Mexician Monday– Potato soup for kids and chicken stew for me. Tuesday– hummus and dip for me , Kendall and Zach had egg salad sandwiches , Wednesday-Thursday and Friday- uncrustables for the kids. I have a salad for one day and left-overs.
Dinner – Saturday-Arby’s Sunday–Left-overs Monday-Rice Kieblsa . Tuesday– Cheese quesidila and mexican rice Wednesday–Chicken pie Thursday– sloppy joes and FF. Friday- Shephard pie

Menu Planning Monday

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We were VERY successful eating up the junk food Sunday left-overs this past week. I did not post a menu plan but did talk about some of them over here.   The focus of this week is to try out some new recipes. I found a bunch of new to me crockpot recipes that include a shopping list. After looking at most of it, I realized that I would only have to buy the meat for most of these. I did want to do a taste test before stocking the freezer with these items. I also realized that some are just as easy to prepare the morning of or the night before. So far all three have been good but I will most likely only repeat two, the Mexican chill and Honey Sesame Chicken.

Breakfast- Saturday– Pancakes- with leftovers for several additional mornings this week. Sunday-I made an egg frittata with lots of veggies for me and biscuits for the kids and Matt. . Monday- Left-over egg frittata (the kids tasted mine on Sunday and wanted to finish it on Monday). Tuesday, Thursday, Friday– Choice of any available left-overs, oatmeal, grits, cereal, toast or eggos waffles.  Wednesday- baked oatmeal of some form.

Lunch–Saturday-Olive Garden (special treat) Sunday-Cranberry Roast with mixed veggies.  Monday– Potato soup for kids and a can of soup for me.  Tuesday– hummus and dip for me , Kendall and Zach had egg salad sandwiches , Wednesday-Thursday and Friday- uncrustables for the kids. I have a salad for one day and left-overs.

Dinner – Saturday-Mexican Chill with cornbread topping. Sunday–Oddles of noodles soup (yeap it was that good of a day) Monday-Honey Sesame chicken with egg rolls and rice. Tuesday– Taco pasta   Wednesday– Baked Ziti Thursday– Hamburgers and FF. Friday – left-overs or rice kielbasa depending on what the fridge looks like.

 

Do you have a favorite crockpot recipe for me to try?

Saving on Saturday 2/9/2019

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I have often said in the past that saving money and living on less is a lifestyle choice.  I will also be the first to admit, it is not a fun or easy choice. I wanted to highlight some of the better choices that I made this week.

Gardening– The weather earlier this week was beautiful, highs in the 70’s for several days in a row.  We took one afternoon and spent about 2 hours trimming the rose bushes and removing weeds from the garden and flower beds.  I am really excited to have extra time this summer to spend working and caring for the garden.  After some thought, Matt and I have agreed to use our Swagbucks for both plants and supplies that we need to eliminate the initial cost. I estimate that prior to planting, first of May, we should have around $150 in gift cards to use for this project. I am hopeful that this will cover not only the cost of the plants but also some fertilizer and additional dirt.  I did purchase 2 packs of seeds at Walmart this weekend. We found for fifty cent each. I used Shopkicks  ($2 card earned in the store) to cover this purchase. No upfront expenses make any and all food we manage to raise FREE!

Groceries–  This is probably my greatest struggle.  This week we have focused on eating up and not letting any of the leftovers from junk food Sunday  go to waste.  One evening this week was a left-over meal. Additional, we have been using these items for lunches.  I enjoyed one day of a huge salad that included broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and tomatoes from the veggie tray. We added taco dip to our dinner of chicken enchiladas and spinach dip (creamed spinach) to our Salisbury steak meal.  I made egg salad with the remaining devil eggs which both Zach and Kendall took for lunch.

I also have found some new crock pot recipes that I want to try over the next couple of week to add to our list of quick and good meals. This particular website even provides a grocery list but I want to try each recipe using what we already have before spending additional money.  If these turn out to be repeats, they will be a summer project to stock the freezer while I am out of work during the summer.

I purchased a grinder attachment for the Kitchen Aid on sale for 60% off today. Our family does not particular enjoy roast, we purchased a whole cow last year with probably 20 different roast. My plan is to use the new attachment to turn the roast into hamburger which we used on a regular basis.

CVS- I have slowly been stock up on a variety of items from the weekly sales. I have managed to make a weekly trip the last several weeks. My saving percentages have been around 75% for each week. I have needed to restock on toothpaste, shampoo and body wash up front before moving on to laundry detergent and paper products. I am limiting myself to spending $10 or less per week at CVS.

Kendall’s Glass

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I have already shared how we spent much more than anticipated in the month of January. So far we are starting the month of February off with a bang as well.  On the way home from work, Friday afternoon. I get a text from Kendall that said “I broke my glasses at school today.”  I asked for pictures and got the followingAt this point, I knew four things. 1. These probably were not fixable.  2. Kendall’s prescription for her glasses expired in March. 3. I did not plan to take the kids to the eye doctor til at least July, when my new vision insurance starts. 4. Kendall only has one set of glasses with her current prescription.

I did some quick research and called Matt to have him meet us in Winston- Salem at the closest Vision Works store. I was very fortunate that Vison Works currently had two specials. The first is a Buy One Get One Free and the second was 2 pair of kids glass for $99.  Unfortunately the $99 special was for frame that cost $69 and did not include transition lens.  We decided to purchase two pair for Kendall with the transitional lens for $299.  Ouch but at least now we should be able to make it to July or later without new glasses. Kendall is also requesting contacts so this may be a very long term pair of glasses.

Lily and Zach both have multiple pair of glasses but they both located $69 frames they LOVED and did not need the transition lens since they already have several pairs at home. I did purchase the additional pairs for $99.

$400 and 4 pair of glass later… all I could say is welcome to February!

January in Review

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This January has turned into a quite expensive month. I did some reading of old post and realize that I usually have a successful clean out the pantry month and stay way below spending in grocery spending. This was not the case for this January. I did clean out the pantry for all but the last week. After some debate, it was physically less demanding and stressful for me to do a huge grocery shopping trip to Costco in January instead of trying to squeeze it into February.  I also ended buying food for junk food Sunday as well. Total spend in Groceries $800 YIKES!

I was able to keep a running total on our gas usage for the month. We are spending $93 a week to fill all three vehicles, for January that meant $465.  I know that both vans need oil changes in the month of February so I expect this amount to be closer to $600 next month.

Given the numbers above, I am not at all surprised that our overall debt increased by $481. YIKES! One of the other unexpected expenses for the month of January was the purchase of new phones and an apple watch for myself. Feel free to check out the details here 

Personally, I have been able to complete a devotional 3 times a week. This is a huge increase from zero!

I did use the treadmill several time this month. I also realize that I am walking quite a bit for work. I am averaging 2.5 miles just at work. I am going to set a goal for walking at least 3 miles a day for February.

Blogging: I have posted only 9 times this month. No real reason other than I am tired. Guess it is time to start doing instead of thinking.

PLANS: A couple of plans for February include not increasing our overall debit, staying under $200 for groceries and increasing both devotional time and treadmill time!

 

No Spend Fail

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When I posted goals in January, I was going to work very very hard at achieving them. I was honest and thought that they were attainable. But what I failed to take into account is that January is the LONGEST month of the year. seriously 5 full weeks.

The good news
I have been able to keep a record of our spending in gas. It is averaging around $93 a week.  This will give me a realistic amount to work in the budget.
I found out that my insurance paid more than expected on Zach’s brace. This was a huge expected win. I actually only owe 2 or months instead of 3. In addition each month is approximately $10 than I anticipated
I have been able to keep up with my devotions at three times a week!

NOW  the fail
Both Matt and I have apple phones that are 2.5 years old. They were both paid for in August. Over the past several weeks, things have gone from annoying like no siri, a delay when receiving message to problematic. When I receive a text is take a minute including a white screen before I can read it. In addition my gps was acting strange and finally my phone lost a work message.  We did some research and decided to take advantage of Verizon’s BOGO apple phone sale. We ended up spending about 3 hours at the Verizon store. We both got new phones and I got an apple watch.  As much as I use my phone and we both need it for work, it is an expense that is justified in the end.

I also had intended to spend $60 or less on groceries this month. So far I have spent $75 however I am planning a trip to Costco on Saturday. A full week early but a trip that is need to restock several major items include garbage bags, toilet paper and paper towel. I have managed to only buy items we are out of this month so at least that is a start.

Menu Plan Monday-01/21/2019

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I am working on eating out of our freezers and pantry this month. So far I have spent $65.35 in groceries, 10 days remaining and my only additional spending should be for eggs and bread. My goal is to end at $70.  We are beginning to come to the end of some of our preferred foods so things are going to be really interesting over the last two weeks of the month in addition to the face, we are predicted to have winter weather either once or twice this week depending on what you believe.  You will probably notice that we ate out twice on Sunday. Sunday lunch was a choice with friends.  Sunday night- was Chinese for $22 because we ended up at the Verizon store for several hours and did not come home after church until 8:30pm. At  least we can feed all of us for $22.

Breakfast- Saturday– Eggs or clean out the left-overs in the fridge day. I think* the girls both ate French toast.  Sunday-Sausage eggs and grits . Monday- Breakfast bowls complete with hashbrowns and gravy from Saturday evening.  Tuesday, Thursday, Friday– Choice of any available left-overs, oatmeal, grits, cereal, toast or eggos waffles.  Wednesday- baked oatmeal of some form. 

Lunch–Saturday-Chill cheese fries Sunday-Coaches Restaurant . Monday– Milk shakes for the kids and chips and salsa for me .  Tuesday– salad for me, Kendall and Zach had Cowboy beans, Lily a salad, Wednesday-Soup for me, chicken nuggets for Zach and Lily, Kendall-vegetables to dip, Thursday– leftovers for me, Zach has chicken nuggets and Kendall a roll up. Friday- I eat out, Zach, Lily and Kendall have soup.

Dinner – Saturday-Gravy Biscuits  Sunday– Chinese  Monday-Stuffed green peppers (I did manage to use the left-over rice from Chinese in them) Tuesday– Taco pasta   Wednesday– Sloppy Joes Thursday– Chicken enchiladas . Friday – Spaghetti and meatballs.

Eating from the Pantry

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January is always a favorite month of mine because everyone is trying to save money and I can find lots of place to read for eating out of the pantry and freezer.  This year I have joined in.   Today, I am going to share some of the history of the whys and hows of this challenge in addition to what this is actually looking like at our house.

Let me give you a little background first. I dislike shopping most of the time. A trip to Costco is fun but otherwise I prefer not to go to the grocery store.  I live a busy life so I actually have to plan most of my shopping trips these days. Unfortunately, during the months of November and December, my life was a whirlwind. In fact, I do not have an accurate amount for my grocery spending in either of these months. Looking even a little bit further back and I spent $700 in October and $500 in September. So I have a variety of foods and had stocked up on lots of items so January is a good time for us to try and not spend and use up the items we have on hand. A huge plus for us is that we purchased an entire cow last April and still have a freezer of meat to pull out of.

So now the good news, as of today, I have spent $65.35 in groceries for the month. I am also at the point that I don’t anticipate going shopping again this month unless it is to purchase butter which I am down to my last 3 sticks of. Otherwise we are eating from what we have.

Next up the challenge and the reality of what our pantry and freezers currently look like.

The biggest challenge for the next two weeks is providing/finding snacks for the kids to take to school each day. One of the reasons I like to shop at Costco is the ability to purchase a large size of snack foods and not have to open 17 boxes each week.  After starting the pantry challenge I realized I had not purchased snack foods since October. Currently, we are REALLY REALLY low!  In fact, I just raided the snack bag in the van to provide enough of a variety of snacks to get us through the next 10 days of school. I am also planning to offer to pop some popcorn tomorrow as well.

We are also starting to run low on our preferred lunch foods such as soups, ravioli and chicken nuggets. Kendall really enjoys a ham and cheese wrap but we are limited to exactly one for the next two weeks.  I actually found 2 more packages of lunch meat in the freezer so if I can convince the kids to eat regular bread, sandwiches are not a problem.

Another noticeable area that we are running low on is breakfast foods. We have cereal but no pop-tarts. We also have some waffles left and some oatmeal. Currently in the refrigerator is one package of bacon and one package of sausage. We have around 2 dozen eggs left. I did buy a package of frozen biscuits today but they will only last a couple of weeks.

Other “changes” include the ability to see open areas in the pantry in the laundry room which holds extra condiments and cans. We also are able to close both freezers easily. Finally I have less than one half of a shelf of food in the laundry room.

As you can tell this has not been nearly as emptying as it could have been but I am also making a list for our shopping in February. I know that we will likely spend at least $300 but I hope to keep it less than $400.