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Recipe Challenge 26 and 27

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I was not sure about trying to bake an entire cake from scratch. In fact, I can not remember the last time I baked a cake from scratch. But the fact I had a ton of extra carrots and raisins from school lunch delivery gave me a nudge to just try it. I don’t even have the website to share with you about this recipe because it was one I copied from Facebook. What I do have is a lot of pictures to share. This cake and cream cheese frosting turned out awesome it is super moist and sweet. Melt in our mouth delicious!

Recipe number 27 combine several different things. First I made the pizza dough in the bread maker. Next, I decided to wrap the dough around a mozzarella cheese stick. Finally, to use up the Asian honey chicken from last week, I added it to the pizza with some red onions! This was also another hit!

Does not look as good as it taste!

5 Things Friday

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  • I have worked 5 days at Davie County Schools and 5 nights in Guam. I am tired! But the really good news is that I have 6 weeks and 1 day until summer break.
  • The weather continues to be almost as strange as COVID-19. Today was a high of 64*. I always remember as a child that May 1st was the day that you could wear shorts and go barefooted outside! Not today! The good news from this is that we have been the entire month of April without heating or air. This saved us around $70 last month.
  • My goal for the next six weeks is to get our freezers fully stocked for the fall. This will allow me to really have the summer off. I am going to need to make a large meat purchase so that we can begin the process next week.
  • The square foot garden is continue to grow with all the seeds that we have planted. We used the lettuce that I have harvested over the past several weeks to make salads on Wednesday.
  • We have reduced our credit card debit by over $1000 since January. In addition to purchasing and install our new floor in the kitchen/dinning room and paying for our August Disney trip!

Wordless Wednesday- Square Foot Garden

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  • strawberries! The plan is to divide into a second box at the end of the summer. so we went ahead and put the box in place.
  • strawberries
  • volunteer lettuce and oregano
  • Sugar snap peas on the top that survived with help the last two frost and squash plants started from seeds.
  • Tomatoes
  • More tomatoes but this are going to be purple.
  • Cucumbers
  • Sugar snap peas and some zucchini plants that all came from seed.
  • Green Pepper

Recipe Challenge #13

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I am so excited to post this recipe for a couple of reasons! First with this post I am only one week behind on the recipe challenge. Nothing like a stay at home order to let me catch up on some things. Second this was a simple easy to follow recipe that I was able to put together in 15minutes. Third, the muffins are half way gone less than an hour later. Applesauce muffins or applesauce bread as it was originally called are a huge hit that may even be repeated this week. For some reason my kids will eat muffins but it must require too much effort to slice the bread to eat it. Another winner from one of my favorite blogs!

5 Things Friday

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  • I think we are all starting to get use to everyone being in the house everyday. Matt and I both are currently working from home. Matt is going in to his office on Tuesday but I should be home through the middle of May! Zach and Kendall are working each morning on school work and Lily is continuing with her online classes. Lily is actually struggling a bit more than I expected because she is used to being home alone and not working around other people all day long.
  • We are actually eating out more than normal for us as we try to support local business. Matt went to lunch on his office day on Tuesday. I actually went into my office on Thursday and stop by our favorite Greek restaurant bring home a late lunch for everyone. Friday, we ordered from the local pizza shop and Matt and I splurged on ice cream to end our date night.
  • On our date night Matt and I ended up at Lowes. I purchased both mulch and paving stones to help work out in the yard tomorrow. My goal is to get most of the not plant work done this weekend and we will start planting in probably a week or so. I am planning to share pictures tomorrow after the work is done.
  • Family walks are a fun way for everyone to get out of the house and get some exercise. We actually walked 3 evenings this week.
  • The weather is still doing crazy swings from 80s to low 30s in just a matter of days. I am really fighting the urge to plant outside and have been bringing in our growing cucumbers and squash in on a daily basis.

Monday Menu Planning

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Last week was mostly a success but this week brings even more uncertainty as I am suppose to return to work on Thursday but I may be given a work from home opportunity but that is still the unknow. Our school district is delivering lunch and breakfast for the following days. On Friday, the kids got a chicken sandwich, carrots and a banana for lunch. Breakfast was a donut and banana. We will definitely be adding to the breakfast as a doughnut is desert not a meal! Two things, you will notice are different this week. First, on Sunday, I did not cook. I was tired and we need to use up left-overs! We also are trying to continue to support local restaurants when it makes senses. Amanda brought over several meals that would not get eaten at her house so currently we have no more room in the refrigerator.

I was able to spend some time taking inventory in both of my freezers this week. We currently have a list of approximately forty-five dinner meals that are available to us. This does not include any meals of left-overs or meals from our panty. My current plan is to start emptying out the freezers and also stashing back some extra money for meat. I am debating on purchasing a entire cow or just simply restocking at the local butcher shop. I definitely want to wait several weeks till people stop hoarding because I don’t want to pay the inflated price.

Breakfast– Saturday sausage biscuits and hash browns. Sunday- find your own. Mom is not cooking.   Monday- cereal for the kids and I ate left-over quiche. Tuesday,  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-choice of bagels, breakfast bowls or burritos, breakfast muffins, eggs, sausage, pancakes,  cereal or grits. – Or what ever the school sends.

Lunch-  Saturday- Left overs , Sunday- Left-over from Fridge. Matt has packed 2 hamburgers and 2 brat meals for the week. I will be eating left-overs or soup. The kids have school meals. My kids are really excited for this because they are not allowed to eat at school so I am not sure what they will get or if they will eat it. I plan to report next week on the items they received and what we ended up doing with them.

Dinner-  Saturday- Low country boil with hushpuppies(purchased from local resturant) , Sunday-Boneless buffalo wings (purchased from a local restaurant for $20) Monday- left- overs Tuesday- Sloppy Joes and French fries. Wednesday- Mandurian Orange chicken and egg rolls, Thursday- Baked Ziti Friday-Chicken apple and sweet potato crock pot meal (new recipe).

Saving on Home Repairs- Master Bathroom

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A house is an investment and with any investment you have to plan on maintaining it. But a house also needs repairs not just maintenance. We finished our master bedroom addition about 10 years ago with the plan to spend no more money on it. Of course we were wrong. In September, I stepped close to the shower to grab something on top of the shower wall and my foot went through the floor.



The detective work began. We needed to figure out first how much damage there was, second what was causing the damage and third how we were going to fix the damage.

The damage was much worse than we even thought

  • We needed to add additional supports to the floor in because we could not replace.
  • The floor and subfloor were rotten

It actually took several months for us to figure out and completely repair the problem. We discovered that the shower surround itself was leaking. The only solution to this problem was to replace the entire shower surround. We decided to order the replacement from Home Depot for several reasons, first they would deliver to house and second we could stretch the payment to 6 months without interest. Unfortunately the cost of shipping was over $100. Total cost for the replacement shower surround $725.

Fortunately, we had saved excess material from the addition work. We even saved multiple pieces of the glass tile that we used as an accent in the shower room. We found large tile that matched closely to the original for $0.78 each. We also had saved the gout needed to match the original. We decided to rework the design of the floor and used the remaining glass tile. I actually like the look of the finished project much better than even the original. We also used gift card earned from Swagbucks in order to decrease our overall expense. We did have to purchase a tile saw and tile clippers. We plan to use these in the future to update the hall bathroom. Total out of pocket other than the surround $101.34! This is a huge win for us!

Quiet Christmas Budget

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I have finally managed to do it! This year, I successfully reduced both the number of gifts and the amount of money that we spent on Christmas. The result has been even better than I anticipated! We have spent the entire Christmas day, enjoying some quiet time and new activities. The kids are not fighting and even more surprising is the fact that I have not heard one single time “I’m bored or Is this all we are getting for Christmas.”

The big girls got 6 presents under the tree!

The little kids got 5 gifts under the tree and one big gift from Santa

Monday Menu Plan

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This plan looks a lot different, simply because it is for the week of Christmas. In my make believe world, I would get to enjoy several day of not cooking, however Christmas day or not my kids want to eat. They also want something beside left-overs after a full day of them. I am trying a couple of new things this year to see how they work out, the goal is to make things easier for me and keep everyone happy and feed without a lot of stress.

A couple of things to look for and I will definitely let you know if they work. 1.You will notice that each morning we have a casserole or other make ahead item. We are big breakfast eaters but I am not a big morning person. I am trying several new recipes and hope to make some a part of the normal routine.
2. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day cooking. My goal is to have everything prepped ahead of time so that I can dump and pour and/or stick in the oven for a good but easy meal.
3. The kids and I are home all week long. Matt has a couple of days off so lunch becomes a regular meal.

Saturday- Desert day. Most of the deserts for Christmas are made. I do have a couple of place and bake cookies to be made Christmas Eve. Peanut butter balls, Reindeer crack and brownies are all made! Breakfast-Bacon and egg biscuit casserole. Lunch- Olive Garden Left-overs. Dinner- Girls at Youth Christmas party. East Coast Wings for Matt, Zach and I.

Sunday- Breakfast-Toast and Church breakfast. Lunch- Gregg’s(local restaurant). Dinner- Left-overs.

Monday- Preparation Day This is the day that hopefully makes the rest of the week go smoothly. We will prep 2 days of breakfast and all the items need for Christmas lunch. Breakfast-Bacon and sausage casserole. Lunch- Oyster Stew for home, Matt has banana bread and a snack meal at work. Dinner-Pick a left-over or sandwich.

Tuesday- Christmas Eve! Breakfast-Cinnamon Roll Baked Oatmeal. Lunch- Left-over Soup day or Tomato Soup. Dinner-BBQ at my mother’s house.

Wednesday- Christmas Day-Breakfast-Sausage Cresant Casserole and Hashbrown Casserole.  Lunch- Turkey, Dressing, 7 layer salad, Cranberry sauce, Creamed corn, Carrots, Squash Casserole, Green Bean Casserole and Cresant rolls Dinner-BBQ at my mother’s house.

Thursday- Leftover Day! Don’t think this needs any explanation but it is grab and eat. No fighting and no saving!

Friday- Breakfast-Sausage and Egg Casserole. Lunch-Nachos(depending on what is left it may be turkey nachos or it may be beef nachos. Dinner- Taco Turkey Soup. This was a huge hit last time so I hope it is as well received this time!