Monthly Archives: November 2015

November in Review

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Because honesty is important, I will admit to posting this a week late. I am placing on the correct day so that when I search at the end of the year, I will be able to find this.

Blogging:  Goal: 14 per month! This is post number 14. Goal Met

Weight: Goal:  Met and maintain weight of 175. This goal will be considered met each month that weight loss is achieved and once this weight is achieved, each month maintained is considered achieved. FAIL

Spiritual-  Goal. I want to spend time reading and or studying the Bible at least 5 days a week for the year.  Fail at least 3 weeks of the month.

Financial Goals-
1.  Full Fund the budget each month.   Fail

2. Emergency Fund to $2000.  Fail

3. Groceries: Goal is for $700. Goal met!  Spent $695 for the month

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month Goal met! $228 for the month including half of the gas for our Disney trip.

5. Eating out- $100 not including the Disney trip

Disney- GOAL MET!

Random Tuesday Thoughts 11/24/2015

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  • We are counting the day until we leave for our Disney trip. I have made a list of one thing I want to accomplish each night this week and so far I am staying on track.
  • Last night, I was able to squeeze in a trip to get my nails done. I decided to go all out and got gel nails. The tech jokingly said that these should last me till Christmas. My reply was I will be happy if they last til we return. This is the second time I have got gel nails. The first time was a flop as less than a week later, one started to peel. Getting my nails done is a huge treat and so I am really hoping they last a long time. The good news, I already received a compliment at work today about them.
  • We are debating on taking our “box” for our trip. We did remove an interior seat and I am hoping this eliminates the need for the box.
  • My plans for Wednesday night (tomorrow) are to get my two casserole prepared to pop in the oven on Thursday and bake a cake.
  • I am really hoping that I don’t have to work and we get to hit the road at an early hour on Friday.
  • All the inside Christmas decoration are up. I decided to scale really back this year due to the trip but I am already really enjoying the tree and of course my village.
  • I am 90% done with my Christmas shopping! I refuse to purchase any more until I can count and get what is purchased wrapped.
  • Speaking of wrapping, I did wrap the kids DVD players tonight and they will be opening on Friday morning.
  • We are working on cleaning out the refrigerator, and continue to stick the menu plan. I did give away some fresh produce but otherwise we are using what we have!

 

Zach FIRST Soccer Game

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Zach asked to play indoor soccer and today was his first game. I want to remember that this was his first real “athletic” event EVER!  I was disappointed at first that he did not have any practices but he had a great time today. So maybe just showing up to play a game once a week is the best way to start something. Lots of pictures….image image image image image image image
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Friday 11/20/2015

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  1. In order to have enough time to enjoy our Christmas decoration and not feel so pressure to get things moving when we return from Disney. The plan is to get our tree up and decorated tomorrow. I am scaling way back on decorations  this year with less than 50% coming out of the attic. Christmas is still my favorite time of the year!
  2. Kendall had to sit in time out for the first time EVER because of her behavior at school. I do feel a little bit guilty because we have been crazy busy this week and the added excitement of our Disney trip probably contributed to the problem.
  3. Zach will play his first soccer game EVER on Sunday. I am excited but nervous especially since this league does not have any practices. We just show up and play.
  4. We are planning to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family this year. I do have to bring a couple of dishes and my have to work after our celebration but we still have so much to be thankful for.
  5. Our change in Menu planning appears to be working. I am hoping to not throw away any leftover prior to our trip!

Monday Menu Plan

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We are trying a little something different with our meal planning this week. Instead of assigning a meal to every night and moving things around as needed. I have made a list of 15 meals that we plan to eat prior to our Disney trip. We brought all the ingredients up to make these meals and everything is currently store in the house. This way we can decided the day of what sounds good for dinner as well as use only ingredients we have on hand. In addition to trying this new menu plan approach, I want to really reduce the amount of food we have in our older refrigerators and freezers while we travel.

Breakfast–Pancakes and sausage ball on Saturday, left-over pancakes all week. Sunday- Orange glazed Cinnamon rolls, Monday- Baked oatmeal. Other choices include eggs, sausage, poptarts, grits and toast.

Lunch- We were able to pack all the kids lunches on Sunday. Each chose chicken nuggets for several days, sandwiches are on the menu another day as well. I am planning to make some chicken salad for my lunch as well.

Dinner-
Cheeseburger Pie times 2. We actually ate this for dinner today.
Chicken Enchiladas (planned for Tuesday)
Stuffed Green Pepper soup
Ham bone soup
Chicken and Broccoli Casserole
Mexican Rice and cheese Quesada
BBQ Chicken Pizza (lunch on Saturday)
Egg roll in a bowl
Taco Soup (lunch on Sunday and for church dinner on Sunday)
Rice Creole

 

 

Saving on Sunday 11/15/2015

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Lily and I made a quick before church trip to CVS this morning. I said it was my practice trip for next Sunday, when CVS “Black Friday” ad will start. Check out what we scored.

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Total Spent was $4.84 with a total saving of $15 or 75%. I will also receive 5 ECB for Beauty club purchases next week as well. I LOVE rain checks and today demonstrates why. I used one from several weeks ago to grab the 2L Diet Coke which were paid for by the 4 ECB I received after purchasing the shampoo and conditioner. My only regret from today is that I did not have but one set of coupons because of a problem with paper delivery for the past two weeks.

Other ways that I have been saving this week  is my using my Amazon prime membership. I have purchased several items and most of my Christmas gifts on line this year. One option that is appearing is to receive a credit to either the “pantry” or movies if you chose the no rush shipping. We have chose this option each time it has been offered because we are really not in a hurry for the purchase.  Friday night we decided to use one of our movie credit to watch the movie “Home” it was so fun and the kids enjoyed at well. So money saved all around!

5 things Friday 11/13/2015

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  1. Our new refrigerator arrived yesterday. Unfortunately the build in microwave would not fit so we sent it back. I LOVE the new fridge as it is huge!  We have enough room for all the food!
  2. My computer was acting up so I had to have a new hard drive install. The good news is that I was able to back up everything I thought important. The bad news is that I will be spending tomorrow reinstalling and getting the computer back to where I want it to be.
  3. We are still able to pick some lettuce and cabbage (finally) from the garden. The lettuce is almost gone but I have LOVED having it. We also have some tomatoes left in the window that were saved from the first frost. I am hoping to make some slaw and another dish this weekend with the cabbage.
  4. Our budget in November is still on track.
  5. I need to upload a lot of pictures from my phone and IPAD in anticipation of our trip to Disney. After finding storage I am planning to delete off both so I will have a lot of space!

 

Monday Menu Planning

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This week menu planning takes on more importance as we purchased a new refrigerator and need to clean straighten and re-organize so that we can start on a right with the best use of space.

Breakfast–  Baked oatmeal on Sunday, eggs and sausage, grits, poptarts, cereal and toast.

Lunch- I thought I would share a little more about our lunches this week.
Monday- Everyone had a fresh salad. Tuesday- Homemade chicken dunks for Zach and Kendall. Lily chose a sandwich. Wednesday- No school. Thursday- Grab an go day- Each child picks 3 items which must include either a cereal bar or pack of crackers for lunch. Friday- Chicken dunks again.

Dinner- We have several different new meals this week as this is our least busy week for the month.

Saturday- Lunch- leftovers.   Dinner- White chicken chili
Sunday- Lunch- Meatballs and baked sweet potatoes.    Dinner- Pepper steak, rice and eggroll.
Monday- Cranberry Pork Roast, snap peas and fruit cocktail.
Tuesday-Grilled chicken, pineapple and corn.
Wednesday-Spaghetti and meatballs
Thursday-  Chicken and broccoli? or hamburger helper.(Depends on when new appliances arrive)
Friday- Taco Soup

My goal is also to make double portions of both Thursday and Friday dinner to freeze for use in the upcoming weeks.