Living room Closet
Hall Closet
My bathroom closet
Wordless Wednesday- This makes me Happy!
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Category Archives: Life
Not so Wordless Wednesday-Family Craft Time
This past weekend, my sister in law, who lives in Atlanta, made a trip up to visit with us. Eric, her son, was able to come as well. My kids absolutely loved having them both for the 24 hours they were here. Saturday night was spent opening gifts eating and playing a board game that she had purchased for Lily.
Sunday after church we decided to work on some new decorations for our front sign as Christmas has passed. This turned out to be a load of fun and the results are even better!
The buckets we found in the Target $1 bin several weeks ago, I was so excited to find that the colors just about perfectly match the color of the letter. The snowflakes are hand painted and just perfect, enjoy a closer look.
Food For Thought-
Today is my Mom’s birthday, which means we are fast approaching the end of the year. I am already in the process of looking and working on a budget for 2016. I will do a final update and set new goals hopefully this week but today I want to focus on Food.
- Menu planning is still happening although I have not been posting the last couple of weeks have been about a couple of special meals and using up leftovers. This week we have already had a meal using meatballs my sister in law brought, tonight we made a roast and used some the sides we had left-over and tomorrow the plan is to use and make pork fried rice from leftover Christmas Eve shoulder. I am also adding some “convenient” meals to the freeze with the extra time we have this week.
- Our grocery spending for the month is close to $900 which is way over budget. I have been taking advantage of some sells and stocking up, in addition to some extra meals and appetizers.
- Our average monthly grocery spending for the year is at $691.59. I am totally amazed and excited for this number as it is under my $700 a month that I started in July.
- I have been looking into some “average” numbers for grocery spending for our size family a “thrifty” plan is $770 and a “Low” plan is $1028 per month.
- After finding these numbers I am very comfortable with maintaining our grocery spending to $700 a month. I am going to continue to focus on each month but not beat myself up for spending over now that I know it averages out within the year!
- I was also able to find that the “average” family spends about $200 a month on eating out. In the past, I have not budgeted anything for eating out but this will become a regular expense in the year 2016.
- We are starting the year with lots of meat in the freezer. I have already paid for 80# of pork that Matt will pick up the first week of January. We also just recently purchased chicken and a large order of ground beef. I am hopefully to not purchase any additional meat until March.
- Our garden this year did well and we have been enjoying a variety of things. We have enlarged the garden to it’s capacity and hopefully will be able to multiply our freezing stock for the year.
- I did not even attempt to lose weight with our trip to Disney and the holidays so I will back on track with eating healthier again in January.
- Total random thought but at least it is food related. I just received in the mail a total of 6 free 12 packs expiring March 31. I will hold on till CVS offers ECBs or I just need them.
5 Things Friday
1. Pictures-The above is my favorite Christmas tree from Disney. It was located at the marina in the campground. I have enjoyed spending extra time looking at and ordering pictures to make a scrapbook with in the coming months. We have ordered several calendars, mouse pads and other items as well. The bright orange box containing the first 600+ pictures I ordered arrived yesterday. I am planning to spend at least 30 minutes a week on my scrapbook with a goal to finish it prior to June.
2. Water Park Tickets- After some debate, we decided to purchase season passes to the water park that is 30 minutes from our house. The park opens the last week of May and is opened until September. This is an expense that is equal to our pool membership. We did purchase parking and have free passes for 2 days which means both Lily and Kendall will be able to take a friend with them this summer. The cost of the season pass was $12 more than a one day pass. We decided to try it out this summer and if we really enjoy then may consider in the future. I love water parks so I am hopeful that the kids will enjoy as well. A nice surprise was the $300 bonus I received on my American Express this month as well. This bonus will cover the cost of all 5 tickets!
3. Shopping- Our Christmas shopping is completed with all presents wrapped and either under the tree or mailed out. I was also able to use the extra time this week at home to get ahead with lots of food preparation!
4. I am so thankful to have had the last week off of work. I stayed at home until Tuesday, meaning I did not even leave the house. . Each day I was able to spend extra individual time with the kids working on homework and see how they are really doing in school. I planned ahead and prepared several meal or meal pieces to make the next month. We were able to hit several groceries stores including the meat store and have plans to avoid grocery shopping for at least the next 4 weeks. Matt and I also spent some extra time cleaning which means even more free time this weekend.
5. Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love everything about it! With catching up on shopping and cooking. We have decided to drive an hour south of us to visit the town of Christmas lights on Tuesday. I am more excited than the kids.
Day in the Life 12/17/2015-Cooking
My unscheduled time at home ends tomorrow, so I decided to spend the day by getting ahead. I have actually enjoyed cooking most of the week, probably because I had the time and energy to do it. With this in mind, I wanted to go ahead and get ahead start of Christmas preparations as we will have family over for several meals in the next couple of weeks. I had a plan in mind and was able to actually finish everything on my updated list. However before cooking, I clean both the vacuum cleaner and did a quick clean of the floors.
On the menu plan for today was cowboy beans, so I started by frying a pound of bacon and then browning a pound of hamburger for this. I realized as I was browning the hamburger that I should go ahead and make a pot of chill for baked potatoes next week. I ended up letting the second pound of hamburger sit in the pan to defrost. I also need to cut up onions for the beans. I love my pamper chef dicer but it is hard to clean so I went ahead and chopped up 6 cups of onions instead of the 2 cups I needed for the beans. I decided to try bacon wrapped appetizers that we saw on Saturday morning. This was definitely a good call as Matt froze a bag so we would have some next weekend as well. They are awesome but time consuming. Next was a corned beef ball that will work as an appetizer for several times.
After checking our supplies, Matt and I decided to head to the local meat shop to make a purchase that should last till at least March. We have ordered pork from Zaycon but want to add hamburger, cube steak and beef stew to the freezer. We also purchased chicken wings for our annual super bowl party. I was very impressed with our total of $113, which is 18 meals of meat.
I came back home to work on browning and freezing the 20# of ground beef. While this was cooking, I was able to finish up my day with candid pecans which will be a gift and desert on Sunday. I am very proud of the hard work that I put in today but also realize this gets me ahead for the next couple of weeks.
Cooking accomplished:
Cowboy beans ( 4 total meals including today)
14 bags of ground beef
2 appetizers
Chill
Candid pecans.
Are you cooking for Christmas?
Monday Menu Post 12/14/2015
With me being at home with the shingles for this week, you will notice a little bit more complex meals for most evenings. This are usually food that we keep for the weekend but since I am at home might as well cook.
Breakfast–Orange cinnamon rolls and sausage ball on Saturday, Sunday- BLTs Monday- Waffles or French toast. Tuesday- Banana baked oatmeal. Other choices include eggs, sausage, poptarts, grits, cereal, instant oatmeal 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.
Saturday- salad (we need to use up a bunch of lettuce that was purchased for $1.88
Sunday- meatloaf, squash casserole, left-over deviled eggs and potato salad from Saturday dinner.
Dinner- The side dishes will be brought out several times until they all get eaten or Matt and I finish them off at lunch.
Saturday- BBQ chicken legs, potato salad and deviled eggs, cookies for desert
Sunday- Copy Cat Lettuce Wraps-This were AWESOME! I did purchase both Sesame seed oil and hoisin sauce but will use for several times to decease the cost. Desert- Crockpot Apple cake
Monday- Cheeseburger Pizza using sour dough Desert- Pineapple casserole
Tuesday- Squash Lasagna Desert- brownies
Wednesday-Country style steak, all side should be left-overs except for corn? Desert- pound cake?
Thursday- Cowboy beans- Will plan to freeze half and this will also make at least 3 meals.
Friday- Spaghetti and meatballs- I am going back to work this day so back to quick and simple.
5 Things Friday- Not the Happiest
1. I was diagnosed with Shingles this morning. I honestly was surprised by this but it makes sense. I was almost thankful for an extra week out of work, I am highly contagious until I finish the medication Wednesday at lunch, until I started the medicine. My current side effects include being hyper including feeling like I can jump out of my skin, and nauseous to the point I just want to put my head between my legs. My prayer is that the shingle pain and itching does not increase and the side effects decrease.
2. Our septic system is not working properly. This has been an ongoing problem since I bought the house in 1992. We are again trying to fix the problem as our yard is becoming a wet mess. Today we had to move the trampoline out of the septic field which also involved making several paths of mud in the yard. We hope to have it fixed completely within the next week.
3. Matt and I decided to finish putting up Christmas lights outside this afternoon after moving the trampoline. The light looked awesome until it blew out the outlet outside. Matt had to go to Lowes and replace the entire outlet which meant our bedroom was dark for a couple of hours.
4. Both of our email accounts have been hacked. Matt is spending his evening on the phone with the internet company to try and get this straighten out. This will be the third time this week that we have been on the phone with this company for a variety of issues.
5. Zach is having a rough time without sleeping. He was so tired last night that he ended getting several spankings prior to bed. Tonight, I put him to bed an hour early tonight but he is so tired that he is keeping himself awake. The medicine I am on, makes me less than patient so let’s hope the extra sleep helps.
Wordless Wednesday-Disney Family
Random Tuesday Thoughts 11/24/2015
- 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!
Friday 11/20/2015
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Our change in Menu planning appears to be working. I am hoping to not throw away any leftover prior to our trip!