Menu Planning Monday

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Things are starting to get a little bit hectic around here, cheerleading started last week, Zach has both sign language club and student council meeting, Lily will start rehearsal for her spring play next week. We also are trying to fit in some doctor appointments. Matt is no longer working a second job but I have working at least Sunday and Wednesday night.

Breakfast- Pimento Cheese and Bacon biscuits. Sunday,-Lucky Charms cereal. Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, Friday– Choice of breakfast burrito, omelet, pop tarts, cereal, bagels or toast.  I may make a baked oatmeal for one morning just not sure yet. (Did not happen last week so it may this week.)

Lunch–Saturday- out to eat at The Classic in Denton, , Sunday-Panda Panda Chinese. Friday both Matt and I will eat out, Kids have a mix of salads, soups and sandwiches. Matt and I both has two days of salads, He will have homemade chill the other days and I have a snack tray planned and a left-over soup.

Dinner – Saturday- Salads and crackers.  Sunday–Left-overs Monday-Tator Tot Taco(new recipe) Tuesday– Find your own Wednesday–Chicken Diva Thursday– Pork Chops, scallop potatoes and green beans, Friday- probably a meal out as the girls are going skiing with the youth group.

5 Things Friday-Medical Expenses

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We are very fortunate that overall our family is healthy. As I started to prepare to file our income taxes for 2019 and because of several huge medical expenses this week, it occurred to me how difficult it could be to cover this expense. So I thought I would share some of this information with you.

  1. We are currently paying for both Lily and Kendall’s braces. Total monthly expense $266.
  2. Although we are fairly healthy we do have several monthly prescriptions, total $10 a month.
  3. Zach need to have the lens in his Rex Specs replaced. His glass that broke in October were finally ready so I went ahead and purchased the new lens. Total Cost $337
  4. All three kids had appointments at the dentist this week. I do have dental insurance but still had an out of pocket expense of $33.
  5. I do have a medical flexible spending account, which I max out each year, $2500. My year runs from July 1st to June 30th. We have already used this allotment for the year so the above expense are out of pocket for us for the next six months.

Monday Menu Planning

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We are back to a regular routine this week. The kids all have school and I am working both jobs. You may notice that several easy to fix dinners are showing up. I am also committed to trying one new recipe a week. The biggest accomplishment of the week is no planned eating out!

Breakfast- Saturday ,Eggs, bacon and toast. Sunday,-Frozen Waffles. Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, Friday– Choice of breakfast burrito, omelet , pop tarts, cereal, bagels or toast.  I may make a baked oatmeal for one morning just not sure yet.

Lunch–Saturday-Sandwiches on Hawaiian rolls, , Sunday-Cranberry Chicken Friday both Matt and I will eat out, Kids have a mix of salads, soups and sandwiches. Matt and I both has two days of salads, He will have homemade chill the other days and I will find the best left-overs.

Dinner – Saturday- twice baked potatoes (from freezer).  Sunday–Broccoli and cheese soup Monday-Sloppy joes and French fries Tuesday– Taco pasta Wednesday–crockpot cubed steak. Thursday– Chicken enchiladas, Friday- Kielbasa and rice.

2020 Recipe Challenge

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One of the goals, I wrote was to try 52 new recipes this year. I promptly forgot about it when menu planning of the week. But as I was scrolling through Facebook yesterday morning , I found “17 instapot chicken recipes.” I decided to check this post out and found the recipe, I used for lunch today. The reason I chose this recipe was that it would encourage us to completely use up the remaining Christmas left-overs. We don’t like to wait for lunch after church so I made a couple of changes to the original recipe.

Here is what I actually did for Cranberry Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breast
Can of pineapple chucks
Cranberry Sauce- I used the remaining amount from our Christmas meal, the original recipe called for a can of whole cranberry sauce.
1Tablespoon of Brown Sugar.

Dumped in the crockpot with chicken on the bottom and cooked on high for 4 hours.

The results: 3+/5. Zach was not a fan and did not finish his, Kendall statement “it is on the verge of being good.” Lily LOVED it and requested again. Both Matt and I enjoyed the meal. Matt summed it up best, “Not something I would buy the cranberry sauce for, but it was good.” The four breast were plenty, I actually have enough to use on two of my salads this week.

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!

2020 Budget

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Am I the only nosey one? I have been stalking several blogs and facebook to see a real family budget. I want to see if my numbers are any where close to others and to find if I left anything out? In lieu of being able to compare, I decided to just go ahead and share our budget lines.

Hair50
Gas/ Auto up keep500
Offering520
Piano120
Clothing50
Braces 100
Chores350
Car Payment436.42
Spending300
AAA/Insurance78
Groceries550
Gifts100
Summer200
Saving30

Mortgage 1019.17
water32
electric260
Road runner147.46
Car Payment344.03
cellphone476.25
Adobe/Computer21.39

Creative Left-overs

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I cooked a huge meal for Christmas lunch, knowing that I would be able to stretch it for several more days. The day after Christmas we shared left-overs with our friends and ended up with about 1/4 of a spiral ham and even more unexpected was the left-over BBQ pork from my family gathering. So far, I would consider our use of left overs a success! We been eating up the left-overs for 7 days now but I have been able to use things in different ways and actually freeze several easy to prepare meals to use in the next couple of months.

The first creative left-over was ham bone soup. I cut most of the remaining ham off the bone and threw the bone in crockpot with an additional 2 cups of chopped ham, added a bag of navy beans, chopped up cooked carrots, a couple of stalks of celery that were not used, 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 1 teaspoon of salt and 6 cups of turkey stock. We ate this for a dinner meal and I froze a container to use as a quick soup meal.

I pulled out my food processor to make ham salad. This is an awesome snack or lunch.

Yesterday, I chopped up some of the ham and mixed with remaining mac and cheese. Kendall, who is not a left-over person loved this and requested that I make it again! Today at lunch, we finished up the ham by making ham and cheese quesadillas.

Left-over BBQ was eaten as several meals of sandwiches, next I made two containers of Pork Fried Rice. We ate one for dinner and finished as a lunch. The second container was frozen again for a easy meal in the future.

Turkey is an easy sandwich of course. But I have also made a pot of Turkey taco soup, simply chop up the cooked turkey instead of ground beef. This also made two meals with one in the freezer to use later on.

Can you share a creative left-over that I have not thought of?

2020 Goals

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  1. Grocery Budget of $550- This includes all household supplies and will include any and all meat that we need. This goal is probably more difficult than in the past due to need to purchase a cow this year and the increase in the price of all groceries. I am beginning with a pretty well stocked pantry and some meat so that should keep us on track for at least January.
  2. Record and keep up with gas/ auto purchase- I am not setting a goal but need to determine the amount to budget. Currently we budget $500 but this may not be enough.
  3. Use a cash envelope system for everything possible. I have set up separate accounts for gifts and clothing that I can easily on the spot transfer money to and from a debit card. Gas will be placed on our Sheetz credit card to help with tracking.
  4. Blogging- 15 post per month.
  5. Fitness- Goal is to walk 3 times a week. I also want to increase the distance to 3 miles at a time.
  6. Bible study- Goal- I am thinking 3x a week to start with but increasing to 5 times before the year ends.
  7. Attempt at least 52 new recipes this year. In order to stay accountable, I will have to report on each with a blog post.

Year in Review

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I am actually really impressed with myself for writing this on New Year’s Eve. This is almost a week sooner than 2018. 2019 was a much less stressful year in all the areas of my life. As I was looking back on the goals I established it does not look like I made progress but overall I feel really positive as we head into the next year.

Financial- Our debit is not below 20,000 however both Matt and I have significantly increased our income this year. In fact, Matt received a raise today that we were not expecting until mid January. I plan to share our budget tomorrow along with the goals of the year. I feel comfortable financially which is the first time I have said this in our entire marriage. In fact it may be the first time in my entire lifetime.
We spent an average of $506.76 a month in groceries this year. This is over an $100 a month deduction from last year but $75 more a month than what I wanted to budget. The kids are all growing and eating real portions now. The budget for 2020 is $550 a month which includes the purchase of more meat as we don’t have any hamburger meat or steaks.
Gas is a huge expense for us. We currently are averaging $ 465 a month but this is only over the 7 months that I managed to keep track. The good news is that we only spent $284.49 in December.

Blogging- I have been averaging 10 post a month. I was able to hit the goal of 15 in the month of March and came close in June with 14. This month, this is post number 12.

Weight/ health- This is huge dud. I injured my knee in August. I stopped everything except working. This week I have managed to walk outside 2 days so I am going to establish the goal of 3 days a week for this year.

Bible study- As a family, we were successful in reading Luke during the month of December. I need to find an individual devotional book and start a good habit for the next year.