Menu Monday

Menus for the Week

Trying to slim down as I am sure everyone in the country is doing. It is crazy when it is cold and all we want to do is hibernate & be warm then we try to loose weight. Well I am tracking my calories and watching my serving sizes. Goal this week is to walk on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. I will post later how it goes. :)

B'fasts

B'fast burritos, Yogurt, Eggs & muffins, Oatmeal, Bacon & pancakes, Cereal

Lunches

Broc Cheese Soup, Chimi's, Italian Hotdish, Mexican Bean Salad, Quesidillas

Suppers

Crock pot smokies, Stir fry(steak), Tropical Fish, Potato Soup, & Vegie Pasta Salad

As always this is subject to change as our schedule allows. One thing that has helped with our time in the mornings is to have a child in charge of lunch. E does Monday & Tuesday, MN gets Wednesday & MA does Thurday & Friday. That means no lunch duty until Saturday for Mom! Yeah!!!!

Unfortunately there is always something else to do . . . .

Bursting at the Seams!!

I feel a little like the farmer's wife after the harvest is in and the food is stored away. I was at 4 different grocery stores today and I think it all went extremely well. I started at Walgreens--I am not counting that as a grocery store since I didn't buy any food(candy but no food!).

Then on to Schnuck's! I was working on my list last night & thanks to my good friend Lisa I found I had some clipped coupons & was able to get a few more printed--then this morning the coupons.com site reset & I printed again!



Yeah! All total I spent 21.25 for these items--not pictured 4 tortillas & all the vegies--whoops they were still in the cooler!





Best deals were the free Green Giant Vegies(4 boxes, 4 bags), & Chex mix(5). Then I got chocolate chips for .50 a bag(6) -- time to bake! I was really excited about their $1 sale--got wheat tortillas, bagged spinach, Dawn soap, & Puffs tissues. All things we will be needing!



After picking up my girls, we went to Kroger & there it got fun! After she totaled my order it was $65 then after the store & manufacture coupons the order was $30.01!!!




Best deals here were the Organic Annie's Mac & Cheese(2) for free & the eggs were B1G1. I had received some coupons from Kroger in the mail that were only good at their store so I used a couple of those but I also had received a "Spend $50 & get $10 off." I combined that with a $3 off frozen items and a free pizza coupon and it turned out to be less than half of the original price. YIPEE! The check out girl was asking me where did you get those coupons? I love it!

I like to really make sure I am not buying things just because I have the coupon. That to me is the system changing the way I buy groceries. I don't want that to happen. I want to buy what we need & use coupons to make it cost less. I think I can say everything I bought today was a "normal" item we would buy--I wasn't conned in to trying something for the coupon. :)

The last part of our day was spent at Aldi's. In my last post I was talking about how I used to do a big monthly purchase & not run to the store as much. I had gotten away from than and I can honestly say why now. There isn't much that I am not able to get with a coupon. So my purchasing at Aldi's has gone down. Now I did go & get some staples that we have been consistently out of and I feel really good about having those on hand now. Spent $80 there but now we have our oats, cheese, juice, applesauce, salsa, dry milk & sugars on hand. I also got quite a few regular priced produce items. Didn't get a picture because it was too much & I had lots of little hands helping put away--which was wonderful.

This girl was really confused about me taking pictures of the groceries. Forgive the funny picture--she was saying "What are you doing?" Tickled me so I snapped her picture.

So I am done shopping and stocking up . . . well until tomorrow when the ads come out.

Menu Plan

Well this month I am trying something different that I read on a Flylady post. November's new habit is to get your menu's planning going. I used to do a plan once a month and that worked pretty well. I would make this HUGE list and go to Aldi's & Walmart to stock up. That cut our grocery bill by a lot in avoiding the little trips to the store.

Then I started to use coupons more & that means I am at the store multiple times a week sometimes--but only for coupon stuff. So I back slid in to not planning and shopping ahead as much. So I am trying to find a balance.

I do have a lot on hand but find that I am often missing one ingredient for something and that is SO frustrating to me. So having the plan and getting the staples in one big trip sounds good & then I can zip in quick and get the great deals when I am in town on errands on Tues/Thurs.

So here is my plan for suppers for this month & the next two weeks. The plan for lunches is different.

Mondays - Chicken
Tuesdays - Beef
Wednesdays - Fish or Pork
Thursdays - Meatless
Fridays - Big crowd or easy
Saturdays -Chicken
Sundays - leftovers or easy

Monday - Garlic Lime chicken Mexi-Chicken
Tuesday - Crockpot Pirates Stew Crockpot Swiss Steak
Wednesday - BLT's and Potato Salad Tropical Fish
Thursday - Crockpot Stuffed Peppers 3 Bean Soup
Friday - Pizza Pizza
Saturday - Crockpot Brown Jug Soup Creamy Chicken, Vegies & Noodles
Sunday - Cheese & crackers Sloppy Joes

I am going to work on the last two weeks tomorrow so that I can plan my "big" shopping trip for Tuesday. I think that will take a lot of stress off me in the next 4 weeks as the holidays draw near. More time for baking & making gifts instead of stressing about what to feed everyone! I am also going to do a chicken freezer day since we are running low on frozen meals in that meat if I can catch frozen chicken breasts on sale! Or maybe I will just go buy another frozen turkey! Gotta do the math first!

A home or a library?

I admit it. I love books. In fact I have been accused of being a book worm, of having a book up my nose & I am guilty of not hearing people talk to me because I was so in to the story.

I am also guilty of passing this disease on to my children. It all started when they were little. I remember reading the same books over and over again. In fact that is one of my hidden talents, I can still recite many of those books. "Do you like my hat? No I don't like your hat" "Swishy Swashy" "Plink Plank Plunk" Can you name those books? We have read so many out loud since then. I still read to the kids even though they can all read independently. It is bittersweet. The little ones are enjoying books I read several years ago to their older siblings. Now the older ones drift in and listen and say "I loved this book".

When I taught the little monsters how to read--little did I know that I would loose all control over them after that. Now all their spare time is spent in a book! I require them to read things for school and the funny thing is that they LIKE it! We use literature based history for that very reason! Love Beautiful Feet & Biblioplan!


Anyway, the reason for that introduction was that we worked on organizing things on Friday instead of going shopping with all the other crazy people! E & I worked on shelves & books. We don't have enough room on the upstairs and downstairs shelves to hold all our books. So we were sorting the ones that were not being read(ie ones they've outgrown) and putting them in to boxes. The picture is one set of shelves that we have--there are at least 3 or 4 others! After the shelves were straightened, they were so BEAUTIFUL! However it did strike me that we have a library of books in our house!!!! Oh and some beautiful memories that are stored in scrapbooks on the other shelves but that would be a topic for another post!

New Places for Memories

For as long as I remember, Thanksgiving has happened at my grandparents. My grandma Norma has been gone for several years but we have still gone to their house & gathered together with my grandpa Willard. This year was different.

We went to my uncles. His house was great for our group & we all had a lot of fun. But it was different. I am the oldest of my cousins & my kids are the oldest great grandkids. They did a great job of helping out and entertaining all the younger kids.

One of the discussions we have(as we drive the hour to get there) is about how they are related to these people. We don't see my cousins & aunts & uncles very often so for my younger two it can be a bit confusing. It is a big family. They are familiar with that as my kids are 4 of 30ish cousins on Steve's side, but we see them all the time and it is familiar. I am the oldest of 20ish cousins and now they are all having kids too!

I had the treat to see my dad playing ping pong with my uncle. It was downright shocking! My dad--the couch potato, the one who has a hard time with his balance & sleep depravation? Wow it was amazing to see him moving around like that. Maybe a ping pong table for Christmas? Sounds like fun to me!

Well next week things will be back to normal but this years change was a good one.