Measuring and estimating with cookie dough - YUM!

For those of us who homeschool or want to supplement our child's learning, the idea of adding one more thing to our already busy family life can seem daunting. In order to maximize our learning and make the best use of our time, I try and integrate learning into our daily activities as much as possible. Opportunities to introduce new concepts and practice problem solving are everywhere!

Today we were baking rainbow sparkle cookies (otherwise known as my fake out snickerdoodles) and took the time to discuss how to divide the cookie dough evenly, so that all the cookies would cook correctly. Sweetpea is still a bit young to fully grasp fractions, but this was a good introduction. We cut the chilled dough in half, then half again. We counted how many dough balls we had. Everything went into half again, more counting...and so on until we had the sized dough balls that we wanted.

After we started rolling dough balls and covering them with colored sugar and cinnamon we talked about how the balls had to be two inches apart. How do we estimate two inches, and what does that look like anyway? We got out a ruler and thought about it a bit. We decided to measure Sweetpea's fingers, to see how many together made two inches. It turned out we needed three fingers between cookie balls.

Our cookies came out colorful and evenly spaced. Sweetpea is obsessed with estimating now, and the idea of how big something is. She thinks it is hilarious that a foot used to be determined by the size of the kings actual foot.

What have you been learning lately? Do you teach in the kitchen?

Making mornings smoother with an evening routine

Those of you who read the last post in this series might have anticipated today’s topic? What better way to prepare for a stress free morning than with a little evening preparation!

Each evening I make an effort to complete the following items:

Prepare lunch
Choose everyone’s clothing
Put together a reminder list for the morning
Pack Sweetpea’s preschool bag
Load the dishwasher
Lay out or write down (on the reminder list) breakfast ideas
Identify wake up plan

I find that the best time to pack lunches is as I’m cleaning up after dinner. I believe this elegant and effective idea came to me via Meagan Francis on twitter. If we have enough food for a meal later in the week, I package it accordingly, and the remainder is portioned into lunch sized containers and put either in the refrigerator or the freezer. If we have a lot of food already in the fridge, it’s nice to have some things stashed in the freezer for later!

Both girls like to choose their clothing (already!) and given the option would change their minds multiple times each morning. To reduce this frustrating time suck, we choose outfits ahead of time and I have them get dressed at daycare. Somehow they never have outfit attitude with the daycare provider like they do for mama. I pack clothes in the daycare bag and put it in the car the night before. I also carry an extra pair of shoes in the car for each child – I don’t want to admit the number of times one of them has arrived without footwear…

I am a list mama, and if I need to remember something – especially in the morning – it needs to be written down. An added bonus of this strategy is that it helps me decompress and empty my brain at the end of the day, which makes it easier to relax and unwind. The last thing I want is for my mind to be racing when I finally get to lie down at night. This list goes under my car keys on the kitchen counter.

Sweetpea started preschool this fall, and her class made special bags for transporting to and from school each day. Anything that needs taken to school gets packed into that bag, and projects or notes to parents come home in the bag each day. I empty the contents and reload as necessary. This bag gets put into the car the night before so it doesn't get left behind.

It’s funny how a pile of dishes in the sink when I wake up bothers me – the thought of them sitting there all day, waiting for me to return home is what gets me. Somehow I don’t mind them at all when my bed is singing its siren song at the end of the day. To keep myself from being tempted to waste precious time in the morning, I rinse and load anything that is dishwasher safe and call it “good enough”.

As with lunch, a little prep for breakfast is a big help. I try and have two options available to give the girls a choice in the morning. They love to be in control of their breakfast (are you noticing a pattern here?!) and I like to be able to give at least the impression that I’m being flexible and giving the girls their way!

Wake up plan – this is the topic for the next blog post in this series – for now suffice it to say that I spend time thinking about how I’m going to get the girls up and at ‘em each morning. They like some predictability, but we also like to mix it up from time to time.

Do you have an evening routine? What tasks do you complete each evening in order to smooth out your mornings?

No More Morning Mania! Tips for more peaceful mornings...

Going back to work has brought crazy back to our mornings. I hate it when my failure to plan causes melt downs, stress and widespread grouchiness. It's so much nicer to savor the mornings at a leisurely pace than to rush through them sprinting to the car in a desperate attempt to be on time.

This is the first in a series on making mornings more peaceful -regardless of what your day might hold, I hope you'll find some ideas that get it started in a positive way, and in turn share what works for you!

First things First: Have a plan, write it down, review/revise it as needed, and STICK TO IT! For me, that means a morning and evening routine and a wake up time that allows me time to reflect and get prepared before the rest of the family wakes up. A plan also allows me to be realistic about what I can get done before leaving the house, and a minimum list of accomplishments that, once complete, mean the day will get off to a good (enough) start. It's amazing what I think I can do the next morning when I'm wilting from exhaustion and just want to go to bed...my routine keeps me honest and provides a bit of a reality check.

Do you have a morning and/or evening routine? How often do you revise it?

Renewal

It has been a very long time since I've written in this space...and yet all along I was blogging in my mind - composing posts to myself in the car, while working on homework assignments or in between classes I was teaching. These past months have flown by as each day was jam packed with things that had to be done. Now I'm working on my final project of my last teaching certification program, and the teacher I was substituting for is back from materity leave. In the next month I need to refresh my memory on the details of physics and chemistry for two certification tests I take at the end of April, and then - whew! I'm sure there will be many other things taking up my time at that point, but I'm sure hoping that some of those things are items of my ever growing wish list of things to get to *at some point*.

With mother nature showing us peaks of spring here in the midwest, the flowers just starting to peek through the ground and the seed catalogs coming in earnest, this time of year always seems like the right time to do my yearly planning. I do some daydreaming about goals and the like at the start of the year, but this is when I do my serious editing and reworking. As usual, at the top of my list is being present and attending to my family before all else. In order to make the home management tasks less of a burden, I've been on a relentless quest to eliminate the unnecessary "things" in our house - little by little as I find pockets of time. We have made many a trip to the resale shop and to our local charity donation station. There is much more to do.

How do you organize your time and do your best to make time for what is most important? I've written before that what works best for me is being very clear as to what those *most important* things are...and with that, I'm going to try and share a link to my daily sheet planning page. It's a sheet I created from excel, based loosely off of SimpleMom's planner, but adjusted to meet my needs. If you're looking for a planner and can't quite find what you need, maybe you can create your personalized sheet from excel too! My next scheme for keeping everything in one place is to print a bunch of these off and have them bound at my local office supply store - a DIY planner with extra pages for all of those someday plans as well.

Anyway, it's great to see you all again - thanks for sticking with me through my "vacation" of sorts. What have you been up to?! :)

Feeling Buried? Why yes, I am!

At the beginning of last year, I had just transitioned to stay at home mom thanks to our plant closure. I absolutely loved those first few months of time off - the "career transition program" I wanted to enroll in wasn't available until March, and I was free to focus completely on my family and my home. What a blessing that truly was, even though in the back of my mind I was a bit frustrated by the uncertainty of where I was going.

Fast forward to the latter part of last year, as I'm substitute teaching somewhat regularly and preparing to begin my last quarter of the teaching licensure program I started in March. Things are busy but manageable, and our little family is thriving on our new "routine", which included frequent trips to the library and YMCA, as well as gymnastics class one morning a week for Sweetpea.

I took a sub job at the start of December that quickly turned long term - all of a sudden I was working full time again, yikes! It took some serious readjusting to get us all back on an early morning schedule, and to introduce Sugar Plum to the daycare routine she had never really had to get on board with. Then came my schedule for this final quarter...somehow I managed to overlook the fact that I'm taking five classes. So far I'm managing to keep my head above water, but I've gotten very protective of my free time.

I'm trying my best to soak in the bits of time we cobble together as a family, to remember that this is our reality but for a short time, and that this opportunity to teach is a blessing. And I really am enjoying it, which definitely helps. So I'll be pretty scarce around here until April or so, though I hope to get a chance to stop in and say hi now and then. If you'd like to chat, look me up on twitter, where I manage to type one handed while I'm nursing Sugar Plum most nights. ;)

What are you up to these days?

Alternatives to the Advent Calendar - Planning our Christmas Traditions

Each year we make a countdown chain for the month of December, a fun decoration/craft that serves several purposes. The chain is fun to make - we practice cutting, gluing, and patience! Each link gets assigned a fun activity or craft from our activity list for the month. This helps ensure we make time for the fun family activities and traditions we want to enjoy, and that they don't get lost in the busy-ness of the season.

Here is our activity list for this year - with the first activity (for today) being the making of the chain. :) I'll post our chain, hung with care next to the stockings later this week. After making the links and writing an activity on each one, I cross reference our calendar to see whether we have time for a big or a little activity - this helps order the links!

December Activity List
Create our countdown to Christmas activity chain
Hang the chain and the stockings by the fire with care
Make a tree craft
Make hot chocolate and drink it by the fire
Drive around the neighborhood in our pajamas, enjoying the lights
Make a Santa hand craft
Make dough ornaments and bake them
Decorate dough ornaments
Bake cookies
Decorate cookies
Take treats to the fire station
Make Rudolf hand craft
Make snowflake crown craft
Bath time Santa beards
Watch the Year Without A Santa Claus together in our pajamas
Make red and green swirl cake
Make a gingerbread house
Make an angel hand and foot print craft
Make snowmen crafts with cotton balls
Take a winter hike at the park
Make a tree paper plate craft
Pick out Christmas books from the library, to supplement our collection*
Visit Santa Claus
Buy toys or clothes for a Christmas charity
Buy food and donate it to our local food pantry

* When we find a holiday book that we really like, we add it to our collection. We go to the library and check out enough holiday books so that between the library books and the ones in our collection there are 25, and read a different holiday book each night at bedtime.

Do you use an advent calendar, or an alternative way to count the days until Christmas? I'd love to hear about your traditions! What are your favorite holiday activities?

Easily clean tomato stains!

The other day, I posted about cleaning up after stuck on food messes...but what if you're tray still has that yucky orange tomato glow after it's clean? Our girls love spaghetti, so this is a regular occurrence. If you're like me, you have some food storage containers that look like this too.


I did some investigating, and came up with a solution that is very effective and nearly free! Spray or wipe down the surface with lemon juice, and then lay it out in the sun for several hours. I laid our tray out before running some errands, and when we came back, after a quick wipe down, it was as good as new!

5 ways to make homemade convenience foods more convenient

Convenience foods are particularly tempting during a hectic day, but many of them aren't very nutritious. The ones that are nutritious are generally pretty expensive. If you want to provide nutritious food to your family, the natural answer is to control what goes into that food by cooking it yourself, but that can be time consuming and at times overwhelming. Here are five tips to help streamline your "convenience" foods, which I generally think of as snack foods, but which could also be a previously prepared meal.

1. Bulk/Batch cooking - is it nearly as easy to double or triple the recipe, rather than make a single batch? If so, make extra for the freezer or pantry and save yourself some time down the road. There is nothing like laying out a frozen meal on a particularly busy day or reaching into the pantry for a stored snack before running out the door to an appointment.

2. Piggy Back - by planning to make snacks or meals that share common ingredients, preparation methods or cooking temperatures, you can save time and effort. I've written in the past about choosing a few main ingredients to include in my menu plan - by keeping some ingredients common I can reduce my cooking time as well as reuse leftovers in new dishes.

3. Process & Prepackage - take some time to clean and chop or assemble your snacks that don't require cooking so that they are ready to go when you need them. Packaging them in the size and container that you will want them in will allow you to grab and go.

4. Presentation - speaking of packaging, are you suspicious that certain family members like certain snacks as much for their presentation as their taste? Does your son or daughter always ask for the Dora pasta or Spongebob fruit snacks? In this case, try and use branding in your favor by providing a cute reusable snack bag or placing fun stickers on your containers.

5. Share - whether it's tips, recipes or an actual food swap, sharing resources makes things easier for everyone. If you have friends with similar tastes, try coordinating a play date where the kids entertain each other (or play with one parent) while the others make meals for everyone to take home!

Do you eat convenience food on a regular basis, occasionally or almost never? What tricks do you use to maximize the amount of homemade food in your diet?

Quick Tip - cleaning stuck on food messes

If you have kids in the house, chances are you have your share of big messes! The best advice I've read about how to clean up a big mess was from simple mom - clean it right away. That makes sense, right? With most messes, I find cleaning as we go to be very effective. But what about when your baby is just as messy as the highchair you just fed her in? I find that my biggest messes usually involve me carrying someone covered in goo straight to the bathtub...leaving a trail behind me. For these occasions, I have another quick and easy trick.

Wet a towel and place it (still fairly wet) on top of your mess. Let the towel sit for just a few minutes, and then wipe clean. You will be surprised how effectively the towel loosens a stuck on mess. Clean up any remaining mess or disinfect if necessary and move on about your day!

Do you have any quick and easy cleaning tips? What do you do when the mess maker is just as messy as the area around her (or him!)?

On Vacation...see you in August!

We are having a wonderful summer, full of sun, some sand, and relaxing evenings catching fireflies and eating watermelon. I do, however, want to be able to savor that slower pace this summer, and instead I find myself more often than not feeling a bit more buried than Sweetpea is in this picture.


Classes are eating up quite a bit of my "free" time, and so I'm going to take a bloggy break. My plan right now is to return more or less by mid August.

Take care, and I can't wait to hear what you've been up to when I return! :)

Summer Fun List

I love making these lists - it is so much fun to brainstorm the fun things we want to do over the course of a season, to prioritize fun into our lives. I find that with a sign like this posted visibly in our kitchen we are much better at making time for the things we want to enjoy. By making conscious decisions to include these mainly frugal summertime experiences we are not making our schedules busier, simply more focused. Not everything gets done, and there are always a few projects that are more fun after they are completed than in the midst of things. I'll even admit that Sweetpea's big girl room looks a bit familiar...it might have been on last year's list? Yep, that didn't get done last summer.

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the Vintage Pearl - beautiful hand stamped jewelry

Neptune Sprouts - unique clothing for your little sprout

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Mindlessly delicious pulled pork

This recipe might look familiar to you, I've posted it once before and talked about it many times - my slow cooker pulled pork is simply the easiest go to meal ever. I'm looking forward to comparing notes with the other back burner cooks over at aiming low, and their back burner recipe contest is what prompted me to re-post this super simple supper.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Pork loin, cut if necessary to fit into your crock pot
Beef broth, enough to cover your pork loin (usually ~3 cups)

Cook the pork on low heat in your slow cooker for 6 - 8 hours, until it shreds easily. I usually cook this overnight or during the day, and I usually make big batches so I cook the full 8 hours. Remove the pork from the slow cooker and place it into a casserole dish. Preheat your oven for 350 and shred the pork using two forks and pulling the meat in a crosswise motion. Once the pork is shredded, add either broth or BBQ sauce. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes.

I serve the meat plain with potatoes, on sandwiches with BBQ sauce, in place of chicken in a tetrazzini recipe, in mexican casseroles, etc. I usually cook as much pork as I can fit in my slow cooker and freeze the leftovers for when I don't even want to take the time to plug in my slow cooker.

What is your favorite back burner meal?

We are Blissfully Frugal!

Hubs and I have always been frugal - we enjoy saving where we can so we can spend on the things that really matter to us. The key to being frugal for me is knowing what matters most to me and my husband - what things really make us happy, and what are necessities... In addition, it's important that I keep in mind the value of my time. If I spend hours to save a few dollars on something that I don't enjoy, then I'm going to get burned out. Lastly, even in the areas where we splurge we do so wisely – even though it’s a splurge I don’t want to overpay.

What things do we like to splurge on? I’m glad you asked! ;)

• traveling, both near and far
• taking advantage of the great amusement park just 20 minutes from our house
• belonging to our local YMCA
• celebrating big and little events in our lives

What things are less important to us?

• Having a big house - for me that just means more to clean. I do enjoy decorating our home and making improvements, but we do much of the work ourselves and take on projects one at a time as we have the time and money to devote to them.
• Clothes - I love clothes, but I will never be mistaken for trendy...I try to stick with pieces I really love, that fit well, and that are going to last. I love shopping at consignment shops, and for my girls we are lucky to have an excellent supply of gently worn hand me downs.
• Having the perfect car - we know what we like, but buying new is something we try and avoid at all costs. Gently broken in is much more affordable, and allows us to get a nicer car than we might have afforded if we bought it new.

How do we make sure we're spending wisely when we splurge? We use talk to friends and search the internet before we buy. I rely heavily on menu planning and stockpiling. I cook from scratch as much as I can without stressing myself out, and freezer cook when our favorites are on sale. I keep a price book for things I use regularly so I know when I’m getting a good deal. I also follow a few sites that are a big help, including Mommy's Wish List, Freebies 4 Mom, Inexpensively, and BabyCheapskate. Even when it comes to necessities we stockpile when a great deal comes up - for me this includes kids clothes, holiday clearance, diapers and wipes, and presents for friends and family, as long as I know I will use them.

What are your secrets to being frugal? I'd love to hear them!

*this post is my entry into Inexpensively's Blissfully Frugal contest* If you're interested in attending Blissdom, you should check it out!

Countdown to Christmas: Activity garland

Last year's garland hung up on the mantle

Last year's Christmas activity garland was such a success I imagine we'll be doing it for many years to come. We come up with a list of 24 things we want to do to celebrate the holiday season. Since this time of year is so hectic, I assign each activity to a specific day when I think we'll have the time to enjoy it.

This year's list is a bit more basic since we have a baby in the house - I didn't think we could count on any outside activities. If the weather is nice enough or we decide to have Sugar Plum stay with someone then these will be bonus activities. Below is our list. Each one will be written on a paper chain and made into a garland we use to count down to Christmas. We will hang the garland on our mantle with the stockings. Sweetpea is going to help make the garland this year as part of our first activity!

make Christmas chain
put up Christmas tree
decorate Christmas tree
paint pine cone ornaments
decorate mantle with pine cone ornaments and stockings
make dough ornaments
Santa coloring pages
hot chocolate and Christmas music by the tree
gingerbread house
bake cookies
drive around looking at neighborhood lights
decorate cookies
make grandparent gifts
deliver cookies to friends
family handprint wreath
make & decorate felt trees
visit Santa
handprint reindeer
write letter to Santa
caroling at grandparent's houses
handprint Santa
cookies to firemen
angel craft
family over for dinner

How do you count down to Christmas and organize your holiday activities? What are your favorite traditions?

Easy peasy Mac n Cheesy - quick and easy mac n cheese

Does your kiddo ask for mac n cheese on a regular basis? I love making mac n cheese from scratch and hubs makes a great box mac n cheese, but there are days when Sweetpea asks for it and I don't have the time or ingredients to grant her wish. On those days, if I still want to grant her request, I pull out this quick and easy fake out:

~1 cup of small cut pasta, I like using alphabet pasta
1 slice of American cheese (I always have these on hand for EmDee's lunches
1 "slice" of light laughing cow cheese or 2 tablespoons of cream cheese
a splash of milk

Cook pasta according to package directions and then stir the cheeses and splash of milk into the hot pasta. Add some meat and vegetables if that will go over...or not. Presto, a pretty tasty mac n cheese substitute. For a "cheesier" taste, use 2 slices of American cheese instead of the combination above.

With this, as with any other meal, if Sweetpea loses interest or doesn't want to eat her food I pull out my "secret weapon" a big wooden spoon. She will eat just about anything off of a big wooden spoon...

Do you have any go to fake out meals? I'm always looking for quick and easy favorites.

No spend month in review

Today was a bit hectic, but I wanted to get my menu plan up and reflect a bit on our no spend month...my laptop battery has died, and I can't tell you how hard it is to be newly tethered to a desk again!

Monday: Beef stroganoff, mashed potatoes and peas
Tuesday: Chicken tetrazzini and green salad
Wednesday: General Tso's chicken (modified from this recipe) rice and baked crab rangoon
Thursday: Turkey, mashed potatoes and green beans
Friday: Turkey soup, crusty rolls and milkshakes
Saturday: leftovers
Sunday: Turkey pot pie

We ended no spend month just a few cents over our budget. It was an empowering experience to know we can cut our budget by nearly 40% and still enjoy ourselves. I spent nearly $100 in diapers and wipes for the month, leaving us roughly $50 per week for groceries, gas and miscellaneous spending.

Having little ones in the house makes it both easier and more challenging - on the one hand, there are lots of things that are just too challenging to do with an infant and a preschooler. (shopping comes to mind...) On the other hand, I tend to want to buy everything in one location, or to choose the easiest place to buy things because shopping can be so challenging. I normally buy several things at Sams club, but this month I opted out, even though it would have been a bit cheaper, simply because it was too difficult to fit a trip in without the girls.

I really didn't miss going out and spending money - we found plenty of free and nearly free things to do. While I enjoyed the freedom of not counting every penny when I was shopping yesterday, I think I've retooled my menu planning to a point where I will consistently spend less than I had been. For anyone that has been considering a no spend month or budget challenge, I would highly recommend it. This month's adventures will pay dividends (literally) for months to come!

Our last week of no spend month - what's on the menu?

So we're winding toward the end of no spend month, and I have to say there were very few times that I actually felt like I wanted to spend money on something and "couldn't" because of our budget challenge. I think we're going to come out almost exactly on target, as I've purchased our groceries for the week and we have just a little wiggle room left. Here's the menu plan for this week:

Monday: Steaks, mashed potatoes and green salads
Tuesday: BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans and potato chips
Wednesday: Grilled chicken salads and smoothies
Thursday: Pork chops, baked potatoes and peas
Friday: Pulled pork tetrazzini and corn bread
Saturday: Pizza and breadsticks
Sunday: Mexican casserole and corn cake

How are we affording such a yummy meat filled menu? As I mentioned last week, we shop the "reduced for quick sale" section at our local IGA - they have a terrific meat case and if you know when to shop you can get a super deal. All of the pork from this week's menu is from a pork loin I bought when it went on sale for $1.69/lb - I'll slice some meat off to pan fry and the rest will become pulled pork in the slow cooker to be used in several other meals this week. Normally when pork loin goes on sale I'll buy two. I freeze one for later and generally freeze half of the pulled pork after I make it.

In addition, we'll be having cake, brownies, baked oatmeal, and carrot cranberry muffins. In order to help make sure we don't feel deprived (and to help clean out the cupboard!) we've been making more desserts than we usually do. Thank goodness for those extra calories I'm allowed since I'm nursing so often! :)

If you're looking for more menu planning inspiration, visit OrgJunkie. Come back next week for a summary of no spend month!

Frugal cooking, even with meat!

Week one of no spend month found us with $246.52 remaining in our budget. With some creative menu planning I cut our grocery budget by 35% last week, but we ate very well - I found some great frugal recipes and pulled out some old favorites. We've cut back on convenience snacks and Sweetpea and I are cooking snacks from scratch instead. This coming week I know we're going to spend more overall because we're going to need diapers - when I chose $300 for our monthly budget it was with the fact that we have 2 in diapers in mind. I do have $6.50 in coupons to use for each big box of diapers but it's still going to be a large portion of the months budget.

This week's grocery bill was almost identical to last weeks - $46 for our family of 4 (though one of us only drinks mama's milk, so I'm not sure she should count when it comes to groceries?). Here's what's on our menu this week:

Monday: steak stirfry and baked potatoes
Tuesday: tuna noodle casserole with green salads
Wednesday: baked spaghetti and garlic bread
Thursday: chicken tetrazzini and buttered peas
Friday: breakfast casserole and pancakes
Saturday: leftover buffet
Sunday: creamy sausage and potato bake

Here are some of the strategies I've been using to keep our food budget low - even though we're eating quite a bit of meat throughout the week:

- shop the reduced meat section - one of our markets has great reduced meats, some of the others I definitely stay away from. Find a market in your area that has good meat and determine the markdown schedule! I purchased the steaks we're eating tonight that way.

- plan your menu so you use ingredients in multiple meals - that way you use up all your ingredients and you can possibly buy larger containers at a lower price per unit. Tuna noodle casserole and chicken tetrazzini use several of the same ingredients. The ground chuck in our spaghetti bake also went into sloppy joes for lunches (on sale for $1.67/lb) Sausage was on sale and will be featured in both the breakfast casserole and the sausage potato bake.

- speaking of potatoes - stretch your meals with non meat "fillers" that add flavor and texture to your dishes, like potatoes, rice, or beans. I added black beans to our spaghetti bake, which might sound unappealing to some, but my daughter loves it and it adds fiber to the meal. The original recipe for Sunday's sausage bake didn't include potatoes, but they add a nice flavor and texture and increase the overall portion size.

What tricks do you use to stretch a buck when planning your menus?

Budget Friendly Menu Planning

This is our first full week of menu planning during the No Spend Challenge, and just to make things more interesting, we have a leak in our well. Nothing like trying to do your normal day to day activities with limited or no water. Yesterday I cooked three of our meals, so I'm hoping we can stick to the menu and that everything is fixed by mid week.

Monday: Beef Stroganoff and mashed potatoes
Tuesday: Sweet and sour chicken over rice, buttered peas and carrots
Wednesday: Carribean chicken stirfry over rice, lettuce salad
Thursday: Pumpkin black bean soup over rice, corn bread
Friday: Pulled pork with mashed potatoes and rolls
Saturday: Leftover buffet
Sunday: BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans and lettuce salad

For more menu planning inspiration, visit Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie!

No spend challenge

Can we stick to a budget of $300 for all non-essentials this October? The idea of a no spend month is nothing new, and I've been wanting to try it ever since reading about other blogger's experiences here and here. My company is closing the doors to our facility on November 1st, so October seems like the perfect month for us to pay extra close attention to our budget...to recalibrate our idea of frugal and prepare for the months ahead when I'll be staying home. Bills, medical expenses and work related expenses will be excluded, but groceries, my gas, and entertainment will all be subjected to the budget. (EmDee's gas is a work related expense)

We have 3/4 of a tank of gas and the normal amount of groceries for the week to get us started. Today is our 9th anniversary, so we get to sneak a date night in under the wire - thanks, Mom, for babysitting! :)

Here are some free and cheap entertainment ideas I have put together for the month so far - if you have any to add I'd love to hear them!

Story time at the library
Exploring at the pumpkin patch
Picnics (at our local metro park and in our yard)
Borrowing movies and books from the library
Swimming at the YMCA (we are members)
Exploring our local parks and playgrounds
Backyard bonfire
Watching a local high school football game
Starting our home made Christmas crafts
Take a nature walk
Decorate the pumpkins from our garden

I'll be menu planning from the grocery ad even more than usual, and with an eye for quick and affordable meals. I'll be updating our progress weekly. Care to join me? If so, please let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear your advice and suggestions too!