Meal Planning

Since beginning on my weight loss journey one of the things that has halped me is to plan out our meals for the week. This cuts down on the unnecessary purchases ot the grocery store as well and prevents me from staring blankley into the pantry or refrigerator in the evening trying to decided what to make for dinner.

I try to sit down on friday night and figure out what we are going to eat for the weekend. I try to make atleast one meal over the weekend that we can eat in some capacity during the week. I might roast a chicken and then have leftover chicken that we can use in other things for dinner during the week. It is nice to have some of the work already done when I get home from work.

I used to write up the meal plan for the week and stick it up on the refrigerator so my husband would know what we were having incase he got home before me so he could start cooking. Then I progressed to writing on an old dry erase board. My sister in-law noticed this and made me this great framed menu board which is  so much better than a scrap of paper or dry erase board.

The meal plan for this week

Sunday-Crockpot polish sausage in tomato sauce on sub rolls and pasta salad

Monday- BBQ Hamburgers and pasta salad

Tuesday- Pork Poast, baked potatoes, and mixed veggies

Wednesday- Polish Sausage in tomato sauce over whole wheat spaghetti and salad

Thursday- Pulled pork samdwiches and pasta salad

Friday- Pulled pork quesidillas and rice

When it rains...

it pours

It never fails that when we have a big expense planned something unexpected comes up. My husband's truck needed a tune up and new tires which we had been putting off, but had come to a point where we just had to suck it up and spend the money. Well it never fails something was bound to happen because we just had a large expense...our air conditioner is not working. Surprise surprise.

Our house is 6 years old and i think that we have had issues with either our heat or air conditioning every season. It is so frustrating the unit is only 6 years old but we have had issues with it since the day we moved in to the house.

We had though that we were actually going to make it through a summer without having to have the HVAC company at our house but unfortunately not. At this point the days are still hot it is supposed to be 85 today and 89 tomorrow but we are at work all day. The evenings cool off so we open all the windows to cool down the house so we can survive without it for now. I just hope that the heat works and we can avoid having anything done with the unit until the spring but I am not that lucky.

Southern Belle's Bakery Boutique

A friend of mine is working with one of her friends who started her own business, a bakery. Who doesn't love baked goods! I was lucky enough to win a contest on Facebook and got a lovely basket full of samples of many of the different goodies they offer. Their business is just starting out so they are trying to get name out there.

My basket contained :

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Watermelon Jelly

Wedding Cookies

Sugar Cookies

Oatmeal Cookies

Peanutbutter Cookies

Vanilla Cupcakes &

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Everything was delicious and I can't wait to try some of the other things they offer! Go check them out over at Southern Belle's Bakery Boutique you will be glad you did. I am looking forward to visiting their stand next weekend at the Goldrush festival and picking up some more sugar cookies for the kids.

Ahhhh

I have posted before about the fact that we have two dogs and how great they are. Well lately the Lab has been treading on thin ice. Tonight marked the third time in less than a month that we have come home to diarrhea all over the family room carpet. The last time this happened was Tuesday. I spent almost three hours cleaning the carpets and it took me until Thursday night to finally get all of the stains up. We came home from swimming lessons tonight to the tell ta;e smell when we walked in the house.

This time it was worse, there were more spots and they spanned a larger area. I have had it. I ca not take cleaning dog shit up off of my carpet again/ I really want to get rid of her but my husband says no. Yet he is not tho one who has to spend hours getting the stains out of the carpet. He make some half a$$ attempt and then says that is the best he can do.

I know that we should take her to the vet and see what is wrong. We have not changed anything in her diet. No new food or treats. She does eat some of the crumbs the kids throw during meal time but never anything that should make her sick. We really can't afford to do all kinds of tests at the vet and then treat whatever is wrong.

I feel bad. she is part of the family but I don't know how many instances like this I can take.

Life has gotten in the way

Once again I have been a less than stellar blogger. Life unfortunately has gotten in the way and left very little free time for blogging. On Father's Day my husband's grandfather passed away. It was by no means unexpected he had been declining for some time.

This news prompted a 900 mile drive back to New York for the funeral. While we knew that this trip was a matter of when not if, needing to make it on a Sunday posed some problems since the kennel was closed. We were very fortunate that the kennel took our dogs even though it was not during the normal 2 hour window on Sunday. The kids did well on the car trip until the last hour or so when they could not get comfortable in their seats. The portable DVD player was worth every penny we paid for it.

The week in New York was hectic and all of the healthy eating we have been done was basically thrown out the window. I managed to not gain any weight on the trip so which is better than I expected. The week back at work was crazy, I was behind and only made it to the gym once. So I am hoping that the first week in July will be free of complications and I can get back on track.

My other two children.....

We have 2 dogs a golden retriever, Rocky and  chocolate lab, Ruby. I may complain about them but I would be upset if something happened to either one of them. They are a part of the family and have been around  longer then the kids. My husband and I have decided that in the future we will never have 2 dogs at the same time again. It is simply too expensive.

I will say that I hate the fact that there is dog hair everywhere and no amount of vacuuming makes it disappear for very long. I do love the fact that they clean up the trail of crumbs my kids leave so I guess it is a catch 22, clean up crumbs or dog hair! We have a great security system they bark at everything, which is also not so great when they go nuts not five minutes after the kids have finally gone to bed at night.

We have a fenced backyard, and the dogs pretty much have the run of the house. We pretty much let them go where they want. Yes they sleep on furniture but they are not allowed on our bed and do not really go in the kids rooms. I guess you could say they are spoiled.

The kids love them. Hailey has to give each one of them a treat every night before she goes to bed and then she has to pet them and tell them good night. Ryan is starting to acknowledge them too. One of the few words he says is dog. We are really lucky that both dogs are so good with the kids and do not give bother any of the kids stuff.

I cannot understand why some people have dogs though. There are several people in my neighborhood who have dogs that live in the garage. They are ever outside ever that I see. It gets hot where I live. I can not imagine leaving my dogs in a garage all day. I have seen the garage door open and the floor in there is covered in dog poop and pee. I guess they hose it off every once in a while but no dog should have to live like that. I never see them walk their dogs and when we walk buy I can tell that the barks are coming from the garage so I assume they do not go in the house.

So it begs the question why have a dog if it is not going to be part of the family? I can see having an outside dog on a farm or on a large piece of land, but I still cannot see the point of having one if you are not going to give it any attention.

Coupons

Last weekend when I went grocery shopping my bill at check out was $130. Yes you saw that right I said one hundred and thirty. Needless to saw the hubs was less that thrilled at the total especially when we are trying to save and make cuts to out budget.

I recently watched a few episodes of "Extreme Couponing" on TLC and could not believe how much money these people were saving on their grocery bill, one family walked out of the store wilt over $700 in grocers and paid less than $0.01 for everything. They have these massive stockplies in their basements, cupboards, closets, garages, ect so I guess they wil never go hungry or will never run out of laundry detergent, but it seems a little over the top to me. I mean who really needs to have 127 bottles of laundry detergent, or 70 jars of mustard.

Back to the reciept from my trip to the grocery store. I sat down with it to try and figure out where I was spending all my money and figured wou that I spent just about $20 on fresh produce, $20 on dairy, $25 on fresh meat/fish, and $7 on bread so that was $72 dollars right there plus the cost of a book of stamps. The remainder of my bill I will admit that there were probally items that I could have used coupons for if I had one ( I think I had 4 this trip that I used). Recently a co-worker of mine brought in a giant stack of the coupon inserts and I went through them I think I cut out like 7 coupons, the rest of them were for stuff I would never use. I just don't see how the people who save that much do it.

Then I started thinking most of those people say that they do not buy something unless they have a coupon for it. So does that mean that they never buy fresh produce or fresh meats? Only canned, jared, or frozen foods?  How is this healthy? I am trying to change the way we eat in my efforts to lose weight and part of that has been to cut out most processed food. Maybe I am not looking in the right places but the only coupouns I seem to find are for processed foods, cleaning products, and beauty/ personal care products. If that is the case how do I save using coupons with the exception of the cleaning  and personal care products that I buy very rarely?

So I will use the few coupons I find for the products we use but I am pretty sure I will never get to walk out of the grocery store and be the person who got $700 worth of grocerys for $0.01 unless of course someone can tell me where to find coupons for produce.

Check it Out

I am lucky enough to have an amazingly talented photographer in the family, my sister in-law Melissa. She is just starting to get out there and is looking for new customers. As Melissa has been building her portfolio I have gotten some great pictures of my kids from her. Please check out Melissa over at Yes M'AM Photography she does an amazing job!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there. Hope you enjoy your day!