Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is DECEMBER! Can you believe that? December already! Our finances are awful. We have really fallen off the wagon lately and I have been spending much more than I should be. I'll figure out the final damage either tomorrow or the following day but I'm nervous to do so. Finances should not make me nervous. We have no real need to be nervous about our finances which only goes to prove that I failed to budget properly throughout November. Tomorrow starts a new month. Tomorrow starts a new budget. Tomorrow starts a new beginning on getting our finances back in order. Tomorrow we start working on our goals together for more tomorrows to come.

-M

Oh menu plan

why do you never work out? Our first week of menu planning was an epic fail. We did not stick to it at all. Let's try again...

Sunday - Tonight we had pork chops, spaghetti squash and mashed potatoes - so yummy!

Monday - Nothing planned... we ate the spaghetti squash tonight that I planned on making tomorrow tonight. Perhaps, Chili!

Tuesday - Crock pot Chicken Salsa

That is the extent of our menu plan this week. As always, Wednesday and Thursday are at Grandma's and then we are out of town Friday - Sunday!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just wanted to check in and say Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers. I'm working while S and O are at S's parents' house with his brothers. I'll join S at home when I'm done working to have some desert. I hope you have a great holiday.

-M

After a major freak out...

we successfully had S's mom and oldest brother over for dinner last night. I have these issues I'm trying to work through and well lets just say yesterday they all came to a head. Let me start by saying the house was pretty clean but we still had dishes in the sink and toys on the floor and I was not thrilled about it. I wanted everything to be super clean when they came over. I have been feeling like if things aren't clean, organized, cooked well and presented nicely I am a failure as a wife and mom. I'm not sure where I got these ideas but it lead to a breakdown yesterday. Finally, I snapped and started yelling at S to help me because it was his family coming over and he started yelling back that I was freaking out for no reason, which was true as things were pretty clean.

Anyway, I made marinated chicken breast, roasted squash and green beans. All of which turned out very well. I wish the green beans were better but such is life I guess. Hopefully, I'll be not so crazy the next time we have visitors for dinner.

-M

Cooking Adventures

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best chef. I can read and can follow a recipe so I'm slowly learning. If it didn't come from a box or require shake n bake my mom probably didn't make it so I never learned how to cook it. I'm being adventurous and trying many new things. I've picked out a bunch of recipes, planned days to make them, bought most of the ingredients and am hell bent on becoming a decent cook for my family.

This past week has been trial and error both in cooking and in planning. I planned meals for the upcoming weekend with the intentions of S planning for Monday and Tuesday and everyone eating out on Wednesday and Thursday. I went shopping Sunday night for some basics and hoped for the best. This didn't go so well and S was unable to child wrangle as well as work the stove. Tuesday I needed up putting something in the crock pot for him to serve at dinner time.

Let me also point out some scheduling factors we have while making the menu plan. Monday - Thursday I work til 11pm. S works Wednesday - Sunday starting at 10pm. O eats dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's on Wednesday and Thursday while Mommy works and Daddy sleeps.

Menu Plan for 11/16 - 11/26 (I shop on Fridays)
Monday - S was supposed to plan and cook. It ended up being hot dogs with a veggie stir-fry. Epic fail on the ability of S to watch O and cook at the same time.

Tuesday - After the night before fiasco I decided Mondays and Tuesdays will be crock pot meals set up by me before I leave at 12pm. Chicken Parm with S cooking the spaghetti when he was ready to serve. Thumbs Up!

Wednesday and Thursday - Dinner at Grandma's

Friday - Mexican Stuffed Shells

Saturday - Cabbage, Rice and Beans

Sunday - Marinated Chicken Breast with Squash and Salad

Monday - Spaghetti Squash with Tomatoes and Herbs

Tuesday - Egg, Cheese and Sausage Bake

Wednesday and Thursday - Dinner at Grandma's

So, there you have it, my first attempt at a menu plan and keep tuned it to see if we can follow it and how the meals turn out!

-M

New Home!

We're in our new place... almost. Physically just about everything is in the apartment. We have a few straggling boxes at S's parents' house. Only 70% or so is put away which is a good deal but we are very busy during the week and were hoping to get more done this past weekend.

All of our groceries are put away and we are accessing what we still need to fully stock our pantry and freezer on items we like to keep in the house. I went shopping late last night which is the worst time to go because the shelves are almost empty. The store had none of the cheeses I wanted luckily I was able to get rain checks so I'll pick those up later in the week. S is washing all of our dishes today and after that the kitchen will be fully set up. We need to finish the living room. We have the TV, sofa, rocking chair and VCR in place but still need to hook up the DVD player, radio and Wii.

I did the laundry before we moved but never put it into drawers so that needs to be done pretty quickly before it starts getting mixed in with the dirty stuff and I have to wash everything over again. Possibly tomorrow morning. Things are moving into place quickly which is the way I like it because when they are out of order I tend to become a basket case.

-M

We're Moving!

On Sunday! This explains the lack of postings and lack of state of the finances update. We'll be skipping the finances this month and begin again in December with an awful drop in net worth. We spend more than we would have liked buying things to set up our new place. I'm disappointed but also not at the same time because much of the stuff that we bought is good quality and will last a long while. We could have saved here and there on some things but had to replace them much sooner which would most likely cost us more in the long run. I'll give you some rough numbers: We spent about $300 on household items such as dishes, pots/pans, towels, rugs, appliances and so forth. We spent $75 on setting up the pantry so far. We fully intend on spending a large chunk (over $100) either Sunday or Monday when we go shopping and after that we are down to a much smaller weekly grocery budget. We are also renting a moving van to move items from my parents house about 190 miles away to our apartment. This will cost just over $100. Moving sure is expensive especially when it is your first actual apartment.

-M

Tot School!

We have so much to update you on! Since we missed our tot school updates the last few weeks I’ll start with those and continue to post little updates throughout next week. We have been busy during Tot School plus we took a field trip. We spent some time building with blocks. While we were doing this we were learning color, letter, number and animal recognition. She currently knows the letter O and most of her colors. We are still working on the rest and they will come with time. This is also good for hand eye coordination.

We love our play dough. We play with it multiple times every day. We had green, red, yellow and blue but they dried out so we bought new play dough on our field trip to Toys R US where we met Plex. We came home with two shades of pink, teal and purple. (All picked out by O) Most of the time play dough is used to increase her fine motor skills but occasionally we have a little throwing which is a gross motor skill. Ho Hum, can’t keep it all on the table.

This is PLEX from Yo Gabba Gabba. O loves this show but not people in costumes dressed up as people from her favorite show. She would not go anywhere near him to have her picture taken. Such is life with a 17 month old. We were expecting other characters from PBS as well as Nick Jr to be there as well but we waited around for 20 minutes and no one else showed up so we checked out and headed to AC Moore. After AC Moore we checked back in Toys R Us and didn't see anyone else. I was disappointed and O didn't have any idea she was missing out on anything.

After trick or treating and candy eating we created a homemade drum set out of the candy containers and some lollipops that no one really wants to eat. We experimented with using both ends of the lollipops and decided that we like hitting the pot with the stick end better than the pop end. We learned that the pot makes a different noise than the plastic pumpkin. Most of all we learned that drums are very noisy when other members of the family are sleeping.

There you have it! That’s what we’ve been learning at Tot School!