Happy Birthday to me - yesterday

Yesterday was my 31st birthday. It was ok. Then I got my present in the mail from my sister today and I was SO excited. It was the best present ever! I hate to brag but she mailed me a TON of coupons!!!!!! Thanks Steph - you rock!! You totally made my day ;-)

Seriously though, I did have a great birthday - thanks for all the calls, cards & emails, I loved it! My friend was here from Pensacola so she took me out for lunch yesterday - thanks Jen! She also watched our kids for us Thursday night while TJ and I went out for dinner. I have been hearing a lot lately about The Melting Pot. Monday - Thursday are half price for active duty military so we tried it out. All I can say is WOW!!!!!! It was amazing. SOOOO good. The whole experience was just awesome. I highly recommend eating there and doing the full course dinner. You start with cheese fondue, then salad, then meat that you cook yourselves at your table, then the chocolate fondue! YUMMY! I told TJ that's where we are going for our anniversary in a few months.

Daddy daughter fishing

Brena loves to fish with her Daddy. I saw the two of them sitting outside the other day and thought it was so sweet. We are so blessed to have such a good Daddy in our home!

Going over budget :(

I wrestled with myself over this decision and almost didn't do it. The sale ends today and I was trying to hold off. But, I gave in and went and bought the yogurt. It was on sale at Publix for .50, there are $1/4 mfq's here and a Target q here for $1/8. My Publix lets me stack mfq's with store q's. With the combined q's, I got 16 things of yogurt (my very favorite kind that I eat all the time) for $1.92 - just .12 cents each! So my total for groceries went up to $205.53. I am still happy with that.

I did it!!!!!!

$203.61! That is what I spent on groceries for January! I thought I could, but wow, I can't believe I really, really did it! Looking back in my Quicken reports, I have spent anywhere from $500-$800 a month on food in any given month in 2008. I am definitely going to keep this $50/week thing up! I was talking to my friend last night about the $50/week grocery budget and I think the one thing that we don't buy as much as we used to is pre-packaged snacks, crackers, etc. She wanted to know what we eat for snacks. With all the couponing, I have found we always have tons of cheap yogurt, so the kids get lots of yogurt. And I have had really good coupons for string cheese, so there's always lots of that too. I also go searching out packaged ripe bananas at .25cents a pound and can usually find 4 pounds of bananas for $1, so then I will make smoothies or muffins with them, and those are good for snacks too. I will still get fruit snacks if they are .28 cents a box like they were a few weeks ago ;-)

The only other thing in my life that I can't really budget is our (TJ's) eating out habit. I don't eat out, but TJ does. There is absolutely no possible way to not have him eat out. Half the time he doesn't even know when he's working which makes things hard. Then, there isn't a real place to take a lunch and put it in a fridge or anything like that. So, he has been allotted $2/day for lunch :) He gets his little envelope with his $ for the week, then if he doesn't end up working that day, or he's at home and eats lunch, the money just stays in the envelope. Then his lunch fund will grow because he doesn't work every day, but he's still getting his $2. So if there's a day he needs to spend more than $2 it will work out. TJ is still looking at me like I'm crazy, but hopefully he'll appreciate all my hard work someday!

Fort Clinch and Amelia Island

We all had a day off today and I wanted to go somewhere. We headed north up to Amelia Island and Fort Clinch. It was only about an hour away. Fort Clinch is a fort from the Civil War days and I love anything historic. It was a fun day of exploring.

$50 weekly grocery budget - update

We only spent $47.74 on groceries last week. I ran to Publix Tuesday night to grab a couple of their steals. So this week I have only spent $8.09 on groceries! But, I do really need to get to the store to get some essentials. Here are the steals I got at Publix.

Pepperidge Farm Toast .34cents a box! (Parmesan flavor)

Pepperidge Farm Toast .50 cents a box (five cheese)

Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks: .28 cents a box
5 lb bag of potatoes
1 lonely tomato - I am the only person who will eat them!
1 bag salad
And I HAD to have some ice cream - it was on sale!
Total oop: $8.09
The cashier told me I was a "smart shopper." ;-)

Wheat Bread

So I just finished chatting with my good friend Kendra and she told me she had just taken bread out of the oven - well I had too! So I decided to post my bread and recipe. Let me just first off start by saying I have decided to do something very drastic for us. And, if you haven't figured it out already, I sometimes go a little nutty about new ideas I have. Drum roll please....we (I) have decided to put us on a grocery budget. TJ thinks he is going to die, he can be so dramatic sometimes! We have never lived on a grocery budget. I just buy what we like to eat and never think about cost. Let me just reassure you that we are doing fine, no money problems etc. etc. But I have been inspired by Moneysavingmom.com to live on a $50 a week budget. Yes you read right - $50 a week. We did it already last week. We will see how long we can keep it up. So I'm sure you can imagine that $50 doesn't go very far in food. I decided that making bread could save me probably about $10 a month, and I love homemade bread. Plus, there is no preservatives in it. And I have a ton of wheat. And I have an awesome wheat grinder. So I won't even have to buy any flour for a few years... Ok, this recipe came from The Bread of Life Bake Shop in Pensacola and it's perfect for sandwiches. I have another recipe for wheat bread that I LOVE, but it's more of a eating bread (does that make any sense???) rather than a sandwich bread. I'll post that one later.

Whole Wheat Bread - Sponge Method

7-8 cups fresh white wheat flour

1 TBS dough enhancer

2 TBS instant yeast

2 tsps salt

2 1/2 cups warm water

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup honey

1. Combine the warm water, yeast, and two cups of fresh whole wheat flour in a large mixing bowl. Allow to sponge for 15 minutes. Add the honey, oil, dough enhancer, salt, and 4-5 cups additional flour until the dough is stiff and cleans the side of the bowl. Let mix on speed 2 in your mixer for about 7 minutes or until dough is very smooth and elastic with small bubbles or blisters beneath the surface of the dough.

2. With oil on hands, remove the dough from the mixing bowl and place on oiled surface. Divide dough into two balls. With rolling pin, roll 1 ball out two times the length and one times the width of your bread pan. Starting at one end, roll the dough, sealing each roll with fingers. Place in pans which have been well greased. Allow to rise in a slightly warmed oven (84 to 88 degrees) or other warm place until doubled in size (about 30-40 minutes).

3. Bake loaves 30-35 minutes in a 315 degree oven. When loaves are done immediately remove from pans and let cool on a wire rack. Placing bread on its side may help to reduce the risk of falling - I never have had my bread fall.

That's it!

Lots of pictures crammed into one post

We flew to Colorado for Christmas on December 22. I took Brena to urgent care that morning before we left because she was complaining about her ear. OF course she had a double ear infection - that makes 8 ear infections for the year! The doctor told me we couldn't fly...what???!!! We were leaving in 5 hours! I was so upset. Of course I didn't want to cause permanent damage to my baby girl's ears, but those tickets were non-refundable (and expensive!). SO, being the bad mom I am...we went. But, she was totally drugged up. She was an ANGEL the entire way. And it was a long trip. A. Very. Long. Trip. We flew from Jacksonville to Atlanta. Then Atlanta to Denver. We still had to go from Denver to Grand Junction. It was late at night. Our flight from Denver to Grand Junction was delayed. Then it was cancelled all together. No big deal I thought - we will just leave in the morning. Nope, the next available seats they could book us for was 2 days later!!!!!!! Being the spoiled girl I am, I called my Daddy :) He left Grand Junction right away (it was midnight CO time). It was 2am to us. We got a shuttle to a local hotel and spent the night. My Dad arrived at 9:30am the NEXT MORNING! A 4-hour drive took him 9 1/2 hours. The interstate was closed in Vail, so he had to take an alternate route. What a mess! The return flight home to FL on Monday was not much better - but I'll spare you the long and boring details of that. I'll just say that I am NEVER flying again (of course I reserve the right to change my mind on that!). So, now here are lots of pictures. Santa came to our house in FL on December 22, so some photos are from FL, some from CO.

Happy Birthday Kim!

Because you were giving me a hard time earlier about not posting lately, I'll dedicate this one to you! Happy Birthday! 29 - you are so old! Love ya!

And, I could never post this before, because this is the sister that does read my blog. I also finished this quilt last year. I gave it to my sister's family for Christmas. I really wanted to quilt it, but totally ran out of time, so I took it to Colorado and tied it on my mom's quilting frames. I really like it, but have decided I don't like working with flannel - it really stretches! When I saw this fabric from the Cozy Cabin Flannel line from Moda, I knew I had to have it for my sister's family. I forgot to take a picture of the back. The back is all one fabric, fish. Because my brother-in-law is a fish biologist for the State of Wyoming, and they love to fish.