First beach trip of 2009

We finally had a free day and we headed out to the beach. This was our first time to Jax beaches. The water isn't as beautiful as Pensacola, but it's still a great beach. We are all so pale! But, I guess it's only February - the tans will come soon :)
I love this photo of my poser girl!

Friday night date night

Babysitter by my great friend Melissa - free
Dinner @ TGIFriday's - BOGO - $9.52
Dessert @ DQ - BOGO - 3.75
Entertainment by Robyn - priceless!
Dinner, dessert, babysitter & entertainment all for under $20!

I forgot my camera!! Our friend who we originally met at church in San Diego lives here in Jacksonville. She plays on a women's football team and we have been meaning to get to one of her games. So we finally did it last night. We were only able to stay for the first half, but it was fun to watch! Robyn - your team is really good! Thanks for the entertainment!

$50 Weekly Menu

This was by far my best shopping week yet. I spent $49.78. Here's what that got us:

4 pounds ground beef

2 bags chips

2 packs crystal light

2 boxes chicken broth

2 bags chex mix

2 boxes jolly time popcorn

2 boxes Post Trail Mix cereal

3lbs shortening

2 packs yoplait yo-plus yogurt

2lbs margarine

2 packs yoplait kids yogurt

18 eggs

1 mozzarella cheese

1 cheddar cheese

1 pack frozen veggies

1 pack Hillshire Farms ham

2.17 lbs chicken breast

1 pack tortillas

1 pack buns

1 loaf bread (giving myself a break from making bread this week!)

fresh broccoli

2lbs carrots

red leaf lettuce

garlic

orange

green onions

bananas

grape tomatoes

Here is what we ate with that:

Sunday: White Chicken Chili, wheat cornbread muffins

Monday: Pizza, salad

Tuesday: Leftovers from Sunday

Wednesday: Spaghetti & Meatballs, salad, jello

Thursday: Orange Chicken, rice, veggies

Friday: Date Night! Kids eating hot dogs & beans

Saturday: BBQ Beef Sandwiches, jello, veggies

Envelope system?

Have you ever heard of the envelope system? I hadn't. I read a great book by Dave Ramsey and thought "hmmm, I think I'll try it." For the month of February we made big changes in our budget. We successfully lived on less than $200 for groceries for the entire month of February. We started using cash for everything (except rent & utilities). The cash gets divided up into envelopes. I am still perfecting my system, but I can tell you it works! I go to the bank on payday and get the cash out we need to live for those two weeks, then the cash gets distributed into the envelopes. When the cash is gone, there is no other way to spend any money. We don't carry a credit card (we don't even have one anymore) or debit card around ever. The debit card only exists for times when we will have to be travelling and booking hotels/airfare. By doing all this we had a very large surplus at the end of this month. Try it!

Borders

Yes, I like quilts with borders better! The top is 100% finished. Now on to the dreaded basting. I. HATE. Basting. But, if you haven't figured it out, I'm too cheap to have someone do it for me ;-)

Tap & Ballet

Brenalee has been taking a tap/ballet class. I can't believe how much she loves it. She is so adorable in her tap shoes.

Paper Piecing class

I have been wanting to learn how to paper piece. I was excited to find a class at my local quilt shop. Yesterday my good friend watched Brenalee for me so I could go. This is what I accomplished in two hours. I enjoy doing the paper piecing. I like that you don't have to cut everything perfect, and you can just grab any old scrap piece of fabric to do it with. I don't know if I will finish this project now, or wait until Valentine's Day next year...we'll see.

Friday Food & Menu

This week I spent $45.22 on groceries.
Forgot the chicken!

My menu this past week was this:

Sunday: We got lucky and got invited to dinner again! I did bring the dessert.

Monday: Hamburgers, baked beans, fresh green beans

Tuesday: Mac & Cheese, waldorf salad, veggies

Wednesday: Ham & Scalloped potatoes

Thursday: Chicken Enchiladas, salad

Friday: Pizza

Saturday: Garlic roasted red skin potato soup, oatmeal muffins

Bad night

Have you ever had one of "those" nights? I had one last night. I was supposed to bring a veggie tray to a baby shower. I planned on being at the shower, but T.J. had a basketball game at the church and my kids were still a little sick and asleep on the couch. So, I took my gift and my beautiful veggie tray to the home of the shower. On the way there, I don't know what happened, but my veggie tray took a dive. This is what was left of it. The rest of the ranch dressing is all over the floor of T.J.'s car. I couldn't help but cry over my spilt veggies and ranch dressing.

Mail from Grandma

The kids were excited to get a big box in the mail from Grandma Franklin today. She sent them each a puzzle, handmade card and some chocolate (that melted - only in Florida in February can chocolate melt). But it was ok - I put it in the fridge and it was good as new. Thanks Grandma!

Black & Bright

Other than reading, this is the only other thing I've been up to lately. I have two sick kids and we are finally on our way to the doctor today because they just don't seem to be getting any better. It seems like I haven't left the house in about 2 weeks because of sickness! But, I am not complaining because I am a homebody and really prefer to stay in my house and not go anywhere if I don't have to.

I'm no good at naming quilts, the best I can come up with is Black & Bright - feel free to offer any suggestions! These are just the squares, nothing is together other than that. I hope to like it a little better with a border around it. I have found that I prefer quilts with borders. I hope to get this top done this week.

Friday Food & Menu

I decided that to keep me motivated on my $50/week grocery budget I am going to post every Friday my menu I used this past week and the groceries I got. This week I spent $47.66 total on groceries. Not pictured is $14.65 of it - a large thing of honey & a bag of salad. I need the honey to make our bread and I was out of honey - so obviously that was a huge chunk of my budget this week. Besides the honey ($10.45), everything in the pictures was $37.21!
Publix trip

Commissary trip

I had put one of my favorite soups on the menu for this week and low and behold Publix put velveeta on sale for me! I got velveeta for .84 cents each - you cannot beat that! I was super excited about that! And I needed to take some junk food to a super bowl party and was equally stoked about the french onion dip for .49cents and crackers for .79cents. Not bad!

Our menu for this week was as follows:

Sunday - dinner at friend's house

Monday - Manicotti

Tuesday - leftovers (not planned but we had a lot left from last night) Ham stromboli was on the menu - so that will get moved to sometime next week.

Wednesday - Salad & Chicken

Thursday - leftovers from freezer (been & rice burritos)

Friday - Tonight is date night so we will be going to Olive Garden - kids are eating grilled cheese sandwiches

Saturday - Hearty Winter Soup (a couple of weeks ago I found hams deeply discounted at the commissary because they were almost expired. I got a 4lb one, cut it up and put it in baggies in the freezer for different meals throughout the month).

And, I thought I wasn't really doing food storage - but I was wrong. I am just not buying as much. So, I will probably end up having to give a lot of food away to people when I move, which is fine. The stuff was too cheap to pass up.

Baby it's cold outside!

And I am LOVING it! I wish it could stay like this year round! I think it dipped into the 20's last night, and it's supposed to be in the teens tonight! We don't turn our heat on and we thought it felt a little chilly this morning. It was 63 in our house at 9am this morning (the top number is the temp it's set for if we had the heat on). We were wearing all kinds of layers this morning trying to stay warm! We had hot cocoa too. At least we get to experience semi-winter for a few days!

Butter

I have been dying to make homemade butter - I have never done it. My friend Kendra posted it on her blog and she found it here. Last night I had to make bread because we were out. While TJ did our taxes (glad that's over!) the kids and I made butter and ate some fresh bread with fresh butter - wow was it good! I put honey and popcorn salt into the butter to make us some honey butter. I probably won't make butter all the time, but it's fun for a treat now and then. This is our buttermilk from out butter