In Which We Have a Pantry Challenge

This time of year I think everyone could use a little extra money, whether it's for presents or charity, or just to head into a new year with some dollars in the bank.

I decided that this 2 weeks (my grocery budget is divided into 2 week increments) would be a pantry challenge.  I'm giving myself a budget of $20 for each week to fill in where needed (i.e. when my kids inevitably run out of milk) and hoping to use up items in my fridge, standing freezer, and pantry.

Tonight I started off by cooking a HUGE bulk package of chicken breasts that I got at Wegmans on great sale a few months ago.  I usually break up such large packs when I get home before freezing, but, if I remember correctly, I was out of plastic storage bags and so I lazily threw this whole mama-jama in the freezer and have been avoiding it ever since because it's TOO big to use unless we have a BBQ! It'll work out great for this week, though, even if we're very chicken-heavy :) All the chicken meals are basically prepared and put away, unless they need a last-minute addition (i.e. matzo balls)

For breakfast we've got oatmeal, cereal, toast, and eggs.  Lunches will be turkey or pbj sandwiches or leftovers, and I'll do mac and cheese or something warm at least once.

Week 1- November 30-December 6
Wednesday: Mexican Chicken Casserole, Spicy Corn with Bacon
Thursday: Slow cooker bbq chicken over baked potatoes, green beans, cole slaw
Friday: Pasta with capers and white wine butter sauce,  cucumber tomato salad
Saturday: Pizza (Riley's birthday party and the CC Practicum)
Sunday: Kung Pao Chicken with Rice, egg rolls
Monday: Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese Sammies (Scouts)
Tuesday: Leftovers

Shopping List: Egg Rolls, cole slaw mix, cucumber, tomato

Week 2- December 7-December 14
Wednesday: Matzo Ball Soup, yeast rolls
Thursday: Vegetarian Chili, cornbread
Friday: Pancakes and Bacon
Saturday: Grammy's House (Cookie Swap)
Sunday: Chicken Salad over greens
Monday: Vegetarian fried rice, fruit salad
Tuesday: Leftovers

Shopping list: Onion, parsley, can of rotel tomatoes, salad mix, frozen mixed veggies

Anyone else trying to cut a few corners on the grocery budget this December?

In Which We Return to the World :)

Austin's been on a "unemployment" week (not really, he quit his job at BAH, which was such an answer to prayers, because he got a job at a new company! The week off to relax was a bonus!) and we took the week off with him.

This was the strangest "vacation week" our family has ever taken.  We stayed home.  We slept (copious amounts) and we watched TV.  A lot of TV.  I hate the television and keep it off all week so 7 days of TV was crazy! There was a bunch of rain, but when there wasn't, we rode our bikes and played with chalk....I read some books to snuggly children but generally speaking we stayed home and were lazy.

It was incredible.

We're such a go-go-go kind of family, so this was a completely unhealthy, but much needed vacation!

On Thursday we had Thanksgiving at my mom's house.  Kevin and his girlfriend went to have dinner with her family, and with our resident "THINGS MUST STAY AS THEY ARE!!!!!!!" member of the family out of the picture, I enjoyed being able to experiment a little with some new dishes and have to say that the new pumpkin pie recipe was a rousing success.  It's from Paula Deen, so it's dreadful for you, but it was yummy! You can check out the recipe from her HERE, and I added a little cinnamon and nutmeg to mine, which was quite nice!

Saturday we went to the local drive-through lights show with my family, which was frustrating to me because I really want to reclaim Christmas from all the (sorry) BS to make it more like our observation of Hannukah, which is distinctly a sacred celebration.  The lights didn't bother me, but the hot mess of a carnival at the end ($3-$5 per ride! win a santa toy! buy buy buy!) was offensive to me.  I love living close to my family, but sometimes it makes it really hard to celebrate holidays the way I feel is right for our family.  My mom is a Christmas fiend and loves presents and Santa, which isn't bad, but it's what I feel a calling for my family to head towards.

Sunday my baby turned 8.  EIGHT.  I don't know what else to say about that.  I just can't believe how the time flies.  Riley wanted to spend the day exploring a cavern, and he looped back to Luray, which is fine with me because it's my favorite.  He and Logan were totally enthralled, Savannah was completely unimpressed! It was a good workout, though, since I had to carry her the entire 1.25 miles over quite the incline.  The 64 stairs at the end were fun, too! She's getting heavy!

I'm super excited for Advent to have started, and I'm really excited that I get to weave this season into our learning. I keep mentioning that we're not homeschooling for religious reasons, but the more I'm able to take advantage of the fact that I can weave our faith into our lives more and more, the happier I am :) We'll still spend some time exploring the other festivals and holidays happening this month because my little comparative religion minor (Riley)  just needs to know everything about religions. He's a history major, in case you were wondering.  ;)

I'm excited! Happy Advent!

In Which It's November

Oh, hey...look at that, it's been a few weeks!  Whew!

Let's see...there was no Halloween party because our basement decided to give me trouble....I didn't get to go see my friend Lindsay when she brought her new son home from Africa because my kids were sick and then I had a headache for 3 days where I basically slept non-stop to escape the pain in the back of my neck (bonus: I lost 5 pounds by sleeping instead of eating anything!) Savannah got scarlet fever, Austin quit his job so he could take a new one...I think that covers it :)

 Look! Cute pictures!! We've been enjoying the Tuesday craft days that a very sweet woman in our CC group hosts every week.  In addition to having an amazingly decorated home, she also comes up with an adorable craft each week.  In this one, we did spider cupcakes and then Connor, who is the love of Savannah's life, taught a lesson about garden spiders.

 We were seriously suffering without our basement being functional! A townhouse is small enough without having to jam everything on to two floors! Riley enjoyed moving all over the main floor especially because it allowed him to do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE while listening to his story of the world CDs.  He would listen to them all day, every day if he could.

 We got to enjoy our friends Mia, Kat, and Bella for a sleepover.  Their parents went to a ball! How fun! I wish that non-military institutions would do balls.  I haven't dressed up for a dance since Freshman year of college!! We had a fun (albeit late) sleepover and then the next day, I woke the kids up and rushed them around before realizing it was Veterans Day and there was no preschool.  I'm a genius.

Instead we went to the Marine Corps Museum and gave cards to Veterans.  Savannah was adorable going around saying "Happy Vetwans Day!!" and I'm pretty sure she made several grown men tear up.  All the kids had a great time handing out cards, although the museum has a lot of "reality" in it and seemed to make Kat and Logan very concerned about everything.

In terms of school we're doing well, too.  We're on week 12 of CC, studying the end of the civil war, geographic features of the east coast, and finishing up with a field trip with our friends to Appomattox Courthouse.  Logan's moved on to chapter 7 of Singapore Math A which is on measurements and Riley just finished 2A chapter 2.  Logan's reading is going really well, and so is Riley's.  I'm still really enjoying Teach Your Child to Read and Logan is in the 60s.  Riley is reading Revolutionary War on Wednesday right now and doing very well with it.  The IEW work is going well, too.

Our CC group takes a huge break after this week, allowing us to have time to truly enjoy the Christmas season.  I've been collecting work that will allow us to focus on the holiness of the season and integrate our studies.  We'll also use the time to review our memory work.

I think that's about it!

In Which We Breathe

Making things is very calming to me, I really need to make more time to do it.  Today I realized that Savannah Lynn doesn't own anything orange....and tomorrow is orange day at preschool! I took the opportunity to make her an outfit by stitch-witchery-ing (yeah, because that's a word) on a square of fabric with a picture and then making a tulle and ribbon skirt and matching hair bow.  I might still put the bow onto a headband, we'll see.

I think it's pretty cute for about an hour and $16 in fabric!! (We already had the white t-shirt, which was a free hand-me-down from a friend!)

This leads me for a moment to Halloween.  We celebrate Halloween.  In fact, we have a huge party for our kids' friends, too.  We don't really do the whole "ooooh, scary death" thing, it's more fun dress-up, candy.  I've never felt a conviction to not do Halloween. I have many Christian friends that do, and many in our CC group find it offensive (although many of them love it and also enjoy celebrating).  For me, it's no different than people who celebrate Christmas and aren't Christian.  For them, the day may have started out as a (pagan festival the church wanted to compete with, ahem) celebration of Christ, but they're ignoring that and doing Santa, presents, and a day off work.   For me, Halloween may have started out as Samahein or be important to various cultish sects, but for us, it's not about Satan or evil or the "thin veil between the living and the dead".  It's about little kids dressing up and having fun.  I don't think the people celebrating secular Christmas are being "deceived into celebrating Christ" nor do I feel us having fun with Halloween makes us "deceived into the devil's holiday".  So that's what it is.  If at some point God convicts me otherwise, we'll change that.  Just an aside.

I've been very stressed lately- there's a lot up in the air about our lives right now and I've struggled with anxiety and depression for a few years and it's particularly bad right now.  Austin's work schedule (constant) and the kids' sports and activities (many) along with the house being a mess during construction actually landed me in the closet crying a few days this past week.  It's been a tough few days.

Making something tonight made me feel so much more relaxed.....

This post made no sense at all, did it? I guess there's something to be said for a picture and some rambling, right?

While I'm here writing, this week's menu:
Monday- Vegetarian Lasagne with salad and garlic bread (scouts)
Tuesday- Tofu, Cauliflower, and Bell Pepper Tikka Masala with naan (CC craft day)
Wednesday- Split pea soup with carrots, beer batter bread (art class, football)
Thursday- leftovers (CC day)
Friday- Party! (Football)
Saturday- Party! (At someone else's house!!) (Hockey, Church)
Sunday- Baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese, baked chicken (hockey, football)

In Which We Share the Caramel Recipe With Jamie :)

• 1 cup butter 
• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Pinch of Salt

In a heavy saucepan, combine the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, salt and milk; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook and stir until a candy thermometer reads 248 degrees (firm ball stage) about 30-40 minutes and for a softer caramel cook just to a few less degrees. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla. 

Notes- don't double in a larger pan, make 2 pans.  When I say Butter I mean Butter.  Don't try margarine or soy substitute, because it will fail miserably.  Very Salty peanuts make a great addition to the outside of the apples, and will make sure the apples don't stick to your (very well buttered) wax paper.

In Which I Tell You What's Cookin'

In the spirit of feeding my family better, I've been cutting back on the couponing and cooking more.

This week:
-Roasted turkey tenderloins with stuffing, peas, and baked acorn squash.  Apple Cranberry Crisp
-Fatteh with chickpeas and onions, yogurt garlic sauce, roasted eggplant, tabbouleh
-Turkey Pot Pie (homemade with biscuit topping), applesauce (homemade!)
-Leftovers
-Hawaiian Pizza

Next week:
-Eggplant noodle-less lasagne, garlic bread, salad
-Ham steaks with sweet potatoes and green beans
-Split Pea Soup with Carrots and beer bread
-Macaroni-less Mac and Cheese (using spaghetti squash) with broccoli
-Vegetable Pad Thai with Green Papaya salad

This week we've also processed more of the apples we picked making apple muffins, apple oatmeal cookies, applesauce, apple crisp and (today, hopefully) caramel apples with homemade caramel.  I found a recipe that uses sweetened condensed milk as a base, which I'm hoping will work out better than other caramels I have tried :) We picked a bunch of 2-3 inch apples that were fully ripe, thinking they'd be the perfect apple-caramel ratio since most kids only eat the bites that touch the sweet stuff anyway :)

In Which We Give Up On The Kitchen

Oh Kitchen.  I have such plans for you.  Plans to turn you from yellow and blue into tuscan oranges and browns and blues...plans for a backsplash...plans to sew seat cushions for the chairs....

But let's be honest....you're not really a kitchen anymore.

It's CC Week 7, which our community takes off.  We'll be on Week 7 work next week, but it'll be Week 8 of homeschooling.  That means we review.  I finally bought our giant white board and mounted it on the other side of the window-

We're doing fairly well on our memory work- we're erasing lines as we all know them perfectly.  Riley struggles with generating the years for history sentences and getting the route memorization of other subjects in the correct order.  Logan struggles with focusing when I'm testing his knowledge straight through.  Savannah is a rockstar for a 3 year old. :)

I finally organized my Baker's Rack in a way that makes some form of sense as far as usage.  If you ever come to my house and open the bottom cabinets, though, I will cut you.  As my friend Gaby would say, I know Mexican Judo.

And since I was spending money today.....I also bought a magnetic white board for Riley's All About Spelling components.  I am so happy I won't have to dig these out of bags anymore for every lesson!! Happy Day :)

Tonight we're having soup and French Orchard sandwiches (which I am totally stealing from a local sandwich shop!) They're nice white bread (no Wonder, please) with ham, brie, green apple, apricot jam, and some greens.  Yum! I was giving my mom ideas and mentioned this one and then promptly decided I had to run to the store, too.

I love my children- but I know better than to run to the store before dinner.  So embarassing when they're running around like crazy and I can't contain them because I didn't get a cart since "We're just getting ONE thing!"

Sigh.  One day I'll be good at being a mom. Probably when I have great-great-great-grandchildren.