More than just pink

In just a few months our girly household will be invaded by blue things, trucks, and all things "boy". Its going to be quite a different world than our house-playing, dolly-caring for, dressing up twosome. But we are excited. Our world is about to change, come May!

In the meantime, here are a few more pictures of my girly-girls in residence:

Menu Plan for the week of Nov 29, 2010

Here's what we'll be eating this week:

Breakfasts: scrambled eggs, oatmeal, maybe a triple batch of chocolate chip pumpkin muffins (we go through a double batch in 2 days and I want some to freeze! The pumpkins are in the crockpot right now:)

Working on a 30 day menu plan...

Lunches/snacks: leftovers, sandwiches, soup/salad (for me;)

Dinners:


Monday: Shepherd's Pie peasant bread

Tuesday: Turkey and Dumplings in the crockpot

Wednesday: Spagetti Pie, leftover rolls, green beans

Thursday: Chinese Turkey and Rice

Friday: Homemade Easy Pizza
Saturday: Homemade Mac N Cheese, salmon, cheesy broccoli

Sunday: Leftovers, meal out...my parents are on their own!

Shopping List:
Costco: Pickles, spinach, carrots, milk, mozzarella, rice, pictures (for our newsletters), sugar
Fred Meyer: ground beef, mac n cheese, tomato soup, day old bread, bananas, cheddar cheese

What's on your menu this week?

Thanksgiving Feast Menu

What a blessing to have so many choices and the resources to buy such a feast!

This year we were able to get everything we needed to have a traditional feast for very inexpensively. Our turkey was about $5, potatoes $0.88, stuffing was almost free and the pumpkins came from the garden. We'll be celebrating with our normal crew of 6 (my family plus my parents), my bro and sis-in-law, and my grandma. So we'll be feeding 9 this year plus a little one on the way:).

Here's our menu:

Breakfast:
Turkey sausage, Rhodes Cin Rolls, satsumas, scrambled eggs, possibly an apple coffee cake

Appetizers: Olive, pickle, and veggie tray, crackers, onion cheese dip

Main Meal:
Turkey, cooked in a bag (my cheat to make it faster and more foolproof).
Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
Stuffing in the crockpot (Stovetop...I don't like stuffing so I don't bother to make from scratch:)
Cranberry sauce (from can and scratch)
7 layer salad (grandma bringing)
Green Beans
Sweet Potato Casserole
Rolls (going to try to make yeast ones again!)
Homemade Applesauce

Dessert: pumpkin and apple pie, icecream (bro and sis-in-law bring). Possibly a pumpkin cream pie from my mom.

Exhausted

Lately M has had a super hard time getting up from her naps. We thought she might be done with naps (she's 3). We've started letting her read quietly in bed while sissie naps but she's fallen asleep almost every time and then can't seem to wake up for hours. Any tips...anyone else go through this? All evening she seems really tired and even asks to go to bed sometimes. But then she wakes up before 6am every morning! What to do?!

Here she is "after" nap time...a time when daddy was trying to wake her up but fell asleep himself instead:)

Last week's double runs and Rite Aid

Albertson's, last week...the turkey price was calculated on sale based on regular prices so I only spent $15 or so for all this. I had no coupons for the syrup, graham cracker crust but they were items the family requested.

Rite Aid: less than $5 for all this after Up rewards, coupons, and sale. Love it!

Target: $2.05 for all this...pretty much ready for Thanksgiving items!

Albies, again. Doublers run. Not sure of exact but around $5 for all, including a few things we just needed like bouillon and the bags (Hefty one zip were gone and would have been free, but these were a dollar each). Bisquick was $0.50 for the big box (like to do scratch but these are nice for quick biscuits or rare occasions), Michelina dinners were $0.10 each (got 10) for dad's lunches, Tree Top and Swiss Miss were both free! The soup was $0.19 after doubles.

Got it made in the shade

Watch out teen-years! Are we ever in trouble with this one;) Well, with both of them for that matter!

Big Trees, Many Leaves

Daniel has raked, mowed and blown (plus several times by my dad) countless times already. Thankfully we have BIG helpers.

Don't be deceived, these are lean mean working-machines.

Menu Plan week of Nov. 15th, 2010

Here's what we'll be eating this week:

Breakfasts: scrambled eggs, oatmeal, maybe a triple batch of chocolate chip pumpkin muffins (we go through a double batch in 2 days and I want some to freeze! The pumpkins are in the crockpot right now:)

Oh and be on the lookout for a 30 day menu plan soon, especially for my friend Cindy:) I will probably use a lot of turkey in the plan because I will be starting it beginning right at thanksgiving! So get those $0.29/lb birds now!!

Lunches/snacks: leftovers, sandwiches, soup/salad (for me;)

Dinners:


Monday: Split Pea Soup(in the other crockpot right now!), Leftover salad (from church lunch), and cheesy biscuits

Tuesday: Spinach Cheese Frittata with leftover salad and biscuits from monday

Wednesday: Roast in the crockpot, with potatoes and carrots (for my parents' dinner w/friends that they will be hosting

Thursday: Taco Soup, Pumpkin Soup, peasant bread and a big spinach salad with feta and apples for my mom's prayer group

Friday: Enchiladas, brown rice, corn and cooked spinach

Saturday: Homemade Mac N Cheese, turkey sausage, green beens

Sunday: Grilled Cheese, Nachos, leftovers...pretty much whatever is fast, easy and gets the job done since today will be busy with church meetings and such.

What's on your menu this week?

Sunshine Farms Fun

My mom was MOST AWESOME and wrote a note to Sunshine Farms after a bad experience there this summer. And Sunshine Farms was also awesome a replied with a very comprehensive letter about how they were going to try to fix the things that went wrong with our experience and ALSO sent us a $50 gift certificate to spend there in hopes that our next experience would be much better. Today, if definitely was. We had great service and got $50 worth of great stuff for free:) Plus we visited the goats. What's not to love?

Free and Almost free groceries at Albies

Albertson's was good to us this week. The food in both pictures cost less than $2 total!

Cute M girl was not included in the totals:)

Free 100% juice and veggies...can't beat that!

Washing Sissie's hair

Shockingly, Liv was very willing to have her hair "washed" by sister.

Close yers eyes!

Lean yers head back!

Good job!

Diaper Deal at TOP Foods

TOP Foods Diaper Deal (just started today...you still have time!) $31. Spend $25 (or multiples of) and save $10 instantly for each increment of $25! Here are the details, thanks to Coupon Connections NW!

8 packs of diapers and one large wipes and generic bum-paste for $31! Just in the nick of time...we're out of wipes and diaper cream. Not a good thing. Especially when the little bro has to do his very first diaper change (poo) in the Mickey-Dee's w/no real wipes. I call that a white-trash diaper change (using wet TP:).

Oh and to add excitement to my diaper run...the power went out in the store just as I went to check out. I didn't get a normal receipt so if there were mistakes I will never know. But I figure it works out to around $3 an item so I can't complain there:)

Grinning in the bathroom

Not sure what the draw is but these girls LOVE to hang in the bathroom these days. M has recently gotten into some trouble for unrolling entire rolls of TP and washing her hands (w/soap) for 15 minutes on end. Liv just loves to brush her teeth.

Both sitting on the coveted stool here. And pretending to be happy about sharing:)

Menu Plan

Here's what we'll be eating this week:

Breakfasts: scrambled eggs, oatmeal buttermilk chocolate chip muffins (made these this morning...sooo good w/ mods of whole wheat flour and 3/4 c. mini choc chips! Breakfast Casserole (this is made up in the fridge for tomorrow morning!)

Lunches/snacks: leftovers, sandwiches, soup/salad (for me;)

Dinners:


Monday: Italian pasta bake w/ squash (this version wasn't a big hit...not enough liquid!)

Tuesday: Clean out the fridge too many leftovers! I also picked up a marked-down caesar salad kit on our walk today which we'll have tonight

Wednesday: Chicken and Potatoes in Crockpot (carrots and onions too!)

Thursday: Homemade chicken noodle soup, peasant bread

Friday: Anniversary dinner out, I'll probably leave a lasagne or chicken tetrazinni in the fridge for the parents/kids

Saturday: On the road to Spokane for the Moody Missions Conference!

Sunday: In spokane, hopefully a meal w/friends if not we'll be eating pizza somewhere!

What's on your menu this week?

Loves me some grocery bargains: Albies & Wal-Mart

While I do not love Wal-Mart, it came in handy today when I needed a lot of staples (sugar, rice, eggs, beans etc.) that didn't have coupons or sales at most other stores this week. Plus running around to bargain hunt isn't my idea of a good time when pregnant and toting toddlers! So Albies had to fulfill all the bargain hunting I wanted to do and Wal-Mart filled in the rest:)

And here's what we'll be eating this week:

At Wal-Mart I spent about $22:

A freebie: 4 bottles of Gain dish liquid
Cheap: cream of mushroom soup $0.30 after coupon and sale
Ritz Munchables $0.98 after coupon (we've been out of crackers for awhile and hubby was going through withdrawls!)

At Albertson's I spent about $26 in two transactions.

Free: bananas (nilla wafers peelie), corn tortillas, Capn' Crunch cereal
Nestle Halloween theme cookie dough.
Cheap: Wheat Thins (like I said, we were out and this deal was good enough!)
Jenni-O Turkey Sausages (marked down $3 to just over $1 each!) ground pork for $1.50, olive oil for $2 (after other doubles overage?), Juicy Juicy for $1!

Snag any great bargains this week?