I missed posting yesterday.....sorry about that

Hi all. Well, it is day three of our no spend month, and I missed my day two post. I have a good excuse, I promise. I have been super sick with the flu, and it got the best of me this weekend. I am in bed, awake and ready to keep typing so here we go.

I am going to try and start posting pics this next week of the meals we are making. Our phones have decent cameras, so it should be a snap.

Yesterday, the family stayed home again. I was preoccupied trying to get treated for this flu of mine, but being housebound has helped with the temtation of spending for sure!

For breakfast yesterday, the kids decided on cheese toast, bananas, and milk for breakfast. Bananas go fast in this house, so it is a great thing they are so cheap, so it shouldn't be a budget kill for me. I have two loaves of bread here in the house, but have a feeling that will also need replenishing soon.

For lunch, we (or my husband, lol) decided on grilled ham and cheese sandwich mini's, canned peaches in their own juices (I don't do syrup) and actifry potato chips with some yukon gold's we have in the pantry. I have some black forest ham lunch meat I got at SAM's this month, with a darn good shelf life. It tastes just like deli ham, which is hard to do and is low in sodium, even better. I have a half package of sandwich mini's left, but the kids love them and they are whole grain. We have a decent amount of cheese. All my cheese in the frig is cheddar, I quit buying Kraft Singles when my kids told me they preferred the real cheese's.

The actifry is a machine that fry's food with 1tablespoon of oil. It doens't actually fry, but the end result is like frying. We didn't go out and buy this machine, Robert has it as part of his job with an agency, where he does product knowledge demonstrations. This is one of the perks, and it is a nice $300 machine I know I can't afford, so I am all for using it while we have it! You might hear me talking about it more and more, since I can cook so much in it!

For dinner last night, the kids had a frozen pizza that was in the deep freezer and made it a movie night. Things were a little nuts from me being sick, but they all made the best of it. They also finished off a 2 liter sprite open from Christmas, as a special treat. I was glad that got used since I am notorious for letting soda get poured out after sitting and sitting.

So, my next challenge......today is Sunday......I need a paper.

Happy New Year!

Well, I haven't posted in about 3 weeks, since I made the choice to start doing things different. I have spent them planning on how we would do this, since I seem to only function on a game plan with 5.8 kids. Today, 1/1/10 marks the start of our "nospend" month. In addition to that, we are taking part in a pantry challenge. What does this mean, you ask? Well, here are our rules and how we are incorporating it into our monthly goals!

The Master Plan:

1. Spend nothing extra for January.
2. $20 allowance a week for milk, fruit, veggies, bread (family of seven, 2 adults 5 kids)
3. Make all meals from what we have on hand in our pantry, freezer and deep freezer
4. Take all overage for the month and put it into an interest bearing savings account.
5. No trips to SBUX, the corner store, fast food, etc on our dime. (if the inlaws or friends bring over something that is not part of it , but we are not asking for anyone to bring us anything)
6. Cover all bills upfront for the month, and find more family centered activities for fun.
7. Have enough of a slush fund in case I go into labor (big possibility) this month so we can be prepared for hospital parking, etc...
8. Put aside enough for my parking expenses at the doc office each week. ($5-10 a week)


I will post here as often as I can with our meals for the day, what I used, challenges I am running into (there WILL be challenges) and hurdles I must overcome(there will be some of those also).

Ok. So, now onto the pantry. The pics you see up above are my freezer, deep freezer, pantry and chrome rack. WARNING: My stockpile is large. If we still have a large stockpile at the end of the month, we will continue this challenge starting 2/1/10.

Today's meals:

Today is and was lazy day in our home. We have a few sick kids, I am sick, Robert is sick. It just sucks. So, for breakfast, the kids had cereal (which we have a ton of) and milk with carnation instant breakfast. For lunch, they just had a sandwich thin with peanut butter and jelly. Easy enough. They had apple juice with it. Dinner is another story. I pan seared warm cabbage with vinegar and sugar and some salt / pepper, did crock pot black eyed peas with fresh cilantro and tomatoes, cornbread (gotta love jiffy) and I am about to make some Turkey pastrami flautas with white corn tortillas, a thin layer of cream cheese, a slice of turkey pastrami, pan baked instead of fried until crispy.

So here is the breakdown:

Breakfast: Cereal and Chocolate Milk

Lunch: Sandwich thin with PB & J, apple juice and carrots

Dinner: Cornbread, Cabbage, Black eye peas, turkey pastrami flautas

That is day one. We haven't left the house all day. We are packing up some stuff for purple heart and organizing gifts, finding them all a home.

See ya tomorrow! Happy 2010!