If you are a Walmart employee you should avoid using the f-word in regular conversations at work. Especially with customers. Especially in the children’s section.

If you are a mother in line at Subway and your child tells another mom in line that her kids are cute, you should avoid screaming at your child, calling her an embarrassment, and sending her to wait in the car for an extended period of time without the keys to turn on the air conditioning. Especially on days in June when it is 103 degrees inside of cars.

This lesson has been brought to you by Miss Manners.

My mind is still reeling with things I should have done/said when we ran into these people today.

Sheesh.

It’s a miracle. My garden has officially survived for almost 2 months!

This is the first time in the history of my adult life that something I’ve planted has lived.

Although I know it is about 0% me and 100% the week straight of rain followed by the week of 90+ degree sun, we are actually starting to see fruit! Also, apparently the secret is raised garden beds. (and not living in Florida anymore)

So far I have 7 little baby green tomatoes poking through, quite a few blueberries, and a few peppers starting to flower.

This little guy won’t be seeing fruit for a few years, though.

A friend of mine asked me recently how I find time to garden, blog, serve at church, etc. with two toddlers. Umm…I let my kids run around in their underwear and play with sharp objects?

True story.

Sorry I’ve been MIA for a while. We have some exciting family news I’ll be ready to share with you in a few weeks, but until then please bear with me.

In the meantime, we have started renovating our second bathroom. YAY! Actually the demolition part of the renovation took place back in January, but then got put on hold while Eddie prepared to take his Professional Engineering exam, which he passed, ya-hooo! So our family of 4 with two potty training toddlers has been using one bathroom for five months. It hasn’t been as bad as I feared, but I’m still excited that the end is in sight.

Brace yourself, what I’m about to show you might be the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but it was actually one of the main reasons we bought our house. You see, when we were house hunting most of the houses in our price range only had one bathroom, but this one has 1.5. That was a huge selling point for me. Although the half bath looked like this:

The 70’s called, they do not want their bathroom back. Yes, that is 40+ year old brown shag carpet you see. And fake laminate paneling. The yellow “stripes?” That would be plywood streaked with glue. My guess is that at one point in time there was some very groovy wallpaper attached, but not so anymore. Just lovely exposed glue.

Also, this space was not insulated, there was no electrical outlet, and spiders constantly were getting in because it’s sandwiched between our garage and the crawl space under our front porch, neither of which were properly sealed or insulated either.

I’m claiming the title for worst bathroom ever, unless one of you thinks you can beat me. If so, please share!

The new walls and floors are finished, but there is still A LOT of work to be done hanging trim, re-installing fixtures, etc. I can’t wait to reveal the after pics to you guys, hopefully really soon!

One of my more popular posts was about family Meal Planning. I was going to write an ebook on the subject and offer it for free here on the blog, but I don’t actually know how to publish an ebook and it would only be like 9 pages anyway, so I decided to just offer it here in an extra-long post. I hope some of you find this info helpful! Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you do to get started. Many of these ideas came from a homemaking author named Donna Otto who wrote a lot of books in the 90’s. You can get her books on Amazon. I’m going to use a baseline of a $100 budget to feed a family of 4, which works out to be less than $5 per meal, about $1.20 per person, and includes main dishes, fruits, vegetables, and drinks. Try doing that with the $1 menu at McDonald’s!

Part 1: Stocking Up

You probably already have most of the basics in your pantry and refrigerator. I’m talking about salt, pepper and other spices, condiments, flour, sugar, etc. If you do not have these basics yet, you will need to purchase them before you can start long-term meal planning for your family.

You can either make a separate grocery trip and spend about $100 stocking up, or you can add an extra $10 or so to your grocery budget for the first few weeks. Either way, you will want to make sure that at a minimum, your pantry and refrigerator are stocked with the following items:

Spices:

Salt, pepper, Italian Seasoning, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Garlic Powder, SeasonAll, Old Bay

Pantry:

Flour, Sugar, Brown Sugar, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Corn Starch, Pancake Syrup, Vegetable Oil, Cocoa Powder (I prefer a mix like Nesquick that can be used to make chocolate milk, but also used in making icings, etc) Peanut Butter, Bisquick, Vinegar

Refrigerator:

Mayonnaise, Ketchup, Mustard, Relish, Pickles, Worcestershire sauce, your favorite salad dressing, jelly, butter

As you are able to afford, add additional spices like oregano, basil, thyme, paprika, etc. to your spice cabinet. Do not purchase exotic spices or ones that you hardly ever use unless and until they are called for. Spices are expensive and it does not make sense to waste money on spices that sit in your cabinet, unused until they expire and must be thrown out.

Adjust your list to fit your needs. If you love rosemary, but can’t stand ketchup, obviously your list of basics will look a bit different than the one above.

Once you have these things in stock, it is much easier to throw together a quick meal. Of course, there are other things, like milk and bread, that you should always keep in stock. Those kind of basics will be included in the weekly grocery budgets and meal plans that I will share with you, but since we are talking about stocking up, we will discuss them here as well. Of course you can also stock up on things like frozen vegetables as you find them on sale.

Here is a grocery list that is already filled out with the basic items that most of us like to have on hand. I find that most of the time I tend to buy the same basic ingredients over and over again and just re-work them from one week to the next. (Ground beef might be sloppy joes this week, meatloaf next week, and tacos the week after that.)Just print out the list and circle the items you plan to purchase this week. You can even laminate it and circle the items in a dry erase marker. It will save you a lot of time re-writing your lists.

Grocery List

Produce:

LettuceCeleryPineappleBeets Broccoli

TomatoesStrawberriesApplesBagged SaladOther:

OnionsBlueberriesOranges Asparagus

PotatoesBananasCarrotsCorn

Sweet PotatoesSpinachGarlicPeas

Starches:

CerealOatmealBagels StuffingTortillasMac & Cheese

BreadRolls RiceInstant Potatoes

Meat:

Ground BeefChickenFishSteakHamPorkSausageBaconTurkeyLunch meat

Dairy:

MilkCreamYogurtCheese slicesShredded CheeseCream CheeseRicotta Cheese

Miscellaneous:

Eggs

Soup

Juice

Soda

Pretzels

Chips

Other:

Part 2: Walking Through a Week

I recommend doing your meal planning on Sundays because that’s the day coupons come in the paper and it’s also the day stores are restocking for the upcoming week. At some point during the day on Sunday, I like to sit down with a chart like this one. It’s very easy to make a chart like this in Mocrosoft Word. I usually order our groceries online Sunday evening and pick them up on Monday while Nicholas is at preschool. It’s a cool service that our store offers for an extra fee of $4.95.

In our family, like most others, we tend to always go back to a few staples: cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, grilled cheese and soup at lunch time, and dinners made from the same basic ingredients week after week. In order to keep things from being too repetitious, I try to vary the type of cereal, or cut up fruit to go with it. Maybe I’ll throw a few chocolate chips, nuts, or blueberries in the oatmeal. As much as I would like to be able to say that I’m frying eggs and flipping pancakes every morning, that’s just not our reality and I don’t think it’s the reality for most families in America. I will include a few affordable homemade breakfast and lunch ideas in my plans, but I also want to be realistic. My experience as a mom tells me that there will probably be more Poptart mornings than there will be homemade smoothie ones, but that’s one of the great things about meal planning; when you prepare ahead of time it is just as easy and affordable to take homemade blueberry pancakes out of the freezer than it is to buy processed, pre-frozen waffles.

I’d like to walk you through how I go about planning our family meals. I start with an empty chart and fill in one meal at a time for the entire week. I start with breakfast and plan out the entire week. Remember, it is ok to repeat meals. If you buy an entire box of cereal you should use it for more than one meal.Maybe your chart will start off looking something like this:

As I fill out the chart, I will add the items I need for each meal to my grocery list. I also like to write an estimated cost next to each item to make sure I stay on budget. At this point my grocery list would look something like this:

Cereal: $3

Bananas: $1.50

Oatmeal: $3.50

Blueberries: $3

Eggs: $3 (2 dozen)

Milk: $6 (2 gallons)

Juice: $4

Bread: $4.50 (2 loaves)

Cheese: $4

Bisquick: $3

Right now the total would be at $35.50, which might seem like a lot for breakfast, but keep in mind that some of those items, like the bread and cheese, will be used in other meals throughout the week as well.

Then I’ll skip down to dinner. The reason for this is that we will sometimes eat our dinner leftovers for lunch the next day, and I will include that in my plan when I write down the lunches.

I always include at least one free space in the week for flexibility. We might decide to order a pizza or meet friends for dinner, those things would cost money, but I would consider that part of our entertainment budget. Maybe we get invited to the grandparent’s house or maybe we will just use up some left-overs on that night. I find that including one free space for dinner actually saves us money because I’m not buying extra food to fill up that space, it makes us use up left-overs, and when we are invited out, we aren’t throwing away food that went to waste because we didn’t get around to cooking it before it went bad.

After planning those dinners, I would need to add the following items to my store list:

Ground beef $4

Frozen Corn: $2

BBQ Sauce: $2

Chicken drumsticks $3

Frozen Broccoli $1

Spaghetti $1.50

Pasta Sauce $3

Hot Dogs $4

Rolls $3

Tea bags $3

This adds another $29.50, which brings my total up to $62. I could buy refrigerated pizza crust, but I am planning to make the pizza crust, waffles, and pancakes out of the Bisquick. Buying tea bags and making my own iced tea will save money because I can but a box of tea bags for about the same price as a gallon of ready-made tea, but the box of tea bags will make several gallons.

Next, I will take inventory of what I already have on my list and what I am planning to make for dinners and start to fill out the lunch category. This allows me to utilize what I already have and buy as little as possible

We like to go to Little Caesars and get a $5 pizza on Sundays for lunch after church, so I use that as my free lunch space. In order to round out my grocery list for this menu, I would need to add:

4 cans of soup: $6

Lunch meat: $4

1 family sized box of Mac & cheese $3

This brings my total so far to $75, although I could probably get it lower with coupons or a store loyalty card. That leaves me an extra $25 in my budget. I would spend $13 on snacks for the week, like carrot sticks, apples, pretzels, and popcorn. The rest I would either save and put toward a pizza night or spend on stocking up on my staples, like making sure I will have PB&J for next week’s lunches or buying extras of whatever was on sale this week to keep in the freezer.

Now that you’ve done all that work, save the meal plan and grocery list for that week. You really only need to do this about 8 times, then you can just rotate the plans. Your family will never remember that they ate this same food in a similar pattern two months ago.

Next week when I start to make my chart, I will take notice of what I have left-over from this week, like the extra oatmeal, and fill out those meals first so that I save as much money as possible.

Do you have any other meal planning tips and tricks to share?

I have a secret. Actually, it’s not a secret at all.

I have a slight addiction to children’s books.

I’m trying to get it organized, if not under control.

This is what our basement floor looks like at the moment.

There are 14 of these bins organized by category, like historical fiction, biographies, Newbery Award winners, etc.

and there are 3 more of these storage tubs filled to the brim with special books that I don’t want my little ones getting into because they are autographed, out of print, valuable, or they go with a specific classroom lesson and I’m keeping the materials together, despite the fact that I have no plans to return to the classroom anytime in the foreseeable future.

These are only the books that are out of season, or that I have multiples of (yes, I buy multiples on purpose because who knows when a stay at home mom might need to break into a spontaneous reading group with a bunch of imaginary third graders? When Nicholas’ preschool has the scholastic sale every month I always buy multiples of the well known authors that are in the $1 section.) or are too advanced for my own kids.

That doesn’t count any of the books that we are currently reading regularly. (There are at least 75 in my living room right now, I’m quite sure)…

Or any of the ones we have set aside for our upcoming yard sale….

Or any of the ones that I took to church when I started the children’s book exchange for our mom’s group earlier this year (and filled up an entire 8 foot tall bookshelf by myself!)…

It also didn’t stop me from buying three more today. But seriously? Who can pass up brand new books for 39 cents?

I totally justify this collection to myself by saying that it I ever do go back to the classroom most of them will go with me, and I never spend more than $25 in a month on books. (but I can stretch that far, believe me) and they will really come in handy if we decide to home school. (which I have no intention of doing) Plus I’m pretty sure that all this reading is the reason the pediatrician says Abby is a year ahead of schedule in terms of her verbal development.

Yes, I confess, I am a total hoarder of children’s books. Do you have a collection that has taken on a life of its own?