Pretzels!

Today was one of those days where I had to eat everything! I was desperate for pretzels and we live in the middle of nowhere, which means I had to make them! They're super easy to make, so I got right to it! Here's the recipe! 

(Notice I tried many shapes before deciding to just make pieces!)

Ingredients
- 1 packet of Active Yeast
- 1 3/4 cups warm water
- 4 cups flour
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 TBS baking soda
- melted butter for brushing
- sea salt

1. Put the yeast in 1/4 cup water until it is bubbly
2. Mix the yeast, remaining water, flour, and brown sugar. After it is mixed cover the bowl with a warm wet towel for 30 minutes.
3. Heat the oven to 475 and boil water with 1 TBS baking soda
4. Roll the dough into strips and cut them into 1 inch sections, then place each piece in the boiling water for 10-15 seconds.
5. Place the pieces on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and brush on melted butter, sprinkle sea salt on the pieces and bake for approximately 12 minutes. 

ENJOY!

Sadly, the pretzels are already gone =/  But, they're so easy I may make more tomorrow =)

S

Get rid of my things!?!

  Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm a hoarder....Over the past few weeks I've really been trying to get myself organized and that means letting go! I've always had a funny thing when it comes to getting rid of things others have given me, this means I have everything! For the first time ever I have felt okay about purging my closet, including things that were gifts! Well, so far so good! I gave some things to others, gave some to the trash can and sent some other items to ThredUp. I'm waiting to see how many items they accepted, I sent 21 items, so we'll see how it goes. I hope to be able to clean out and let go of many more things over the next few weeks and prep for a yard sale.

  I highly recommend ordering a ThredUp bag and sending some stuff away! I haven't purchased things from there, but the do seemed to be reasonably priced.

Meal Planning for A MONTH!

   Well, it's been a bit since I've blogged! I've planned on doing it many times, but it just doesn't seem to happen :/ Life with two boys is going great! I can't believe my little is 10 weeks now! It seems crazy! He's a big dude still, weighing in at 17lbs.

   I have to admit that I have cut back on doing certain things, like crochet and knitting, I still do it, but aside from a few orders here and there, I've just been doing things for myself and my family. It's pretty nice actually. I've started the insanity workout (13lbs of baby weight to go) and been working on doing a lesson plan for Monday-Friday for my mini-me, meal planning for a month at a time and keeping track of our budget more. Meal planning for the month and budgeting go hand in hand. In our house we have individual budgets for every member of the house separate from our general and grocery spending. I'm attempting to be smarter with that and already started Christmas shopping from Mr.M's budget.

   Budgeting is becoming more important for us! I've realized that we buy whatever we want whenever we want it and that's a bad habit, it also makes it super difficult to buy for us during holiday times. We also need to work on saving for our vacation, weekend trips, and new house that we hope to start building by the end of the year.

   On that note, the budget that we seem to have the most difficulty with is the GROCERY budget. It seems like we set it and then ignored it! In March I tried just tracking our spending and did my usual weekly meal planning and it seemed to be okay, until the last week when we went over by $80.

   This month I took a new approach and tried planning for the whole month. The first thing I did was pantry cook! The last week in March I knew that we would go way over if we didn't, I also knew our cabinets were full and it still seemed like we had nothing to eat. I cleaned out the cabinets first, I was surprised by how many things had actually expired! Those items hit the trash, then I assessed what we had and planned our meals accordingly, only getting what was necessary, sadly we still needed many things because I hosted Easter dinner.

  The last Friday night in March I worked on planning out meals for HOURS. I started with my go to meals-  sweet potato shepherds pie, healthy turkey meatloaf, pork chops, spaghetti squash with roasted vegetables, Greek chicken and whole roasted chicken... I decided we couldn't have each meal more than twice a month. I then decided that we would have one left over night a week, we've never been good at eating left overs and it seemed like an obvious way to save money, we also kept with one meatless night a week, and making a dessert as our fun activity on Thursdays. The I searched for the new things I wanted to try.

  Once I figured out EVERYTHING I was going to make I figured out what things I would need for multiple meals, ie. Chicken breasts, ground turkey, yeast and then all other things that could be bought in bulk, paper towels, water, formula (I already have diapers and wipes on recurring order on Amazon.com) I made a bulk grocery list and then the list for everything else we needed just for that week. Our in bulk shopping trip came to $350 (including formula) and our week trip $150.

  I then decided I needed to color code things to give myself a heads up on certain days, like crock pot days.

Pink was for regular  meals

Green was a pre-made frozen meal

Yellow for left overs and Eat out days

Blue for Crock pot

and Orange was for desserts

Our breakfast and lunch menu is pretty basic and revolves around 3 standards. We have completed 21 days on this plan and have stuck to it! We also finished our last shopping trip for the month! After the first week we spent another $400, bringing our total to $900 for the month before diapers and eating out...in the end we have finished $20 below budget! That's the best we've ever done! 

I wasn't super prepared to blog about it this month, so my goal for May is to blog about it while planning and give details on planning, with meals, recipes, and lists. 

I highly recommend planning for the entire month of May this week!

HadABabyIt'sABoy! ;)

I FINALLY had Mr.R! I was induced at 41weeks. They started at 2:30p and stopped my pitocin around 1:30a when I was having too many contractions in five minute intervals. Within minutes of stopping I started having some painful contractions and back labor (AGAIN) I stood to lean over the counter and boom my water broke, which was a ton due to the polyhydramnios. I started throwing up and out started to come my beautiful big boy! A couple seconds later they told me only half pushes and there he was! Mr.R came into the world (MED FREE) at 3:08am on Feb 7th! Weighing in at 10.1lbs and 21 1/2inches! It was easy compared to my last labor, but to make it eventful I hemmorhaged after, which was more scary than anything...they said that it wasn't that uncommon in people with large babies, my uterus was distended which caused it. They said Mr.R was the largest baby born at the hospital this yr and that my uterus was large enough for twins, between baby and fluid.
ANYWHOOOO... He is wonderful and sleeps allllll the time. His brother is doing surprisingly well and has even decided on HIS OWN that it is time to be potty trained =)

Yay! TIME FOR BED =)

40 weeks....

Yep, still pregnant! I had an appointment last week and an ultrasound. At the ultrasound they discovered I have developed Polyhydramnios, which I had never heard of! I guess I have too much amniotic fluid, if you google it you will panic and have nightmares! They think it's possible I had it last pregnancy too, considering I left the hospital 26lbs lighter and lost the whole 72lbs in four months. As a result I have to go on the monitor twice a week =/ At the ultrasound he already weighed at least 8.4lbs, they guess by now he weighs over 9lbs (my first weighed 9.10lbs).

Yesterday I noticed my legs are turning purple...I've been checked for preclampsia and re-checked for gestational diabetes, both a negative! So they have decided that the baby is large and on my spine cutting off my circulation. =( I have also started to develop PUPPPS again boooo....

I can't wait for him to come out. 4 pineapples, 3 cups red raspberry lea tea, 2 membrane sweepings,  and 1 tablespoon castor oil and  I AM STILL PREGNANT! I have my induction scheduled for February 6th! They guess by then he could be over 10lbs, I was hoping to push out a smaller guy, but it doesn't look like that will happen.

Well today I'm just whining.....sorry!

On a more hopeful note! We have been freezer cooking and we have saved so much money in such a short time! We are under budget! The other super exciting note is that we signed up for a CSA! I'm super excited about it! We found one that really meets all of our needs and leaves us with a ton of options. If someone is looking to join one I highly recommend researching a few. There were a few closer to us, but they just did not meet our needs. I can't wait until we can take advantage of it!

Hopefully I'll be back with something much more fun and interesting soon!

Meal Planning

Hello! As I mentioned in my last post I really wanted to get better at meal planning and doing freezer meals, I'm starting my second week and it seems to be a success! Being almost 39 weeks this also seemed like the logical thing to do.
Last Sunday I spent about 2 1/2 hours preparing/cooking meals, it seemed like a long time and I made a huge mess, but it was worth it. I have found that by having things prepped and frozen hardly anything gets tossed, like fruits and veggies. They are all used and frozen.

So... to get ready I spent my Saturday night picking meals and making a list. My husband went and did the shopping by himself the next morning =) Our grocery total was $199 for EVERYTHING, including paper products. My meal list consisted of:

-Chicken won tons
-Super healthy turkey meatloaf
-Pot Roast
-Spicy tomato soup
-Crock pot BBQ beef

I made the BBQ beef on Monday, super easy, I followed the instructions exactly. It was delicious! We had a ton left, we ended up having left overs on Wednesday with sweet potatoes cooked in the microwave and veggies =) Easy enough! We had so much left that we even sent some home with my parents.
Tuesday I made the chicken won tons and salad. they were easy because I had already cooked and shredded the chicken and just had to put together/fry the won tons. Thursday we took out the tomato soup, when making/ freezing this put everything together EXCEPT the pastina, put that in we re-heating or you end up with mush, tasty mush, but mush =/

My son went to my mom's for the night on Friday so on the way home from shopping my husband picked up  Burger King...oops! We finished the week with TWO meals still frozen! I just added them to this week!

For the Pot Roast I just put it in a freezer bag with cut veggies (carrots, celery, onions) a can of cream of mushroom soup and french onion soup mix. It's all frozen and will just need to hit the fridge the night before to thaw enough and head to the crock pot the next morning!
The meat loaf is the same, fridge night before and then head to the oven when we need it.

For this week I knew I had two meals to start, so I picked 3 dinners and 1 breakfast our list was smaller than last week, even with detergents and fresh fruit/veggies and milks, the bill came to $169....wayyyyy better than our usual $300ish a week!

Our meals this week will be:

- Baked Ziti
-chimichangas
- Corn casserole

Everything we make is changed to be lactose intolerant friendly! So everything I pick can be changed easily. For the baked ziti follow the directions up to the point of baking and just stick it in the freezer. Try not to use glass containers when freezing things, they could expand and you would have a big mess! Ceramic and throw away containers are best (cheapest at Walmart). The chimichanga recipe gives directions to freeze, they are great!

In trying this freezer cooking things I have picked things I liked and altered them to work for freezing, so many of these recipes have been taken from others, links to the original sites are attached. There are some things that can't or shouldn't be frozen. Things like uncooked potatoes, rice/pasta, and raw eggs...they just become yuck! If you decide to try this be prepared for a big mess! It is kinda nice to clean up only once a week though!

Good Luck! Have fun saving time and money!
S

Busy, busy, busy...

(written 1/12/13)
Welcome 2013! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

Sorry it's been so long since I've been on but we've been pretty busy. Mr.M has been super sick and now I have caught it =/ I'm also 37w 4d pregnant! The final countdown is on! We had some unexpected things happen things week, like a last minute appraisal on our house, snow falling off our roof onto my car and crushing the hood, running out of propane(our fault), but we're moving forward.

I'm trying to finish up orders for Two Mama Owls and working on some new things! I've spent time working on some things for just us too! I still have unfinished projects that I will need help from my father to complete. Mr.R's room is done, well it needs blinds put in, but other than that DONE! A lovely train room for the new guy! I even made some no sew valances for the room.

Today we are trying to catch up on all the LAUNDRY!! Mr.M was sick on what seems like almost everything we own, he's sleeping beside me on the couch at the moment. Thinking of all the laundry got me thinking about how to save some money on laundry and I'm considering an indoor laundry line...thinking about this also made me think about composting (AGAIN) and going back to meal planning. Meal planning went out the window during the end of this pregnancy =/ We were doing pretty well before and saving some money, but starting the store and being pregnant derailed me from couponing and meal planning. I really need to find a way to get back into it, even with the new little guy. We hope to make some changes in the future which we really should save some money for! Soooo I am just now making my resolution, 12 days late, but who cares...I need to find ways to save money in ways that we don't feel it (I'm not good about just not spending =/ )

So I guess my top attempts at saving money will be:
 - Find cheaper high quality pellets (DONE!)
 - Start drying laundry on an indoor line when it's too cold to put it out
 - compost
 - meal plan and coupon


That's all my chatter for now! My husband should be back soon so hopefully I can get some sewing done for the store!

S