Menu Plan Monday-UPDATED!

Here is our menu plan for this week. I have been working very hard to stick to the plan and stay under budget for our groceries this past month. We have been having at least one meatless meal per week to cut down on cost. This week we are having 2 meatless meals. Poor Brian;) I have had a couple of people tell me they wish I would post recipes. I am going to start trying to get them posted so I can just link to them when I make my menu plans each week. For more on menu planning and lots of great recipe links head over to orgjunkie.com
Have a blessed week!


Sunday, May 31st-
Lunch-BLTs, pears, cottage cheese
Supper-Leftovers or PB & Js

Monday, June 1st-
Pasta with Fresh Tomato-Basil Sauce
tossed salad
homemade french bread

Tuesday, June 2nd-
Chicken and Rice
Green Beans
Pears

Wednesday, June 3rd-
Chicken Tortilla soup
Apple sauce

Thursday, June 4th-
Poppyseed Chicken
broccoli
peaches

Friday, June 5th-
camping at Gold Head! Grilled Quesadillas
Chips and salsa
smores

Saturday, June 6th-
Lunch-Picnic at Gold Head State Park after hike
Dinner-Macaroni and Tomatoes with Cheese
Pinto Beans
corn bread

Menu Plan Monday

This is a very off week for our family! The first part of the week, we are out of town and the middle part of the week, my sister is town. I imagine we will be spending much of our time at my mom and dad's house visiting. I was tempted to not do a menu plan for this week, but really wanted to stay in the habit and remain disciplined! So, here is our tentative menu for this week!

Monday, May 25th-
out of town

Tuesday, May 26th-
traveling/dinner at mom and dad's?

Wednesday, May 27th-
AWANA awards at church!
Tuna sandwiches/PB & Js, macaroni salad

Thursday, May 28th-
last night with Ashley-dinner at mom and dad's?

Friday, May 29th-
homemade pizza night!

Saturday, May 30th-
grilled chicken quesadillas
refried black beans
strawberry-lime slushes

Sunday, May 31st-
BLTs
carrot, cucumber, pepper stix

Gratituesday

I love sunny, warm weather. I love playing outside with my kids from morning until evening. I love tank-tops and sundresses, flip-flops and sunglasses. I love hot, humid Florida heat. But, today, I am thankful for the chilly and drizzly weather we have had for the past 2 days. Why? Well, our little lawn and garden was getting pretty thirsty! And, today, the girls and I will spend our time baking and learning and laughing inside of our cozy, warm and dry house-what a blessing! Now, don't get me wrong-the kids do go a little "stir crazy" after being cooped up inside all day. And, I will be very thankful when this wet weather passes and we can play outside again. But, for now, I am thanking God for the gift of rain.

join Laura at Heavenly Homemakers for more gratituesday!

Brian and Emily's camping-date mini-adventure!

A couple of weekends ago, Brian and I had our first over-night "date" since before we had children 5 years ago. As I blogged about here, we don't go out for dates very often. But, when we do go out, we do it in our own unique style. One of the things that brought us together to begin with was a love for music. Over the years, we have been to quite a few great concerts and Brian has a talent for scoring us awesome seats. When Brian found out that James Taylor was coming to one of our all-time favorite venues, The St. Augustine Amphitheater, he knew we had to go. I grew up listening to JT. My dad is one of JT's biggest fans and he raised me with a love and respect for that music and message. So, one of my favorite musicians at one of my favorite venues for concerts and camping...it was the perfect get-away for us! On Friday afternoon we packed up our tent and headed to Anastasia State Park. We set up camp, relaxed for a while and then walked to the amphitheater for the 8 o'clock show. The show was great! The weather was perfect, our seats were awesome, as always. JT was...amazing. He played a couple of nice, long sets. After the show, we walked back to our camp site and sat around our little fire. We ate smores and talked-without kids interupting! The next morning we got up and went down to the beach for a while. I love being at the beach early in the morning! After we packed up camp, we drove around St. Augustine for a little while looking at old houses and then went and had lunch at Mango Mangos...so yummy! After lunch, we headed home. It was wonderful, but I missed my babies and was refreshed and happy to see them when we got to my mom and dad's house to pick them up. It was a great little adventure with my favorite guy!

A Star is Born

Last Sunday night, a star was born. Several stars, actually. Our children's choir at church, the KPs, helped lead in worship for a very special Mother's Day service. They did a fantastic job! I have been so blessed to be a leader in KPs this year. These kids worked very hard to prepare for this service and their hard work really payed off! I, as a mama, was especially proud of my own little KP. Hadley made her official solo debut. (her unofficial solo debut took place in June of 2006 when she sang her rendition of 'Old McDonald' at a most inappropriate time-my sister's wedding ceremony!) Hadley loves to sing and is most certainly not even a little bit shy about being onstage! The service went great. It was a Mother's Day I will never forget:)

To see a video clip of Hadley singing her solo, click here

Swagbucks

Have you ever heard of swagbucks?

If you are like me, you "google" things every day. Any time I wonder about anything, I go "google" it. Well, swagbucks is a search engine that is powered by google. Instead of going to google.com, I go to swagbucks.com and search just the same way I would at google. But, at swagbucks, I earn points, or bucks, that can be traded in for all sorts of prizes. After you rack up enough swagbucks, you can get giftcards to places like amazon.com, Starbucks, Barnes and Noble and many more! How cool is that!?! At first, I kept wondering what the catch was, but I have been using it for a while now and I have racked up quite a few swagbucks! And, lots of people I know have been trading their swagbucks in for prizes. So, if you want to start earning swagbucks just for searching the web, head here and sign up. I have not received any annoying emails or anything by signing up! And, if you follow the link on my blog to swagbucks, I earn extra swagbucks for getting you to sign up! YAY! Check it out...this may just be the next "big thing":)

Menu Plan Monday

I have not really taken the time to plan out my menus for the past couple of weeks. It has made dinner time much more stressful and the temptation to just go "grab a bite" at a fast-food joint more appealing. I have learned my lesson and I am back on the wagon:) Taking just a few minutes to plan ahead helps me to save money and time. I am able to thoughtfully put together healthy and frugal meals for my family. It really is wonderful! For more on menu planning and lots of great menu plans and recipe links, visit orgjunkie.com

Monday, May 18-
Chicken and noodles
green beans
peaches

Tuesday, May 19-
Macaroni and Tomatoes
pinto beans
corn bread

Wednesday, May 20-
Tabbouleh Salad
homemade pitas
carrot sticks
pears

Thursday, May 21-
Left-over Bar
homemade icecream

Friday, May 22-Tuesday, May 26-
Out of Town for Memorial Day weekend!

Garden update!

Our garden has now been planted for about 6 weeks. Things are really starting to get exciting! I am learning so much as we go. Our tomatoes are doing great-we have lots of little green tomatoes growing and ripening, our peppers were doing great...until Crush figured out how to get around the chicken wire fence Brian built. We are hoping to still get some peppers off the couple of plants that survived. We reinforced the fence-hopefully it will keep the garden-Crusher out! Our basil is doing pretty well, but the tomatoes have grown so big that they are blocking the sun from getting to the basil. Next year we will plant the basil somewhere else. Our parley, dill, chives, and cilantro seem to be doing well. My cinnamon basil and stevia is doing great! Sadly, my chocolate mint and chamomile never germinated:( I am so disappointed about that! Our hibiscus plants are all doing great as well as some of the other flowers. I am learning which flowers I like in my little garden and which are not worth the effort to me. The flower beds look a little wild right now. The sweet potato vine is taking over! I really need to cut some stuff back, I think. So far, everything has went pretty well and I have had so much fun learning and growing!

I am ready to blog again!

Long time, no blog! I have so many things I want to blog about! Over the past couple of weeks, I have been doing some spring cleaning and preparing for the summer. I decided to take that time to go on hiatus from blogging. It really did help me to be more focused on the day-to-day activities of managing my home, but I sure have missed sharing the day-to-day activities with you! I can't wait to get you all caught up on everything you missed!:) So, look out for some new posts over the next couple of days!