Menu Planning and lots of photos:

I actually got my menu plan written out on Monday morning.  I am sort of organized for most of the week, which I count as a success in my books. Now whether I stick to the plan we'll see.

Here are some photos of the front hall, kitchen and breakfast area that we just decorated.

We were given some money at Christmas so we put it towards this rug for the front door.  It's from Pier 1 and despite the fact it looks green in real life they reckon it's blue?  Here is a link to the rug.

This is our breakfast area at the front of the house.  You can see my bird feeders in the front garden. 

Did you notice the oranges in the bowl in the middle of the table?  Well they are my $50 oranges!  You can read more about them here.  I got them when we were selling our last home.

This is looking into the kitchen from the breakfast area.

This is looking the other way and you can see the chalk board on the wall.

It all looks lovely and clean and very neutral, just the way I like it!

February already........where did January go?

Pleased to see February as it means another month of Winter is over with.  We have been so lucky (touching wood) with the weather I have nothing much to complain about weather wise.

Anyway I want to post a to-list for the month in the hopes it will make me accountable and actually do the things I post on the list.

• decorate the powder room - that is totally doable, so I see no problem doing that
• decorate the master bedroom - that is iffy, that job may go into March
• menu plan - that was only partly done in January, so need to work on that
• finish knitted baby blanket for dd, we should know the sex of the baby by this upcoming weekend - we hope
• finish two baby quilts.  One is cut out the other is not
• encourage dh and help him in the basement to get all the framing done and make a good start on the electrics.  There are a lot of bulk heads to make in the basement which equals a lot of work.
• sort out the basement and see what we don't want and try and sell those unwanted items.
• knit a pair of socks - this is proving to be a pain in the butt and I think it has something to do with the yarn I have?
• cut back on grocery spending and use what is in the cupboards - menu planning will help with this
• try and save as much money as I can and not buy anything online all month.
• sort out my blue air miles card, as I want to be able to cash in for groceries not just goods.

We have three birthdays this month.  All cards have been purchased and I only have one that I have to give a present for.   We do have a wedding the beginning of March, but the money is saved up for that and the card has been purchased.

I may add to this list throughout the month and re-post it as we go along

Okay I admit it...........

I am getting old.  These past three days have certainly taken it out of me.  Gone are the days when I could get two coats of paint on the walls in one day.  Mind you despite me painting "three" rooms; kitchen, breakfast area and front hall, I only used a gallon and a half of paint.  It was very fiddly.

I am not sure what hurts the most, my back, shoulders or neck.  I am so lucky though that after a night's sleep I bounce back and everything seems back to normal; whatever normal may be.

Today I will be putting the place back together.  I also ordered three of these lights which should hopefully come today:

I ordered three for the front hall.  They are out of Lowes (Canada) and I took advantage of a sale that was on a weekend or two ago.  They are not the most expensive but they suit where they are going and fit in with the rest of the décor.

Due to all the decorating nothing much has been done as far as organizing this week.  Menu planning has gone by the wayside.  Thankfully I have been popping leftover's in the microwave. 

I went and got this picture framed at Michael's; again took advantage of a 50% off coupon.  We are very happy with how it turned out:

We got the picture from the Drawing For Art function we go to every year, back in 2013.  The artist is George Mocanu.  It's back to hanging up on the breakfast area of the kitchen.  I will get more photos taken of the newly decorated rooms when I get them all back together.

All it took was 2 hours.........

and I made enough meals to last us all week:

I made a cheese, onion and mushroom quiche, some baked potatoes, two shepherd's pie and a bean lasagna. 

I had a lot of mushrooms, and a few onions that needed to be used up, along with a lump of Harvati Cheese, so all that was saying made me into a quiche.  Of course put potatoes onto bake at the same time.

The Bean Lasagna recipe is from here.  The recipe says it feeds 12, I think more realistically 6.   Here is a Iink to the Pulse Pledge Site with more recipes on it. I took out a pound of ground beef (mince) and used half a pound for that recipe.  With the rest I used it to make two meals of shepherd's pies by bulking it up with veggies and we will also have pickled beets with them.  I love pickled beets with shepherd's pie.

So our menu plan this week will consist of:

Quiche with baked potatoes and ceaser salad.
Quiche with fries and baked beans
Shepherd's pie with pickled beets x 2
Bean Lasagna with garlic bread probably twice and I'll freeze one meal for next week.

I am quite proud of myself for actually doing a menu plan and a batch cook all in one day!!!  That is really good for me, as I do not like menu planning for some reason. 

You may have noticed there are only six meals there, I want to see what I have in leftovers and make a meal out of them later in the week.

Did you menu plan this week?  Also I have a big bag of cornmeal.  I need some ideas on what to do with it?

Bit of a change up this week.

Here is my menu plan for the week:

Instead of eating things on certain days; these are the meals I am going to make and whatever we fancy that night off the list is what I will make.

I am hosting the book club meeting today.  So on Sunday thought I'd get a jump start on the cooking and made the gingerbread.  While the oven was on put some Scotch eggs in too cook along with some Rosemary potato wedges.

I'll show you what else I served the ladies tomorrow.

This month's book was The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.

You can read my review here.  Has anyone read The Rosie Effect?  What did you think of it, as the reviews were mixed?

Let's see........

Devil Cat (aka Rhubarb), decided it would be fun to jump on the headboard, just as I was dropping off too sleep on Saturday night.

Then at 5 am start meowing, just because she can.  Never heard a peep from Olive!

Someone is admiring herself:

She was as good as gold..........well as good as any 18 month old is, when they have VERY selective hearing!!!  When Nana got home at lunch time on Sunday, she had something to eat and then went to bed for an hour..........could have stayed there all afternoon, truth be told.

Did go grocery shopping later in the day so closed off the month of May.  As usual was over, but it was a five week month for me.  Ended up spending $384.25, with savings of $58.92.  Luckily it's not the end of the world if I go over my monthly budget of $350, BUT once in a while I would love to be under budget!!

I did manage to make up a menu plan for the week.  It's such a help when I do that.

Sorry about the quality of the photo.  I haven't made scotch eggs in ages, so thought that would be good, as I have both eggs and sausage meat.  Also saw on tv someone making Pan Haggarty, so thought I would give it a go, may just have some salad with it.

Have you made a menu plan for the week?  Do you have a "devil-eyed cat?"  Do you know someone who likes to look at themselves in the mirror?

So what did I do on Monday?

As I am feeling a lot better, I decided to get some jobs done around the house.  Started off with cleaning the bathrooms, which is a typical Monday and Friday morning job.  Threw in a load of laundry.  Our laundry room is in our powder room behind two large doors, on the main floor.

I decided to do some cooking and made fishcakes, fish in parsley sauce with peas and, cauliflower and cheese sauce.  There was enough fish cakes for one meal for Monday nights supper and one meal to put in the freezer:

Prepared some fruit to put into dh's lunches and for our dessert:

Made out our menu plan.  I see I spelled parsley wrong on the menu, just couldn't be bothered to take another photo.

I posted three book reviews here of the books below in the photo.

Along with tidying up parts of the house along the way, by the time I got to the book reviews I was getting tired.  So after posting the book reviews I didn't do much.  There's always tomorrow.

Did you have a busy Monday?

New Plant Stand.....

We popped up to the garden centre on Sunday and had a look around.  I had some money left on a gift card I had been given for my birthday so decided to buy a plant stand with it for the breakfast area in the kitchen.

It's metal and all folds up when not in use.  I may put cookery books on the bottom shelf.  The African Violet is on an old Tupperware container.  Perfect size for it.  It's that orangey brown colour from the 80's.

A closer look at the birdies on top of the unit.  Can you see the little squirrel door wedge to the left of the plant?  We bought it for the last house.  

Our menu plan for this week is very basic, LEFTOVERS!!  Not sure how long I can make the leftovers stretch, but I think they will last most if not all of the week.

We had ham, mashed potatoes, salad and coleslaw on Sunday night.  Ham, mashed potatoes, salad and baked beans on Monday night.  Ham quiche and salad on Tuesday night, with the last of the mashed potatoes.  Tonight will be ham quiche and salad again, with maybe a baked potato.  So that only leaves, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

I will make a pot of soup with the ham bone, and see how much we have left on Thursday.  Not bad from a ham that cost just under $10.

A few random things for a Monday.....

I have been growing my hair out.  It is now long enough to put into a short ponytail thank goodness, as it annoys me when it's down and makes me feel too warm.  So why don't I get it cut......I have no idea!!

I am on a house plant buying spree at the moment?  Bought a Martha Washington geranium and a Christmas Cactus this weekend.  As there is a bud on the Christmas Cactus, there is a good chance that will be flowering soon!!

I finished off my grocery shopping for the month of March and spent $331.80 this month with savings of $34.19.  It's proving to be practically impossible to keep it under $300.00 a month.

I am still doing my menu planning and it is keeping me organized.  Here is this weeks, Thursday's shepherd's pie is iffy, as I may make a double quantity of Monday's meal and have that again on Thursday.  In fact the more I think about it, the more I like that idea.  Cook once, eat twice.

Still knitting but it's not coming along very fast.  Still using the first ball of yarn; but it's been less than a week and it's not a race to get finished is it?

Very lazy Sunday.......

As I mentioned we were at a wedding on Saturday for one of dh's co-workers.  This fine young man we have known for many years and his wife is a lovely woman.  They were so happy and so in love it was a joy to see them.

Here are a few photos from the day/night.

It was a Catholic ceremony and the stained glass windows were gorgeous.

They were all the same wheat but different colours.

This is where the wedding party sat, it was lovely.  There were seven bridesmaids, seven groomsmen, two flower girls and a ring boy.  That's the biggest wedding party I have seen.

The centre piece on our table.  I won ours but forgot it.  Dh will pick it up today at the office for me.

 The wedding favour was a jar of honey, again I forgot it, so dh will also get that at the same time.

 The cake it was so pretty.  The colours were pink and white.  The guys wore navy blue suits with pink ties.  The bridesmaids wore pale pink strapless ruched dresses.

This is the most unique dessert I have ever seen.  They are ice cream.  The banana tasted of banana, the grapes tasted like grape flavoured bubble gum.  The apples were vanilla and the red covering was white chocolate.  I had the orange/peach and it tasted like Creamiscle ice cream.  They were so good.

I did do one thing on Sunday and that was do the menu plan for the week.

These boots are made for.....

Splashing in puddles of course!!

I needed new wellies and so I picked up a pair for our Little Munchkin as well.  The Peppa Pig ones we got in England are too big for her.  All are Walmart specials!!!

Better later than never here is my menu plan for the week, bit heavy on the pastry side for most of the week, but lots of veggies with the salad and coleslaw.  With there being just the two of us things tend to last for more than one meal.

 Just noticed one of my daffodils are a different colour and a lot smaller?

 Picked up a pot of yellow tulips on the weekend.  We'll see how long they take to open.

Above freezing today....YEAH!!!!

And finally a Youtube Video of Nancy Sinatra about the boots........mind you I don't think she is talking about wellies (rainboots) here!!

Organizing and Baking........

In my attempt to be more organized with meal planning I actually started using my chalk board in my kitchen:

As you can see I even wrote down our weekly menu plan in the hopes I will follow it.  I even ticked off the meal we had eaten:

I decided to do some baking on Monday afternoon.  After seeing this recipe on Simple Living for some flapjack.  I followed the recipe to the letter, other than I melted the sugar in the pan with the butter and I used a 9 inch cake pan to cook it in.  In my oven it only took 18 minutes to cook.  Oh and to make things a bit easier I lined my cake pan with parchment paper.  **Also make sure you cut it into portions when still warm.**

Now remember I am a lazy cook!!  So I made a couple dozen sponge buns/cupcakes using a cake mix.  

A dozen were made into Fairy/Butterfly buns.  For those of you who do not like the mountain of frosting on regular cupcakes, this way you get a little frosting and the added bonus of jam.  Not sure how to make them; I explain in a bit more detail on this post.  Dh will be whining though as I put glace cherries on them to make them fancy and he hates glace cherries....LOL

I also made a batch of peanut butter cookies.  Made around 4 dozen using this recipe.  This is one of the first recipes I posted on my blog.  I have been using this recipe for over 25 years.

We have nine foot ceilings in most of this house.  Our upper cabinets have four shelves in the kitchen.  If I stand on tip-toes I can reach the second shelf.  So I have a little set  of steps to reach the higher shelves.  I had them out on Monday afternoon!!

I spent around 2 1/2 hours in the kitchen.  Put two packages of cookies in the freezer along with a dozen cupcakes.  I have enough frosting left to frost those in the fridge, I used the Betty Crocker Whipped White Frosting.  I also cooked the chicken pot pie when I had the oven on.

 There was enough for both of us for supper and enough for dh for his lunch.

This is the second day we have eaten from the menu plan!!

All in all a productive afternoon.

Best laid plans and all that..........

I had been muttering on all week that I was going to do a big batch cook and bake on Sunday when the hydro (electricity) is cheaper.  When I got up on Sunday morning, I had as much enthusiasm about doing that as flying to the moon.  However after lunch I did do a mini batch cook of sorts and made some things.

I had picked up a six pack of nice and thick boneless pork chops on clearance for $7.25 and a five pack of boneless skinless chicken breast on clearance for $6.50 at Wal-Mart.  I quite like their meat there and I generally buy from the clearance bin.

With the pork chops I made a pork and bean stew and two packages of bbq pork and onions.

The pork and bean stew consists of two pork chops cut up into cubes and browned off in oil with a sliced onion and a yellow pepper sliced.  To that I added four small diced up potatoes, a couple tablespoons of tomato puree and a can of baked beans in tomato sauce.  To season it I added salt and pepper and an OXO cube.  Cooked it over a simmer heat for around half an hour until the potatoes are cooked through.  

The bbq pork chops and onion, is basically an onion sliced and popped into a plastic bag with the pork chops and some bbq sauce.  To cook them I will pop them in a dish and cook in my toaster oven for half an hour at around 350 oF until cooked through.

With the five chicken breasts I made a chicken, mushroom and onion pasta sauce and a chicken pot pie using two of the chicken breasts.  I had three chicken breasts left over which I individually wrapped in cling wrap and popped into a bag and put into the freezer

I cut two chicken breasts into pieces and browned them off in a pan with two finely diced onions and half a pound of mushrooms chopped up until nice and soft.  In another pan I made a white sauce using 1/4 cup of marg, melted.  I added 1/4 cup of flour and whisked it together, along with a teaspoon of minced garlic.  I whisked in two cups of half and half, but you could use single cream and or milk.  I had probably 1/4 cup of Parmesan which I added in along with salt and pepper.

I added the chicken, mushroom and onion mixture to the sauce and then divided into two.

For the chicken pasta sauce, I added some frozen peas and it will be put over pasta or rice.  If it is too thick I will water it down with some milk.  There will be enough for the two of us for a meal and probably a lunch.

For the chicken pot pie I added a couple of diced cooked potatoes and some frozen mixed veggies.  I will add a sheet of puff pastry and bake in the oven at 425 oF for around 25 minutes......but will check it after 20 minutes.  

I closed out the month of February grocery totals yesterday and my figures were the following.

Total Spent: $310.45

Total Saved: $88.03

I am beginning to see that trying to keep my budget under $300 a month is getting harder and harder to do.

Now I do include all food, toiletries, over the counter medications, and all cleaning products in my monthly totals.  I think I will keep all receipts for the month of March and see what I buy over the month.  I really do need to plan a week's menu at a time.  I also need to be more focused with this.

I "think" this week's menu will be as follows:

Sunday: BBQ Pork chops, potato salad and salad
Monday: Chicken Pot Pie
Tuesday: Chicken with pasta or rice
Wednesday: Pork Stew
Thursday: Mac and Cheese with garlic bread
Friday: Spaghetti Bolognese
Saturday: Chicken burgers and salad

Now the chances of me sticking to this menu is slim to nil but I will try to do it!!

Do you do a menu plan and does it help with your grocery budget

(I am planning on popping some cake/cookies in the oven when I am cooking the chicken pot pie on Monday)