Groceries for July

I have not posted my grocery lists or totals for over a month and need to get back to it.  I am also trying to remember to get pictures of the purchases this month.  Yesterday's grocery purchases will mark the beginning of totals for July and below are the photos and totals. Forgive the bad photos, I was taking these late last night when I thought about it.

Farmer's Market purchase

Yellow Meat Watermelon   $7.00
Mess of fresh Black-Eyed Peas   $6.00
Pluots  $5.00

Total: $18.00



Sprouts purchase

~ 1lb peaches  $0.52
2 pints blueberries $1.76
~1lb nectarines $0.97
~3/4lbs cheddar cheese $2.38
~1/2lb turkey breast $1.88
2 containers muffins $5.98
4 pkgs ball canning lids ( 2 wide mouth, 2 regular) $3.96
Dr.Bronner's Liquid castile soap (citrus) $13.49
Dr. Bronner's bar castile soap $2.99
Bag credit for bringing my own ($0.15)

Total   $35.42


I was mad at myself once I got home and remembered there was a $5.00 of $30.00 purchase in the Sprout's ad. Weighing needs to see if I should go back and do more grocery shopping and use the coupon.  I also have a real problem resisting the muffins. Every single time I go in sprouts I come out with at least 1 muffin, might have to have an intervention.

running total for July:  $53.42

More On the Back Yard

The back yard projects have been going slower because I am trying to finish the visible front yard.  A few more days with no rain and I think I can have the front yard completed and start in earnest on the back yard.

I had to stop when I ran out of mulch. Hoping to at least complete this section by the end of the week as well as the front bed.

Final batch of Letters- First Round

I will be dropping the last batch of letters at the post office tonight. The last of the first batch that is which is to say I made it through mailing a letter to everyone that I know personally in my address book.  I plan on going back through and writing more personal notes to some people and cards for the kids in my life. I especially like to mail letters/notes/cards/post cards to all the kids I know as I loved mail when I was a child. I have been messaged a couple of times by those who received their letters but as of today I have not received any notes back in the mail.

Menu for the 4th Week of June

I made a decision this week to go ahead and post at the beginning of the week and then just edit it with updates instead of waiting until the end of the week.

I made a menu up yesterday and then scrapped it and started over. Below is the plan, we shall see how it goes.

Sun June 26th:  homemade shells and cheese.

Mon Jun 27th:
lunch- plain bagel with turkey and cheese. A banana and a peach.
dinner- smoked sausage and corn on the cob

Tue Jun 28th:
lunch- last plain bagel with turkey and cheese. A banana and a peach
dinner- tostadas

Wed Jun 29th:
lunch- out to eat with friends and coworkers
dinner- after some extended family drama I took the boys and a friend to Chick-Fil-A for dinner. I had a whole chicken in the crock pot so I just deboned it when we came home and put the meat away for meals later this week. I started some stock right away.

Thur Jun 30th:
lunch- went out to eat with coworker
dinner- Jolean's Cheese, Potato and Smoked Sausage Casserole using up leftover smoked sausage and some of the potatoes I bought through the co-op.

Fri Jul 1st:
lunch- annual cook out at work
dinner-Baked Cheesy Chicken Penne dish which turned out to not be good. It started out looking and smelling wonderful but ended up tasting not great.

Sat Jul 2nd: I put the leftover ground beef from Tuesday and the leftover half can of tomatoes from Friday in the crockpot along with canned pinto, kidney and black beans and corn I took off the cob for taco soup. I used a Zesty Ranch packet instead of both a ranch packet and taco seasoning. That along with a can of mild Ro-tel and the soup was still spicy.

Continuation of Front Bed Project

The path portion of this project is finished!!!!

The area after clean up but before path. 

Half way there

This in itself was so exciting but then the rest of the bed was there looking crazy so the next night it was on to more projects. I was over confident when I thought I could get it done in a week.....week 2 started and I might get it done this week and I might not since we are expecting some rain.

The rest of the area by the path. I am going to let the plants fill in before putting anything else here.

now I need something to hang my hose on....

Menu for the 3rd week of June

This is our post company menu! Phillip picked up the produce co-op offerings for me over the weekend. I did not get a picture since my mom was still here and I was just trying to get it put up. Tons of veggies to use over the next couple of weeks so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Sun June 19th: Turkey, cheese and lettuce sandwiches

Mon June 20th:
lunch- split pizza with a coworker in celebration of first day back to work
dinner- Logan's request of pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs

Tue Jun 21st:
lunch-plain bagel left from mom's visit with turkey, cheese and lettuce. Fresh pineapple and some goldfish crackers.
dinner- Pork stir fry made with leftover pork chops, ends of some carrot sticks, rest of some sliced mushrooms from a salad, all of the frozen chopped broccoli I had left, the last nest of noodles I had as well as some onion, garlic and asparagus.

Wed June 22nd:
lunch- ate wings out to celebrate a friend's birthday
dinner- Roasted Asparagus and Mushroom Carbonara which used up the rest of the asparagus, some mushrooms I had sliced as well the leftover bacon.

Thur June 23rd:
lunch- plain bagel with turkey, cheese and lettuce. Fresh pineapple and goldfish crackers.
dinner- roast from the slow cooker with baked potatoes, creamed corn using up the leftover corn on the cob and garlic toast.

Fri June 23rd:
lunch- ate out with a former coworker
dinner- leftover roast chopped and reheated in BBQ sauce served with a side salad and sliced bread.

Sat June 24th: I picked up a pizza while out running evening errands

Books May 28th through June 21st

I did not realize I had not posted a book list in soo long. Here they are:


After finishing Better than Before which really did not get any better for me I switched topics  and listened to Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age which I gleaned some good information from. This was directly followed by The Big Disconnect: Protecting childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age. I also was able to glean some good information from this one although I think she over stated the link between parents on their cell phones and kids becoming addicts. After these 2 books I thought I should change topics again or I was going to go down a rabbit hole with cell phones and kids. Next up was $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. This was a heartbreaking and informative book which I nearly finished and then had to turn in and wait my turn for again. I was able to finish last night and found it renewed my need to see reform in how the truly poor our treated by society. While I waited on $2.00 a Day to become available again I listened to Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.  Several of my friends had been talking about the documentary that he made in conjunction with this book so I decided to listen to it and then watched the documentary. I can say as with most things I preferred the book to the documentary. The book was able to go more in depth and give more vignettes. I did enjoy getting a visual of the people discussed in the book but still preferred the "long" version. When I finished Cooked I was still waiting on $2.00 a Day so I started listening to Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. This book is really hard to listen to due to the subject matter. I just can not believe how over and over in our country we systematically pick on a weaker group of people. I only have 2 days left on this borrow so I have renewed and will have to get in line again. In the meantime I stopped to finish $2.00 a Day last night and then restarted listening. I will try to get as much listened to as I can over the next couple of days but I have a feeling it will be a stop and restart proposition.


In print I have read Death in Yellowstone which was a book I read about in an article discussing the tourists who put the buffalo calf in their car. It was a good, informative guide to people dying in Yellowstone. After finishing this hefty volume I went with A Cowboy Returns which was exactly what it was supposed to be a romance novel. No deep thought was required. It was a series so I went on to Cowboy Proud and then finished up with Cowboy Strong.  After finishing these I am still not willing to dive into another non fiction so I am catching up on Stephanie Plum.  Takedown Twenty is one of the first that has made me laugh out loud in quite some time. After this I will hit the heavy subject matter again.

Backyard Projects Underway

I was on hold on the front yard until I could pick up more brick and I needed to transplant some items anyway so I started on a couple of the smaller backyard projects. I finished this one in one night and had a small moment of satisfaction that it was done.

Menu for 2nd Week of June

My mom gave me a pretty short notice that she was coming to visit. She also arrived with Church's chicken and some groceries. I made a menu based on these options and we headed through the week with that plan.

What actually happened which ended up being pretty close to the original plan.

Sun June 12th: Grilled cheese with cinnamon apples

Mon June 13th: Mom arrived with Church's chicken, mashed potatoes, rolls and mac and cheese

Tue June 14th: The ignition on my outside grill quit working so I went with plan b the cast iron grill pan. We had grilled steak, roasted new potatoes, buttered rolls and Crispy Parmesan Asparagus Sticks.

Wed June 15th: Chili was on the menu! We used up the leftover pinto beans from last week.

Thur June 16th: Beef Strogonoff using up the leftover grilled steaks

Fri June 17th: Pizza!!!!

Sat June 18th: Crock Pot Pork Chops with Mushrooms and Asparagus sauteed in butter with some Teriyaki sauce as well as a green salad and corn on the cob.

It was a really good dinner week and I am excited about the next menu as the produce co-op had a ton of good stuff this time.

Start of June

I am behind in posting. I have been trying to get yard projects done and had my mom visit.

Sunday June 5th: Spaghetti

Monday June 6th: Chicken nuggets

Tuesday June 7th: Grilled flanken style ribs with baked Acorn squash and garlic bread.

Wednesday June 8th: Chicken fajitas and leftover Carne Guisada

Thursday June 9th: I did make the baked spaghetti using up the rest of the tomato sauce from the guisada recipe as well as the leftover noodles and sauce from earlier in the week. I did not have any fresh mushrooms so I used the rest of 1 jar of dehydrated that I soaked for a bit and the rest of some shredded cheese.

Friday June 10th: I made pinto beans in the crockpot using up 3 slices of bacon for seasoning. The cornbread was a disaster. I forgot to put the baking powder in it so it did not rise.

Saturday June 11th: BBQ Chicken and Bacon Taquitos which enabled me to use up all the leftover fajita chicken, bacon and corn tortillas


As you can see this week was quite the dinner disaster but we survived and made it to the next week to try again. 

Front Yard Projects Underway Including Dinosaur and Gnome Gardens.

I finally got underway with a front flower bed project that I have talked about for years.  About 10 years or more ago I started planting English Ivy and hoped it would cover the very shaded front yard. This partially worked but I was tired of the way it looked and the bare spots that would never end up covered with ivy.  This frustration and need for a place to be in the front yard so the kids could play led to the new make over. I did not think to get before pictures of everything but will post the ones I did take.

First project:

Only before shot of the area

The boys bought me this gnome for my birthday

Phillip picked this rock up from someone who was trashing it. 

I still need to work on this area but needed to clean up a spot in the backyard to move some of the existing plants back there. During this limbo time as I wait on Phillip to finish the deck and screened porch before I can move the plants I started other front yard projects.

This is the before of the area under current renovation 

"helpers"

It needed footprints

It was getting dark so I had to quit

This was over multiple evenings as we had the time to work on it. Last night I started on cleaning up the back yard areas so I can transplant some stuff and then finish up the front beds. 

Kindergarten Graduation

Confession time: Until the time I was seated in the auditorium waiting for the gaggle of kids to come in I was opposed to kindergarten graduation ceremonies. I thought it was a pointless exercise as they have really only finished 1 year in school.  My opinion changed when my baby who was really a baby just a blink ago was ready to come across the small stage and get his certificate. He was so proud and happy that I was there to see him. He was then also excited to go out to lunch with me when the program was done.

Last Days of May/ 1st Days of June Menu Plan

This is looking back at last week so this will be an abbreviated post.

Sunday May 30th: Grilled hot dogs served with corn on the cob

Monday May 31st: Grilled flanken ribs served with roasted new potatoes

Tue Jun 1st:
lunch- I only worked half the day because Logan graduated kindergarten mid day, his choice afterwards was Rosa's
dinner- fried rice with leftover fajita chicken, rice and bits of veggies.

Wed Jun 2nd:
lunch- Wendy's forgot lunch at home
dinner-Breakfast for dinner! Bacon, eggs and toast

Thur Jun 3rd:
lunch- home with the kids, we went to McDonald's
dinner- Crock pot pork chops served with black beans 

Fri Jun 4th:
lunch- home with the kids again, we once again went to McDonald's 
dinner- Carne Guisada from the crock pot. Served as tacos

Sat Jun 5th:
lunch- sandwiches
dinner- we went to a wedding, the kids had sandwiches and cheese with the sitter.