I totally forgot we had these pictures until I was going through and organizing our pictures today and found these.  The kids’ homeschool group had a Valentine’s exchange, so I thought it would be fun to make cookie pops.  I made the dough, they cut all the shapes out, I put the pops in and baked them, put on the icing and the kids decorated them with sprinkles.  It was a big undertaking, but a lot of fun (and they tasted great too).  Here were the final results (yes, Morgan is smiling, not grimacing!):

So this week I substituted a number of items where I would normally buy non-organic, and bought organic instead. I fully expected to have a high grocery bill, but I really didn’t at all. I’m pretty pleased with how it all turned out. Details below.

Menu (I completely drew a blank when making my menu this week.  I had only one meal planned, and decided to go out on a limb and try new recipes from a new site I found, linked below):

• Monday: Teriyaki chicken and rice, broccoli
• Tuesday: Asian lettuce wraps, potstickers
• Wednesday: pasta for kids and I
• Thursday: Potato soup
• Friday: Fettuccine alfredo, salad
• Saturday: Baked creamy chicken taquitos, black beans
• Sunday: leftovers

When I purchased something that I would have normally purchased non-organic, I starred it below.

Costco: pretzels, cheese, *organic chicken breasts (5.99/lb - I got just over 3 lbs)

• Spent: 29.61
• Full item value: 29.61
• Saved: 0.00

Kroger: Got mostly produce on sale.  I’ve discovered that my Kroger doesn’t even sell organic meats, and has very limited organic produce.  I did get 3 cans of Kroger-brand *organic black beans, on sale for .89 each.

• Spent: 13.79
• Full item value: 15.79
• Saved: 2.00 (13%)

Publix: I did most of my shopping here, and I got *5 lb organic potatoes (4.99), *32 oz Stonyfield organic yogurt, *16 oz Organic Valley heavy cream (also had 1.00 off coupon), *Greenwise market organic chicken thighs (with skin and bones, I need this for my teriyaki chicken recipe).  Plus lots of non-organic stuff.

• Spent: 37.67
• Full item value: 63.72
• Saved: 26.05 (41%)

So overall with buying $19 of organic chicken, I thought I did pretty well for the week coming in at 81.07 total.  I also stocked up on vanilla extract and some cereal, and bought a couple full-price specialty items, like mirin.

Remaining for the month: 175.97

Jackson has decided that he wants this cake for his birthday, which we found on this site:

I think it’s pretty cool as well, especially considering that his big birthday present and 5th birthday trip is that he and Gavin are headed to Florida to see the space shuttle Discovery launch on April 5th.  Gavin miraculously got tickets (at cost!) to see the launch, and it has been his dream for years to see one before the shuttles as we know them retire later this year.  With Jackson’s latest interest in space and obsession with seeing the launches over and over again on YouTube, it just made to be the perfect birthday idea.  They will most likely spend a day at Disney as well.

So, my job is to create the cake. :)  There is a huge program at camp next week, so my handy cake engineer (aka Gavin) will not be around to give me much advice.  We’ll see how it comes out!  (quick note - I do not plan to use fondant, which was obviously used in the cake above.  I used it for Mackenzie’s cake, and while it makes the cake look so nice and smooth, we really don’t care much for the taste.)

I finally got a couple shots of the girls this past weekend. Morgan has a recovering bruise on her forehead from when she fell a couple weeks ago, and Mackenzie has Alfalfa-style hair since we didn’t brush it down after her bath, but at least we have pictures!

Morgan update:  This girl continues to crack us up with her increasing verbal skills.  It still amazes me that she has been talking for barely 6 months.  Jackson’s class at church have been learning a song with all the Books of the Bible, so we have the song on a CD for him to learn.  He has mastered the whole thing, and now Morgan is constantly singing ‘Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy…” from the backseat of the car.  It’s pretty cute.

Morgan is finally getting to the stage where she is playing with friends, instead of just alongside of them.  She still tends to be a bit of a loner, easily getting overwhelmed when there are a lot of people or things get crazy.  When she’s with other people she is very quiet, and usually just stands and watches.  With Jackson, on the other hand, she gets goofy and crazy - they still don’t get along all that great, but we’re working on it.

She finally is mostly potty trained - she does great with the pee part, has had hardly any accidents since we started potty training, but she refuses to poop in the potty.  Instead she holds it and goes in her diaper at night.  Jackson did this for quite a while, so I’m going to give her a bit more time to get it.  At least she is out of diapers for the daytime!

Mackenzie - this little stinker is easily the loudest baby we have had in our house.  Either because I’ve forgotten how loud the others were when they were younger, or because she has to be that loud in order to be heard!  Probably the latter.  She is a pulling-up pro now, and loves to pull up to anything that she can clear off or empty out.  So I can’t tell you how many times I put the recycling back into the basket, my kitchen towels back into their basket, and the magazines back onto the table.  Whatever she can reach will end up on the floor.

She still loves to be held.  It also still doesn’t matter who is holding her, she has never had stranger anxiety in any way.  As long as someone is holding her, she’s happy!  She still loves to snuggle, and her poor 3rd and 4th fingers on her right hand are always cracked and raw because she sucks on them so much.  She is taking 2 naps a day, but I can tell she’s starting to not need a full 2 naps, so am thinking in the next 2-3 months we’ll be transitioning to 1 nap a day.  She loves to eat but has to eat what everyone else is having.  If something on her plate looks different (like if we have soup and I strain it out for her), she makes quite the fuss until her plate looks the same.

She has kept her bright blue eyes, and we laugh seeing her in the tub with Morgan, because both Morgan and Jackson got Gavin’s olive skin that tans easily.  Mackenzie instead got the pale white skin and add on to that her red patches of excema, and you have quite the sight!  Looking at her we don’t think she looks a whole lot like the other 2 kids, but when I look back at Jackson’s baby pictures, she definitely resembles him.  Her hair is growing in the back, but she still has a short section on the right side where she used to pull her hair out, so I’m actually thinking of trimming the left side so that they match.  Haven’t gotten around to it though.

So that’s the update on my girls.  They are doing well in a room together, they both get very hyper in the morning - usually Mackenzie wakes up Morgan, then they are silly together for a while, then Morgan leaves the room which leaves Mackenzie screaming because she is left alone.  If Jackson is not awake at this point, now he is!

I am so behind on some posts I wanted to put up.  I’m behind mostly cause I don’t have any good pictures, and I really don’t like putting a lot of posts up in a row without pictures.  We have not been good about taking pics of the kids lately - I have one cute bathtub shot of the 3 of them, but it’s a bathtub shot… not one I want to put up for the world to see!  So anyway, hopefully we’ll get some pictures going soon, but until then, here’s a quick update with 1 shot we have!

We had snow a couple weeks ago (Feb 12th) along with most of the country.  It was more than I had expected (about 4-5 inches), but we didn’t get to enjoy it much (story on that below).  We did have enough for Jackson and Gavin to get out and build a pretty large snowman in the afternoon!  This picture is taken in the evening when we realized we didn’t have a shot of the guy, so no, Jackson did not build a snowman in his crocs!  And that snowman had better feel pretty special - he has an organic carrot for his nose, the only thing I had in my fridge.

If you know me very well, you know I LOVE snow.  Just love it.  I loved living in Slovakia where we had snow every year, and probably my favorite thing in the world is to sit and watch snow fall outside.  It’s tough living here in Georgia where it maybe snows once a year, so when it does snow I do my best to enjoy it.  That was not the case that weekend.  We had planned for 2 months to go to my parents house in South Carolina, as they had a surprise anniversary evening for us on the 13th.  It was snowing here on the 12th and our initial evening plans here in Atlanta got canceled, so we thought we would go ahead and get to my parents, rather than drive in the morning like originally planned.  Having lived in a cold climate for so long, Gavin feels comfortable driving in that kind of weather, so we waited until the traffic had cleared and hopped in the car at 7:30 pm, figuring we would arrive at my parents about 11:00, a time we still felt comfortable with as far as the roads were concerned.

All was great heading out of the city, and about 45 minutes out, we pulled off to fill up on gas, and got back on the highway (85 North).  It was 8:26 pm (time on our gas receipt), and we were at exit 120.  Right after getting on the interstate, we stopped.  I mean stopped.  We would sit still for 20 minutes, then move forward 1/2 mile.  Repeat.  Listening to the radio all they were saying is to tell people to stay off the roads and that there was a backup where we were - they never said what it really was, it was so frustrating.  About an hour into this, we decided we needed to turn off at the next exit (still 3-4 miles out) and go back home, as we had past our comfort level with the roads considering we wouldn’t arrive until midnight or later.  It took us another hour just to get to the exit (exit 126)!  6 miles.  2 hours 5 minutes.  The road would literally freeze around us as we sat for 20-30 minutes at a time.  Thankfully the kids fell asleep about 9:30.  It was so frustrating.  Not only were we going to have to turn around and make the entire drive again in the morning, but I was missing the beautiful snow fall, instead sitting in gridlock on an interstate.  We got home at 11:30 pm.  Four hours to nowhere.

We were able to get out about 11:30 am the next morning, arriving at 3 to my parents (that spot on 85 was STILL stopped on Saturday, but Gavin navigated us around it with side roads).  They took us that night to see the musical ‘Wicked’ in Greenville, and I have to say it was absolutely fantastic.  One of the very best shows I have ever seen.  Totally worth the 8 hours it took us to get there, believe it or not.  The kids had a great time with Nana and Papa, and swimming in the indoor pool on Sunday.  We turned around and came home Sunday after dinner, but it was a great trip.  I’m just most sad that I missed seeing the snow fall.

We’re having an ‘eat from the freezer and pantry’ week, as I am to spend as little as possible at the store, since I had such a big Bread Beckers order earlier in the month to get oatmeal, olive oil, honey, and a few other things.  So pretty much everything below is already in my freezer or pantry, or I can make the whole dish with what I have.  I just had to buy a few things to complete our meals, plus 2 gallons of milk.

Menu:

• Monday: a gourmet pasta blend we received for Christmas that I’ll add tuna and a couple other things to
• Tuesday: crustless sausage egg dish (kind of like a quiche), sweet potato fries
• Wednesday: Chick fil A
• Thursday: date night, pasta and hot dogs for the kids
• Friday: potato and bean soup, bread
• Saturday: homemade pizza with mushrooms
• Sunday: spinach quiche, bacon, hash browns

Publix:

• Spent: 20.23
• Full item value: 37.93
• Saved: 17.70 (47%)

I do need to go to Costco for cheese (4.50) and mushrooms (3.50).  And Publix was out of the organic carrots I wanted, so I may stop back in there and get those as well as some multigrain Cheerios, on sale and I have coupons.  So I anticipate my total for the week being about $28.

I came into the week with having 13.22 left.  So I will be over by about $15 or so, and will have to borrow from next month.  I’m ok with that, considering I had such a big order at  Bread Beckers, and won’t have to get those items again for a while.

I’ve been wanting to write a post for a while now on my developing thoughts about eating good wholesome foods versus eating frugally.  For a long time now I have been striving to do this to some extent - I cook good meals for my family mostly from scratch, and we seldom eat out of a box or bag (frozen pizza on occasion and a couple frozen bagged items we like from Costco/Trader Joes).  But lately I’ve been reading a couple books, following a blog I enjoy a little more closely, and I went to a healthy eating class at Bread Beckers (where I get all my grains from to mill my wheat) for the past few weeks.  All this has gotten me thinking and made me realize there is so much more that I want to be doing.

Currently I regularly purchase organic apples and organic milk.  I have added in a few other things recently which are only slightly more expensive than non-organic, like carrots, potatoes, and celery.  But that’s all I have done on a regular basis up to this point.  (I occasionally would buy the Stonyfield organic yogurt when it was on sale - I’m actually making my own organic yogurt now, but that’s a story for another post!)

So I have decided to make baby steps towards my ultimate goal.  I would love to buy all organic seasonal produce (and locally, if possible - especially in the summer), buy only organic meat, eggs, and dairy, and leave out most processed food (including processed white flour and sugar) from our diets.  This is a goal, a long-term goal.  I know I can’t do all that on the budget I have and the time that I have.  But I can take baby steps in the right direction.

So, my baby step #1 is to switch over to buying organic meat.  This is actually a huge step for me, as I’m used to buying whatever is on manager’s special at Kroger, or chicken when it bottoms out at 1.99/lb.  So I don’t even buy regular meat at anywhere near full price, yet I really want to buy organic chicken (5.99/lb on sale), and grass-fed beef (4.99/lb) for our family to eat.  And I want to do this on our current budget.  I know this will mean a couple more meatless meals than normal in a month, and I will need to find ways to stretch the meat that we do have a bit further.  This is a lofty goal, but one I really want to try out.  After reading a lot on it, I really feel that consuming the right meat is the next best step for us to do.  I know I will occasionally purchase non-organic meat, but I want to start switching over as much as possible.

How will I do this?  I think that just by sticking primarily to the perimeter of the grocery store will help me out.  I also know that I purchase some things each week that are unneccessary.  So the combination of sticking to foods in their raw state (to be cooked and made at home by me) and cutting back on a couple unnessary items, I think I can do it.

I know that as I make each step my costs will increase, so at some point I will most likely need to increase our grocery budget.  However, I am coming to realize that this is something that is becoming really important to me, and where we spend our money reflects what is important to us.  I also know that eating good food pays off in the long run medically, so maybe it’s frugal in the long run?

Anyway, this is just my new journey I’m on, so thought I would share it since I regularly post about my frugal shopping.  I will probably be using less coupons, and will be making regular trips to the Dekalb County Farmers Market (which I posted about in the last post) where I can get good produce at a reasonable price.

All for now, we’ll see how this goes!

I didn’t do a roundup this past week - I did a one-stop grocery run to Publix to get a few things.  This week I decided to make a trip down to the Dekalb County Farmer’s Market - it’s not a local market at all, but I had heard they have great organic produce at reasonable prices, so I wanted to try it out.  I ended up getting everything I needed for the week there, and will just have to make a quick run later for milk (I should have just gotten it there, but forgot).  Here’s the weekly menu:

• Monday: chicken with mushrooms and artichokes over pasta
• Tuesday: bean burgers, home fries, asparagus
• Wednesday: turkey meatballs with snow peas and edamame, rice, homemade artisan bread
• Thursday: chili over cornbread waffles
• Friday: enchiladas, rice, chips
• Saturday: leftovers
• Sunday: beef nachos

So my only trip was to the Dekalb County Farmer’s Market.  I didn’t need any meat, so I got pretty much all produce, some buttermilk, and some tortilla chips.  I was most impressed with getting over 1/2 lb of snowpeas for .67.  I think that I would get less than that at the grocery store for about $3.  I got good eggs, organic lettuce, organic apples, organic bananas, and a bunch of other produce.

• Spent: 29.47
• Full item value: hard to calculate
• Saved: 0.00 ??

I had a big order at Bread Beckers last week, stocking up on oatmeal, olive oil, honey, and a few other things, so I don’t have a lot left for the month.  Not sure of the exact numbers at the moment, but next week will need to be a frugal week!

Menu:

• Monday: potstickers, eggrolls, sweet and spicy cabbage
• Tuesday: fajitas, rice, tortilla chips (also bringing to 2 other families in our church)
• Wednesday: chili over cornbread waffles
• Thursday: ravioli with sauteed zucchini, bread
• Friday: leftovers
• Saturday: breakfast - cinnamon rolls, dinner - artichoke and mushroom chicken
• Sunday: lunch - black bean burgers, dinner - super bowl party at friends, bringing bean dip and tortilla chips

Grocery-

Kroger: I took advantage of the buy-10-save-$5 mega deal last week, I did it 4 times in fact.  I got 24 packages of cheese.  Yes, you read that right.  But they ended up being .50 each, and I also got back 2 - $2 catalinas (the things that print for you at the end of the transaction).  So I got 24 packs (12 lbs) of cheese for $8.  Should last me a really long time.  I also got 7 lbs of meat on clearance - 2 packages of ground bison (buffalo), and 4 packages of ground turkey.  Then a number of other items.

• Spent: 49.42
• Full item value: 164.04
• Saved: 114.62 (70%)

Publix - I didn’t use a single coupon on this trip.  Can you believe that?  Well, I take that back - I used my $4 in catalinas that I got at Kroger, but it doesn’t really count as coupons.  I got almost entirely fresh produce, 2 gallons organic milk, and a couple canned beans.

• Spent: 38.78
• Full item value: 45.50
• Saved: 6.72 (15%)

Totals:

• Spent: 88.20
• Full item value: 209.54
• Saved: 121.34 (58%)

Remaining in Feb budget: 217.98