Lazy Day

I had a really lazy day yesterday, went to church and that's about it.  I did look over a lot of blogs for menu planning and wandered around Pinterest looking at recipes and home decor photos.  Gotta love that Pinterest.

I am running a bit behind on my organizing, so haven't really gotten my meal plan refined, but this is what the week is shaping up to look like.

Mon. - Hubby's birthday - going out
Tue. - Pineapple Chicken meatballs, cheese tortellini Alfredo, salad
Wed. - Baked Chicken, carrots, green beans
Thu. - Sloppy Joe's
Fri. - Pulled pork, beans, pasta

I will be linking up with Meal Plan Monday over on Organizing Junkie.  If you need some inspiration, head over and take a look.  All kinds of menu plans are posted, some are special diet plans (gluten free, vegetarian, kid friendly)

I am still fine tuning the plan, am going to be getting a few more weeks planned out as well based on what I have on hand.  I am trying to knock down the budget, save where I can.  After cleaning, sorting and writing down an inventory of what I have, it will be much easier to use what I have.  I did do a massive buy on Saturday at the local WinCo store which is all the way across town, but went to the farmer's market and a couple of other errands that had me driving that way anyway. I will be having to go back to WinCo to talk to a manager about my receipt, they rang up an item wrong and I will be seeing if they will refund me the difference. Normally I wouldn't waste the gas, but this is a significant mistake, like about $7.  That is two gallons of milk, which is what I will be buying when I am there, along with some little things I forgot.  I spent $160, no coupons, mostly no sale items.  The meat was on sale, and there were two magazines.  Now that I am really seriously cutting the budget, I will be seeing just how long I can make this buy last.  If all goes as planned, it will be the end of the month before I have to do a large purchase.  I will have to of course buy the usual (bread, milk, pet food) items that I don't stock up on, that we go through quickly.

Speaking of my WinCo trip. I saw this and had to take a photo. Fifty Shades series.

Now, while I haven't read this series, I have heard a lot about them.  They have been on the top 100 books at Amazon.com for a long time.  I even, as bad as I hate to do it, had to ask my oldest daughter about the books.  She is who I go to, and my sweet daughter in law, when I need to know about current things concerning books, meaning of slang, or social issues.  All things I am some what sheltered from. At any rate, from what she told me about the books, they are NOT children's books.

Now, I told you I would post photos of my spice cabinet and product storage.

This is the before. Every thing was just thrown in where ever it would fit or land.  The products (foil, baggies, wax paper) was especially chaotic.

Now then, you have the after.  I am having a little trouble getting the photos to go where I want, but you can get the idea.So, now I have it all organized. I found that I had duplicate boxes of several items open and being used.  For example, slow cooker liners (Man I love those things) I had three boxes, all open and being used.  I took all of the bags from those boxes and placed them in to one box.  I did the same with my reusable bags. (gallon, pint, quart, sandwich and snack) Tried to put the most used at the front of the cabinet.  Kind of hard since almost all it gets used on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. There just isn't any good way to store my baking sheets and cupcake pans. Put at least it looks a little better.  Of course, I went and bought a jumbo cupcake pan to add to the mess.  I love a big muffin for breakfast.  Cupcake size just seems a little small sometimes.  I had a mix for banana nut that I promptly mixed up to give the new pan a try.  I had a banana that was a few minutes away from needed to be trash, so I saved it and mashed it up in the mix, added a little bit of rum flavoring as well. The taste was AWESOME, the texture was not.  The bottom and sides of the muffins all stuck to the paper liners, really stuck as in 1/4 of the muffin stayed on the paper, and the texture was very dense and had large hollow spots.  Not sure what happened with that, have never had that happen to me.

On a brighter note.  My hubby finally got around to hanging one of the stain glass pieces my dad made.  This is one is called "The Cowboy" and is special because he framed it out and wired it for lighting.

When we moved my mom from Texas to California, my oldest daughter took it to her house.  That was about three years ago.  She never got around to getting it hung at her house.  When my mom passed away, we took her ashes to Texas to be buried next to my dad.  My daughter gave me "The Cowboy" to take to home for a while.  With the remodeling they are doing and two active boys, she was afraid it would get broken.  We did find a crack in the glass, but there is no telling when that happened.  It is only noticeable if you know where to look.  My dad was a veteran, so that is his flag from his funeral and then the shadow box has all the medals he earned during the war.  He also built the bookcase that we are now using to hold DVDs.  Guess my kids will tell me I have built a shrine to my dad, but I just don't really care.

Today is hubby's birthday, we will be going out somewhere this evening.  He hasn't said where yet.  Guess I better get moving, have some more cleaning to get done while I don't have the little guy.  Thanks for stopping by and drop in again soon.  Feel free to leave a comment, it is always nice to know that some one has read this.