Today is your last chance… and more...

Have you seen me talking about the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle the past few days? Well, today is your last chance to grab it — because this special offer ends tonight. After tonight, this goldmine of great resources (106 ebooks + […]

Here's what's new: Today is your last chance… Are you looking for a work-at-home job? 12 Healthy Crockpot Freezer Meals to Make in May What to Buy (and Skip) in May Today is your last chance… Have you seen me talking about the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle the past few days? Well, today is your last chance to grab it — because this special offer ends tonight. After tonight, this goldmine of great resources (106 ebooks + ecourses + printables + bonuses) will not be available again. So if you wake up in the morning and want to buy it, you won’t be able to because the sale will be over and it won’t be available to purchase anywhere. The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle is a goldmine of great resources (106 ebooks & ecourses + bonuses!)  Maybe you've been busy and haven't really paid attention to the Homemaking Bundle Sale thinking it wasn't for you or feeling like you didn't really have time to investigate whether it was a good deal. Or, maybe you've been thinking about getting it but you're on the fence as to whether it's worth the investment. (If you are not in a financial place to purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, will you do me a huge favor and just skip this post? The last thing I want to do is to encourage you to buy something that you can't afford.) However, if you’ve been considering getting it, I wanted to share 10 reasons why I absolutely LOVE this year’s Ultimate Homemaking Bundle — and why I think it's very worth the price ($29.97): Reason #1: When You Purchase, You Get FREE Access to the Temper Toolkit If you're a mom who struggles with anger and frustration with your kids, please know that you are not alone! My beautiful South African friend (who first introduced me to South Africa and took me there to meet all of the amazing people whom I now call dear friends!!), Lisa-Jo, gets what it's like to struggle with a temper. She's blogged about it and shared from stages about her struggle with anger. And moms all over the globe have responded to her blog posts and messages begging her for more ideas, hope, and practical help to tame their tempers. For the past many months, she's been working on a course packed with tools to help moms who struggle with taming their tempers. Y'all. I don't say this very often, but I can't recommend this course highly enough. It's SO well worth every penny! And it's exactly what I need right now. It’s been such an inspiration and help to me personally. Her course is usually $29 (and so well worth that price!), buy you get FREE access to it when you purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle! Reason #2: When You Purchase, You Get FREE Access to the Stay-At-Home Mom Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder The SAHM Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder was designed as the ultimate guide to building a functional, fashionable wardrobe that works for your every day life. It's a downloadable resource that tells you exactly what you need to have in your closet in order to create dozens of cute outfits! Not only do you get a list of all the items you need to have in your capsule wardrobe, you get pictures of the items, you get details on exactly what to get and why to have each item in your wardrobe, AND you get links of where to purchase the items, if you don't already have them in your closet. Then, you get 20 days of super cute and functional outfits ideas — complete with pictures — and they are put together using ONLY items from the capsule wardrobe! The pieces in these outfit formulas work for all of your daily life activities from running errands to days at home and even lunch with girlfriends or casual date nights. You'll never walk into your closet and wonder what to wear again! This SAHM Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder is usually $29, but you get FREE access to it when you purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle! Reason #3: When You Purchase, You Get FREE Access to the Mom’s Guide to Better Photos Online Course Want to learn how to take better photos of your kids but don’t have a lot of time to invest in learning how. When you purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, you’ll get access to the Mom’s Guide to Better Photos Online Course — a $99 value! This course offers: 2.5 hours of video content to stream on a computer or any device Individual videos are only 10-15 minutes – perfect for busy moms! Downloadable slide PDFs for note taking and reference The chance to learn from a professional photographer and mom Tips you can use with any camera – DSLR, point&shoot, or phone! Tons of before/after examples to help you understand concepts Reason #4: When You Purchase, You’ll Get Access to 7 Money-Saving Ebooks/Courses You get seven different money-saving ebooks and courses when you purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle — and each of these resources could easily save you the cost of the bundle over and over again. In fact, the ebook How to Coupon Effectively promises to teach you how to save $5200 per year in just two hours per week! I think that definitely would mean you’d quickly be making back your investment of $29.97 for buying this bundle! Reason #5: When You Purchase, You'll Get Access to Clean Mama’s Just One Page Kit The Just One Page Kit is just that – simple, easy, and perfect for getting your thoughts and tasks on paper. This digital download includes one EASY PRINT combined document with 10 pages. THE JUST ONE PAGE KIT includes: • MONTH AT A GLANCE • YEAR ON ONE PAGE • QUARTERLY CALENDARS – 4 pages • 2 WEEKLY DOCKETS – one blank and one pre-filled with the Clean Mama Cleaning Routine • BILL PAYMENT CHECKLIST – one month on a page – keep track of your bill paying on one page • CLEANING CHECKLIST – one month on a page Simply print and enjoy! The files are yours to print as many times as you need or want! Reason #6: When You Purchase, You'll Get Access to Over 450 Recipes Need some new inspiration in the kitchen? Looking for some healthful recipes or brand-new slow cooker ideas? You’ll get access to 12 different cookbooks when you purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle — with over 450 recipes total! Reason #7: When You Purchase, You'll Learn How to Land a Work-at-Home Job Do you have a dream to work part-time or full-time from home? Have you struggled to know where to start looking for a work-at-home job? If you answered "yes" to either of the above questions, check out How to Land Your First Work-at-Home Job by Angie Nelson. It’s a step-by-step guide to getting your first work-at-home job. This ebook covers so much valuable information, including: What Work-at-Home Job is Right For You How to Avoid Work-At-Home Scams How to Find Work-at-Home Job Opportunities How to Put Together a Resume That Will Stand Out What You Need to Know Before You Apply For a Job What You Need to Know Before Your First Interview 100+ Companies That Hire At-Home Workers If you are serious about getting a work-at-home job, I cannot recommend this ebook highly enough. It gives you all of the information, tools, and advice you need to go from dreaming about working from home, to actually landing your first real work-at-home job! This resource might be the most valuable resource in the bundle because it could easily teach you ways to earn 10 to 100 times what you spent on the bundle — every. single. month. Now that's what I call a good return on your investment! Reason #8: It Will Save You Money on Gifts For Others One of my very favorite things about the Homemaking Bundle is that you are allowed to gift any resources or bonuses you don't plan on using or reading. Yes, you read that right! So if you only are interested in 10 of the ebooks, 2 of the courses, and 2 of the bonuses, you can give all the others away! You could use these as gifts for a friend's birthday or an upcoming special occasion. You could split them up as gifts for multiple friends. Or, you could just share them as a way to bless someone who is interested in healthy living. The bonuses would especially make great gifts! When you purchase the bundle, you'll get a FREE $15 Credit to Hope Ink PLUS 3 FREE Digital Prints, a FREE Lip Balm Kit from Orglamix, a FREE Detox Project Box, and a FREE one month subscription to Kiwi Crate — all items that would make great gifts! If you used three of the bonuses/ebooks as gifts for friends for upcoming occasions, that could pay for the cost of the bundle itself — because you wouldn't need to spend any money (but the cost of shipping) on gifts for those three occasions! Reason #9: You'll Get FREE Motivated Moms Chore Planner + a Sweet Life Planner If you love printable planners, you are in for a treat! When you purchase the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, you'll get access to the Sweet Life Planner, The Ultimate Homemaker Binder, The Inspired to Action Day Planner, The Yearly Personal Planner, and The Family Chore Planner. This way, you can try out a few different kinds of planners and then pick the one that works best for you — and you don’t have to pay the individual prices of each planner (some that cost more than the entire bundle themselves!!) Reason #10: It's a Risk-Free Purchase With a Money-Back Guarantee! If you are still sitting on the fence right now wondering whether or not you should take the plunge and buy the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, here's why you should: it's a risk-free purchase. That's right! There's a 100% money-back guarantee on it for up to 30 days! So if you purchase it and then decide it's not as helpful as you'd hoped or that it's not worth the price you paid, you can get a full refund — no questions asked. So what are you waiting for? Through tonight at midnight only, you can get all of these items listed + much more for just $29.97 total! This huge library of resources has something for pretty much everyone! It covers homemaking, mothering, DIY-ing, your marriage, organizing, budgeting, making money from home, plus much more! Remember, this offer ends tonight at midnight. Tonight is your last chance to take advantage of this incredible sale! Ready to purchase? Just click below… Want to learn more? Read more about this amazing bundle here.  P.S. Remember, this offer ends tonight (May 1, 2017) at midnight! Get it while you can! (Note: The links in this post are affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy here.)        Are you looking for a work-at-home job? Do you have a dream to work part-time or full-time from home? Have you struggled to know where to start looking for a work-at-home job? If you answered “yes” to either of the above questions, I have a resource today that I want to tell you about that you’ve got to check out! How to Land Your First Work-at-Home Job by Angie Nelson is a step-by-step guide to getting your first work-at-home job. This ebook covers so much valuable information, including: What Work-at-Home Job is Right For You: This ebook starts out by walking you through exercises to determine what type of work-at-home job is right for you. It gives multiple examples of work-at-home jobs and then shares the skill sets and passions you’d need for those jobs. For instance, it gives you bullet points on what types of strengths you’d need to have to land a Customer Service job or a Freelance Writing job or a Data Entry Job or a Virtual Administrative Support job. How to Avoid Work-At-Home Scams: I love that this ebook also addresses how to avoid scams when it comes to work-at-home jobs. Sadly, there are a LOT of scams out there. But by using the tips this ebook gives, you can be guaranteed to not fall for anything that isn’t a legit work-at-home job. How to Find Work-at-Home Job Opportunities: Next, this ebook walks you through a lot of insider tips to actually finding work-at-home jobs. Here’s the encouraging thing: There are thousands of jobs out there — if you know where to look for them! How to Put Together a Resume That Will Stand Out: The author gives you a free resume template you can use, shares a lot of pointers on how to put together a well-crafted resume, and encourages you to use key words in your resume that will catch a potential employer’s attention. What You Need to Know Before You Apply For a Job: I can tell you from personal experience that the tips she shares in this section are spot-on. Don’t starting applying before you read these and follow them. I have not even bothered to look at someone’s resume because they made one of these simple errors. Also, there are some fantastic tips for the art of the cold pitch. What You Need to Know Before Your First Interview: Prepping for an online interview is very important — and your interview will likely be what makes or breaks you landing the job. So do yourself a huge favor and listen carefully to the valuable tips the author shares in this section. 100+ Companies That Hire At-Home Workers: Okay, this section of the book is worth so much more than the price of the book. The author has put together a list of 100+ companies that hire at-home workers and this ebook lists them by field. This is GOLD! It will save you hours of time and effort — and many of these are likely companies you wouldn’t have thought to contact without this list! If you are serious about getting a work-at-home job, I cannot recommend this ebook highly enough. It gives you all of the information, tools, and advice you need to go from dreaming about working from home, to actually landing your first real work-at-home job! How to Land Your First Work-at-Home Job is usually $24, but it's part of the special Ultimate Homemaking Bundle right now. Which means you can get this ebook + 105 other amazing printable planners/organizers and ebooks/courses on topics like self-care, home management, working from home, time management, and much more for just $29.97! Through tonight at midnight only, you can get How to Land Your First Work-at-Home Job plus 105 different ebooks, courses, and printables + some cool bonuses for just $29.97 total! This huge library of resources has something for pretty much everyone! It covers homemaking, mothering, your marriage, organizing, budgeting, making money from home, plus much more! Ready to purchase? Just click below… Want to learn more? Read more about this amazing bundle here. Note: This bundle is only available until midnight tonight (Monday, May 1, 2017). P.S. I also loved Jessica Turner’s course on time management for working moms (Stretched Too Thin). It's regularly $39, but it's also part of the bundle. So it's like getting her course & 100+ other resources for quite a bit less than the usual cost of her course!! Grab this amazing price here while you can — it's only good through tonight!        12 Healthy Crockpot Freezer Meals to Make in May (Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.) Kelly from New Leaf Wellness put together a list of 12 Healthy Crockpot Freezer Meals to Make in May. Her free download includes 12 printable recipes, a shopping list, and a meal planning calendar (editable). Psst! Looking for even more freezer cooking meals? Be sure to check out the extensive New Leaf Wellness eCookbook Collection! It has something for everybody — even those with specific diets such as gluten-free, vegetarian, paleo, and more.        What to Buy (and Skip) in May Julie from Frugally Blonde put together a great list of what to buy (and skip) in May.        Help! What should I wear?? Psst! I’m posting this instead of the usual Peek Into Our Week post… because we are camping this week and I’m completely offline. I pre-scheduled this to run today and I didn’t even bring my computer! Do you ever wish that someone could come help you put together cute outfits? Do you dream of being able to easily and effortlessly put together incredible looks without much effort? I know I have! As a self-proclaimed “non-fashionista”, I fell into just having a minimalistic wardrobe of six mix and match tops and bottoms for years. Because it was easy, simple, and no-fuss. It meant I didn’t have to think about what I was going to wear. It meant I didn’t have to stress over outfits. And I certainly didn’t have decision fatigue. But I didn’t really like it. In the past two years, I’ve discovered that I actually do care about clothes. I actually do like looking cute and put together. In fact, I find it fun to piece together an outfit — complete with jewelry and shoes — based upon what I have in my closet. I’ve given myself permission to try new styles, wear new colors, and have more than just a few outfits. But I still abhor shopping. Seriously. There are a thousand things I’d rather do that comb through stores, try on multiple items in dressing rooms, and try to decide in a few minutes while in the bad dressing room lighting whether I love something enough to buy it. I’ve watched my friend, Jessica Fisher, as she has been learning all sorts of new wardrobe tips and tricks from Allison from Get Your Pretty On. And I’ve loved seeing her find so much joy and fulfillment in dressing well. She has raved about the GYPO Style Challenges and has instagrammed herself many days as she’s going through one. She’s definitely piqued my interest about what these style challenges are all about, so I was thrilled when I discovered that the brand-new Ultimate Homemaking Bundle had a Stay-at-Home-Mom Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder as part of the 106 resources offered in the bundle! As soon as I got my bundle, I downloaded this Wardrobe Basics Builder and I was so impressed with it! The SAHM Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder was designed as the ultimate guide to building a functional, fashionable wardrobe that works for your every day life. It’s a downloadable resource that tells you exactly what you need to have in your closet in order to create dozens of cute outfits! Not only do you get a list of all the items you need to have in your capsule wardrobe, you get pictures of the items, you get details on exactly what to get and why to have each item in your wardrobe, AND you get links of where to purchase the items, if you don’t already have them in your closet. Then, you get 20 days of super cute and functional outfits ideas — complete with pictures — and they are put together using ONLY items from the capsule wardrobe! The pieces in these outfit formulas work for all of your daily life activities from running errands to days at home and even lunch with girlfriends or casual date nights. You’ll never walk into your closet and wonder what to wear again! This SAHM Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder is usually $29, but I have an even better deal for you: it’s part of the special Ultimate Homemaking Bundle right now. Which means you can get this course + 105 other homemaking resources for just $29.97 — just $1 more than the usual price of her course!! How’s that for a deal?? 🙂 Through Monday at midnight only, you can get the SAHM Casual Wardrobe Basics Builder, plus 105 different ebooks, courses, and printables + some cool bonuses for just $29.97 total! This huge library of resources has something for pretty much everyone! It covers homemaking, mothering, your marriage, organizing, budgeting, making money from home, plus much more! Ready to purchase? Just click below… Want to learn more? Read more about this amazing bundle here. Note: This bundle is only available until midnight on Monday, May 1, 2017. P.S. I’ve also been eyeing the Nester’s Cozy Minimalist course for a long time. It’s regularly $39, but it’s also part of the bundle. So it’s like getting her course & 100+ other resources for quite a bit less than the usual cost of her course!! Grab this amazing price here while you can — it’s only good through Monday!        Do you wish you could stop yelling at your kids?? It’s all too easy to sugarcoat things we share online — or at least to sanitize our life. Because who really wants to see pictures of a grumpy mom, read about frustrated kids, see posts about the laundry pile, hear someone go on about the dirty dishes, or read about someone’s unfinished to-do list? So I post the smiles, the picked-up house, and the orderly planner pages. But these are just little snippets of life. They are the highlight reels. The reality is that none of us have it together. None of us have it all figured out. And none of us are doing all. the. things. We all have our struggles, our setbacks, and our shortcomings. We all have those areas that we’d rather just Photoshop from existence. So let’s just get real honest here. I wish I could be the mom who could pretend and say, “I never yell at my kids!” But, instead, I'm the girl who has struggled with anger ever since I was a child. And I’ve sometimes acted out on my anger in ways that I regret to this day. It's one of the things I wish I could hide and pretend didn't exist. If only I had more patience. If only I could be the mom who was never even tempted to raise her voice. If only I had incredible calm and never got frustrated. But nope. That’s not me. I realize that good has come from it when I really think about it. Because it keeps me humble. It reminds me to be more understanding and empathetic with others who struggle with other issues. It’s caused me to need Jesus so much. It’s allowed me to learn to practice patience and love and self-control — even when it’s the last thing I feel. And it has given me many opportunities to humble myself and ask for forgiveness when I fail. I know that this could be disappointing to some of you. I know that this could make you want to stop reading my blog because I’m a hot mess over here some days. But it’s important to me to be real — to not pretend like I’ve got it all figured out. If you ever look at my life or someone else’s life and feel like you don’t measure up, remember this: You have plenty of highlight reels in your life, too. We all do. The struggles and shortcomings and setbacks don’t define us. Rather, they are part of our story — and can be part of our redemption and refining, if we let them be! Do You Struggle With Your Temper, Too? If you’re a mom who struggles with anger and frustration with your kids, please know that you are not alone! My beautiful South African friend (who first introduced me to South Africa and took me there to meet all of the amazing people whom I now call dear friends!!), Lisa-Jo, gets what it’s like to struggle with a temper. She’s blogged about it and shared from stages about her struggle with anger. And moms all over the globe have responded to her blog posts and messages begging her for more ideas, hope, and practical help to tame their tempers. For the past many months, she’s been working on a course packed with tools to help moms who struggle with taming their tempers. Y’all. I don’t say this very often, but I can’t recommend this course highly enough. It’s SO well worth every penny! And it’s exactly what I need right now. Her course is usually $29 (and so well worth that price!), but I have an even better deal for you: Lisa-Jo’s course is part of the special Ultimate Homemaking Bundle right now. Which means you can get her course + 105 other homemaking resources for just $29.97 — just $1 more than the usual price of her course!! How’s that for a deal?? 🙂 I love Lisa-Jo’s premise in the course: TEMPER is not an incurable disease but a treatable condition. Yes, yes, yes! That gives me so much hope! Moms, we don't need more guilt, do we? What we need are the tools to help get us through. That's why Lisa-Jo created the Temper Toolkit — a collection of all her practical strategies, honest stories, and Biblical resources from one mom to another to help you take control of your temper BEFORE you lose it. She has packaged up everything she's learned over the last decade of parenting and what she teaches at her workshops so that you can put it into practice in your own homes. Here are the topics she covers in her 7-video course: 1: The one thing you can stop feeling guilty about right now 2: Discovering the roots of our anger 3: The one simple scheduling trick to help you tame your temper 4: What to do when parenting feels like a hostage negotiation crisis 5: Why having a bad day doesn't make you a bad mom 6: What to do when your temper has nothing to do with being angry 7: So you lost your temper, what comes next? I told you it was good! The words and insights she shares in these videos have impacted me so deeply as a parent and have given me so many tools to turn to when my temper begins to rise! Through Monday at midnight only, you can get Lisa-Jo’s course, plus 105 different ebooks, courses, and printables + some cool bonuses for just $29.97 total! This huge library of resources has something for pretty much everyone! It covers homemaking, mothering, your marriage, organizing, budgeting, making money from home, plus much more! Ready to purchase? Just click below… Want to learn more? Read more about this amazing bundle here. Note: This bundle is only available until midnight on Monday, May 1, 2017. P.S. I’ve also been eyeing the Nester’s Cozy Minimalist course for a long time. It’s regularly $39, but it’s also part of the bundle. So it’s like getting her course & 100+ other resources for quite a bit less than the usual cost of her course!! Grab this amazing price here while you can — it’s only good through Monday!        This is SO embarrassing! I can’t believe I’m actually putting this out on the internet. But I am… and I’m pretty sure that I have hit a new low for doing so! However, for those of you who like it when I keep things real, this is for you! You see, I cleaned out my bathroom closet — on LIVE video. Y’all. I didn’t even know what was in there. (See above photo. I told you it was B-A-D!) Watch below to see my very messy and embarrassing bathroom cupboard: Here’s the thing I learned from doing this: Once you turn on the camera and get started, when people are watching you on the other end, you kind of have to follow through. 😉 Oh my goodness! Does that not look SO. MUCH. BETTER???? I still need to get a few more tubs and I still need to label all the tubs in there, but it just makes me incredibly happy to look at! Need Some More Help Getting Your Home & Life in Order? Through Monday only, you can get a brand-new Ultimate Homemaking Bundle — a completely new and AMAZING collection of homemaking helps & resources that will give you a truly valuable knowledge base you'll use for years to come. In this bundle, you will find 106 eResources aimed to grow you in all aspects of homemaking. There are resources on home management, motherhood, marriage, feeding your family well, taking care of you, faith, working from home, managing your money, organizing your life, plus much more! Go here to see the full list of 106 eBooks, eCourses & printable packs included in the sale. They have a combined value of over $2,000!! Some of the resources I’m most excited about are: The Temper Toolkit — You all, I LOVED this course. Loved, loved, loved it! And you can get it + everything else in the bundle — for the cost of the course! What a deal! (Value: $29) From Frustration to Functional: A 14-Day Closet Makeover — I can’t wait to go through this course! It helps you create a plan for a functional wardrobe that you love! (Value: $69) The Paperless Home — How to declutter your home and save hours every week. (Value: $32) 31 Days to Radically Reduce Your Expenses — Want to find some extra room in your budget? This book will give you some great ideas! (Value: $7) How to Coupon Effectively — This book promises to teach you how to save $5000+ per year in just two hours per week! (Value: $10) A Mom’s Guide to Better Photos — Beginning photography for moms, no fancy camera required! (Value: $99) The Breakfast Revolution: Recipes From Outside the Cereal Box — 40 recipes to help you break out of your breakfast rut! (Value: $8.95) Reset: 31 Days of Real Joy Right Now — A month-long devotional journey on how to have real joy in the middle of a messy life. (Value: $10) 52 Dates for Two — a date idea for every week of the year! (Value: $6.97) The Cozy Minimalist Course — how to decorate your home with confidence! (Value: $39) Your Morning Manual: A Guide for Resetting & Maximizing Your Mornings — This ebook walks you through the process of setting up and organizing your best morning! (Value: $15) How to Land Your First Work-at-Home Job — an ebook to walk you through how to actually land a work-at-home gig! (Value: $24) This deal is only available until Monday, so you'll want to get it while you can! Grab your copy of The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle here.        Brigette’s $73 Grocery Shopping Trip and Weekly Menu Plan for 6 Unfortunately it was one of “those” weeks at Aldi where they were out of several things I wanted (and I had already made my trip to Harris Teeter). I will probably end up making another stop at Aldi this weekend for a few things like almond milk, cauliflower and romaine. Aldi Pineapple – $1.19 1 3-lb bag Sweet Potatoes – $1.79 1 Cantaloupe – $0.99 1 Artisan Lettuce – $1.99 2 pkgs Broccoli Crowns – $2.78 1 pkg Zucchini – $2.49 1 16-oz bag Mini Cucumbers – $1.29 2 16-oz pkgs Baby Carrots – $1.98 1 16-oz carton Egg Whites – $1.89 2 64-oz cartons Orange Juice – $3.38 1 2-lb bag Shredded Cheddar Cheese – $5.89 1 box Honey Nut Oats – $1.39 1 box Honey Crunch Oats – $1.49 1 pkg Hamburger Buns – $0.85 1 bunch Organic Bananas – $1.30 1 5-lb pkg Ground Beef – $8.95 1 pint Grape Tomatoes – $1.89 1 32-oz pkg Spaghetti Noodles – $1.45 1 pkg Sliced Pepperoni – $2.19 1 pint Heavy Whipping Cream – $1.89 1 can Green Beans – $0.49 1 pkg Bacon – $3.87 2 gallons Whole Milk – $4.54 Total: $55.96 Harris Teeter 3 dozen Eggs – $2.61 3 Dannon Yogurt – $3.00, used $0.50/3 Dannon or Light & Fit Single Serve Cups – 3-26-17 SS (exp. 04/26/17) (doubled) – $1.50/3 after coupon (I thought these were on sale for $0.50/each before the coupon, but apparently only the Light and Fit varieties were. Oh well – my kids will still be happy to eat them!) 1 2-ct pkg Avocados – $1.67 1 Smuckers Simply Fruit Jam – $2.79 2 Harris Teeter Frozen Pizzas – $5.79 3 Deer Park Water (96-oz, 12pk) – $5.97, used 3 $0.50/1 RP 04/09 (doubled) – $2.97/3 after coupons Total: $17.33 Grocery Total for the Week: $73.29 Weekly Menu Plan Breakfasts Cereal x 2 Oatmeal x 2 Smoothies, Classic Bran Muffins x 2 Hard Boiled Eggs, Toast Lunches Baked Sweet Potatoes, Pineapple, Yogurt Veggie Omelets, Smoothies x 2 Leftovers x 4 Dinners Spaghizza, Tossed Salad, Homemade French Bread Baked Chicken Nuggets ((I’ll use homemade breadcrumbs and just add some extra seasonings), Milk Rice, Honey Glazed Carrots Tacos, Spanish Rice, Fruit Salad Beans with Bacon (I’m adding carrots), Skillet Cornbread Herb & Cheese Stuffed Burgers (I will leave out the onion and substitute fresh cilantro – leftover from last week – for the parsley), Baked Potato Wedges, Roasted Broccoli Pizza, Tossed Salad Leftovers        Want to see the inside of my fridge and pantry?? So, I got really, really brave yesterday and today. And I cleaned out my pantry and my fridge on LIVE video. It was rather embarrassing… especially because a lot of people think of me as someone who has a really clean house. Here’s the truth: There ARE some parts of my house that are really clean and organized. And there are some parts of my house that are really NOT clean and organized. Ahem. One of those parts happens to be my pantry. I see all these incredibly organized pantries on Pinterest and I’m over here all like, “Baskets? Bins? Tubs? Nope. I’ll just cram everything onto the wire shelves and when it doesn’t fit anymore, I’ll stick it on the floor of the pantry.” Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Imagine lots of comments while I was cleaning like, “Oh wow! I didn’t know I had bought this! I completely forgot!” Or, “Um, okay, and now we have an almost entirely empty container of dried apricots that someone decided to put back on the shelf with three tiny apricots left at the bottom.” Watch below to see the very raw, real video of me cleaning out my pantry… Here’s the thing I learned from doing this: Once you turn on the camera and get started, when people are watching you on the other end, you kind of have to follow through. 😉 I also got brave and cleaned out my refrigerator today — on LIVE video again! Watch below… And I’m working up the courage to clean out my bathroom closet tomorrow on live video. It’s going to take a LOT of courage to pull that off… because my bathroom cupboard is far, far, far worse than my fridge or pantry! Need Some More Help Getting Your Home & Life in Order? Through Monday only, you can get a brand-new Ultimate Homemaking Bundle — a completely new and AMAZING collection of homemaking helps & resources that will give you a truly valuable knowledge base you'll use for years to come. In this bundle, you will find 106 eResources aimed to grow you in all aspects of homemaking. There are resources on home management, motherhood, marriage, feeding your family well, taking care of you, faith, working from home, managing your money, organizing your life, plus much more! Go here to see the full list of 106 eBooks, eCourses & printable packs included in the sale. They have a combined value of over $2,000!! Some of the resources I’m most excited about are: The Temper Toolkit — You all, I LOVED this course. Loved, loved, loved it! And you can get it + everything else in the bundle — for the cost of the course! What a deal! (Value: $29) From Frustration to Functional: A 14-Day Closet Makeover — I can’t wait to go through this course! It helps you create a plan for a functional wardrobe that you love! (Value: $69) The Paperless Home — How to declutter your home and save hours every week. (Value: $32) 31 Days to Radically Reduce Your Expenses — Want to find some extra room in your budget? This book will give you some great ideas! (Value: $7) How to Coupon Effectively — This book promises to teach you how to save $5000+ per year in just two hours per week! (Value: $10) A Mom’s Guide to Better Photos — Beginning photography for moms, no fancy camera required! (Value: $99) The Breakfast Revolution: Recipes From Outside the Cereal Box — 40 recipes to help you break out of your breakfast rut! (Value: $8.95) Reset: 31 Days of Real Joy Right Now — A month-long devotional journey on how to have real joy in the middle of a messy life. (Value: $10) 52 Dates for Two — a date idea for every week of the year! (Value: $6.97) The Cozy Minimalist Course — how to decorate your home with confidence! (Value: $39) Your Morning Manual: A Guide for Resetting & Maximizing Your Mornings — This ebook walks you through the process of setting up and organizing your best morning! (Value: $15) How to Land Your First Work-at-Home Job — an ebook to walk you through how to actually land a work-at-home gig! (Value: $24) This deal is only available until Monday, so you'll want to get it while you can! Grab your copy of The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle here.        My Completely Honest Review of Twigby Phone Plans & Costs (and why we’re getting our daughter her own phone) (Note: This post was sponsored by Twigby. Read our disclosure policy here.) So, we’re about to enter a very new era… our oldest daughter is 12 and we’re getting ready to get her a phone. {Excuse me while I try to recover from the fact that I have a 12-year-old and the fact that I have a child old enough to have a PHONE.} I know that all families are different, all kids are different, and I’m not here to say that 12 is the magic age when your child should get a phone. It’s just the age our family has decided upon for Kathrynne based upon a variety of reasons, including: 1) Kathrynne is more and more involved in different social/school opportunities where I need to be able to contact her to coordinate pick-up times, let her know various things, and be able to check-in on her. 2) She’s getting ready to start Lower Division in August at the classical school our kids go to and she’ll have a lot more independence and responsibility and social opportunities as a result. We feel like it’s important that we’re able to check in on her throughout the day and that she’s able to easily contact us, if she needs to. 3) She’s also shown maturity and responsibility and we believe she’s ready to have her own phone. We’ve already explained to her that having her own phone is a privilege not a right and that if she abuses the privilege, we can take the phone away at any time. With all of this in mind, we’ve been researching out phone plans and prices to figure out what the best options would be. Twigby contacted me a few months ago asking if I would consider doing a review of their services. Because we were right in the midst of this whole new world of researching getting a phone for Kathrynne, I said I’d love to try out their services and give a completely honest review. So here are my honest thoughts based upon my experience and research into this company: How Does Twigby Work? Twigby is a company dedicated to providing fantastic phone service at great prices. If you are looking for a great deal on a phone — either for yourself or your child — I’d highly recommend checking out what Twigby has to offer. Unlike traditional cell phone companies, they give you the ability to create your own custom, prepaid plan — without a contract or an unnecessary activation fee. You don’t have to mess with going to a store and picking out a phone plan. You just go to their site, pick your phone plan and either switch your current phone over or get a new phone, and they get it all set up for you. My favorite part about their service (in addition to their great prices!) is that they offer plan flexibility with the ability to change plans or phones at any time for free. You’re not locked into an expensive contract that has activation and termination fees. They also offer Free Overage Protection, so you can rest easy in knowing that you will never be charged for overages without your go-ahead! You have complete control. Psst! If you end up switching over to their phone service, they also offer a referral program so you can email your friends a special link and, if your friend signs up through your link, you’ll both automatically receive a $20 credit 45 days from your friend’s activation date! Read more about their referral program here. How Much Could You Save? When I visited the Twigby site for the first time, I was shocked at how affordable their plans were! Their basic phone plans start as low as $9 per month! They have a variety of plans, including those that offer unlimited texting and the option to include data. If you are wondering whether or not you could save by switching to Twigby, check out this calculator here to see how much you could save by switching to Twigby. {If you try out the calculator, let us know how much it says you could save on your phone service! I’m very curious to hear!} If the calculator shows that you will save by switching to Twigby (and I bet it does!), there’s a good chance you can switch your current phone over to the Twigby service. Fill this form out to see if your current phone is Twigby-compatible. If you need to buy a new phone, they also offer some great deals on phones. If you don’t really care about having a fancy iPhone, but just need a cheap and simple phone, check out all of the phones they offer that are $75 or less. Plus, use coupon code MOM at checkout to get an additional $10 off! Is the Coverage Good? We got to try out the Twigby phone service for the past two months and were very impressed with how great the coverage was. We never had one time that we had any issues with the coverage. Twigby customers use not one, but two of the nation’s largest nationwide networks! You can input your address here to see if the coverage is good in your specific area. Would you like to try Twigby? Twigby is offering MoneySavingMom.com readers an exclusive introductory offer right now! Choose from the following deals: Get $10 off any phone purchase with code MOM at checkout. Get a free SIM card for a Twigby compatible phone with code MOMSIM at checkout. Valid for a limited time only. Go here to get started with Twigby.        The jeans I’m going to be wearing over and over again this spring (they were just $14.99!) (Note: This post was sponsored by thredUP. Read our disclosure policy here.) Need to freshen up your wardrobe or your kids’ wardrobe for spring and summer? Have your kids grown since last summer and you need to buy clothes for them for this summer? I highly recommend checking out thredUP — especially if you’re like me and don’t love the process of having to go to multiple stores and shop for clothes! thredUP is the world’s largest online thrift store and is a great way to help you afford the brands and designers you might not normally be able to. thredUP sells high-quality, practically new women's and kids' clothing and accessories, with a range of great brands to choose from at up to 90% off the original retail price! They have a HUGE selection of items — from baby clothes, kids’ clothes, and clothes for women. I’m always impressed by the variety they offer and just the sheer number of items they have available on their site at any given time. It’s WAY more than you’d find at your local consignment sale! Now, if the thought of them having so many different options to choose from feels like it might be overwhelming to you, I can guarantee you that it won’t be because their search features are so incredible. You see, they allow you to search by what types of clothes you are looking for, what colors you like, what brands you prefer, and/or what price range. This allows you to really find exactly what types of things you are looking for quickly and efficiently — and saves you lots of time and frustration having to wade through pages of pages of items that aren’t your style, aren’t in colors you like, or are out of your price range. I love getting great deals and shopping secondhand, but honestly, at this season of my life, digging through racks at the thrift store or going to garage sales just isn't really my cup of tea. So I love that there are options to shop secondhand clothes online. thredUP is one of my favorite online sites to buy secondhand clothes. thredUP prides itself on the "unboxing" experience. When you receive your thredUP box, all of the clothing items will be hand-folded with cute thredUP tags attached to each. The items are wrapped in nice tissue paper and delivered to your doorstep in an cute polka dot box. We've ordered many, many clothes from thredUP over the years and many of the clothes we've ordered have been items we've worn over and over again. One of my favorite ways to shop thredUP is to search for deals on high-quality brands I already know that I love and adore but would never pay full price for. For instance, you can choose from popular brands such as Lululemon, Gap, J.Crew, Express, Forever 21, H&M, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Anthropologie, and many more. You can often find name brand items that are in like-new condition (or even new with tags!) — for up to 90% off the retail price! And my favorite thing is that they have lots of items for $5-8 each — and if you use the 40% off coupon code (below), you'll be able to find some amazing deals! Note: thredUP also offers an easy way to clean out your closet. You can check their website to see which brands of your secondhand clothes they take and what the payouts are. Simply order a thredUP Clean Out Bag, fill it with items you no longer want, and place it at your door for pick-up. I needed to freshen up my wardrobe for spring/summer, so I ordered some new and like-new items from thredUP two weeks ago. I was so happy with some of my finds! These J. Crew shorts were just $17.99 (originally $65!) and this Express Sleeveless tank was just $11.99 (originally $40!). Both of these fit me so well and are in great condition. I can dress them up or dress them down, depending upon the occasion. (See how I wore the Sleeveless Top today here.) I love this purple Black Saks Fifth Avenue Sleeveless Top I found. It was just $16.99 (originally $60) and in excellent condition. I actually wore this on Sunday for Easter! In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what I would think of this top, but I went ahead and got it because I knew that thredUP has a great return policy. If an item doesn't fit you, you can log into your account within 14 days from when it's delivered to say that you want to return it. You can then opt for free shipping if you want store credit or simply pay the price of return shipping to get a refund. The purple Black Saks Fifth Avenue Sleeveless Top is perfect to wear with my very favorite find… these American Eagle white jeans! I’ve told you all how jeans are a struggle for me. I’m short, but not petite. Small, but not tiny. So finding jeans that fit without being too long, too short, too loose, or too tight is a constant challenge. I have a few pairs that I wear over and over and over again. So I was thrilled to find these American Eagle white jeans for just $14.99 (originally $50) in excellent condition. They fit me like a glove! They are a little long, but look cute when rolled at the hem. My only complaint is that you can see the pockets through them, but if I wear a longer top, you won’t be able to. I already know that these will be jeans I will be wearing again and again and again this spring and summer! Would you like to try thredUP? thredUP is offering MoneySavingMom.com readers a special offer! The first 100 new sign-ups who place an order and use coupon code SAVING40 at checkout will get 40% off your purchase (up to a $50 discount). This coupon is valid for new thredUP customers only. Have you tried thredUP before? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts on your experience with it.        Gretchen’s $40 Grocery Shopping Trip and Menu Plan Aldi 2 Frozen Pizzas – $0.99 each 1 lb Butter – $2.89 1 bag Frozen Chicken Breasts – $5.99 1 Unsweetened Applesauce – $1.89 1 pkg Gallon Bags – $1.99 1 Half & Half – $1.79 2 cans Green Beans – $0.49 each 1 Grape Jelly – $1.39 1 pkg Shredded Cheddar Cheese (16 oz) – $2.99 1 pkg Flour Tortillas – $0.99 1 pkg Tortilla Chips – $1.19 1 dozen Eggs – $0.52 1 lb Ground Beef – $2.69 2 pkg Cheddar Cheese (8 oz) – $1.79 each 1 pkg Rice Cakes – $1.29 1 bag Red Grapes – $1.98, used $0.25/1 Checkout 51 rebate – $1.73 after rebate 1 bag Potatoes (5 lbs) – $2.49 1 pkg Roma Tomatoes – $1.49 1 pkg Deli Turkey – $2.39 1 loaf Bread – $0.85 Used $10/$40 mailer coupon Total after coupon and rebate: $31.59 Dillons I tried something new this week and used Clicklist for the first time! I didn’t order much because I wasn’t sure how I would like it. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was and happy that they took my coupons without any problem. Although I missed the store “experience” and the opportunity to look for marked down items, I will definitely be using Clicklist again! It was nice to not have to get my kids out of the car and keep an eye on them while shopping. 😉  1 Annie’s Mac & Cheese – $1, used Free e-coupon (no longer available) – Free after coupon 2 Cucumbers – $0.50 each 1 gallon Dillons Milk – $1.88 1 pkg Hormel Natural Choice Snack – $1.99, used $1/1 printable – $0.99 after coupon (I thought I had a Mobisave rebate to make this almost free, but it wasn’t on my app when I went to redeem it.) 🙁 1 Romaine Lettuce – $1.49, used $0.10 Mobisave rebate – $1.39 after rebate 1 Mom’s Best Oats Cereal – $1.67, used $0.25 Ibotta rebate – $1.42 after rebate 2 Sunbelt Granola Bars – $2.69 each, used Buy One Get One Free printable (took off $2.99) – $1.19 each after coupon Used $0.25 Ibotta rebate for any receipt Total after coupons and rebates: $8.81 Total for both stores: $40.40 Menu Plan for This Week Breakfasts Eggs, Toast, Spinach (leftover from last week) x 4 Cereal x 2 Donuts from our local donut shop 🙂 Lunches Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Grapes x 2 Turkey Sandwiches, Fruit Salad Baked Potato Bar Mac & Cheese, Carrot Sticks, Cucumber Slices Cheese, Crackers, Turkey, Fruit, Veggies x 2 Dinners My husband had to go out of town for a couple days last week so we ended up not using two of the meals from last week’s menu. (Am I the only one who serves cereal and milk for dinner when my hubby is gone? 😉 ) I went ahead and moved those meals to this week’s menu since I still had the ingredients for them. Chicken Noodle Casserole, Steamed Broccoli, Sliced Pineapple Ham Hashbrown Casserole, Eggs Southwest Roll-ups, Chips and Salsa Salad Bar with Grilled Chicken BBQ Meatballs, Mashed Potatoes, Biscuits, Green Beans Spaghetti, Homemade Bread, Steamed Veggies Leftovers        A Peek Into My Life This Past Week (+ win a stack of books from me!) Welcome to my weekly Sunday post where we take a break from money-related posts and I share about what I'm loving right now and give you a little peek into our life from the past week. I told you last week that I had BIG plans for this week — to not only commit to getting up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, but also to bring back my much-requested morning Periscope show. I’m so thrilled because not only did I get up around 4:30 to 4:45 a.m. every day this past week, I stuck with my commitment to be on Periscope every morning, too. AND, best of all, I got so much done this week and had a lot of breathing room in my life for the most important things — like relationships! It was so successful, that I’ve decided to continue it for at least this next week, as well. No promises after that… I’m just taking this one week at a time! 🙂 This week, I’m also going to work on doing a better job of actually getting in bed before 9 p.m. — something that I struggled with this past week, mostly just because that’s at least an hour earlier than I usually get to bed! I know it’s very doable with our current season of life… I just have to, you know, DO IT. 😉 What I’m Reading I haven’t been doing as much reading recently, but this week, I did a better job of at least getting in a little reading time every day. Hopefully next week, I’ll be able to report that I actually finished some books. Right now, I’m reading: Thou Givest, They Gather (an old Christian reprint), A Gospel Primer (a spiritually encouraging book), 10% Happier (a story-driven book), and The Big Leap (a book on life improvement). {See my Reading Goals for 2017. Also, see the 36 books I've read so far in 2017 here.} {Psst! In case you noticed that my rug is off-centered in this photo, read this.} What I’m Watching We’re continuing to really enjoy Designated Survivor and are also watching the latest season of Amazing Race together as a family. What I’m Listening To This week, I listened to episodes of podcasts from Sorta Awesome and Cultivating the Lovely. I also watched/listened to the entire What’s 4 Dinner Challenge that is going to be part of the upcoming Homemaking Bundle (more details on the bundle later this week). What I’m Loving I’m absolutely loving the new raglan shirts we launched with Cents of Style this week. And if you saw me this week, you probably saw me wearing one! 🙂 As you well know, I’m LOVING the Slow Cooker Menu Plan from Eat at Home and am excited to continue sharing the recipes I’m making on this menu plan every morning on Facebook Live at 9 a.m. CT. One Thing I Accomplished This Week I’m a Marie Kondo failure when it comes to the whole folding clothes thing. I read the book, I looked at blog posts on it, I watched the videos… and I really did try. But my drawers were just in constant disarray. I got tired of digging through clothes, having to spend extra time looking for what I needed, and feeling discouraged every time I opened up my drawers. So I decided it was high time I try something different… because clearly my current non-system wasn’t cutting it. I pulled everything out of my dresser, hung up almost everything (including nicer tees and jeans), and bought organizers for the remaining items in my drawers (workout clothes, leggings, pjs, socks, etc.). It makes me SO happy to open up each of my dresser drawers and see a neat and tidy system and space in each drawer! I kind of just want to keep opening each drawer up to look at it and admire it! (Okay, I might be weird! ;)) I didn’t stress over getting them folded all perfectly since I’m just going to be pulling it out and wearing it, and it’s not Marie Kondo approved, but it works for me!! What I’m Celebrating Moms, it’s sometimes easy to forget what our kids are capable of. I’ve been working on trying to divvy up the household responsibilities even more instead of just doing things myself because it’s “quicker and easier.” It may be quicker and easier in the short-term, but in the long run, it means that we are missing opportunities to let our kids learn new things, take more ownership, find the fulfillment that comes from accomplishing a task successfully… and it means we end up doing a lot more work than we need to be doing! Case in point: I was getting ready to make some bread for dinner a few days ago when I realized that Kaitlynn could probably learn how to make bread and I had time to teach her. She was so excited about making it, but then surprised me by asking if she could use a recipe she had found in her homemade gifts book. It was her first time to make bread and she made the entire recipe herself with almost zero help from me. The end result was this amazing sourdough-like bread that wowed us all at dinner!! And the loaf lasted all of about 15 minutes! She made it again the next day, too. I think I could get used to this. 😉 A Word of Encouragement for Moms, Especially “I’m trying to get up by 7:30 am and had been feeling good about that. I just read your post about getting up at 4:30 am and now I feel pathetic!” Someone left the above comment on one of my posts about getting up early and I wanted to reach through the screen and hug that woman and celebrate the fact that she’s getting up at 7:30 am. You guys. Please remember that my kids are 12, 9, and 7. They are sleeping through the night. They can bathe and dress themselves. They can get their own breakfasts. They can even buckle themselves in the car! (Oh how I remember the days of 3 kids in car seats who all needed my help getting in and out of the car!!) Also, please remember that my husband gets up early and has a very flexible schedule, so this works for his schedule, too. Please remember that I’m a morning person. Please remember that this 4:30 am thing is an experiment. Please remember that what works for me won’t work for you. And what works for me in one season won’t work for me in another season. Please celebrate where you are, who you are, the season of life you’re in, and the schedule you have. Please don’t feel discouraged by me and the crazy things I do over here sometimes. Please do you and what works for you. And know that even if you get up at 11:30 am every morning, if that works for you and your family, there is no shame or guilt there. You’re doing a great job. Keep it up! A Photo I Had to Share This photo moves me at a deep level. You see, this boy struggled for three years to learn how to read. Both of his sisters started reading pretty easily at 4. He just couldn’t get it in preschool like they did. He couldn’t get it in kindergarten. He couldn’t get it in first grade. We tried one curriculum. Then another. Then another. Nothing worked. He was frustrated because there was so much that he couldn’t do by himself without being able to read. He wanted to learn to read so badly and it just wasn’t clicking. When he started going to school in the fall, we had him take first grade again — because we knew he really needed to be reading independently to move on to second grade. We found out later that he pulled his teachers aside and told them that he couldn’t read and he didn’t really want the other kids to know so could they help him. They were so amazing to quietly work with him and help him — without the other kids knowing — and then to do class reading exercises that were specifically designed to help Silas. They said within just a few weeks, he was able to be a part of the class reading groups — which made him so proud! He has since really taken off with reading and spelling and, a few weeks ago, when we had parent-teacher conferences, his teachers told us he is reading and writing at first grade level!!! I snuck this picture of him one morning this past week when he wasn’t looking. It’s of him reading the Bible verses for our morning breakfast/Bible reading. He loves, loves, loves to look up the verses and read them all by himself. And my mama heart is just so proud of him for how far he’s come this year. But mostly, it makes me heart thrilled that he loves reading God’s Word! In Case You Missed It What I Made for Dinner This Week Is Blue Apron Really Worth the Cost? New YouTube video: Italian Seasoned Salt Chicken in the Crock-Pot Want to win this stack of books? I thought it would be fun for me to do a giveaway here every once in awhile on Sundays — giving away some of our our products, items I've been sent two of, books I've already read and want to pass on, or other items I have that we no longer need and would like to pass onto a great home! To win this stack this week, leave a comment letting us know what you are currently reading or what is your favorite book that you’ve read recently. I'll choose one winner from all of the comments and will email that winner personally + post the winner next week on my Peek Into My Life This Week Post.        What I Made for Dinner This Week (recap & reviews) + last chance to save 25% off!! I’ve been doing the Eat at Home Challenge this week in partnership with the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service. And I have to tell you, this has been SUCH a blessing to our family this week! We had a really, really busy week this week and having dinner made in the slow cooker every morning has been amazing. It’s been so simple (most of the recipes only require 5-10 minutes of work!), it’s been fun to make the recipes on live video, and we’ve really enjoyed the recipes. In fact, we have loved this service so much that we’re planning to continue using it and our family puts a BIG stamp of approval on it (scroll to the end of this post for a coupon code if you’d like to try out the service!) Here’s what we made this week: Monday — Crockpot Cantonese Sweet & Sour Pork Chops — Jesse LOVED this one. The kids thought it was so-so. Watch me make it live here. Tuesday — Slow Cooker Smoked Sausage & Sauerkraut Soup — Jesse and I thought this was really yummy. Two of the three kids liked it, too. Watch me make this recipe live here. Wednesday — Italian Seasoned Salt Chicken in the Slow Cooker — The kids really loved this one. Jesse thought it was okay. Watch me make it live here. Thursday — Beef Shawarma in the Slow Cooker — Jesse and I really loved this one. The kids weren’t as excited about it. Watch me make this recipe live here. Friday — Tilapia with Garlic Cheese Sauce — This one smells like it’s going to be really yummy! We haven’t eaten dinner yet, otherwise, I’d let you know! 🙂 Watch me make this recipe live here. Why I’ve Fallen in Love With the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service The Eat at Home menu-planning service is an incredible way to help you save time and save money. You don't have to worry about planning menus OR grocery list, because Tiffany does all of that for you as part of her menu-planning service. She has designed it specifically with busy families in mind and the menu plans offer: Quick to fix meals (even as fast as 15 minutes to the table!) Lots of slow cooker recipes Done-for-you Weekly Meal Plans & Grocery Lists The recipes can all be fixed quickly, with only a few minutes of hands-on prep. Because the recipes use common pantry ingredients, it's likely that you have everything you need to make many of the recipes. It's so convenient because all the work is done for you! You just choose which menu plan you'll use, print the grocery list, go shopping, and then spend a few minutes prepping food each day and dinner is D-O-N-E! Watch the end of this video here to see more details of the membership site and what you get when you subscribe. When you sign up for the plan (it's just a few dollars per week — or less!), each month, you'll get: An entire month of Traditional Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Slow Cooker Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Whole Food Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions Each menu plan comes with recipes created for small family (3-4 servings) and large family (6-8 servings) Color-coded grocery lists make it easy to swap out ingredients or whole meals Printable Menus to hang on the fridge or near your calendar, so you can easily see what's for dinner that week and your family can too Access to the entire month at once! 1 Hour Freezer Stash Plans – a new plan each month to stock your freezer with 6 meals in 1 hour! You can choose to stick with just the traditional menu plan or just the slow cooker menu plan or just the whole foods menu plan. Or, you can rotate different menu plans on different weeks, depending upon what you feel like cooking or how much time you have! Last Chance! Get the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service for as Low as $1.21 per Week! If you struggle to make menu plans and would love for someone to make them for you + make a grocery list for you, it's well worth spending a few dollars every week to let Eat at Home do the work for you. This week only, when you sign up for their plan (either the monthly plan, the quarterly plan, or the yearly plan, you can get 25% off by using coupon code MSM at checkout! That makes the done-for-you menu plans and grocery lists just $1.21 per week. And you get access to all three plans and the freezer cooking plans for the whole month at the rate! Go sign up for this incredible menu-planning service here. Hurry! This offer ends tomorrow evening (Saturday, April 22, 2017)! (Oh and they have a fantastic money-back guarantee if you think you want to try it out but aren't sure whether it will work for you or not!) Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.        Brigette’s $69 Grocery Shopping Trip and Weekly Menu Plan for 6 Aldi 1 Artisan Lettuce – $1.99 1 Pineapple – $0.89 2 64-oz cartons Orange Juice – $3.38 2 gallons Whole Milk – $4.54 1 container Feta Crumbles – $1.99 2 pkgs Broccoli Crowns – $2.78 2 heads Cauliflower – $4.58 1 bag Cilantro – $0.79 1 bottle Balsamic Dressing – $1.29 1 3-lb bag Pink Lady Apples – $2.99, plus receive $0.25 back from Checkout 51 – $2.74 after rebate 1 10-lb bag Russet Potatoes – $3.49 1 bag Chocolate Chips – $1.79 1 jar Parmesan Cheese – $2.29 2 cans Green Beans – $0.98 1 large jar Unsweetened Applesauce – $1.89 1 pkg Bacon – $3.49 1 pkg Mandarin Oranges – $1.89 1 carton Cottage Cheese – $2.29 1 dozen Eggs – $0.75 1 2-lb bag Red Grapes – $1.98 1 bunch Bananas (2.08lbs @ $0.30/lb) – $0.62 1 jar Grape Jelly – $1.39 1 40-oz jar Peanut Butter – $2.99 1 jar Natural Peanut Butter – $1.49 Total after Rebate: $52.30 Harris Teeter 2 cartons Mayfield Ice Cream – $5.54, used 2 $1.00/1 Mayfield Creamery Ice Cream – 4-9-17 RP; Includes 48 oz Only (exp. 05/31/17) – $3.54/2 after coupons 2 bags Snyder’s Gluten Free Pretzels – $6.00, used $1.00/2 Snyder’s of Hanover Products – 3-12-17 SS; Includes 5 oz or larger (exp. 05/31/17) – $5.00/2 after coupon 2 jars Bertolli Pasta Sauce – $4.00, used $1.50/2 Bertolli Sauces – 3-26-17 SS (exp. 04/23/17) – $2.50/2 1 Sargento Balanced Breaks – $3.00, used plus $1.50/1 evic, plus receive $0.75 back from Ibotta and $0.75 back from Checkout 51 – $1.50 MM after coupons and rebates 1 jar Smuckers Simply Fruit Jam – $2.79 2 24-ct pkgs Bottled Water – $3.29 1 Green Pepper, reduced – $0.25 1 pkg Strawberries – $1.67 Total: $17.54 Grocery Total for the Week: $69.84 Weekly Menu Plan Breakfasts Oatmeal x 2 Cereal x 2 Hard Boiled Eggs, Smoothies x 2 Cinnamon Rolls Lunches Peanut Butter and Jelly on Homemade Butterhorns, Fruit, Carrots x 2 Baked Potatoes with Cheese, Peppers/Carrots with Ranch Dip, Fruit x 2 Leftovers x 3 Dinners Grilled Chicken, Roasted Cauliflower and Broccoli, Make-Ahead Butterhorns, Cheesy Hashbrown Potatoes, Beautiful Salad (I’ll be using pecans instead of almonds since we already had pecans, and romaine mix instead of spinach since we like it better), Ultimate Double Chocolate Brownies and Ice Cream (Company for Dinner) Meat Potato Quiche (I have some leftover lunch meat that needs to be used up), Fruit Salad, Green Beans Spaghetti Carbonara, Homemade French Bread, Tossed Salad Pan Fried Tilapia, Fruit Salad, Roasted Cauliflower Upside Down Pizza, Soft Garlic Breadsticks, Homemade Applesauce Hot Dogs on the Grill, Baked Potato Wedges, Peas Leftovers        Eat at Home Challenge: Beef Shawarma in the Slow Cooker (Day 4) Welcome to Day 4 of the Eat at Home Challenge — a one-week challenge designed to encourage and inspire you to make more meals at home in order to save money and eat more healthfully! I'm following the Eat at Home Slow Cooker Menu Plan and I have been SO impressed with this plan. The recipes have been so yummy, there’s lots of variety, and they only are taking me a few minutes to put together every morning! Plus, it’s been amazing to not have to worry about dinner in the afternoons/evenings! I’m loving this plan so much that Jesse asked if I could keep doing the Slow Cooker plan after the Eat at Home Challenge is finished! Details on The Eat at Home Challenge The Eat at Home Challenge runs through April 21, 2017. Every weekday morning around 9 a.m. CT, I'll be on Facebook Live prepping our dinner to throw in the slow cooker for the day so that when 6 p.m. rolls around dinner is READY! Every day, in addition to doing a Facebook Live video on my Facebook Page, I'll be posting here on the blog what I made that day, along with a link to my video (in case you missed it). I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. You can sign up and get the recipes if you’d like to follow along with me! Scroll down to the bottom of this post for all the details on this menu-planning service + a 25% off coupon code good for this week only. My hope is that this will inspire you with some new recipe ideas, encourage you to not wait until the last minute to think about what you're having for dinner, and motivate you to eat at home more (even on busy nights!) so you can save money. I'd love for you to join me in this challenge! To participate, go join the Facebook Page here so you can share what you are making every night and see what readers all over the country (and world!) are making for dinner each night, too! What I Made Today For dinner tonight, I made Beef Shawarma in the Slow Cooker with yogurt/cucumber sauce. I’m excited to try it because I loved Shawarma when I had it on my trip to Israel! We’re going to serve it in pitas with the yogurt/cucumber sauce and have have a side of fruit salad with it. Watch the video below for the recipe details and to see me make it LIVE: What is the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service? I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. I usually make my own menu, but I thought it would be fun to try out a menu-planning service and see what we thought of it. So far, I’ve been very impressed! Eat at Home is a menu-planning service designed to make getting dinner on the table much easier every night. It was a service created by Tiffany, a mom of 4 who loves to cook and loves to gather her family around the table, but has found that if she doesn’t have a quick and easy plan, it’s hard to make that happen. How Does the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service Work? The Eat at Home menu-planning service is an incredible way to help you save time and save money. You don’t have to worry about planning menus OR grocery list, because Tiffany does all of that for you as part of the menu-planning service. She has designed it specifically with busy families in mind and the menu plans offer: Quick to fix meals (even as fast as 15 minutes to the table!) Lots of slow cooker recipes Done-for-you Weekly Meal Plans & Grocery Lists The recipes can all be fixed quickly, with only a few minutes of hands-on prep. Because the recipes use common pantry ingredients, it's likely that you have everything you need to make many of the recipes. It’s so convenient because all the work is done for you! You just choose which menu plan you’ll use, print the grocery list, go shopping, and then spend a few minutes prepping food each day and dinner is D-O-N-E! When you sign up for the plan (it’s just a few dollars per week — or less!), each month, you’ll get: An entire month of Traditional Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Slow Cooker Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Whole Food Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions Each menu plan comes with recipes created for small family (3-4 servings) and large family (6-8 servings) Color-coded grocery lists make it easy to swap out ingredients or whole meals Printable Menus to hang on the fridge or near your calendar, so you can easily see what's for dinner that week and your family can too Access to the entire month at once! 1 Hour Freezer Stash Plans – a new plan each month to stock your freezer with 6 meals in 1 hour! You can choose to stick with just the traditional menu plan or just the slow cooker menu plan or just the whole foods menu plan. Or, you can rotate different menu plans on different weeks, depending upon what you feel like cooking or how much time you have! Get the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service for as Low as $1.21 per Week! If you struggle to make menu plans and would love for someone to make them for you + make a grocery list for you, it's well worth spending a few dollars every week to let Eat at Home do the work for you. This week only, when you sign up for their plan (either the monthly plan, the quarterly plan, or the yearly plan, you can get 25% off by using coupon code MSM at checkout! That makes the done-for-you menu plans and grocery lists just $1.21 per week. And you get access to all three plans and the freezer cooking plans for the whole month at the rate! Go sign up for this incredible menu-planning service here.  (Oh and they have a fantastic money-back guarantee if you think you want to try it out but aren't sure whether it will work for you or not!) Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.        Is Blue Apron really worth the cost? (Note: This post was sponsored by Blue Apron. Read our disclosure policy here.) Last year I had the opportunity to try out Blue Apron — a subscription service that ships farm-fresh ingredients right to your doorstep, in exactly the right proportions so you can make home-cooked dinners for your family. Since I’ve gotten so many questions about Blue Apron since then, they asked me if I would be willing to do another unboxing and review on my blog for those of you who have yet to try out the service and are curious if it would work for your family or not. When I first tried out Blue Apron, I was a newbie and didn’t know that you could go in and change what meals they would send you and when your box would arrive. This time around, I got smart and went in to my account and looked at the different meal options and chose two meals that I thought my family would really like. (Some of their meals are ones that I know we wouldn’t like at all and that some in my family wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole because they are just too different than our usual simple meals.) I also changed the delivery date so that the box would arrive on a day that would be better for our family instead of the pre-scheduled date. When I was in my account, I also discovered how easy it is to see what meals they are going to be sending to you (if you are signed up for the subscription service), how simple it is to skip deliveries, and how it only takes a click of a button to see and/or change what meals they will be sending you. I chose to have them send us a box of ingredients for two recipes: Sweet & Sour Salmon with Bok Choy, Carrot, and Ginger Fried Rice and Mushroom and Swiss Cheeseburgers with Roasted Rosemary Potato Wedges. I made both recipes this week and both were winners at our house! Yay for going in and choosing which recipes I thought my family would love best! {all the ingredients for the Sweet & Sour Salmon recipe} If you are unfamiliar with Blue Apron, they are a meal subscription service and they send you a box of all the ingredients you’ll need to make 2-3 meals, including sides. The box includes pretty much every single thing you’ll need to make the recipes. The only extra ingredients the recipes called for this time were olive oil and salt & pepper. Blue Apron's goal is to make it easy for you to create delicious, nutritional recipes at home and I think they do a really great job of that. The service is definitely on the pricey side for a frugal person like me, but it’s really fun and the meals we made this time were SO delicious! I also love that they send you everything you need to make the recipe and very detailed instructions on how to make the recipe. Even if you aren’t an experienced cook, the instructions are so detailed (and include lots of pictures!) so that it feels so doable and simple. I also love that they tell you exactly how long it’s going to take to make the meals — so you can know how much time you should plan to make dinner. (Note: Some of their meals take quite a bit of time and prep. They can all be made in 40 minutes or less, but as someone who rarely spends more than 15 minutes making dinner, spending twice or three times as long in the kitchen making dinner is a big difference! I love cooking, but I rarely have time at dinner for a bunch of steps and a lot of time-intensive effort.) For me, one of the huge benefits to this service is that you literally don’t have to think about planning a meal or buying the ingredients for that meal. You just choose the recipe and open the box and it’s all there for you! As always, though, I encourage families to do what’s best for them. All of us are on different budgets and in various seasons of our lives, and Blue Apron may or may not be a great fit for your family. If you are thinking of trying out this service, here are some pros & cons to consider: Pros The ingredients are very, very fresh. The ingredients were delivered in a refrigerated box and I was impressed with how fresh they were for being sent by UPS! You get a choice in the kinds of recipes you want to receive (meat, fish, vegetarian, etc.) There’s a fun variety of recipes and an opportunity to try new foods. Some of the ingredients that we’ve received in our boxes have been outside our usual fare. If you like to try new things, this is a great way to keep your meals fresh and varied! There is no wasted food. They send you the exact amount of everything you need to make the recipe — so you don't end up throwing out the extra food because you don't have another recipe that calls for that ingredient before it goes bad! They offer a large selection of different recipes — all that are between 500 and 800 calories each. They are always adding new recipes to their line-up and do not repeat any of the same recipes for at least a year. All of the recipes can be made in 40 minutes or less. This seems like it’s pretty much right on. They offer two types of plans — the 2-Person Plan and the Family Plan. You can choose which day of the week your food is delivered to you. There's no long-term commitment once you sign up for Blue Apron. You can cancel your subscription or skip weeks at any time. They are working to develop a sustainable food system and use high quality ingredients. Check out their vision page here. Cons To keep the food so fresh, there is a LOT of packaging waste, in my opinion. Gratefully, however, they do offer a recycling program and you can return your packaging for free to Blue Apron via USPS. This made me feel better about all of the packaging! The meals are more time-intensive than I’m used to. Blue Apron specializes in more creative recipes that are geared toward foodies and those who love to spend time in the kitchen. While I love to cook, I don’t always have 30-45 minutes to spend in the kitchen making dinner. Not all of the meals are things our family would really enjoy. When I was choosing which recipes to have them send in our box, I saw a number of recipe options that I knew would be things my kids (especially) would not go for. This is why I think it’s so important that you go online and choose which recipes they send in your box. Don’t just let them choose for you or you might end up spending money on a meal that you won’t like at all. Personally, I think the prices are really expensive — especially if you usually cook from scratch and make simple meals like we do. (However, if you love to buy expensive and unique ingredients or you typically go out to dinner multiple times per week, it's very possible you could save money and eat more healthfully by using Blue Apron. Plus, it could also save you time and effort when it comes to grocery shopping and meal-planning.) Would you like to try out Blue Apron? The first 50 readers to sign up through this link will get three free meals with their first Blue Apron order. Just click here to sign up! After your first Blue Apron order, there's no long-term commitment. You can cancel your subscription or skip weeks at any time! Have you tried Blue Apron before? If so, I'd love to hear what you thought of it!        Eat at Home Challenge: Italian Seasoned Salt Chicken in the Slow Cooker (Day 3) Welcome to Day 3 of the Eat at Home Challenge — a one-week challenge designed to encourage and inspire you to make more meals at home in order to save money and eat more healthfully! I'm following the Eat at Home Slow Cooker Menu Plan and I have been SO impressed with this plan. The recipes look so yummy, there’s lots of variety, and they only look like they’ll take me a few minutes to put together every morning! Details on The Eat at Home Challenge The Eat at Home Challenge runs through April 21, 2017. Every weekday morning around 9 a.m. CT, I'll be on Facebook Live prepping our dinner to throw in the slow cooker for the day so that when 6 p.m. rolls around dinner is READY! Every day, in addition to doing a Facebook Live video on my Facebook Page, I'll be posting here on the blog what I made that day, along with a link to my video (in case you missed it). I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. You can sign up and get the recipes if you’d like to follow along with me! Scroll down to the bottom of this post for all the details on this menu-planning service + a 25% off coupon code good for this week only. My hope is that this will inspire you with some new recipe ideas, encourage you to not wait until the last minute to think about what you're having for dinner, and motivate you to eat at home more (even on busy nights!) so you can save money. I'd love for you to join me in this challenge! To participate, go join the Facebook Page here so you can share what you are making every night and see what readers all over the country (and world!) are making for dinner each night, too! What I Made Today For dinner tonight, I made Italian Seasoned Salt Chicken in the Slow Cooker. This recipe was SO simple to make and I think it’s going to taste really good! We’re going to have a fruit salad (already made) + some whole-wheat biscuits (I’m making those this afternoon) + (possibly) some steamed veggies or Sweet Potato Fries. Watch the video below for the recipe details and to see me make it LIVE: What is the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service? I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. I usually make my own menu, but I thought it would be fun to try out a menu-planning service and see what we thought of it. So far, I’ve been very impressed! Eat at Home is a menu-planning service designed to make getting dinner on the table much easier every night. It was a service created by Tiffany, a mom of 4 who loves to cook and loves to gather her family around the table, but has found that if she doesn’t have a quick and easy plan, it’s hard to make that happen. How Does the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service Work? The Eat at Home menu-planning service is an incredible way to help you save time and save money. You don’t have to worry about planning menus OR grocery list, because Tiffany does all of that for you as part of the menu-planning service. She has designed it specifically with busy families in mind and the menu plans offer: Quick to fix meals (even as fast as 15 minutes to the table!) Lots of slow cooker recipes Done-for-you Weekly Meal Plans & Grocery Lists The recipes can all be fixed quickly, with only a few minutes of hands-on prep. Because the recipes use common pantry ingredients, it's likely that you have everything you need to make many of the recipes. It’s so convenient because all the work is done for you! You just choose which menu plan you’ll use, print the grocery list, go shopping, and then spend a few minutes prepping food each day and dinner is D-O-N-E! When you sign up for the plan (it’s just a few dollars per week — or less!), each month, you’ll get: An entire month of Traditional Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Slow Cooker Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Whole Food Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions Each menu plan comes with recipes created for small family (3-4 servings) and large family (6-8 servings) Color-coded grocery lists make it easy to swap out ingredients or whole meals Printable Menus to hang on the fridge or near your calendar, so you can easily see what's for dinner that week and your family can too Access to the entire month at once! 1 Hour Freezer Stash Plans – a new plan each month to stock your freezer with 6 meals in 1 hour! You can choose to stick with just the traditional menu plan or just the slow cooker menu plan or just the whole foods menu plan. Or, you can rotate different menu plans on different weeks, depending upon what you feel like cooking or how much time you have! Get the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service for as Low as $1.21 per Week! If you struggle to make menu plans and would love for someone to make them for you + make a grocery list for you, it's well worth spending a few dollars every week to let Eat at Home do the work for you. This week only, when you sign up for their plan (either the monthly plan, the quarterly plan, or the yearly plan, you can get 25% off by using coupon code MSM at checkout! That makes the done-for-you menu plans and grocery lists just $1.21 per week. And you get access to all three plans and the freezer cooking plans for the whole month at the rate! Go sign up for this incredible menu-planning service here.  (Oh and they have a fantastic money-back guarantee if you think you want to try it out but aren't sure whether it will work for you or not!) Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.        Eat at Home Challenge: Slow Cooker Smoked Sausage & Sauerkraut Soup (Day 2) Welcome to Day 2 of the Eat at Home Challenge — a one-week challenge designed to encourage and inspire you to make more meals at home in order to save money and eat more healthfully! I'm following the Eat at Home Slow Cooker Menu Plan and I have been SO impressed with this plan. The recipes look so yummy, there’s lots of variety, and they only look like they’ll take me a few minutes to put together every morning! Details on The Eat at Home Challenge The Eat at Home Challenge runs through April 21, 2017. Every weekday morning around 9 a.m. CT, I'll be on Facebook Live prepping our dinner to throw in the slow cooker for the day so that when 6 p.m. rolls around dinner is READY! Every day, in addition to doing a Facebook Live video on my Facebook Page, I'll be posting here on the blog what I made that day, along with a link to my video (in case you missed it). I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. You can sign up and get the recipes if you’d like to follow along with me! Scroll down to the bottom of this post for all the details on this menu-planning service + a 25% off coupon code good for this week only. My hope is that this will inspire you with some new recipe ideas, encourage you to not wait until the last minute to think about what you're having for dinner, and motivate you to eat at home more (even on busy nights!) so you can save money. I'd love for you to join me in this challenge! To participate, go join the Facebook Page here so you can share what you are making every night and see what readers all over the country (and world!) are making for dinner each night, too! What I Made Today For dinner tonight, I made Slow Cooker Smoked Sausage & Sauerkraut Soup. I subbed sweet potatoes for the white potatoes the recipe called for and I can’t wait to see how it turns out! I’m going to make some Homemade Bread in the Bread Machine to go with it and will probably serve some sliced apples, too. Watch the video below for the recipe details and to see me make it LIVE: What is the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service? I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. I usually make my own menu, but I thought it would be fun to try out a menu-planning service and see what we thought of it. So far, I’ve been very impressed! Eat at Home is a menu-planning service designed to make getting dinner on the table much easier every night. It was a service created by Tiffany, a mom of 4 who loves to cook and loves to gather her family around the table, but has found that if she doesn’t have a quick and easy plan, it’s hard to make that happen. How Does the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service Work? The Eat at Home menu-planning service is an incredible way to help you save time and save money. You don’t have to worry about planning menus OR grocery list, because Tiffany does all of that for you as part of the menu-planning service. She has designed it specifically with busy families in mind and the menu plans offer: Quick to fix meals (even as fast as 15 minutes to the table!) Lots of slow cooker recipes Done-for-you Weekly Meal Plans & Grocery Lists The recipes can all be fixed quickly, with only a few minutes of hands-on prep. Because the recipes use common pantry ingredients, it's likely that you have everything you need to make many of the recipes. It’s so convenient because all the work is done for you! You just choose which menu plan you’ll use, print the grocery list, go shopping, and then spend a few minutes prepping food each day and dinner is D-O-N-E! When you sign up for the plan (it’s just a few dollars per week — or less!), each month, you’ll get: An entire month of Traditional Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Slow Cooker Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Whole Food Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions Each menu plan comes with recipes created for small family (3-4 servings) and large family (6-8 servings) Color-coded grocery lists make it easy to swap out ingredients or whole meals Printable Menus to hang on the fridge or near your calendar, so you can easily see what's for dinner that week and your family can too Access to the entire month at once! 1 Hour Freezer Stash Plans – a new plan each month to stock your freezer with 6 meals in 1 hour! You can choose to stick with just the traditional menu plan or just the slow cooker menu plan or just the whole foods menu plan. Or, you can rotate different menu plans on different weeks, depending upon what you feel like cooking or how much time you have! Get the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service for as Low as $1.21 per Week! If you struggle to make menu plans and would love for someone to make them for you + make a grocery list for you, it's well worth spending a few dollars every week to let Eat at Home do the work for you. This week only, when you sign up for their plan (either the monthly plan, the quarterly plan, or the yearly plan, you can get 25% off by using coupon code MSM at checkout! That makes the done-for-you menu plans and grocery lists just $1.21 per week. And you get access to all three plans and the freezer cooking plans for the whole month at the rate! Go sign up for this incredible menu-planning service here.  (Oh and they have a fantastic money-back guarantee if you think you want to try it out but aren't sure whether it will work for you or not!) Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.        7 Whole30 Crockpot Freezer Meals in 1 Hour (Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.) Kelly from New Leaf Wellness put together a list of 7 Whole30 Crockpot Freezer Meals in 1 Hour. Her free download includes 7 printable recipes and a grocery shopping list for all of the recipes.        Eat at Home Challenge: Crockpot Cantonese Sweet & Sour Pork Chops (Day 1) Welcome to Day 1 of the Eat at Home Challenge — a one-week challenge designed to encourage and inspire you to make more meals at home in order to save money and eat more healthfully! I'm following the Eat at Home Slow Cooker Menu Plan and I have been SO impressed with this plan. The recipes look so yummy, there’s lots of variety, and they only look like they’ll take me a few minutes to put together every morning! Details on The Eat at Home Challenge The Eat at Home Challenge is this week and runs through April 21, 2017. Every morning around 9 a.m. CT, I'll be on Facebook Live prepping our dinner to throw in the slow cooker for the day so that when 6 p.m. rolls around dinner is READY! Every day, in addition to doing a Facebook Live video on my Facebook Page, I'll be posting here on the blog what I made that day, along with a link to my video (in case you missed it). I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. You can sign up and get the recipes if you’d like to follow along with me! Scroll down to the bottom of this post for all the details on this menu-planning service + a 25% off coupon code good for this week only. My hope is that this will inspire you with some new recipe ideas, encourage you to not wait until the last minute to think about what you're having for dinner, and motivate you to eat at home more (even on busy nights!) so you can save money. I'd love for you to join me in this challenge! To participate, go join the Facebook Page here so you can share what you are making every night and see what readers all over the country (and world!) are making for dinner each night, too! What I Made Today This morning, I made Crockpot Cantonese Sweet & Sour Pork Chops. We don’t eat pork chops very often, so I’m excited to try this recipe out and see what my family thinks! The recipe was incredibly easy to make and it smells SO good! My family is excited to try it tonight! We’re going to be serving it over rice (remember the rice I made and froze last week?) plus roasted broccoli. Delicious!! Click to watch the video above for all of the details on the recipe and to see me make it LIVE! What is the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service? I’m using the Eat at Home menu-planning service for my recipes for this challenge. I usually make my own menu, but I thought it would be fun to try out a menu-planning service and see what we thought of it. So far, I’ve been very impressed! Eat at Home is a menu-planning service designed to make getting dinner on the table much easier every night. It was a service created by Tiffany, a mom of 4 who loves to cook and loves to gather her family around the table, but has found that if she doesn’t have a quick and easy plan, it’s hard to make that happen. Tiffany with her family Here’s what Tiffany says: When I started Eat at Home in 2008 my kids ranged in age from 16 to 6 years old. Now my kids are growing into adulthood, but we all still gather around the table together at least once a week. There’s something special about eating together that pulls families close to each other. But it can be a real struggle to get a meal on the table in the midst of busy schedules. My goal is to give easy solutions to dinner, so families can get to the good part – time together! Here’s a video from Tiffany that she made just for you all to introduce herself:   How Does the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service Work? The Eat at Home menu-planning service is an incredible way to help you save time and save money. You don’t have to worry about planning menus OR grocery list, because Tiffany does all of that for you as part of the menu-planning service. She has designed it specifically with busy families in mind and the menu plans offer: Quick to fix meals (even as fast as 15 minutes to the table!) Lots of slow cooker recipes Done-for-you Weekly Meal Plans & Grocery Lists The recipes can all be fixed quickly, with only a few minutes of hands-on prep. Because the recipes use common pantry ingredients, it's likely that you have everything you need to make many of the recipes. It’s so convenient because all the work is done for you! You just choose which menu plan you’ll use, print the grocery list, go shopping, and then spend a few minutes prepping food each day and dinner is D-O-N-E! When you sign up for the plan (it’s just a few dollars per week — or less!), each month, you’ll get: An entire month of Traditional Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Slow Cooker Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Whole Food Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions Each menu plan comes with recipes created for small family (3-4 servings) and large family (6-8 servings) Color-coded grocery lists make it easy to swap out ingredients or whole meals Printable Menus to hang on the fridge or near your calendar, so you can easily see what's for dinner that week and your family can too Access to the entire month at once! 1 Hour Freezer Stash Plans – a new plan each month to stock your freezer with 6 meals in 1 hour! You can choose to stick with just the traditional menu plan or just the slow cooker menu plan or just the whole foods menu plan. Or, you can rotate different menu plans on different weeks, depending upon what you feel like cooking or how much time you have! Get the Eat at Home Menu-Planning Service for as Low as $1.21 per Week! If you struggle to make menu plans and would love for someone to make them for you + make a grocery list for you, it's well worth spending a few dollars every week to let Eat at Home do the work for you. This week only, when you sign up for their plan (either the monthly plan, the quarterly plan, or the yearly plan, you can get 25% off by using coupon code MSM at checkout! That makes the done-for-you menu plans and grocery lists just $1.21 per week. And you get access to all three plans and the freezer cooking plans for the whole month at the rate! Go sign up for this incredible menu-planning service here.  (Oh and they have a fantastic money-back guarantee if you think you want to try it out but aren't sure whether it will work for you or not!) Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.        Gretchen’s $35 Grocery Shopping Trip and Menu Plan Aldi 2 dozen Large Eggs – $0.72 each 2 cans Cream of Chicken/Mushroom Soup – $0.49 each 1 can Green Beans – $0.49 1 bag Frozen Chicken Breasts – $5.99 1 loaf Bread – $0.85 1 bag Frozen Blueberries – $2.29 1 bag Frozen Broccoli – $0.99 1 bag Spinach – $1.49 1 bag Tortillas – $0.99 1 White Vinegar – $0.79 1 Pineapple – $1.29 1 pkg Cheddar Cheese – $1.79 1 pkg Chopped Pecans – $4.99 1 bag Baby Carrots – $0.49 1 Cantaloupe – $1.79 2 Cucumbers – $0.49 each Total: $27.63 Dillons 1 Moms Best Cereal – $1.67 1 Sour Patch Kids Candy – $1.39, used Free e-coupon (no longer available) – Free after coupon 1 Kroger Hashbrowns – $1.79 1 Smithfield Ham Steak – $2 1 bag Kroger Flour – $1.59 1.28 lbs Banans – $0.76 Total after coupon: $7.81 Total for both stores: $35.44 Menu Plan for This Week We still have fruits and vegetables leftover from last week so I will be using those up this week, too. Breakfasts Cereal x 2 Toast, Eggs, Spinach x 4 Blueberry Coffee Cake, Fruit Lunches Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Carrots Sticks x 2 Tuna Salad Sandwiches, Sliced Cucumbers Mac & Cheese, Fruit Salad Cheese, Crackers, Fruit, Veggies x 2 Lunch at my parents Dinners Chicken Noodle Casserole, Steamed Broccoli Sour Cream Enchiladas, Tossed Salad Hamburger Vegetable Soup, Crackers & Cheese, Carrot Sticks Ham Hashbrown Casserole, Eggs, Cantaloupe Italian Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Biscuits, Green Beans Out to eat Leftovers        A Peek Into My Week Last Week (+ BIG plans for this coming week!) After 13 days in Israel, Jesse made it home at 2 a.m. last Monday morning. And I made sure one of the first things I did was to express just how grateful I am for him and all he does for us. I knew that I am so blessed with a wonderful husband, but having him gone for two weeks reminded me just how often I take so much of what he does for granted. And then we savored a Slow Monday… sleeping in, snuggling, talking, laughing, reconnecting, catching up on some projects, and accomplishing a few Laundry Day tasks. I’ve been a LOT more motivated to bake and cook recently since I got to add quite a few new things back into my diet again — including more baked goods and even an occasional dessert. I still can’t have white potatoes, but I made these amazing-looking homemade rosemary fries for the rest of my family. They said they were incredible and gobbled them up in about 10 minutes! 🙂 I may have squealed when I opened up this package this week! Y’all know how much I love She Reads Truth and how much their studies have encouraged, blessed, challenged, and changed me the past three years I’ve been doing them. The one thing I have asked for for Christmas the past few years has been a monthly subscription to their studies. It’s been such an amazing investment in my spiritual growth and deepening my relationship with Jesus. When I heard that the team at She Reads Truth was releasing a Bible, I was thrilled and I had high expectations for it. But folks, this Bible is far beyond my highest expectations. It’s not only beautiful and high-quality, but it’s packed with reference notes, timelines, maps, charts, devotionals, introductions to each book, and — my favorite part — reading plans for each book of the Bible. When I opened it up, I felt like the little girl who had just gotten her very first Bible… and I wanted to drop everything then and there and start reading and studying it. I’ve been so eager to get up each morning so I could start my day with time in God’s Word using this stunning Bible! At 12 years old, she’s growing up so much and I’m so proud of the young woman she’s becoming. She’s her own person, she doesn’t worry what other people think, she has really strong convictions and beliefs, but she has a heart of incredible compassion for all people. She loves playing flag football with the boys. She loves hanging out with her girl friends. She loves long talks with adults. She adores taking care of little kids. And she cares so, so deeply about people. I’m especially proud of her because she and her team finished first in their division at the Destination Imagination State Championship and qualified to go to Globals in May. They are currently fundraising for this big event and have raised over half the amount needed in just less than a week! We are helping to do a garage sale this weekend with some of the team members and all the funds will go toward the costs of this big event. I’m excited because I’ll get to go with her and there will be teams from 15 different countries and over 17,000 teams at this event! It should be quite the experience! Jesse and I helped chaperone a Field Trip with the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes at school this past week. We went to a number of different historical sites in Franklin, TN and did a historic scavenger hunt. It was so fun and we learned so much about the history of this area! Baseball is a big part of our life right now as Silas is on the travel team and has multiple games most weeks. We’re so proud of his team and how hard they have been working, how much they’ve improved over the last few months, how much they’ve shown great sportsmanship, and the fact that they are starting to win a few games. 🙂 We took the kids to a FREE Community Easter Party on Saturday where they had free Easter Egg Hunts, free face-painting, free balloon artists, a free petting zoo, free cotton candy, free nachos, free popcorn and more. The kids had a BLAST — even Kathrynne! But apparently I missed the memo that kids are supposed to dress up in their Easter clothes for this type of event. Um, as you can see from this picture, we clearly did not come dressed in our Sunday best. I just had to laugh because that’s pretty much the #StoryofMyLife as a parent. At least I’m doing my part to make all moms everywhere feel better about their parenting and organization skills! 😉 Getting Back on the Bandwagon — The Periscope Morning Show Returns! With Jesse being gone for two weeks, I feel like I kind of fell off the bandwagon as far as consistency goes… mostly because I was just trying to survive and make it through. But I need a kick in the pants to jumpstart me back in a good direction. So, after some thought, I decided the best way to jumpstart things would be for me to commit to going to bed by 8:30 p.m. and getting up at 4:30 a.m. Monday through Friday this week. I need the public accountability for this, so that’s why I’m putting it out there. Starting tomorrow morning, I’ll be posting on Insta Stories soon after I get up to let you know when I got up. I’ll also be aiming to be bringing back the highly popular Periscope Morning Show and plan to be on live at 6:30 a.m. CT Monday through Friday. This is something many, many, many of you have begged for and I’m thrilled to be committing to it again — at least for this next week. If it goes well, I may commit to trying this again longterm. 🙂 If you want to join me, you can download the Periscope app to your phone, follow me (I’m MoneySavingMom), and make sure you have notifications on so you’ll know when I go live each morning. I’ll also be on Facebook Live at 9 a.m. every morning this next week making our dinner in the crockpot live as part of the Eat at Home challenge. I’d love for you to join me for that, too! And I’m hoping that these public commitments will help me to get back in the saddle and start being more focused, productive, and efficient instead of feeling like I’m sort of running around in circles and taking way too long to accomplish basic tasks! 🙂 Here’s to a great week for ALL of us! And hopefully I’ll see some of you live this week on Periscope and Facebook Live!        Join me next week for the Eat at Home Challenge! Do you struggle to find the time or make the time to make meals from scratch? Do you need some inspiration to cook and eat at home instead of running through the drive-thru or getting takeout? Next week, I’ll be doing a fun Eat at Home Challenge all week long, in partnership with the Eat at Home Menu Planning service. How This Challenge Will Work The challenge will run April 17-21, 2017. Every morning around 9 a.m. CT, I’ll be on Facebook Live prepping our dinner to throw in the slow cooker for the day so that when 6 p.m. rolls around dinner is READY! Every day, in addition to doing a Facebook Live video on my Facebook Page, I’ll be posting here on the blog what I made that day, along with a link to my video (in case you missed it). My hope is that this will inspire you with some new recipe ideas, encourage you to not wait until the last minute to think about what you’re having for dinner, and motivate you to eat at home more (even on busy nights!) so you can save money. I’d love for you to join me in this challenge! To participate, go join the Facebook Page here so you can share what you are making every night and see what readers all over the country (and world!) are making for dinner each night, too! Want to Make What I’m Making Every Night? I’ll be following the Eat at Home Cooks Slow Cooker Menu Plan, so if you want to make what I’m making every night, you can sign up for the Eat at Home Cooks Menu Plans here. When you sign up, you’ll get: An entire month of Traditional Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Slow Cooker Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions An entire month of Whole Food Menu Plans, including weekly grocery lists and printable recipe instructions Each menu plan comes with recipes created for small family (3-4 servings) and large family (6-8 servings) Color-coded grocery lists make it easy to swap out ingredients or whole meals Printable Menus to hang on the fridge or near your calendar, so you can easily see what's for dinner that week and your family can too Access to the entire month at once! 1 Hour Freezer Stash Plans – a new plan each month to stock your freezer with 6 meals in 1 hour! You can choose to stick with just the traditional menu plan or just the slow cooker menu plan or just the whole foods menu plan. Or, you can rotate different menu plans on different weeks, depending upon what you feel like cooking or how much time you have! And as a special offer for my followers only, you can get 25% off the price of the Eat at Home menu plan subscription when you use coupon code MSM at checkout. That makes the monthly subscription $10.50 or the annual subscription just $63 ($1.21 per week!!) If you struggle to make menu plans and would love for someone to make them for you + make a grocery list for you, it’s well worth spending a few dollars every week to let Eat at Home Cooks do the work for you. Go read more about this incredible menu-planning service here.  (Oh and they have a fantastic money-back guarantee if you think you want to try it out but aren’t sure whether it will work for you or not!) (Note: The links in this post are affiliate links, and we will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking through our links. Read our disclosure policy here.)        How to Cook Brown Rice in the Instant Pot I am more and more falling in love with my Instant Pot that I got during the amazing Black Friday sale when the 7-in-1 Instant Pot was marked down to just $69! I love that I can cook so many different things in it so quickly. I love that I can put the ingredients in it and set the timer and then just leave it — instead of having to watch the stove, wait for the water to boil, and/or make sure the water doesn't boil over. It kind of feels like a slow cooker on steroids. You just dump the ingredients in, program the time, and leave it be to do it’s thing… while you get on with your life! I've just barely scratched the surface of the world of Instant Pots and I am starting to clearly understand why people are such raving fans of this appliance! There's so much it can do — and it makes eating at home and getting dinner on the table so much easier! There are many, many bloggers out there who are sharing incredible Instant Pot recipes. However, I knew there are some of you who haven't yet gotten your Instant Pot out of the box and you are feeling scared, just like I was when I first got mine. So I thought it would be fun to share some very beginning Instant Pot recipes on my blog over the next few months as I learn how to use my Instant Pot. My hope is that these will inspire you to not let your Instant Pot sit in the box any longer! Get it out and start using it — you'll be so glad you did! Instant Pots have a Rice button on them that you can use to cook white rice or basmati rice. However, we pretty much only use brown rice at our house, so that needs to cook quite a bit longer than white rice. Here’s how to make brown rice in the Instant Pot: Brown Rice in the Instant Pot (for beginners) Pour two cups rice and two cups water in the removable metal pot. (You can do any measurement of rice and water that you choose. Always use a 1:1 ratio… meaning 1 cup water for every 1 cup of rice.) Plug your Instant Pot in. Turn it on and press MANUAL. Adjust the + button to 22 (for 22 minutes). Line up the arrows on the lid and turn the lid until it locks (and sings music to you!) Make sure the lid is closed and turn the vent lock to closed (turn it to sealing). This vent lock is loose — or at least it is on mine. Just make sure it is turned to sealing not venting. (See a photo here with more details on this. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.) It will take about 5 minutes for the Instant Pot to heat up. It will start making hissing noises. Don't be alarmed. Once it is heated up, it will start counting down from 22 minutes down to zero. You can literally just leave the Instant Pot and go about your day. It will shut off once the 22 minutes are up and it will naturally release the pressure within 20-ish minutes of it shutting off and then the rice is ready. If you want to serve the rice right away and don’t want to wait for the natural pressure release, here how to do that: Let the rice cook for 22 minutes. Once it is at zero on the countdown, wait 5 minutes to let the pressure naturally release. Then, use an oven mitt to turn the vent lock to venting (so that it's open). VERY IMPORTANT: This will shoot out steam. A lot of hot steam. This is releasing the pressure. Make sure you have on an oven mitt. Make sure there isn't a cupboard or anything above your Instant Pot that all the steam is going to shoot up to. And KEEP YOUR FACE AND HANDS AWAY FROM THE VENT when you are turning it. It is HOT! Let the steam fully release (the floating valve will drop down when it's released). Open the lid and your rice is ready! Okay, I know that sounds like a lot of steps. But trust me on this, after you've used your Instant Pot one time, it will be so much easier. I promise! {Need some hand holding to make this recipe? Watch my video here.} I put the brown rice in the Instant Pot to cook before I made dinner and then started dinner. I didn’t come back to it until about an hour and a half later. I took the lid off, let it cool, and then, once it was cooled, I scooped it out and put it into airtight freezer bags and froze it. So easy! So simple! I love that I can just put the ingredients in the Instant Pot, turn it on, and leave it and then come back to it later. I don’t have to worry about it burning or boiling over or over-cooking. I don’t have to mess with watching for the water to boil or setting the timer and then turning down the burner. More and more, I see why people are such big fans of this kitchen appliance! Looking for another great beginner Instant Pot recipe? Check on my post on How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs in the Instant Pot.        Latest finds on Pinterest Want to develop a consistent chore system for your family? Here are five FREE printable chore charts -- some GREAT ideas here! 10 Things to Do If You Wake Up Feeling Like a Grouch -- such great ideas for those days when you feel stuck in a funk! If once a month grocery shopping and meal planning seems overwhelming to you, these are some inspiring tips and tricks!! Latest finds on Pinterest Want to develop a consistent chore system for your family? Here are five FREE printable chore charts -- some GREAT ideas here! 10 Things to Do If You Wake Up Feeling Like a Grouch -- such great ideas for those days when you feel stuck in a funk! If once a month grocery shopping and meal planning seems overwhelming to you, these are some inspiring tips and tricks!!     Click here to safely unsubscribe from "LITE Feed, Money Saving Mom®." Click here to view mailing archives, here to change your preferences, or here to subscribe • Privacy Email subscriptions powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 365 Boston Post Rd, Suite 123, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA.