Monday, May 21, 2018

This Week's $70 Menu Plan + Saturday's Kroger Stock-Up Shopping Trip and more...

I'm currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.). For live updates, be ...

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This Week’s $70 Menu Plan + Saturday’s Kroger Stock-Up Shopping Trip

I'm currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

For live updates, be sure to follow my Instagram Stories.

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and we will be compensated if you click through and sign up. Read our disclosure policy here.

I had every intention of getting these Southwest Rollups done for Friday’s Freezer Cooking post. But alas I productively procrastinated on them and didn’t get them done before I had to get that post done.

But I did get them done! We had one pan for dinner that night and I put two bags of rollups in the freezer.

This is such a simple, frugal, and delicious recipe that we have loved for YEARS.

In fact, it would be fascinating to see how many of these I have made over the years. It’s probably an insane number! 🙂

Fun fact: This was a recipe that Jesse’s family loved and I love that it’s become one of our family favorites. These make such great quick lunches or snacks!

The freezer is filling up!! We currently have 9 dinners, 3 breakfasts, and 2 desserts in there. I’m aiming to have 30 meals in here by the end of June. We’ll see!

Kroger has been having fantastic Saturday only sales in recent weeks.

I was thrilled with the butter and water sale — two items that we use a lot!

You could buy up to 5 packs of butter for $1.99 each with the digital coupon — so, of course, I bought 5! We will stick these in the freezer and they should hopefully last us for two months (we usually use about 2 to 2 1/2 sticks of butter per week).

And I bought 3 cases of water — I found out later that the 32-packs were included in this sale. But they weren’t marked as such at our store, so oh well! We usually wash and re-use water bottles at least a few times before tossing them. So this should (hopefully) last us all summer and will be so handy for time at the pool and road trips and other summer adventures!

Kroger Shopping Trip — $28.47

  • 5 packages of Kroger butter — $1.99 each with Saturday Digital Coupon offer
  • 3 cases of water — $1.99 each with Saturday Digital Coupon offer
  • 1 Larabar — FREE Friday Digital coupon offer
  • Chocolate syrup — $1.59
  • Disposable bowls — $2
  • 1 yogurt — marked down to $0.29
  • 2 Fage yogurts — marked down to $0.49 each (got $0.75 back per yogurt — Ibotta rebate)
  • 2 bags of apples — marked down to $0.99 each
  • 12 ears of corn — 4 for $0.99 each
  • 1 organic cauliflower — $0.99 each
  • Total with tax: $28.47

We had our Community Group (four other families) over for an Ice Cream Social. We provided bowls, cups, napkins, and spoons and chocolate syrup and cookies. Two families brought toppings and two families brought ice cream and we had a great get-together that was super simple and inexpensive for everyone!

Silas made some Homemade Oobleck last night and the kids had so much fun playing with it. This would be a great frugal fun activity for summer.

This morning, Silas and I made Homemade Pizza Dough on Facebook Live. I had planned to make a double batch and freeze half of it, but I realized that we were getting down the bottom of the flour jar. So we just made one pizza crust.

This boy loves helping me in the kitchen — and he just better and better at cooking and baking!

I hadn’t made dough on our new kitchen table until today. I wasn’t sure how it would clean up, but I’m so happy to say that it wiped right off. I continue be so happy that we chose this table for our kitchen. I just love how sturdy it is and how easily it cleans up!

Silas helped me knead the dough and I taught him what dough should feel like when it’s ready.

We couldn’t find our pizza pan and I’m guessing that somehow it disappeared in the move or that Kaitlynn may have confiscated it for some craft project and I just haven’t discovered it yet (she’s always making all sorts of crafts and projects and I try to encourage it as much as possible, thought I do sometimes have to tell her that my kitchen pans aren’t up for grabs — especially if they are going to get destroyed in the process of her experimentation! ;))

Silas made the pizza entirely by himself — from rolling it out, to putting on the sauce, to thawing the chicken from the freezer, to grating the cheese, to pre-heating the oven. The entire thing and I only had to give a tiny bit of coaching! I am so excited with just how capable my kids are becoming and how much all those years of letting them help me in the kitchen had paid off!

Silas’ finished pizza! This will be our dinner tonight. Yum!

 

You can watch us make the Pizza Dough live in the video above.

This Week's Super Simple Menu Plan

This menu is subject to change a little if I find some great deals or markdowns! 🙂

Breakfasts

Cereal, Baked Oatmeal, Eggs, Fruit, Toast

Lunches

Ham & Cheese Sandwiches, Chips, Fruit, Veggies, Capri Sun, Cream Cheese Blueberry Muffins, (for the kids) Leftovers, Eggs, Yogurt, Pita Pocket Sandwiches, Salad (for me & Jesse)

Snacks

Whatever I Find on Sale/Marked Down (That works for snacks!), Ice Cream (our friends left the rest of the ice cream at our house from the ice cream social!), Yogurt, Cereal, Fruit, Popcorn

Dinners

Monday — Homemade Chicken Salsa Pizza, Apples
Tuesday — Spaghetti Casserole, Peas, Naan
Wednesday — Meatballs, Corn on the Cob, Homemade French Fries
Thursday — Haystacks
Friday — Picnic at Kathrynne’s School — we’re supposed to bring enough of a side dish to feed 15 people — I’m thinking of doing Make Ahead Mashed Potatoes since those always seem popular at potluck style dinners and I have all those potatoes that I got marked down. I may change my mind depending upon what markdowns I find.
Saturday — Takeout Pizza (we’re having friends over for dinner but we’re going to be gone all day long so I’m keeping it crazy simple!)
Sunday — Snack-y Dinner (fend for yourself — cereal, leftovers, etc.)

Total spent so far this week: $28.47

Total left to spend: $41.53

Rebates: $1.50 Ibotta rebate for buying the 2 Fage yogurts, $0.25 Ibotta rebate for submitting my receipt

    
 

What I Read & Watched This Past Week

Welcome to my weekly Book-ish post where I share what I've been reading and watching recently. If you missed it, you can see my Reading Goals for 2018 and 44 Books I Plan to Read This Year

(Note: Some of 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.)

We may be some of the last people on the planet to do so, but we finally started watching The Crown. And everyone was right, it IS so good!

Jesse and I are watching it first to decide whether it’s something that our girls can watch (we’ve heard there is one episode that is especially not family-friendly in Season 2) and we are loving researching everything while watching to see how historically accurate it is.

I feel like I’m getting this huge history lesson — in the form of a really engaging show! That’s totally my kind of learning! 🙂

Have you watched The Crown? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

And of course, we watched the Royal Wedding. We didn’t get up super early to watch it so we only saw the tail end of it live, but then we watched them share all of the highlights and give commentary on it. It was pretty interesting!

We also watched the final episode of Season 2 of Timeless. And now I really hope they are going to make a Season 3!

I finished One Beautiful Dream by Jennifer Fulwiler this past week and truly loved it. If you are a mom who also works or you are a mom who wants to figure out a way to pursue your passions while also being a mom, I think you’ll enjoy this book.

I loved how Jennifer talks about embracing the chaos instead of trying to make everything perfect or ideal. I love how she shares so openly about the real struggles involved with trying to have a business and be a mom. And I loved how she showed that the seeing setbacks and delays that came with motherhood actually made her stronger as a writer and business owner.

The last chapter of this book was so good and just really encouraged my heart. There are some days when this path I’m on of being a full-time work-at-home mom who both loves my kids and loves my work can feel lonely. Jennifer’s book made me feel less alone and less crazy and it really reinforced a lot of the places that God has brought me to and the peace I have with what our family dynamics look like — even though they are so different than so many other families we know.

When I Find Time to Read

People are always asking me how I find time to read. Honestly, it's because I love to read, because I've chosen to prioritize it, because I don't have a lot of other hobbies, and because I can't not read. Also, when you love something, you usually can find ways to get creative to find time to fit it in — even if it's in the little nooks and crannies of life.

I wrote a post on 3 ways to find more time to read — even when life is busy. And here are 7 more ways to find time to read.