meal planning follow up

Overall, I think we did pretty well in August by planning meals and doing most of the shopping in one big trip.  But toward the end of the month, I did find myself going, "But I don't want to make vegetable soup tonight!" and then my leftovers for the week (which were usually intended to go into another planned dish) ended up not existing and the whole week was thrown off.  We didn't get take out very often, so in that regard we did well.  And doing all the meat shopping for the month was great--we didn't run out and we actually have some left over!  A pork loin, 8 boneless chicken breasts, two pounds of ground beef, and a pound or two of smoked sausage are all still in the freezer, giving us a good head start into September.  We ate a ton of eggs, it seems, and even though I bought two dozen at a time, I think we went through 5-6 dozen over the month, maybe more!  We did make cookies and some other unplanned treats, so that accounts for some of it.  And breakfast for dinner on one night, too. 

For September, I have gone through the pantry and the freezer and made an inventory list of what we have on hand--the one thing I didn't do before making last month's meal plan.  So I plan to use that inventory along with my recipes to make plans for the month.  I think I'll make a more generic plan for the weeks toward the end of the month, like Pasta Thursday or Meatless Monday or even Big Home-Cooked Meal Saturday, and maybe that will let us add some variety in later on.  I kept thinking of things we hadn't had in a while or finding things in the pantry that I only had some of the ingredients for (like lasagna--three boxes!).  We have a ton of rice and pasta on hand, so I need some good recipes for rotini and penne, like a good baked pasta.  When I get my plan in place, I'll post and let you know how it's going.

adventures in meal planning

I remember when I was single...I'd have things for dinner like goat cheese, brie, crackers, and peppered salami...at 10pm at night....with a beer.  One of my greatest fears before having kids was that my kids would starve, since I am not known for following a schedule with precision.  I remember thinking, "Wow, I'll have to PLAN dinner and have it ready at a certain TIME?!  And have VEGETABLES?!"  The girls are two now, and dinner is at 5:30pm, maybe 6pm at the latest, and it actually seems easy compared to mixing formula non-stop or pureeing veggies, and the schedule itself has eased up as well from the newborn days.  We've been making an effort to eat at home more to save money and to eat more healthily, but I've discovered unless I have a meal plan in place, suddenly it's my nightmare come true--it's 4:30pm and I have no idea what's for dinner, and everything is frozen solid.  (Actually, my nightmare is that it's 10pm and I realize the kids are not only still awake, but starving and screaming.  Actually, any one of those three things at 10pm is pretty much a nightmare.)

I've been doing here and there, kind of casual meal planning for a few months now.  I dove headfirst into a ton of get-it-on-the-table-quick-and-cheap-and-organic-from-our-freezer-and-basement-stockpile-that-I-bought-solely-with-coupons-and-grew-with-my-own-hands kinds of books and was--of course--overwhelmed.  So I picked a few things out that made sense and started there.

• Plan meals for a week or more at a time
• Make a list from those recipes
• Stockpile if on sale and you have coupons
• Make certain parts of the meal ahead (if you are baking chicken tonight, cook an extra piece for tomorrow's jambalaya and you're 20 minutes ahead of the game
• Choose recipes that are easy and use ingredients you usually have on hand

The newest addition to the family!

-- Sent from the teeny tiny keyboard of my Palm Pre

updates on facebook

Since I'm finding it difficult to update things here regularly (although I am vowing to do a better job going forward), I've created a Facebook page for 1928 Bungalow.  I think this link works, but if it doesn't, let me know!

good fences make good neighbors

We already had pretty good neighbors, so the fence is really more to keep the kiddos inside and the random dogs (like the two pit bulls that came right up to us in the yard a few weeks ago or the crazed pug that chased my friend into a neighbor's yard this week) out.  It's one of those wonderful examples of DIY goodness--my parents, Brandon's parents, and my sister and her husband all turned out to share their miscellaneous knowledge and muscle power, and the result?  Better than we ever expected:

This shot shows the finished fence, including copper caps on the posts (and we added another one this weekend to the mailbox, to match).  We tried to stain it this weekend but it was too soon, and the wood wouldn't absorb the stain.

I like to call this one The View from Inside Baby Supermax.

We used the existing chain link fence poles on all the corners.  This weekend, we painted the metal posts brown with shiny copper caps.  Hopefully they'll match the cedar stain we picked out for the fence.

We had two estimates on having the fence done professionally and they ranged from $700-1400!  I've decided that nothing spurs me into physical labor like a free estimate.  The fence you see ended up costing approximately $335 and two days of manual labor.  The stain will probably add another $50 to the cost.

We managed to get a lot of work done on the house this weekend, although most were little jobs that we didn't want to do but that needed doing.  We put a latch on the gate to help make sure the girls can't escape so easily, and finished up the copper caps on the posts.  Brandon's mom came to visit and watched the girls while we climbed up in the attic to pull all of the insulation away from the eaves.  We got a ridgeline vent last summer with our new roof, and ever since the a/c unit can't seem to keep the house cool when it's very warm outside.  We realized part of the problem might be the fact that we shoved the insulation all the way to the edge of the roof, so we went up on Saturday morning to remedy it.  There was a lot of light showing around the edges (more than I remember before the new roof, hmm...), so I'm not sure what we did actually did a lot of good, but it did feel nice and cool in the house on this relatively warm weekend, so here's hoping.  We're not sure there are actually holes where the soffit vents are, so that might be the next step.  We're worried that the P.O. put vented siding over the eaves but that it's solid underneath!   We had a solar vent before the new roof and it worked just fine...the roof guy talked us into the ridgeline one and removed our solar vent (which we kept).  And now the house is hot.  Hmm.

We also noticed a spot where a support wasn't actually attached and the roof is sagging a little.  No idea how long it's been that way--2 weeks or 20 years--but we don't remember it being that way before, so we'll have to look into repairing it soon.

In other news, we've turned The Room of the Visiting Family Babysitter into an office again, with lots of bookshelves and the old futon.  We had a twin bed in there when Nana Reece and Aunt Kathy were so graciously helping out (we owe you forever!), but since I became a full time stay at home mom in January, we figure they can sleep on the futon when they visit.

And--you probably figured this one out already--in January I quit my job at the library and started staying home full-time with the girls.  It's been wonderful and I think it was definitely the right thing to do for us.  Much less stress...and much less money, but so far we seem to be doing okay.  Look for future posts on exciting things like menu planning, home made bread, and meatloaf recipes.  Woo hoo!  ;)

snowpocalypse 2011 (aka atlantartica/snowmaggedon)

Although colder weather seems to have returned today, yesterday was a glorious and sunny warm (50 degrees!) day here in Atlanta.  I love my family, but six days snowed in with toddlers and husband was a bit much.  (More about our storm prep and photos of our yard coming soon.)

Emerson handed me a book yesterday and opened it to page 98. The book was "Yesterday's Atlanta" by Franklin M. Garrett (an autographed copy, no less) and the page had a photo of the Ice Storm of February 1905. Appropriate, no?

And I think the quote on the page nailed it: "The Ice Storm of February 1905 stopped the city dead in its tracks. Trolleys were out of business, schools closed, telegraph and telephone lines broke, trees twisted, trains and mails delayed. Suffering and inconvenience stalked the streets. Here is a view of Piedmont Avenue, between Pine Street and North Ave., then all residential." (By residential, they mean ALL TREES!)

On a side note, I told Emerson the book was about Atlanta, which is where we live. So now when you ask her where we live, she says, "Lanta!" She says that Nana, however, lives in a "hole" which I think is supposed to mean "home," so we're trying to convince her to say "mountains" instead.

Photos of Atlanta's past snowstorms can be found here, including a photo of the 1905 storm.

raising them right

Hadley considers her manicure before beginning.

Emerson gets involved with her work.

 

Always color-coordinate your tools.  You can't go wrong with purple!

Check your work!

Daddy is a good helper, too.

Hadley works on the base.

A job well done!

dreaming of spring

Winter is not my season, folks.  If not for the invention of down everything and SmartWool, I would be pretty miserable.  I discovered these photos taken by a neighbor of our house and garden last summer for an East Point website, and it's given me hope that warm weather, green leaves, and flowers are not too far away.

Photos courtesy of Matthew Sweitzer.

the biggest new year's resolution ever

Nothing like ending the year in a big way...like by handing in a resignation letter to your job (career!) of 10+ years.  I don't have a new job lined up, other than the--as a friend put it--"double time" job of staying home with the girls full-time.  Give me a few months non-stop with twins in the Terrible Twos, and I just might be looking for a job that's not only full-time, but maybe with something along the lines of 80% travel. 

We plan to see how it goes for six months or so, while I stay home with the girls and maybe try to go back to school for the few classes I need to be certified as a school media specialist.  I also plan on writing to try to bring in a bit of extra money.  We've cut back on expenses, but know we have a long way to go before we can survive on one salary...and we have three weeks to get there.  I'm starting to see why we ate odd things for dinner when I was a kid.  They never seemed odd as a kid; only later as an adult did I start to wonder why we sometimes had toast with gravy (and a bit of roast beef) or oyster stew (can you find a cheaper meal than a can of oysters and some milk and butter?!).  I'm sure my parents were thrilled to find out that I didn't actually like the oysters, but was content to drink the milk part (not realizing it was milk, which I hated as a kid).  At any rate, I'm now (as I consider our cheaper meal and grocery options) discovering that I like what the most frugal would consider "extras" in my food--veggies in my eggs, for example.  I read cookbooks with disapproval when the ingredient list is long and includes things that are not only infrequently used in the kitchen but pricey, too.

My other New Year's resolution is to be more positive in my outlook and my actions.  We'll see how that goes after a week of ramen, gravy and toast, and plain old eggs ;)