peelosophy

The boys LOVE apples.  They probably eat 2 a day each.  They aren’t apple snobs like me either, any type will do.  They love to eat them whole and usually they accomplish eating the whole thing and sometimes they leave it half eaten.  The half eaten are the ones that pain me.  You know they won’t eat it later b/c “It’s yucky” aka brown. I encourage them to finish eating the whole thing, but sometimes they don’t.

To solve the problem, I took the advice of Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette.  When the boys are “done” with their apple I cut up the uneaten remainder into lil’ pieces, stick them in some Tupperware and stir some brown sugar and cinnamon in with them.  Then we have a a special treat for later, save some apples and the boys love them.  They call it, “Mommy’s Special Apples”.

I always ask people “what’s new?”. It’s my failed attempt to  get conversation going.  I guess it is rooted in the fact that I really don’t like “How are you?”.  I feel like it is such an automatic response, for me at least, and it’s usually follows “Hi…”  But the problem with “What’s new?” is that people usually don’t have a lot going on or they do have a lot going on, but it’s all day-to-day life stuff.  Nothing exciting, nothing you can pinpoint that exact second to respond to the question. At least this is my experience. I don’t like small talk. Read more…

I love Taco Soup.  I have been known to eat it for 4 days in a row – sometimes for lunch and dinner.  Plus, my kids love it. You eat it with chips – what’s not to love?  I’ll come back to Taco Soup in a minute.

So I’ve been challenging myself with our grocery budget,  I’ve been evaluating and re-evaluating what we spend on groceries. I’ve been pondering what I can tweak with my recipes to make them less expensive while trying not to sacrifice nutrition (or taste).  I have come to discover it’s a delicate balance.  I have an outrageous goal of only spending $400/month on our groceries – food only.  I’ve been able to keep it for two months now and love the challenge.

Before I go further, I don’t buy organic so that explains some of it.  But I do try and buy as fresh as possible and non-processed foods.  I do menu plan and that helps my budget and sanity a ton.  I love it when John looks at his iPhone at work and is able know that we are having spaghetti tonight. I love it more when people think he’s nuts that his iPhone told him what’s for dinner. And I especially love it when they think I’m a super wife – if they only knew how easy it was to menu plan (that’s another post).

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Here’s some evidence that I need some adult time.

First, I referred to our Boppy as a throw pillow.  It has clearly been in our lives/living room for too long.

Second, while watching Spirit with JJ, I thought for a few minutes to myself if it was based on a true story.  For those of you who do not know the movie, it is told from the viewpoint of Spirit, a horse.  Enough said.

• Odeedoh has a great post on reusing a train table.  Right now ours is at the Kuhn’s b/c of lack of space, but when it returns it maybe reinvented to either a contruction site or dinosaur island.
• I do love Soulemama and came across a tour of her home on Cookie’s Nesting Blog. Even though her style isn’t really ours, there are so many things that resonated with me.  For example, she has 3 kids, a dog and a cat in a sweet little house. We totally have her beat by one dog.  I also loved what she had to say about talking at breakfast with her kids about what they would all like to do that day and try and make a way to accomplish it – including her stuff.  Which by the way, the whole having a conversation at breakfast is a little foreign to us.  And I really loved the sweet picture of her baby sleeping on the fur rug.
• Lastly, I really enjoyed this post from Simple Mom about menu planning.  It always seems like this should be such an easy thing to do but I always complicate it.  I really appreciated her simple (I guess hence her name) approach to it with the added techie (I sleep with one therefore I am) ideas that made me salivate a little.  Sorry gross.

We had a big Sunday last weekend, George was baptized and we celebrated Henry’s 2nd Birthday.   JJ was a little left out.  After church we had lunch over at our house with our family and friends.  My brother-in-law, Jeff,  is an excellent smoker– of meats — and supplied us with pulled pork for sandwiches.  Everything went without a hitch and we had a great time. Read more…