Meal Planning/Grocery Shopping

Oh, hello there!! How has a month went by since I last posted? 

Life is pretty crazy around here-so it goes by pretty quickly, to be honest. I would love to tell you that October is pretty laid back for us but...it's not. We have plans every weekend in October, but I will try harder to post more than once a month!

I mentioned in a previous post that Jon and I are really trying to budget/kill debt/save money/BUILD A HOUSE!! 

We have found when we sat down to start the process that we spend a lot of money on going out to eat. A LOT. Since I do the cooking for our family, I wanted to find ways to prevent this. Insert meal planning.

I go to the grocery store twice a month-with a weekly trip for milk and produce. I sit down on Thursday night the week I go shopping and it takes me approximately 2 hours to meal plan, but it saves us literally $100's every month.

I have had several people ask me how I do my meal planning and couponing. I decided to split the two topics up, so meal planning is up first.

First of all-here are my tools:

Erin Condren Life Planner (with my Recipe notes opened), coupon organizer, essentials list, and meal plan template

I use my meal plan template that I based off of my friend Amanda's template. I fill in any social events first that will require us to eat out (date nights, etc). 

When it comes to deciding what meals to make I first look through my inventory sheets to see what I have on hand, then I will go through my coupons to see what meals I can make out of coupons that are expiring. From there I fill in any meals I can make with items that are on sale. Anything left over, I plan according to what we want/what sounds good.

I really try to utilize foods the best I can. For example, we only use about 1/3 of a pot of spaghetti sauce at a time. I will go ahead and make an entire pot, then freeze the other 2/3 for a later date. If we make steaks, I will make 2-3 extra and cut them into strips for quesadillas. Once a month, I will bake a bunch of chicken breasts and shred them and put the shredded chicken into ziploc bags. We use shredded chicken a lot and it really does save time to just thaw out a bag of it that's premade.

Anyways...after I've filled in all the columns, I make sure I have everything I need to make the meals-if I don't have an ingredient-it goes on the shopping list. Once I have that meal's ingredients, I check mark the meal so I know it's accounted for.

I go through my list and put a circle (sometimes I will highlight) items that I have a coupon for. When I make the list I also note anything special about the item with a coupon (such as the brand name or how many I need to purchase).

Then I make sure I have all the coupons clipped on my clipboard and I'm ready to go!

You will see on the bottom of the sheet I give myself an estimated bill to expect-along with the total of coupons that I have. This week I actually came in quite a bit under my estimated amount-which is always a good thing! But-I didn't have to buy diapers, dog food, meat, etc.

Luke...er...Labor Day weekend recap!

Short work weeks make me happy!! It means more time I get to spend with my guys..and I relish in that time!

So...this weekend was Luke weekend and I'll tell ya...it started out...rouuuuuuuuuugh.

Ya see..I posted about my cousin and I going to the concert Friday night and Jon and I were supposed to go Saturday night. 

I went to sleep around 10 on Thursday night to prep myself for the long weekend of little sleep. Jon woke me up to go to bed at around 11:00 and I just happened to check my phone and saw I had a text message from my cousin that she was in the ER because she thought she broke her foot/ankle.

Thankfully she didn't break it...she sprained it really bad but she didn't break it! Since she couldn't put any weight on it, she couldn't go on Friday night. (We had tickets in the lawn...standing on a hill for hours would not be the best idea.)

So at 6:30 in the morning, Jon became my concert partner for the night. I was bummed my cousin couldn't go, but I was excited Jon could go with me. Talk about a crazy day though--I left work at 3, came home, changed clothes, and took care of Reg. Then Jon came home and we left at 4:30.

We hit traffic the entire way up there and a normal 1 hour drive took almost two hours. We got in right at 6:30 and the concert started at 7. Close call! The concert was great!! And I was on cloud nine because I was there with the best guy in the world!! (I'll get to this statement in a minute...there's a story there.)

Not bad seats for only getting there 30 minutes before the show.

<3<3

After the show we sat in the parking lot for an hour without even moving. Finally started the trek home when we realized..oh yeah..we were in such a hurry to get to the concert that we hadn't eaten anything since lunch! Yyyeah...so we swung by Wendy's and ordered food at 12:30, went home, and passed out. 

Saturday we slept in until 9 (Dream big!) and then I started for round two.

Yeah..I...started. Why just me and not both Jon and I? 

I'm going to take you back to Friday around 4:30. Jon and I were getting in the car to go to the concert and he said,"I'm just going to run this by you...you don't have to do it..but I think you would really like it.." I said, "Okay.." He said,"Since we have pavillion seats for Saturday night..why don't you and Katie go tomorrow night since we are going tonight?" I asked him a million times if he was serious and if he was sure. He reassured me that he was absolutely sure.

He is the sweetest, most thoughtful guy I know! I totally cried when he said this because he knows how much Katie and I love going to concerts together and the fact that he thought of my cousin's health was so sweet! *swoooon*

Sooooooooo....Saturday I picked Katie up and we headed up to Olive Garden for a pre concert carb fest!

We got to the concert and had a BLAST!! Plenty of people watching and booty shaking was done!

 

Delicious!!

Favorite Cousins<3<3

As far as the concert goes--well..Cole KILLED it. Seriously..he is SO good!!!! Lee Brice, however, I was not a huge fan. Jon and I saw him live a few years ago and we really liked him, so I had high hopes. But man...he randomly screamed words...for example, "...be stockin up cold BUD LIGHTS for poker every Tuesday night.." Dude, you're singing a love song. Stop it. Just stop.

And Luke...oh....Luke. KILLED IT x ten! He did, actually, fall off the stage Saturday night. True story. We were watching him then all of a sudden boom..he wasn't there. And we hear, "HOLD UP HOLD HOLD UP HOLD UP. Well..add another stage to my list..and who grabbed my ass?!" hahahaha

Sunday, I went to the grocery store and relaxed with the boys. So needed!!

And look what's in our pantry now:

Signs that fall is coming!!

Have a great week!!! 

(& keep your fingers crossed that we are able to watch the Colts game Sunday night--our local NBC station is fighting with DirectTV right now...PERFECT TIMING. Last year 30 minutes before kick off our cable went completely out because Comcast scheduled an update..so we cancelled them and went to DirectTV..the football gods don't want us to watch the first day of football CLEARLY!)