Garden!

One of my favorite parts about my new house is having the outdoors just outside my door! I am so excited to try growing some veggies this year. Ideally I would prefer to plant these in the ground but I don't really have 'ground' so I'll have to make do with planters. Anyway - I have 2 tomato plants from Candice in the back right. The long planters have 3 bell pepper plants and 1 zucchini plant. I am hoping that the zucchini will grow over the side. The front left has sage seeds, next to it is basil (SUPER excited about this one) and in the big pot I scattered carrot seeds because I think that would just be fun to grow your own carrots. I still have some rosemary seeds and cucumber seeds so I think I need at least 1 more pot. I know the plants are a little cramped in the pots but I've got limited space so they will just have to make do!

I'm hoping that these plants will produce a decent number of veggies. This combined with my CSA will hopefully keep me well stocked all summer!

Monkey Muffins

So I had a tube of biscuits that technically expired 2 days ago (forgot about them - whoops!). And since I just made a whole pan of rolls, I didn't want to make the biscuits alone. Soooo - I had to find something to do with them.
Enter MoneySavingMom's post on using refrigerated biscuit dough. Luckily I did not have 12 cans to use up but one was enough. I decided to make Monkey Muffins! I did not have sweetened condensed milk so I just left that part off (probably better for the waistline anyway).



Honestly, I wasn't overly impressed. Don't get me wrong, I WILL be eating them all. But I probably won't be making them again. The sweetened condensed milk probably will make them amazing but it will also add A TON of sugar. So - my vote is - great way to use up some biscuits. Probably won't be doing it too often.

CSA, week 1

A friend and I joined a CSA for the growing season. This week marks the first week of our goodies! We are sharing a small share and thank goodness for that because we are both drowning in produce! This week we split 3 pints of strawberries, 1 pound of spinach, 1 head of lettuce, and 1 bunch of swiss chard.
Can we say salads for lunch this week?!?!

The picture includes only MY portion - so this is only half of what we got this week. Holy moly!

I have no idea what to do with swiss chard but man is it pretty!

Here is my plan for using up these goodies:

1.5 pints Strawberries - hello strawberry shortcake
Spinach and lettuce - salads with carrots, cucumbers and chicken paired with a homemade roll
Swiss Chard - research what to do with this other than to eat it in salad.

We get another delivery next week so I've got to eat all of this before the new goodies come in!

Freezer Cooking Update

We could call this - Freezer Cooking - the chicken edition!

Today I crossed 2 more things off my list - curry chicken and 'generic chicken breast.'
Here is the curry chicken. I didn't make the rice because that is super easy to make with my rice cooker and doesn't take much time either. This should cover 3 meals worth of chicken curry. I have them in the freezer in individual portions.



I also marinated chicken in Italian dressing and cooked it up to put on my salads for the week.



To summarize:
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
1 lb taco meat for tacos and quesadillas (and maybe a taco salad?)
Bread Machine Rolls
Pizza (will make 2 personal size pizzas)
Curry Chicken
Chicken Breasts for whatever meals I come up with
Chopped onion to add to things (I hate chopping onions and try to do it as infrequently as possible)
Meatballs

Harris Teeter Triples

I did pretty well at Harris Teeter this week. I ended the month with a decent amount of $$ left over in the grocery budget so I decided to use it to stock up a little. Below is what I got using coupons. I also purchased some meat and produce to stock up for May.

For everything in the picture I spent $5.54. Yep, less than $6 for all of that! I am pretty excited about everything I got. I probably could have passed on the toothpaste (with the amount of toothpaste I have, I should probably brush my teeth a lot more often) but it was almost free so...I'll donate it if I end up with too much.

I didn't take a picture but I also got a great deal on the chicken I like. It is expensive chicken - normally $6.99 a pound - but it was on sale for $4.99/pound and I had 2 $1/1 coupons so I purchased nearly 4 pounds of chicken breasts. That should last me for a good while!

Holy Deliciousness Batman!

As part of my freezer cooking week, I made use of my newly acquired bread machine (didn't blog about this, but also got that at the Restore - for $5!) to make some rolls using a recipe from MoneySavingMom.

Um - these are amazing. Today I ate 4.



I need tips from my faithful readers - when you make rolls do you freeze the dough or freeze the rolls after they are baked?

Freezer Cooking Update

Well my freezer cooking is off to a good start. Here is what I have accomplished so far:
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (don't know why this is upside down...but takes too long to reupload).
Taco Meat. This should be good for about 6 meals for me.
To summarize:
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
1 lb taco meat for tacos and quesadillas (and maybe a taco salad?)
Bread Machine Rolls
Pizza (will make 2 personal size pizzas)
Curry Chicken
Chicken Breasts for whatever meals I come up with
Chopped onion to add to things (I hate chopping onions and try to do it as infrequently as possible)
Meatballs

Lots of time left this week so I am hoping to accomplish quite a bit still!

New Dining Room Table

So continuing my run of good luck at the Restore, I bought a dining room table and got a SMOKING good deal on it. Solid wood, great condition, my colors, and my style. I absolutely love it! I love the deals that you can get at the Restore, craigslist, and other second hand places if you are willing to be patient. There is a lot of junk to wade through, but there are definitely some treasures in there too.

Without further ado - my new dining room table!

Freezer cooking!

MoneySavingMom and LifeasMom are hosting a freezer cooking day this week! Since I work full time M-F and have commitments over the weekend, I will unfortunately not be able to dedicate one full day to cooking but I think I can make some good progress by dedicating a portion of each evening to freezer cooking. The month of May is going to be very busy for me so I am thinking that the more I can have waiting for me in the freezer the better off I will be. Plus, my CSA starts this week so I will have some extra produce laying around to eat.

Here is what I hope to accomplish this week for freezer cooking.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
1 lb taco meat for tacos and quesadillas (and maybe a taco salad?)
Bread Machine Rolls
Pizza (will make 2 personal size pizzas)
Curry Chicken
Chicken Breasts for whatever meals I come up with
Chopped onion to add to things (I hate chopping onions and try to do it as infrequently as possible)
Meatballs

This is just a starting point for now - it will probably be amended as the week progresses. Wish me luck!!

Financial Goals

Now that I have moved into my new house, I am ready to tackle some of my financial goals. In order to keep myself accountable, I wanted to write them all down without getting into specifics.

Dave Ramsey style goals
1. Pay off all debt other than my mortgage.
2. Fully fund an emergency fund by the end of December 2010

Retirement
3. Achieve 100% of goal for retirement savings by the time I turn 30. Basically I think it would be cool to achieve a certain number by the time I am 30. Right now I am at 80% of this goal. However, given market fluctuation can be unpredictable, I have secondary goals.
a. Open Roth IRA account
b. Max out this account for 2010. This may be ambitious but we'll see how far I get.
c. Contribute 2% more per month to 401K. Right now I am contributing the maximum employer match but I can be doing better.

Some other misc. goals I'd like to make progress on, but may end up being a little ambitious for this year - definitely possible in 2011 though!
4. Start making an extra principal payment per month before the end of 2010
5. Start contributing the equivalent of a car payment per month into a savings account by the end of 2010. My vehicle is 7 years old and shows no sign of stopping but eventually it will need to be replaced and I would like to pay for it with cash.

Now that I have these written down I am hoping to make some good progress and post an update each month.

New Patio Furniture!

So for the first time in my life, I have a patio. I am SO excited about this because I really haven't ever lived in a place where I could go outside easily. I plan on spending a lot of time out there.

Anyway - I may have a patio but I have NO patio furniture. I don't even have anything I could repurpose as patio furniture since anything that goes out there really needs to be weather proof. I don't want to spend a lot of money right now (since I am spending plenty of money on the whole buying a house situation) so I've my eyes peeled for some good deals.

I found a great deal at Habitat for Humanity's Restore.

These chairs were each priced at $2!! Can you believe that. I sat in each of them and they seem to be fully functional. They each have a small amount of rust on the bottom and all of the slats seem to be fine without tears or anything. All in all they seemed like perfect chairs! Only problem was - they were FILTHY. You can't see the dirt very well in the picture but trust me - they needed a good scrubbing.



So after an hour or so with a sponge and some soapy water, they are looking as good as new. Not bad for $4! They will definitely last this season and probably a few more depending on when I decide to get something else. Now I am on the lookout for a small glass table to put between them. With that I think my patio will be all set!

Note: Picture taken on friend's deck - not in my yard!

Diaper Deals

Today, for the first time in my life, I bought diapers. And no, it is not because I have any big announcements to make in the near future. Trust me faithful blog reader, if any announcements need to be made, you will be among the first to know.
I bought them because they were a crazy good deal and while I may not be having a baby anytime in the near future, basically everyone I know is. So good diaper deal = good baby shower gift idea!

I bought 2 Jumbo packs of Huggies size 3 diapers (I've heard size 3 is a good one to get because they stay in the small sizes for such a short time).


So anyway, Harris Teeter has these diapers on sale for $5.99 which is a fantastic deal in itself from what I understand. They are regularly priced at $10.99. PLUS I had 2 $3/1 coupons to use. So each package ended up costing $2.99 before tax.

Not too bad if you ask me! Now I have a great start to my next baby shower gift!!

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

I tried the cinnamon roll recipe from Amysfinerthings and OH MAN are they delicious - beautiful too! The recipe made about 25 rolls which was WAY more than we needed so we both took them to work.


I made some changes to the recipe - primarily I added mostly whole wheat flour in place of all purpose flour because that is what we had on hand. They actually came out pretty good that way so I may try to keep that ratio. Instead of the recommended frosting I made a glaze with vanilla, milk, and powdered sugar. YUM!