October Eating From the Pantry Challenge!

Welcome to October!! Where did September go? No, seriously - where did it go? Anyway, I have somehow accumulated A LOT of items in my freezer. So I've decided to spend some time cleaning out the stockpile this month.

My goal for this month will be to minimize grocery spending as much as possible. Purchasing perishables, milk, eggs, and necessities is allowed. Any leftover grocery money will go towards making an extra principal payment.

YAY! I will update you all at the end of the month.

Food Lion Deals

So I am typically not a Food Lion shopper because in general I haven't been impressed by their prices or their customer service.

However, Hip2Save alerted to me to a great deal on Kraft cheese so I decided to head over. Well...I still can't say much for the customer service but the deals may get me back there every once in a while. I ended up getting 5 packages of cheese and about 6 lbs of chicken for $11.80. The cheese ended up being $0.40/package and 2 packages of chicken were marked down to about $2.50/package. The third package was the regular deal this week which was buy 1 pound, get 1 pound free.

Unfortunately my cashier experience wasn't great. The cashier grumbled when I asked for a paper bag and scanned my coupon in wrong. He did not seem please when I asked him to check the coupon although he did correct the mistake. So - the deals were good, the customer service was so-so, but I wouldn't turn down a trip in the future.

Soap.com purchase

I got my soap.com purchase in the mail today! What a great surprise to have waiting at my door! I purchased the $20 voucher from Groupon for $10 and got 3 rolls of papertowels, 2 bottles of shampoo, 1 large bottle of dishwashing detergent, and 1 large bottle of hand soap.

All in all a pretty good deal. This soap should last me a VERY long time. The shampoo was something I needed anyway so it all worked out. I was overall impressed with soap.com. I was even able to use some coupons on the site. Definitely something to think about for future toiletry purchases.

I have a problem...

...whose name is Diet Coke.


Yes, I am addicted to Diet Coke (or more specifically, the caffeine in the Diet Coke). I try to limit myself but I still manage to get addicted to the stuff. IT IS A PROBLEM!

This week I've tried to quit cold turkey. This was a horrible idea because it resulted in 2 days of crazy headaches. I finally broke down and bought a package of those small 7.5 oz cans as a way to wean myself off.

Diet Coke you will not win!

Menu Plan, week of 9/20

Here is what I am eating this week. I've been in a cooking funk recently so I am hoping to reignite it by doing some meal planning.

Monday
L: Peanut butter sandwich
D: Pesto butter stuffed chicken with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli

Tuesday
L: BBQ sandwich with steamed broccoli
D: Out

Wednesday
L: Pesto butter stuffed chicken with mashed potatoes
D: With Candice, TBD

Thursday
L: Turkey sandwich
D: Summer rolls with peanut sauce

Friday
L: Summer rolls with peanut sauce
D: Homemade cheese pizza

August Reading

I've been really slacking in my reading recently so I though I'd start reporting on it so that I can keep motivated! Also, I finally got a library card in my new city so that is helping a lot with the motivation!

This is what I read this month:

Foreign Body by Robin Cook.
I was shocked to discover a Robin Cook book that I hadn't read before! Unfortunately, this was not one of my favorites. It was a good story but I felt like the mystery was revealed to the reader too early. I like solving the mystery with the main character but in this case I knew what the main character didn't.


One True Love by Lora Copeland
Ok so this was an instance of my grabbing something at the library because the author has written a number of books. I do this every once in a while as a way to discover new authors, etc. In this case, I will probably not be reading anything else by this author. Worth a shot though.


City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Soooo - this was a recommendation from my cousin and I am a little bit obsessed with this series. It is a young adult series and is just a great read. It reminds me a little bit of the Harry Potter series in that it involves teens with special abilities who are battling some sort of evil. Anyway - definitely recommended.


City of Ashes by Cassandra
This is the second in the series and I am still loving it.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by MaryAnn Shaffer and Annie Barrows
I read this on a recommendation from a friend and it was a great read - cute story, well written, and a lot of fun. The only thing I wasn't a fan of is the lack of chapters :)

A book of Ray Bradbury short stories that I can't remember the name of... But the stories were really good!

I feel like there was one more book too...but I can't remember what it was. Overall a good month for reading though :)

Messy

Recently I've been having a little trouble keeping the clutter under control. Now a lot of this is because I've been out of town and otherwise running around like a crazy person but that is no excuse for the disaster that my house is quickly becoming.

As an example, here is my dining room table (which tends to be a catch all due to its location next to the front door).

In addition to the somewhat normal things (purse, mail, etc) you can see that a lot of not so normal stuff has been making an appearance (bug spray, garlic, box, etc).


Now, there isn't a cocker spaniel on the table but the general clutter is basically getting out of control. Needless to say, decluttering is high on my priority list.