January 8th 2015 - Monthly meal planner

January 8th 2015 - monthly meal planner

Since the begining of December 2014 when money was abit tight we have sat down and worked out meals for that week, and bought the things we needed only (plus the odd snack type bits for lunch times and weekends, health n beauty bits, fruit, cereal  etc) and we have saved LOADS of money compaired to when we just went and bought "stuff" or "everything".  WHY I haven't done this sooner I never know!!!

Well I decided if we can do it for a week can we work out a plan of food for the whole month?  The answer is simply yes!  I sat and made a list of all the meals we eat/cook regularly and it came to 33, now I know my maths isn't great BUT I do know that no month has this many days in it, so i'm already onto a winner.

The hardest part was actually working out what to put on what day and what week, so that we didn't have all chicken in 1 week or on consecutive days (if possible) but as chicken is the main meat we eat this wasn't a totally easy task. But I managed it.

Then there was a harder task of working out what we needed for each meal so as to compose a shopping list.  So I worked my way through each of the meals from list 1 noting down what we needed for each 1, and things that were used in multiple meals I changed the font colour to red.

Even though we have the planner things may change on it if my knee is playing up and I can't stand to cook, or if we are ill or not at home or decide to have a take-away.  But by doing it and saving money we will have extra money to be able to get a take-away every now and then.


I found the idea of the monthly meal planner here on pinterest, so used this for todays task.  It doesn't seem possible that I have done over a week already.

January 7th 2015 - loom bands

January 7th 2015 - loom bands

For todays pin I am making loom band bracelets like these ones with my St John Ambulance Badgers (5-10yr olds) as part of their badge work.  They will be being sent to another badger sett that is based in Cambridgeshire in a bid to make them pen-pals.

I wasn't sure if it would count for today as part of 365 pins or not, but upon speaking to my friend Coralie who is also doing it she said she doesn't see why it wont.

Bracelets the Badgers made to send to their badger friends.

January 6th 2015 - beef casserole

January 6th 2015 - beef casserole

As its cold outside I decided to do a beef casserole in the slow cooker for tea.  All seemed good until I opened the bag of diced casserole beef (from supermarket) to find that most of it was fatty!  I'm hoping that with what I salvaged from the bag along with the tray I also had in freezer is enough to feed us all for tea.  I can safely say I wont be buying the stew pack beef again.  The idea for todays pin came from here.

I don't follow a recipe I just throw it all in.  Into the pot has gone diced beef, diced potatoes, sliced carrots, beef gravy, beef casserole powder, an oxo cube, regea regea sauce and worcestershire sauce.  smells lovely and usually tastes lovely.  I will addd a pic once its cooked!

January 5th 2015 - dice

January 5th 2015 - dice

Today peace and quite has resumed in the house as 2/3 kids are back at school and the other 1 is on his computer.  I have painted the last part of the wall in the boys bedroom (eldest son helped by doing the top and painting the ceiling blue as he went grrrr! never mind!) and I have done todays pin.

I have made a sealed pot dice for in the car.  The original idea came from here and was so dice didnt fly across the room.  But my boys have asked if they can have the snowman game from the other day in the car, so that will be being laminated and put in a folder with other similar bits.

January 4th 2015 - race game

4th Janury 2015 - race game

Little man was saying he was bored so I decided to do today's pin as another game for him.  I have various things like it pinned to my board "ideas for the kids to do".  The original pin can be found here.  Our version was slightly different and probably took longer as we used buttons!

The idea was a race to fill your cup by rolling a dice and adding that many objects to it.  Little man won (but i'm sure he was cheating and adding more buttons than what the dice said.)  It also helped him with his counting and he even counted some of them out in french and spanish!

He enjoyed it and asked if we could play again, but as it was dinner time we had to put them away.  But it will certainly be a game we will do again, maybe with lego bricks so it doesn't take as long!

January 3rd 2015 - Happy Birthday to me......

January 3rd 2015 - My Birthday

 EVEN google knows its my birthday today as it has cakes and candles on it!!!

I have opened my presents, and the cake is cooking, the drinks will flow later with hubby and a friend.

For todays pin I picked a purple ombre layer cake off pinterest, now I know mine wont be as good as the original purple ombre cake see link, but it is what gave me the idea.  See my pics later once its cooked, iced and then cut.

 

Here is the cake uncut, 3 different colour layers. I dont dare add more buttercream to cover the outside as there is loads between each layer!  cant wait for a slice after lunch. 

January 2nd 2015 - Do you wana build a snowman???

January 2nd 2015 - Day 2 of 365 challenge

Do you wana build a snowman???  Sadly we have no real snow to do one, but I found this dice and drawing game and printed it out.  Me and the boys had fun for about 45mins playing it.  The pic shows a couple of our snowmen pictures.  I think I may laminate the game and put in a folder to start a games folder of easy things they can do in the car.