Menu Planning February 15, 2010

Monday - Tonight I came home to a wonderful pot of chicken and dumplings. My husband really is the best :)

Tuesday - Mac and Cheese with broccoli

Wednesday - Chili

Thursday - Chicken Fried Rice

Friday - Noodles and Alfredo Sauce

Saturday - Fried Chicken, corn, potatoes

We really do tend to eat the same things over and over again :(

Doesn't this menu look remarkably similar to some of the old ones???

For more menu's head on over to Org Junkie's Menu Planning.

Completely unprepared yet having a wonderful time

Last week I posted about an emergency bag I had started preparing in case of a small emergency: loss of power, various weather warnings etc.... This weekend I realized just how behind I was.

Where I live in the south we rarely get a snow dusting each year. When the weatherman called for one to two inches of snow on Friday I didn't give it another thought. Maybe I should have been listening to the weather more frequently or maybe I should have made a run to the grocery store just in case.... but whatever the reason why we were caught drastically unprepared for the snow that arrived on Friday.

Some things I learned must be kept around the house (and probably in the emergency bag just so I know where they are):

-Infant Tylenol - Wouldn't ya know that my little girl came down with a teething fever as soon as the first snow flake fell. We used up the last of her tylenol then and luckily the fever stayed away until we were able to make it to the store to get some more

- Black Eyed Peas - This is one of the only thing that my little one will eat. Saturday is my normal grocery shopping day and at this point we were out of everything that she would eat. We had no Cheerios, Goldfish, Black Eyed Peas, Yogurt, or Applesauce. So until we could make it to the store she ate cheese :)

- Milk - I know this one can't be kept in the bag, but it might be a good idea not to run so low on milk. We go through 2 gallons a week so it might be better from now on to make sure that we have at least 1/2 a gallon on hand. I have heard that in a pinch you can use equal parts of evaporated milk and water to make whole milk, but I would rather not find out if it works.

Thank goodness that the snow melted just as fast as it accumulated and by Saturday my husband was able to make a store run for the above items as well as a movie.

Despite not being prepared we had a wonderful weekend.

We spent the time teaching our little one to jump on the bed: something I'm sure we will regret later, but thought was oh so cute at the time. My husband and I had a valentine's lunch at one of our favorite restaurants before the snow came in and we cleaned the entire house top to bottom :0)

Hopefully we can have a repeat of the weekend tomorrow as the weather man is calling for one to two inches of snow overnight... this time we are prepared :)

Kitty Litter Part 2

So....

this goal is not going as well as expected. Due to a pretty stubborn cat it seems we will not be going with our homemade kitty litter after all :( I'm thinking that we will go with a more natural pine kitty litter and then be able to recycle the newspapers I was shredding. Hopefully this will work.

Emergency Bag

A few weeks ago the emergency sirens went off in our neighborhood. As I went downstairs (which is where we go in the event of a tornado) I was frantically trying to remember where I had put a flashlight in the event of a power failure.

After the ok to return back upstairs I decided it was time to put together an emergency bag for when something like that happened. This way we would no exactly where everything was and wouldn't be searching around for things. I started the emergency bag today with an old book bag we had lying around.

Right now in our emergency bag we have: a knife, 2 wind up operated flashlights and some water. Over the course of the next few weeks I would like to include: waterproof matches, a few granola bars, a wind up radio, first aid kit and other miscellaneous supplies.

What about you? Do you have an emergency bag and if so what's in it?

Happiness

Tonight was a night of good fellowship with God's people! How wonderful it was :)

I wonder if I could do this?

Somehow I stumbled across one of the most interesting websites I've ever see. A man by the name of Colin Beavan and his family decided to try living one year without leaving any negative impact on the environment. They ate only local food, used no electricity, and made no garbage all in the middle of NYC! I have spent the past few days pouring over the website, reading as many excerpts from the book as possible and wondering how many of these things I could possibly do.

Almost a challange if you will...

Could I go without using our HVAC unit for a year? Probably so... we rarely used it before our daughter was born and now only use it to keep her comfortable. Hopefully next year we can be a little more better at this.

Could I eat only locally grown things for a year? I'm not sure about this one. My husband will not eat anything that grows. We did a huge garden last year and he didn't eat one thing from it. While I could completely beef up my local eating I'm not sure I could depend on it entirely.

Could I go without electricity for a year? Maybe. I believe I could cut almost all electricity out of the picture. I don't think it would be hard to reprogram ourselves to go to bed and wake up with the sun. We have lots of windows in our house so lights would not be a problem. Refrigerator and washing machine however would.

I know it sounds crazy but I would love to see how much of his experiment I could do....now how to get my husband on board? :)

Swagbucks

I signed up for swagbucks yesterday. I'm not really sure how they work, but apparently there all the rage amongst frugal moms. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon and be on my way to making some money :)