Lauren had her 15th birthday Friday. Last night we did ice cream cake and had friends out to play cards. Lauren spent Friday night with her bestie and for the most part, things passed quietly. She doesn’t mind as next year is the BIG ONE and she expects to have a really good time. I have a few ideas in place for next year :)

Things have been quiet this week. I baked a bit, cooked and now I am menu planning! We have such a restricted budget that I am struggling to make ends meet. So I thought in an effort to improve my shopping and impulse buying, I would start menu planning to make the week run smoother.

Since Tues, Wed and Thurs nights at least one child has practice, I am making those easy dinner nights. Either the kids heat up soups, raviolis or ramen noodles. The other 4 nights a week, I make dinner and try to plan in advance. I am using All Recipes as an aide to making dinners with things I have here and going through cook books at home and reading several blogs to get ideas. I recently got a 7qt crockpot for Christmas so I am big on using it as much as I can. If anyone has a good crockpot recipe, please feel free to email it ameregirl at gmail dot com.

The menu planning was spawned not just from the budget, but so many of the blogs I read (mainly submissives etc) the women use menus to make the house more manageable. I really liked the idea of running the house more efficiently and not having to stand in the kitchen and wonder what I am going to make for dinner each night. If I can plan a head, then I can minimize the stress of keeping the house running smoothly and use my free time for other things.

I have been stitching the last few days but I keep forgetting to talk about it and I’ve not posted a picture. Deb and I are still planning our 1 hr a week of stitching time together, but with the recent things in my house and her own happenings, we’ve yet to make that time together happen. We have both stitched but haven’t had a moment to do it together yet. I hope that changes next month since this one is half over already. I was going to post a picture of my current project but I lost it :/

This week will also bring about finally implementing a cleaning schedule! The only room I refuse to do is the kids bathroom. Otherwise, I will be cleaning one room each week and trying to keep the dust and such down to a minimum by doing things this way.

I am using Google Calendar to keep my menu going and will start adding the room/area for that day in the calendar as well. I hope to become more organized this way. I am also using The Declutter Calendar as a guide to help organize things as well. I keeps me on track and helps me weed out junk. Having just had the holidays, there are plenty of new things the family got and we can toss out the old stuff without anyone really noticing. That’s key when you have Logan around and he can’t seem to let go of things. I have to do it with Lauren too sometimes but since I am becoming all about organization, then they will too.

Shawn recently went through all his clothes and emptied out more then half his sweaters (that he never wore), weeded out a bunch of his sleeveless t-shirts and ditched dress shirt and pants he has but has never worn. In total, he dumped more then 3 laundry baskets worth of things off at the local Goodwill and made room for things he had stored under the bed and such.

We have emptied out clothes for the kids, ditched old towels, thrown out torn sheet sets and finally gotten rid of all the extra old comforters that were taking up space. Slowly but surely we are making the most of the space we have here. (It’s a REALLY small house!)

But for now, we head off into the great snowy yonder to hit Wal-Mart to grocery shop, get Logan’s meds and come back so I can make Chicken Alfredo for dinner tonight.

P.S. Pinterest has become one of my new obsessions! Care to share? Leave me a msg :)