july meals!

i absolutely loved having a month of menus in june, so we decided to repeat it for july! i still use the spreadsheet that i shared with y'all last month, but i didn't like the way it uploaded on here. AND one of my sisters asked me to link to recipes, when possible. soo... with that in mind, i'm going to do this month's a little different.

July 1st - crockpot bbq chicken drumsticks

2nd - honey pork chops

3rd - gone

4th - gone

5th - chef's salad with bacon, ham, eggs, cheese, cucumbers, carrots, croutons

6th - pancakes

7th - bbq chicken leg quarters (on the grill)

8th - cranberry pork tenderloin

9th - italian crockpot chicken

10th - lasagna

11th - DB sausage

12th - chicken breasts in phyllo

13th - breakfast burritos

14th - bbq chicken pizza

15th - turkey & dressing

16th - butter chicken

17th - buffalo chicken garbage bread

18th - pizza

19th - sub sandwiches

20th - teriyaki chicken

21st - pork spareribs

22nd - roast

23rd - hamburgers

24th - cheesy chicken bundles

25th - italian breaded pork chops

26th - chicken crescent squares

27th - family reunion

28th - family reunion

29th - buffalo chicken sandwiches

30th - EAT OUT! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! :)

31st - cheddar bacon chicken

i tried to link to as many recipes as possible! enjoy! :)

anne

nephews and the fourth of july!

hello everyone!

apparently, i'm not as good at this blogging thing as i had hoped! life gets busy, and i get distracted. i have all kinds of fun things to share though, so i'm going to back up a bit in our lives. :)

we babysat my three nephews for a weekend while my sister and her husband escaped for their anniversary. and oh my goodness. these boys are precious and very well behaved, but we learned very quickly how tiring it is to have kids. especially three at once. i used to say i wanted to have twins or triplets the first time i'm pregnant, but i think i'm taking that back now. (no offense, jen - you know i love your boys!) we had a lot of fun with them... we made cars out of cardboard boxes for their drive-in theater we had planned for saturday night. we went to the lake and the big boys got to go down the slides (over and over and over) while the little one hung out with us, and then everyone got to play in the lake for a bit. (the little one spent the entire time "helping" by throwing the sand back into the lake, haha.) the big boys went bowling with ash (while the little one and i napped, haha). oh, and we can't forget working out - it was a combination of stroller riding, scooter driving, and racing the dog. these kids were as worn out as we were!

we spent the fourth of july with ashton's family at the lake. lots of good food and fun times on the lake! it was a short trip, and we had to drive home during the normal firework time, so we kind of had a traveling show. we saw fireworks all over the place on the drive home. also, you'll notice that together, he and i make red, white and blue. :)

also, on a sidenote, a different sister of mine and her husband have officially adopted the little boy and girl they had been fostering. which means that i can now show you this adorable picture of my nephew and his pet mouse! (in case you can't tell, that's a computer mouse, haha.)

one of several posts coming tonight, so be on the lookout! :)

anne

no spend june

hey everyone!

this post is going to be a bit different from our normal house updates, but i've had several people ask for this info, so i thought i'd use the blog to share the info!

we have named june our "no spend" month. i've seen lots of variations of this on other blogs, but for us, it just meant that we were not going to spend money eating out this month. (with a few exceptions... we had already planned a weekend trip with friends, but we still took sandwiches and actually only paid for 2 meals out. and then i surprised my dad for father's day, and my sisters and i all chipped in to pick up bbq for lunch with him, so i spent money then too.)

at the end of may, i sat down and came up with a meal for each day in june and then went through and made a huge shopping list for the entire month. which seemed crazy at the time, but i have enjoyed not having to go to the grocery store each week except for some milk or bread. (another exception... chicken wasn't on sale when i went on my first trip, so i waited a week before i bought it and was able to save $35. thank you mom for telling me to wait until it's $1.97/lb.) 

we don't stick to the calendar 100%. we change it up depending on what's going on, or how much energy i have to cook, but the great thing is that i have 30 choices ready for me to choose from, and we're not having those "what are we going to do for dinner?" moments. 

the other side of this is that we weren't going to be able to pick up food for breakfast/lunch. this was definitely a bigger problem for me than for the hubs (i have a sonic right down the street from work), so we had to plan our meals and make enough for dinners that we had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. to make it even more interesting... ash has had CRAZY work weeks these past two weeks. i'm talking leaving the house at 5:30am (or earlier) and not getting home until after 10pm, so that means lots of leftovers for him to take!

anyways, friends and family who have heard about this have asked us to share the month's menus, so scroll down for our june menus! the calendar uploads pretty small, but there is a link above it that says june 2012 menu, so you can click on that and it will take you to a different site where you can enlarge the menu. if you want recipes, let me know and i can share those, too! AND... if you have any other good meals you think i should try out, feel free to share those too!

OHH, also, today i was looking online for a menu calendar so i could put the meals in it to post on here and i found a really cool one that you should check out if you start this. it's an excel spreadsheet that allows you to store meals and sides on there, and then you can just pick from a drop down menu. i imagine this will be soo helpful when i'm stuck and can't think of any other ideas to add to the calendar... click on this link: Monthly Menu Calendar.

June 2012 Menu