SC Johnson mail-in rebate offer!

I really need some more ziploc baggies so I'm excited about this one!

There’s a fantastic new SC Johnson mail-in rebate available! Get a $5 rebate when you buy any 3 items from the following SC Johnson brands:

*Drano
*Fantastik
*Glade
*Nature’s Source
*Off
*Pledge
*Raid
*Saran
*Scrubbing Bubbles
*Shout
*Windex
*Ziploc

Happily, you can submit for this rebate up to three times per household for a total of $15!

Submissions must be postmarked by 7/15/10.

Menu Plan Monday

I actually sat down to think about what I wanted to eat this week. We are in such a food rut. I need to stop using being tired or stressed as an excuse and just start cooking again.

Monday - Meatball subs and sauteed zucchini slices (Meatballs are already baking in the oven)

Tuesday - Breakfast - eggs, bacon and homemade buttermilk biscuits

Wednesday - Crockpot pot roast and baked potatoes (bake extra for Friday)

Thursday - Chopped beef BBQ sandwiches

Friday - Baked potato soup

Saturday - Leftovers

Sunday - Grilled chicken breasts and stuffing

Simple card

James got me a Scraparatus for my birthday. It is a tool used to punch holes and seal eyelets. It also has die cuts that you can use to make letters and shapes. The card pictured below is the first thing I've made using my Scraparatus. I love the eyelet/hole punching feature and love the font of the lettering; however, I think I am going to stick with the Cricut for lettering.

It didn't take long!

It did not take long for Marshmallow Man to get comfortable in our house!

He loves for his belly to be rubbed!!

Grocery trip

Today's grocery trip cost $30.05. I won't list all the prices, but it doesn't seem like much for $30 does it. You might notice that there isn't a lot of processed food in the picture. We are trying to do September without purchasing processed foods,unless we can't make them ourselves. The bison meat was expensive, but we don't have it that often.

Menu Plan Monday

We have done really terrible lately. Mostly because my birthday was last week and we used almost all of the "free" Q we got through various birthday clubs. We are both feeling pretty gross and want to try to eat a little better this week.

Monday: pizza (we need to use up some spaghetti sauce and I have some homemade frozen pizza shells in the fridge)

Tuesday: Baked chicken, potatoes and zucchini

Wednesday: Black bean burritos

Thursday: Breakfast for dinner

Friday: Leftovers

Saturday: I'll decide that day

Sunday: Grilled hot dogs and homemade macaroni and cheese

My new foster dog - Marshmallow Man

Here he is. . .meet Marshmallow Man! He is a year and a half old (practically a puppy)! So far he has a really good personality and is a little possessive with toys. He has a sore on his back leg that the vet is testing and suspects a pretty severe infection. Hoping and praying that the solution will only be antibiotics. He will be posted on the GPA-CT website soon.

Doesn't he have gorgeous eyes?
A body view. He has mostly white hair with one or two tiny patches of brown hair. He also has the black spots on his skin that can be seen under the white hair.
Playing with his toy!

My favorite X-factor audition.

In case you haven't figured out yet, I am an "internet phenomenon" junkie. I love to watch auditions for all the reality competitions on youtube. This is my favorite from the X-factor show. I'm not sure he is the greatest singer, but he is an awesome performer!

Baking morning!

James really likes to have quick things for breakfast in the morning. I haven't had the time to do anything about that until this morning. I made several batches of muffins and a batch of granola bars (new recipe I'm trying - picture later).
I used one muffin recipe that I have developed and modified it for each batch. The basic recipe is as follows:

Preheat an oven to 350°F.

Mix the following ingredients in a large bowl:
2 c all-purpose flour (James doesn't really like whole wheat flour in muffins)
1/2 c sugar (If you like sweet muffins I would increase this by 1/4 c)
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 T ground flax seed

In a second bowl, mix the following:
2 lightly beaten eggs
1 c of dairy product (I usually use milk or yogurt, both of which I was out of so today I used half and half)
4T melted butter
Flavoring of your choice (more later)

Combine the two mixes together and stir in 1 cup of "add-ins". Fill muffin cups (sometimes I line them other times I just use spray) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Bake for about 10-15 minutes if using mini-muffin cups.

Blueberry-Almond Muffins: 1/4 t almond extract as the flavor and 1 c frozen blueberries. This batch was 6 large muffins.

Cinnamon Streusel Muffins: Make a streusel topping out of flour, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and a little salt. I didn't measure these, I just eyeballed them. For the flavoring I used 1/2 t of vanilla extract, 1/2 t cinnamon and no add-ins. I used a silicone pop-over mold for this recipe. Fill the bottom of the molds with about 2 T of batter each. Top with 1 t of streusel mixture. Evenly distribute another 2-3 T of batter over the streusel and then top that with another t of streusel mixture. I had some left over batter so I made 12 mini cinnamon muffins. The mini-muffins baked for about 10 minutes and the popover muffins baked for 20 minutes.

Chocolate chip mini-muffins: The flavor was 1/2 t vanilla, a dash of cinnamon and the add-in was chocolate chips. I didn't have any mini chocolate chips so I chopped up some regular size chips. I made 48 mini muffins out of one batch.

Lemon - Dewberry muffins: The flavoring was 1 t lemon extract and the add-in was a cup of frozen dewberries. Yield of 12 regular size muffins.

I freeze the muffins and James takes them out in the morning and defrosts them in the microwave. Quick and easy breakfasts for my James.

My favorite performance from America's Got Talent

I don't usually watch America's Got Talent, but at the very beginning of the season I saw a preview for Lawrence Beamen's audition. I think it was his best performance of the entire season - which I dutifully watched just to see him. I haven't really enjoyed the performances on the actual competition part of the show. The finale results show is on Wednesday night, but I'll probably just read about it on the internet on Thursday.

What I don't understand and what I think about every time I see this is how does someone like this go undiscovered and people like Britney Spears are found? It doesn't make any sense to me. I hope you enjoy the performance!

Monday = Meal Plan

This week is going to be interesting. My birthday is on Wednesday so we are going out to eat at Mandola's Market in Austin. I love the Gnocchi there. More exciting - we are getting a new foster dog over the weekend!!!! I am super excited about getting him because he is almost a puppy and we haven't had a young foster dog in a very long time. This might change the weekend meal plan depending on how he's adapting.

Monday: Frito pie (need to use up some free corn chips we received)

Tuesday: Bison burgers (Yep, bison. I read that it was super healthy so we bought a little to try it), and homemade baked french fries

Wednesday: Gnocchi and chocolate cake for me at Mandola's Market!

Thursday: Crockpot chicken (not sure how I'll cook it yet)

Friday: Breakfast for dinner - eggs, bacon, homemade biscuits

Saturday: Aiming for meatless pasta, but we'll see how things go.

Sunday: James' choice

Some sales today.

I have a friend getting married in November and it is an evening wedding. I had no idea what to wear, so my friend told me to just wear a little black dress. I DON"T OWN a dress! So, I've been looking for a dress. I wanted a very simple, plain black dress that I could dress up with shoes and accessories. I found the one below at Kohl's for a tag price of $48.00, but when we got to the cash register is was on sale!!!
Kohl's:
1 black dress: $48 on sale for $23.99
Nike workout shirt: $36 on clearance for $7.20

Total before sales: $84
Total sales: $52.81
Total OOP w/ tax: $33.76

We also did a little grocery shopping today at Central Market and Sprouts. (James took care of everything before I could take a picture of it.)

Sprouts:
0.18 lb of Trail mix: $0.90
3 Hass avocados: on sale for $1
2.36 lb yellow bananas: $1.18
Strawberries: $0.99

Total OOP: $4.07

Central Market:
1 loaf of Challah bread (french toast in the morning): $3.99
3.26 lb of ground beef (never frozen): normally $4.49 a pound, on sale for $1.99/lb = $5.95
0.67 lb of bison meat (I wanted to try this even though it's expensive): $3.83

Total OOP: $13.77

Feelgoodz flipflops giveaway

Lindsay at Frugal & Fabulous has an awesome giveaway on her site. She is offering the chance to win a pair of Feelgoodz flipflops and actually has three pairs to giveaway. After looking at the Feelgoodz website I'm excited about the chance to win these. I love supporting environmentally friendly companies and this company definitely meets those standards. Check out Lindsay's website for more info on the giveaway!

Late Menu Plan

Yesterday was my last day at the pool for the summer! I was too tired to cook last night and James didn't feel like cooking so we went out for a burger. Hopefully we'll do well this week with the menu plan.

Tuesday: Pink pasta

Wednesday: Baked chicken and rice

Thursday: Baked potatoes

The weekend: My first weekend off since April! I have no idea what the weekend holds so I'm not going to plan meals!

August recap

We have been having problems with our Time Warner cable/phone/Internet connection. It was down for 17 hours yesterday and then just randomly started up again. I'm just going to do a quick recap of a few things.

Read 15 magazines

Read 9 books

That's all I've got for a recap. I pretty much just worked in August. Starting this month I'll actually be tracking our grocery budget again.

No time . . . AGAIN!

I just started another long stretch of work, 11 days, so I won't be blogging much - again. Hopefully after this stretch I'll be able to work on the blog again and actually do some fun things with my life!