Happy 5th Birthday Clayton!

Happy Birthday to my Lightning McQueen, Superman, Fireman, Policeman all rolled into one!

Whew! I Feel Better Now

All day I've been thinking about the snow coming and trying to work in getting some groceries before conditions got worse.  So we made a mad rush out this evening after work to pick up groceries for the week.  I'll have to save my trip to the farmer's market for another weekend.  But we're plenty stocked up on milk and cocoa powder for some homemade hot chocolate goodness!  Time to sit back and relax, watch a movie and enjoy the snow falling (a simple pleasure of mine).

"Stop waiting for life to become perfect and start working with what we've got to make it as satisfying as we can.  We can accept, bless, give thanks, and get going.  Today, we can begin to call forth the riches from our everyday life.  Today we can move from lack to abundance."

-Sarah Ban Breathnach

Simple Abundance:  A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

Simple Touches for Valentine's Day

I didn't have to look any further than my kitchen pantry to find items for this apothecary jar.  Dried Great Northern and adzuki beans add a touch of red and white for Valentine's Day.  To the top, I added my

10-cent after Christmas clearance ribbon from Big Lots.   

Speaking of after Christmas, the red vase with white branches and candle with natural elements have been going strong since before Christmas.  I replaced the red berries from around the candle with a wooden Love I picked up last week from Michaels - 15-cents after Christmas clearance find!

Linked at:

A Soft Place To Land

Menu Plan Monday - January 25th

Welcome to another week of meals at

The Working Home Keeper!

A note about ingredients - Last year, our family made a switch to whole and nourishing foods. Most ingredients used in the making of these recipes are organic, organically-grown and/or natural (free from HFCS or preservatives). Most of our meats come from local farms where the animals are raised humanely and fed a diet that is natural to them. For cooking, I use traditional oils - olive oil, butter and organic, cold-pressed, extra virgin coconut oil. Local honey or organic sucanat is used in place of refined sugar.

This Week's Meals:

Weekend Meal Prep:

Shred blocks of mozzarella and cheddar cheese
Cook organic, brown rice
Make pizza sauce and pizza dough

Breakfast:

Scrambled, pastured eggs (local)
Soaked oatmeal (The Nourishing Gourmet)
Sprouted cereal
Sprouted toast with organic peanut butter

Lunches:

Usually sandwiches or dinner leftovers

Dinner:

Baked Salmon with Mango Ginger Salsa, Yellow Split Pea Dahl (Easy Indian in Minutes cookbook), organic Brown Rice & Naan

Golden Veggie Fried Rice (Tammy's Recipes)

Country Creole Peas & Corn (Sue Gregg)

Shepherd's Pie made with local, grass-fed & finished beef (Daily Diner)

Homemade Whole Wheat Veggie Pizza

Kale & Brown Rice Casserole (Tammy's Recipes)

For more meal plan ideas, visit Laura at I'm An Organizing Junkie.

Thanks for stopping by!

Market Day - The Cost of Convenience

A trip to Costco for diapers and laundry supplies put a real crunch on the grocery budget this week.  In addition, my last four-week savings coupon for Whole Foods required a 1lb purchase of salmon (got free lemon pepper rub, frozen haricots and two free bags of frozen veggies since they were out of the frozen brown rice listed on the coupon!).  To stay on budget with our cash envelopes, I had to make some changes to the grocery list.  One simple change, was choosing blocks of cheese over pre-shredded bags.  For giving up the convenience of having cheese already shredded, I saved $8.60 at Whole Foods.  Plus cheese blocks seem to last longer at our house because no one wants to shred their own cheese - except for me! 

Another week of using cash envelopes, another week with money leftover!

I'd love to hear from you!  What convenience items have you given up in order to save at the grocery store?

Praising the God of the Breakthrough!

Before this year began, I felt God challenging me to believe in Him for the big things.  To stop limiting Him based on my own doubts.  Not long after, I caught a program by Joel Osteen where he talked about living "breakthrough-minded".  Taking the limits off of God and believing He would show up not with a trickle or a stream, but like a flood.

I wrote a list in my journal of the big things I was going to dare myself to believe God for.  Top on the list was a job for my husband that paid well and gave him more time to be with our family.  Well today I'm praising God for the goodness He has just flooded us with!  After 6 months of being unemployed, my husband was offered (and accepted) a job with our State Controllers Office!  A Monday through Friday, 40 hour work-week, with State holidays, weekends off and great benefits.  After spending 10 years at his former job in a highly stressful environment, working 50 hour plus weeks and missing out on Saturdays with the family, this job is literally an answer to our prayers!

God is good!