Organic on a Budget Part Two

A few questions came up regarding my first post "Organic on a Budget" that prompted me to write this one and possibly another coming soon!

My previous post provided a few tips on how I look for ways to purchase organic meat while staying on a tight budget. Some of the best tips I've seen for how to save lots of money on your groceries is to PLAN YOUR MEALS! Seriously, this is a great way to stick to a budget.

Raise your hand if you've heard about Meal Planning?  It's all over Pinterest! Now here's the reality to meal planning: it's very very time consuming until you get the hang of it. So here are some tips:

Use a Meal Planner

I found a really simple organizer/template for meal planning by Googling it but here is a wonderful resource for seven day, two-week, one month meal planning templates and grocery list templates. They are FREE and PRINTABLE! I would suggest finding a template or creating a template that will work for you. 

Take Inventory
Look in your cupboards, refrigerator  freezer, and spice racks/drawers. You need to know what do you already have, that you won't need to buy, when you choose your meals. These are usually staple items like your spices, frozen vegetables, meats, fruits, dry items like beans, rice, chickpeas, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, soups, etc.

Gather Recipes
This is part one of the time-consuming-ness of meal planning. It's so much easier if you can organize your recipes. So when you sit down to plan out your meal for whatever length of time you choose (7-day, 2-weeks, 1-month), you aren't wasting more time flipping through cookbooks, magazines, online going through Pinterest boards and pins, etc. AHHHH! It drives me crazy just thinking about it! 

Now for some Pinterest is organized enough, for me I have one board with about 150-200 pins of dessert, breakfast, dinners, slow-cooker recipes, and drink mixes. (Follow me on Pinterest!)

My suggestion is to organize your recipes by how you usually decide your dinners. Do you choose your protein first or is it more by the mode of cooking, like baked, grilled, slow-cooker? 

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NOW HERE'S WHERE MEAL-PLANNING TAKES A FORK ;)

You can choose to pick your recipes then go shopping for those items you don't have OR some people like to choose recipes based on what goes on sale at the store.  The latter is more for 7-day planning, since sales run a week at a time.

I prefer to choose recipes then shop for the things I need! Though I haven't tried the other way, it may be easier to save money, but I don't care to look through sale ads to decide what I need to buy.

Plan your Meals
Okay so here's the thing, you need to consider what your family's lifestyle and flow is like because someone whose family only gets a short amount of family time together in the evenings, then any meal that takes longer than 45 minutes to prepare and cook is not going to work very well. Also, the more ingredients a recipe has (the more fun IMO) the longer the prep time. Just something to keep in mind.  

• Is there a day or two that your family normally eats out or orders in? Schedule that in to your meal plan!  
• You want to give yourself a day or two of leftovers. I personally found that when I planned out my meals, some meals lasted that night and some stretched three days.  
• Make it easy on yourself. Plan your family favorites! Spaghetti, Chicken & Rice Casserole, Breakfast for dinner, you get the point.  

Make your Grocery List
Look at the ingredients for each recipe, what items don't you have already?

• Make a list and organize by store aisle (this takes time at first, but you can ask Customer Service for a map of their store aisles!)
• Look to see which items are on sale or in season; which items you have coupons for (unfortunately coupons are a rarity for the healthy/organic stuff); and which items you can buy in bulk. (Future post on buying bulk/whole foods)
• Can you get any of it at your local Farmer's Market? This is a great place to get fresh, organic, and local meat, produce, and dairy for a decently low price.

Stick to Your Budget!
What is your budget for groceries? I can tell you, if you stick to your grocery list and have tried to find sales/coupons, you will come very close to meeting your budget, you may even have some money left over!  It's the other items that get ya, like toothpaste, toilet paper, detergent, etc. (Future post on saving on those other items)

Don't feel like you need to follow your meal plan strictly to what you planned, use it more like a guide that relieves you of that 3 o'clock in the afternoon decision to figure out what the heck you're going to make for dinner, and you realize that you didn't take anything out of the freezer or you just ran out of this or that! I HATE THAT FEELING, DON'T YOU? 

If you have a love/hate relationship with your freezer ;) then try to plan for more slow-cooker meals that you can prepare the night before or in the morning. There a lots of recipes where you just throw in frozen ingredients and 8 hours later, VOILA!! My FAV!

Please please share any tips or experience you have Meal Planning! 

Organic on a Budget

How do you maintain your diet of organic and non-dairy food while living in an environment where most of the food in the pantry is typical American conventional grocery-store items?

Well the obvious answer would be to just buy your own groceries. And yes that is exactly what you should do, BUT if you are also trying to live on a strict budget, hence why you are living with said person in the first place, it's a bit more of a challenge.

Specifically, we are living with my mother-in-law! I know what?! Living with your hubby's mom has got to be dreadful!  So far, a week in, it's not been too bad. I think we are definitely gaining a greater understanding for each other's way in the home and we still aren't trying to step on each other's toes. I realize it's her house, her stuff, and she is gracious enough to allow her son's young family to stay with her until we can afford to move on, but I do not want to compromise my own lifestyle preferences for the convenience of space or money (money to an extent, I mean we are trying to SAVE EVERY PENNY)

I nurse my wee little babay, who is 8 months old this month. She tends to be extra fussy and spits up a lot when I have dairy of any proportion, so I have been dairy-free now for a few months. Easy peasy right? Well yea, sort of, if you don't want to eat out anywhere. I mean you may not realize how much dairy (milk) is an ingredient of until you are trying to avoid it... now I did find this amazing blog that has TONS OF RECIPES where you would use breast milk in place of dairy milk. This is interesting and may cause you to cringe just thinking about drinking breast milk, especially someone else's!

I like this idea, though I don't think my mother-in-law or step-dad-in-law would appreciate not knowing or as I would expect if they knew, not even try it. But I don't blame them! It's only because I was curious what it tasted like that I even took a few sips of my own after I pumped some one morning. It tasted just like cream, with a light and subtle sweetness, definitely a sticky feeling if on your fingers, but I think it's a great use for the stored breast milk if I don't end up donating it.  Well that was a tangent huh? :)  Unless I get the courage to start using my own breast milk in my meals, I will continue to purchase non-dairy items like rice milk, coconut creamer, Soy-free, Dairy-free Butter, and Almond milk and ice cream. This is where the budget comes into play. It's almost $4.00 for a half gallon of Rice Milk, we use it for our coffee, my husband goes through cereal like he's not eaten a meal in days, and for those recipes that call for milk. So price shopping is necessary for staples like this.

And next, she is used to eating meat purchased straight out of the meat cooler, whatever's on sale. Personally I don't care to eat non-organic meat for my weekly meals I prepare at home. I may not be able to get organic when I go out with friends to dinner at a nice restaurant or stop at Taco Bell while on a road-trip, but those times are few and far between. Especially while I'm nursing, and therefore everything I eat, my babay eats, I'd prefer to keep myself pesticide-, hormone-, antibiotic-, and corn-fed-free 99% of the time.  Well I decided to just be the woman my hubby married, I stand up for myself and say what needs to be said, I offered to buy the family's meat as a deal with the grocery-shopping. I mean we are trying to save every penny and buying all of our own groceries, organic meat and all, gets pretty expensive. So we'll see how well this set-up works out for our pocketbook  and our health!

Here are a few tips I use when I purchase organic meat:

1. Look at the price per lb, anything $3.00/lb or less is a great deal.
2. Look for whole chickens and cook it whole in the slow cooker. (I cook mine dry lightly salted and peppered on LOW for about 6-8 hours) You can get at least two meals for a family of four depending on how you prepare your leftovers. 
   
   
3. I find buying the larger portions when on sale are the best bang for your buck. Whether it be a large roast or loin, even a large filet of fish. Divide it into smaller portions when you get home, and freeze the individual dinner portions.  Then thaw only what you want to use, leaving the rest for a another day, another meal, while keeping a few extra dollars in your pocket!

So there ya have it!  If you have any tips you want to share, let me know! I'd be happy to see what else I can do to save save save! 

We Are Home!

GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are finally back in our sweet sweet home state! We are smitten in the Mitten! What a crazy whirlwind of events occurring right now... living in this limbo world of are we or aren't we is finally over! Now we can settle in a bit and let our roots start to take hold.  

Our families are beyond excited to have us home and especially now that we have our little babay they can watch grow up, they can now be a part of her memories first-hand. I can't tell you how much that means to me and her daddy. We just couldn't stand the thought of her grandparents not being able to just watch her for a few hours while we go out for a date night or that she wouldn't have a close-bond with her cousins.

So here's the story:
The hubs has been waiting for a call from a school district he applied for back in June, he called last Tuesday, and they still hadn't decided! On Wednesday, a teacher at ANOTHER school quit that day, leaving an immediate opening. The hubs got wind of it and emailed the principal right away. Interviewed Friday and came back with the job!  He said they both knew before it was even over that it was just a "perfect match"!  This new school is WAY WAY different than what the hubs is used to... A smaller private school academy with a completely different approach to teaching and learning for students of average to above-average intelligence diagnosed with having Autism, Asperger's, and/or ADHD. 



My last words to the hubs tonight as he went to bed were...

"Empty Your Cup"  

With AN OPEN MIND and a desire to BE CHALLENGED, I think we are on to a whole new beginning in so many ways!  Many more posts to look forward to! :)

QWERTY Thirty!

As I pump this morning (to help keep my supply up while my mind is racing and my baby crawls all over the place) I figure now is the ONLY time I'll have today to sit down and write my To-Do List on my 30th Birthday:

1. Woke up early to get some work done, found out we ran out of coffee and breakfast foods yesterday!  Well Checkety Check Check!

2. Design up and print my business cards to make them look real perrrty just in case I pass those babies out at my party on Saturday!

3. Hope the HVAC tech comes between the window he gave me of 8 and 10, because I have a baby and once she's latched on, I'm not moving until she's full and happy!

4. Fold the towels, wash Heidi's clothes and bed sheet, wash OUR clothes and dry them all hopefully.

5. Pack our bags for the potential that we could be staying an entire week at least up in MI, as we are leaving tonight for another potential job interview tomorrow afternoon. School starts on Tuesday folks, let's make a decision! :)

6. Oh yea and eat! I need to make I eat today and drink a TON of water! (Helps keep the supply up, but really just nursing anytime, all the time is the key, but try that and work from home!)

Well for now, that's all my mind will let me think about. I'm sure there's more. A LOT MORE! But like most things these days, on a list of 10, I may only actually accomplish 3 and that's on a good day! 

Waiting is the Game Folks

Well ladies and gents, we are one week into the school year here in Louisville, and the hubs still doesn't know if he'll be starting a new school year on Tuesday in Michigan!

Now imagine for a moment this was you, you are the breadwinner of the household, your wife just started her own business but stays at home taking care of your baby. You are in the process of selling your house, literally in the process, you have a buyer already so now there's inspections, and appraisals, and moving!  Well you don't know if you're going to need to move your family to Michigan, therefore all your belongings to a storage unit that needs to be rented in advance so you can stay with your mom until you get settled in your new job; OR you don't get this job, you need to move necessary items to an apartment and the rest up to Michigan to a storage unit that needs to be rented in advance.

NOW imagine you are me! I'm trying to take care of my babay, nurse on demand, babywearing, and getting her to nap while now trying to "work from home", take care of organizing and packing up our life only to have no idea what to pack with what because if it's going all to Michigan, some things will go in storage others will stay with us; or if we're going into an apartment, then somethings definitely won't be going and cluttering up our space, only the bare essentials in the apartment. OH. MY. GOODNESS!  Did some one say "Beer?" ;)

Wooh! Well on a lighter note, the door hasn't closed on us despite the inconvenience of all this waiting.  I'll be turning 3-0 on Thursday and the hubs is throwing me a big ole partay!!!!! In Michigan, this weekend. 

Soooo life is truly a beautiful and mysterious journey. Let's just enjoy the ride, shall we?! :)

One CRAZY BUSY Week!

So I guess I didn't realize I hadn't posted since Monday. Honestly, I'm not surprised. My husband started back at school this week and it's just been me and the babe during the day. I've been trying to figure out how the heck do I "work" while I'm alone taking care of my 7 month old!?  I decided that I should get up with my husband around 5:00a or 6:00a and work until the babe wakes up then work more after the babe goes to sleep about 8:00p for a couple hours.  Well the babe hasn't been sleeping like she has in the past, this week, OF COURSE! And she's been taking a nap about an hour before bedtime, so that's moved bedtime later by a half hour, which is cutting into my "work" time.  Regardless of what her schedule does, I realize it won't be as easy as work from 5:00a-8:00a and 8:00p-10:00p.

Another crazy thing to get used to is that we are down to one car now, which means I am without a car during the day, so that makes cabin fever a daily occurrence  but if we want to survive while I stay home to take care of the babay, sacrifices we make! Now we made this decision knowing that one of two things will happen now that we "sold" our house: (Which we realize it's not SOLD until we've all signed and handed over the keys)

1. Husband gets the job in MI, we move in with his mom for a short while until we get a place of our own and another liable car.
2. Husband doesn't get the job in MI, we move to an apartment complex down the street from his school and he walks or bikes to school, leaving me with the car.

The point here is, we are a family of three who are determined to make it work so that our child gets the best that possible.  That means that while we are here in Kentucky, without family to help during the nitty-gritty, we gotta do what a family's gotta do!



On a another note, we had an inspection Friday and met our new buyers. They seem nice, it seemed to go well, we'll just wait and see.

AND THE BIGGEST NEWS OF ALL!!!!!!  We are hoping we find out good news that my husband got the job and we're coming home! Fingers crossed that Monday, that day no one looks forward to, is the day we find out the greatest news of our lives!

Stay posted, I'll let you know!

Here's Why I Chose Younique!

My story goes something like this:

I taught 9th grade Physics, Biology, and Environmental Science for two years. I loved it and... hated it!  I loved what I taught, though I was not comfortable with a basic physics understanding; I loved the kids I taught, though many of them did not care for my style; and I loved being able to help a lot of them through the teen angst that we all remember so well! But I just didn't see myself doing this teacher thing in thirty years, not even in five years! So I left public school and found employment with a for-profit technical college doing administrative tasks, that was more my speed as I loved being SUPER-ORGANIZED and being the go-to person to get various things accomplished. But I always knew that I'd want to stay home with my babies and once I found out I was pregnant, the clock began on how were we going to afford that on ONE INCOME? Especially a teacher's income??

Well 6 1/2 months later, a door of opportunity opened... my cousin was starting this new venture and offered to send me samples. I'll admit I was skeptical... 

1. NEVER heard of it. 
2. Can't afford to buy this "party" stuff (ie. 31, PartyLite, Lia Sophia, you get what I'm saying). 
3. I was happy with what little makeup I did have (Bare Minerals and Clinique).

But I looked at her website just to see what she was doing. I knew she too was a natural momma, just like me.  

That's when I read: "100% natural, chemical-free, mineral-based pigment powders, free of talc, oils, preservatives, perfumes, synthetic dyes, and parabens."  Then I thought okay now I'm interested, but how do these products score on Environmental Working Group's SkinDeep Database's scale of 0-10?  Well I had to create my own report and every product I put in scored a 3 or lower (this is GREAT because it means its much less harmful to your body and the environment!)  Bare Minerals didn't score that well on their mineral powders, so I knew this Younique line was on to something!

It wasn't a couple weeks before I was on my cousin's website again and I started looking around more and I saw a link that reads Join My Team. Of course I knew what it meant but I wanted to see what I thought I'd read (similar to what I've heard about Avon and Mary Kay), but this was different because it was NEW! It wasn't Avon or Mary Kay, something that had been around a long time and at least everyone knew someone to order it from. I figured Younique is a great opportunity for me to bring in income AND stay home with my little girl. It's a young company, less that 2000 presenters in all of the US and Canada; it was organic natural makeup that is actually beneficial for your skin (next to a well-balanced diet and exercise); and it looked amazing in photos of REAL PEOPLE! Especially those 3D Fiber Lashes!

So the point of the story is this... I joined my cousin's team and I'm ready to make it the most successful decision I've ever made as it's the ONLY option I have to stay home and take care of my little girl. THAT'S WHY I CHOSE YOUNIQUE! :)

Must be the Dairy

It's been almost 7 months and I have pretty much figured out what ails my daughter. In the beginning when we'd nurse, she would no doubt spit up most of what I thought she ate. She had an ongoing stuffy nose, was always dealing with gas, though my milk always maintained an even balance of foremilk/hindmilk (as showcased in her diapers!)  But I kept reading that a fussy baby who spits up and has gas can be because of what's in her diet. Dairy is usually the #1 culprit. Thanks to KellyMom... THE best resource for breastfeeding information! Animal protein other than your own. It's not lactose, because that's the milk sugar you make in breast milk. It's no different in a goat or cow as it is in us. Anyway, I decided to cut it out completely at about 4 months. Sure enough, she quit spitting up, almost completely! And her gas discomfort and stuffy seemed to clear up. 

Then one day, while visiting family in Michigan, I found it entirely too hard to eat anything that was prepared at our family's houses because somehow it all involved dairy in some way and I was not about to pay top dollar for non-dairy options for the few days we'd be visiting. So I would either A) not eat those items and be left hungry since I didn't get the potato salad with steak, etc. or B) I'd eat a tiny bit of whatever it was.  Well I did this several times throughout our stay and my little girl didn't seem effected hardly at all. So I figured hmm, it's been almost two months, maybe her digestive system matured some more and she can tolerate dairy now. :)  (Not so much... read on)

So excited to eat dairy again, I ran out and bought some organic strawberry ice cream, dairy creamer, dairy butter, sour cream, and cream cheese, also having cheese on whatever we'd order out. Things seemed to be going rather well until a few weeks later... Poor girl has been a moody, cranky, fussy, even colicky child! She's spitting up more and more, stuffy nose is back, and she definitely has more gas. I was determined to figure out what was causing this (not thinking it was diary yet). I knew it had to be a physical issue. (We follow the WonderWeeks and she has been right on with those fussy periods and the 3 C's) Since this behavior was happening in between WonderWeek Leaps, it must be physical. Well she is also so so so close to crawling and pulling herself up to standing.  She is literally about to hit the ground running! SHE WANTS TO MOVE! :)  Other than it being a trying time for her developmentally, I put the pieces together and realized I noticed this behavior starting at the same time I added dairy 100% back into my diet. 

So I'm back to no dairy and I hope that in the next couple weeks, we have our smiley and happy-go-lucky little girl back!  And on the move!  Look out! 

Trying to do it all...

This week has been so crazy hectic for me! And it's only Wednesday! So here's the recap:


My husband and I are from Michigan. I grew up in Shelby Township and he in Garden City. I went to Michigan State University after high school for a two years and then moved home until I had a better idea what to spend my hard-earned financial aid on. ;) When I moved home, I needed a job. REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) was hiring and that is where I met my husband, who also worked there. We both attended and graduated from Eastern Michigan University with high school teaching degrees. This was around the time that the Auto industry was starting to collapse and there was the whole bailout thing going on. With plants closing, nearby businesses closed, people lost their jobs, couldn't afford their homes, found jobs elsewhere (out of state mostly), families moved... decreasing the enrollment in the schools, schools can't afford to pay all the teachers on lower enrollment numbers, which means NO teaching jobs! So we moved to Louisville, Kentucky where the teaching jobs were a plenty! We got married, bought a house, a dog and had a baby! Now, 6 years later, with a 6 month old baby girl, we want to move back to our home state, to be closer to family.


Okay, now you're all caught up on the backstory! ;)


We are currently trying to sell our house, my husband is awaiting on whether he got hired at a Michigan school, I am just getting started with my own business selling Younique Products - Mineral Makeup, and we just went down to one car!

So the reason this week has been so so so hectic for me is mostly that I strive to be awesome! I want to hit the ground running with my new business venture, so I can start making SOME mulah. I want the house to be immaculate for the showings. And I am currently nursing my baby on demand, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's a lot on my plate, not to mention, I've forgotten about the family dinner so far every night! We've had Amy's Cheese Enchilada meals and Annie's Mac n Cheese! Hmm, cheese. Maybe that's why baby is spitting up a little more recently!


Anyway, my journey to being the Organic Trophy Mom is so far not easy, but I didn't expect it to be. I realize that for my business to work, I need to work for myself, Younique is not going to work for me. I also know that my desire to be great is also a fault as I let myself get too overworked and anxiety can get the best of me. It's actually started to effect my milk supply, but that is a whole other topic I will get to very soon. :)


I already need a vacation! Okay, just a good night's sleep! So with that, thank you for reading. Check back soon for another post.

Thanks for Checking Me Out! ;)

Please check back often as I plan to post about twice a week, sometimes more depending on the need to share with you all!

As of right now, I have a 6 month old baby girl and I decided to stay home full time to be with her! That means that my husband, who's a HS teacher, is the one bringing home the bacon. That's the real lean kind too, unfortunately. Sooo, it is time for me to start bringing home some loot if I want to continue to be the awesome mom I dreamed of to my baby girl!  

I am now an Independent Younique Presenter! Younique is a younger company that has already grown leaps and bounds in its first year!!  I am really excited to have become a part of it and I really hope that with your help, I can make them proud to have me as well!  Here's my website!   

Check it out when you have time, even you, men! Women LOVE their makeup! So you could always check out the collections or sets and get your special lovey a gift she will love!

Okay, enough of that! There's my plug this week!  I also have started Video Blogging on YouTube, which I will post a link here too so you can see what I do! :)   My 1st Vlog!

I feel like I could type so much right now, BUT I will wait and make another post very very soon. (tomorrow!)