Menu Plan Monday

So after finally figuring out our budget, I have decided that I HAVE to make a menu plan for the week. I started a few weeks ago and so far so good! We have eaten out 2 times in the past 3 weeks. That is a great improvement for us. This has decreased our food budget immensely! With the kids being home this week and next I have to plan out breakfast and lunch also.

So without further ado here is my menu plan for the week of Christmas:

Monday-
Breakfast- cereal
Lunch- mac & cheese and hotdogs
Dinner- Laura's Unbelievable Chicken & Pasta, ranch garlic bread, cucumber & tomato slices

Tuesday-
Breakfast- pancakes
Lunch- popcorn chicken & broccoli
Dinner- Deep Dish pizza casserole

Wednesday-
Breakfast- cereal
Lunch & Dinner- out of town for Christmas

Thursday- out of town for Christmas

Friday- Christmas!!! =o)
Breakfast- Cream Cheese Delight, Sausage Balls, French Toast Souffle, fresh fruit compote, bacon (these things we will snack on through out the morning/early afternoon)
Late lunch/early dinner- steak, ranch mashed potatoes, chicken (haven't decided on how to cook the chicken yet, dinner rolls, cut out cookies

Saturday-
Breakfast- pancakes & bacon
Lunch- hamburgers??
Dinner- Taco Casserole

Sunday-
Breakfast- scrambled eggs, bacon, toast
Lunch- left overs
Dinner- crockpot country spareribs, ranch potato wedges, french bread

Turning things around...

Ok so I have been reading various blogs, and I am feeling inspired! I am a bit envious of others...like people with themed blogs...for example I was just reading a recipe blog, a penny pinching blog, and a blog about testing new products. WOW...I'm amazed! I seem to start all these projects and well I slack off....then end up just quitting. I think I have a commitment issue to these type of projects.

So how do I get myself to start and follow through with a project similar to the kind I mentioned above? I guess buy figuring out where I'm at right now and what my current goals are!

Ok so here is what is going on in my life...

We are currently living in Michigan. We moved up at the end of June after a 6 month family seperation due to my husband's work situation. He lived up here, and the kids & I lived in Indiana. Now that we are living together again life is much better! We have a few hang-ups, but nothing out of the norm...I guess.

Financially, it costs us more to live here. We have a high rent payment here than we did with our family seperated. The cost of living is more here. Therefore, we are working on fine tuning our budget to fit our family. One of our biggest expenses is food. We eat out a lot! In the past few weeks we have started to make a food plan based on the ads...so we are working on it, but we definitely have a lot more room to improve!

I'd like to keep some kind of list of the dinners w/ recipes and our money savings on here. I just signed up to get the newspaper for the coupons & ads so I can continue to plan our meals around it.

If anyone has any tips on any other areas that can help us in our penny pinching venture...please let me know!

New around here...about us...

Well hello! Welcome!

We are the Thakur Bunch..

Our "Thakur Family" life began in 1998...when Deep & Keli met at Indiana Tech. We got married a year later. Kamdyn our first daughter was born on July 3, 2002. Diya our second daughter was born April 22, 2004. Max our son was born August 31, 2006. We got custody of Khiley (Keli's cousin) in Sept. 2007. She is currently 15 years old. We are having a new baby on Thursday...3/19/09. This baby is our surprise! We were surprised to find out we were expecting, and we decided to keep the gender a surprise!

The kids have a website- http://www.babyhomepages.net/thakur

I am on facebook- search for Keli Thakur in Fort Wayne, IN.