This was a week of bustling around, preparing for Christmas, going to the doctor quite a bit, having company over for lunch on Saturday, and having Jake and Michaela stay over here with us for a long weekend, ending on Tuesday.

On Saturday,  we wanted to attend the Christmas program at church, and our friends wanted to go as well, so we had an early lunch, then went to the program.  This meant that the food needed to be easy to fix, and easy to put away.  Our oldest daughter wanted to come, too, which meant that her special dietary needs needed to be met, as well as my need for no-gluten. There needed to be lots of it, since there were 15 people, counting us, and I needed to stay within my lowered food budget for this month.  Good thing I love a challenge and have a deep pantry!

So, what did we do?

We defrosted a turkey previously purchased inexpensively.  It was quite small, and perfect for this occasion.  Rob stuffed it with apples, cooked it on the BBQ, and we cut it up on Friday.  We also had part of a ham we were eating on, so I sliced off some nice pieces and set them aside and let the family eat the other bits during the week.  I also had part of a roast beef I had cooked earlier in the week, which was sliced as well.  All of those meats were re-warmed in the microwave, taking care to put a little liquid in with them and they were tightly covered.  Rob handled that. Nothing was dry, and everyone had choices.

I made twice-baked potatoes, home-canned green beans, corn, and cookies.  I also put some baby carrots and cauliflower pieces in a dish.  That was it.  It worked beautifully, didn’t cost much, and there was plenty.  In fact, we are going to repeat the lunch today at Family Sunday Dinner with the leftovers–win-win!

I cleaned the house.  I used items I had for decor.  I found paper plates and plastic cups and even some Christmas napkins out in the garage.  We put up a table in the living room and another small one in Patsy’s room to supplement the dining room table.  Usually, we seat extra people out in the garage, which is set up with a table and some chairs.  It was pretty cold out there, so with these tables, we were able to avoid that yesterday, and the kids were able to play games at the table in Patsy’s room as well.

We ate, visited, put perishable food away, threw away the plates, and put the silverware in the sink and went off to the program.  It really didn’t take long to clean it up that evening.  We had so much fun visiting with our friends, as we don’t see them much anymore since we live a little distance from them now, and the program was really, really well done and wonderful to watch.  The music was amazing, with a large choir, a children’s choir, an orchestra, and also drama with angels, Mary and Joseph, and shepherds with real sheep!  I’m sure glad I was not in charge of those sheep, but enjoyed watching the shepherds manage them:). To me, it really feels like Christmas when I can watch the Christmas story, shown in such a creative way, and I loved sharing the enjoyment with our daughter and friends.  One of their sons recently married, and he and his wife now live down our direction, and have been attending our church (super special for us to see them on Sundays) so the young couple were in the choir, and our youngest was on stage crew–so that was special, too.

I messed up the first tray of cookies.  There was not enough flour in them, and they crumbled up terribly when I removed them from the pan.  So, I crumpled them up even more, made some hot fudge/mint sauce, and will serve the sauce and cookies today over the ice cream that my aunt is bringing to dinner.

I have been buying the super good deals that have been offered at the stores with most of my grocery budget.  This week, my aunt clued me in to the fact that there were eggs for 79c/dozen at Safeway on one day only.  She got me the 2 dozen allowed on her card, since she had recently purchased eggs, and I stopped by and got 2 more.  Yesterday, I got the 5,  8-ounce shredded cheese allowed at Fred Meyers for 99c/each.  I got 5 Hot Wheels cars for 50c/each to set aside for my nephew’s birthday in January, and 2 boxes of coffee at 3.99 each.  (I could have had 5, but that was what I chose to spend). I did have to buy almost $25 of produce this week though–it’s pretty expensive right now, and  but I’m not cutting corners on that right now.  There were several free items I picked up, and one more that they were out of and I can hopefully get before the coupon expires.  I put a few more cents onto my Ibotta account, but most of my shopping was items that were store brands or items that there were no rebates for.   I’ve got about $60 left from the $250 I want to spent this month.  The budget I set was an average of $50/week, plus $50 to stock up on sales with. I am on track to easily manage it, I feel, but will go over if produce continues to be so high.  (I have a little more available, but would rather buy Christmas goodies with it if possible) We are eating home-canned and frozen items, using produce from the $1/marked-down rack when I can get anything there, and still burning through salad stuff, carrots, potatoes, etc. like crazy. Go, us!  The commercial that would rather have us eat peanut butter cups says, “Not sorry–Reeses”. I say, “Not sorry–veggies!”  I’m so proud of Rob for sticking to this diet for so long.  He gets weighed again this week.  Here’s hoping he’s lost some more:)

I had 2 incidents this week where they over-charged me at the grocery store.  I was able to catch it by paying attention, and got both of them corrected.  One time was for $7 and the other $3, so I saved $10.

I made a lot of burritos and froze them.  The filling mixture is cooked brown rice and quinoa, pinto and black beans, cheese, a tomato and a jar of the home-canned taco sauce I made last summer.  I found these tortillas at a scratch and dent store for 50c/package.  I filled them, and wrapped them in foil and froze them.  Now Rob has something to quickly make for Patsy for dinner on nights when he is just over-done from the day and I’m still at work.  I made lots and plan to gift a few at Christmas time to one of our sons who would love to have some frozen burritos to eat in a hurry.

Patsy did stage crew for the Christmas program.  She needed black clothes.  We looked through all the clearance choices at Fred Meyers and found a plain, long-sleeved t-shirt type black dress.  We decided she could wear that with leggings she already had, so I got away for only $15, since things were marked 1/2 of the clearance price that day!

I hope your week is not too hectic, and that you can have some peaceful times so you can reflect on the true meaning of Christmas amidst the busy, busy week you probably have ahead of you.  That’s what I hope to do, as well.  Merry week before Christmas!

I spent some time cutting up and roasting some of the acorn squash from last summer’s garden.  I roasted one tray and cooked 4 more in halves.  The squash meat was scooped out and mashed into a bowl.  This squash was exceptionally sweet and tasty this year and we really are enjoying eating it.  It’s not a long-keeper, though, so I’m trying to use it up.

The green tomatoes we picked in October are still slowly ripening up.  We are about done with them now, but they lasted a long time.  We did the worst job EVER with storing them–picked them into a cardboard box and left them on the covered porch, dug through them picking out the red ones, throwing out the rotten ones, and leaving them alone.  It’s a miracle any of them survived, but, they did and we’ve been eating them as fast as they turn red.

We took Jake to the library Sunday afternoon after lunch.  The Discovery Room had a very cool display of many, many activities and toys relating to dinosaurs.  Jake especially liked this toy as he used a battery-operated drill to build (after unbuilding) dinosaurs.  He got books and a couple of movies.

Patsy put up the tree, decorated it, put the boxes away and….it’s Christmas:)

We went to a performance of the Portland Singing Christmas Tree.  This is an event we have enjoyed 2 or 3 times in the past.  Last summer when they were running a sale on tickets, we got some, and got to go Saturday night.  We enjoyed ourselves more than we ever have before.  It was so wonderful.

I got a couple of hours of yard work done on Saturday morning.  The other day (at my request), Rob took a chainsaw to the large ivy clump that was taking over the lamp-post.  On Saturday, I clipped the rest of the lower part with my clippers, as he didn’t care to run his saw into the dirt. It will grow again in the spring, but hopefully not be taking over as much.  Ivy is not my friend, although I do like the look when it’s not taking over things.   Between the ivy clippings and the dead weeds and debris I pulled, the yard debris bin is overflowing.  I’m glad, as I have a goal to fill it weekly and don’t always meet the goal.     I grabbed some more fancy daffodils and crocus bulbs from a clearance rack and let Patsy plant them.  She now has a few more fancy kinds of flowers that are mixed in with the plain yellow (but still beautiful and cheerful) daffodils.  There aren’t that many fancy ones, but they will multiply and there will be more each year.  The first year we were here, she planted way over 100 yellow daffodil bulbs that came from my sister’s yard and they were magnificent last spring.  I expect an even better showing this year as they continue to fill out.

This week was a good week to use up things from the holiday week.  I boiled ham bones and froze, shared, and cooked with the resulting broth.  Ham and beans were the first thing I made.  Then, I used some of the white beans to make Chili Mac.  I usually use kidney or pinto beans, but it was very easy to just fish out some beans when the ham and beans got done in the crock pot and use them instead.  We used up the leftovers from the holiday, had turkey rice soup, and then made lettuce-wrapped hamburgers to change things up.

I purchased one item for groceries last week–a gallon of milk.  I was able to wait until today to grocery shop.  The milk was entirely gone or I wouldn’t have had to shop today, either.  I had everything I needed.  Finally.  At last.  Until I walked in from work today and was informed that the Lowrie’s Seasoning Salt was gone!  It’s getting pretty funny for each family member to try to see what they can find that we are out of:).

I set my niece Alissa a homeschool math problem today that I though was fun enough to share.  I had a $10 off $50 coupon loaded on my phone for Safeway.  When you read the fine print you can see that liquid dairy is not included in the $50.  I needed a few groceries–produce, milk, the 89c eggs (could buy only 2), the 99c sour cream, some yogurt, 99c bread (4), and so on.  I told her she had to spend more than $50 to use the coupon, but under $60.  (The extra was for milk and 1/2 and 1/2 and any small overages).  She needed to get the items on the list first, then use the rest of the money for a few “if we have extra money” items.  She did great!  She added up the amount we were spending in her head, agonized over which poultry seasoning to get for the best price, kept track of what the liquid dairy cost, searched for the correct items that matched the sales and deals I had downloaded, and with the $10 off $50 coupon…..spent…..wait for it…..$48 and some change.

We then went home, uploaded the few Ibotta rebates we had bought the items for, put it all away and will write it up tomorrow.  I ended up redeeming $4 worth of rebates, and am building that account up again to use later as I wiped it out before Thanksgiving for the sales.  I am trying to stay under $50 per week this month, as I really stocked up last month.  I have a little slush fund in case I see any stellar stock-up sales or need to do a small Costco run. Also, I noticed produce was outrageous yesterday, but I still got salad stuff because Rob is using a lot of that is his weight-loss journey, so I will spend what it takes to get him what he needs, regardless of price.  (For those inquiring minds….he’s down another 3 or 4 pounds, depending on which scale you pay attention to–he got weighed on 2 different ones last Friday).

I feel I’m off to a good start to the month. How’s your week going?