We hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas weekend! We’ve had a great time spending Christmas with our families and we are looking forward to 2011!
Jennie and I will be preparing soon for our next ALL DAY cooking marathon (date is TBD), and we hear Once A Month Mom will be doing a great weight loss menu planned for January so be sure to check it out! We loved ALL our meals, except for the eggplant parmasean – mostly I think becuase neither of us are huge fans of the texture of eggplant made this way. Having meals prepared has been a huge money saver for us! Not only are you able to use fresh, whole-food ingredients, but you save so much on eating out which we are all tempted to do when we don’t have meals on hand! If we do make meals that day, we usually try to make enough for two – and put the second portion in the freezer! I did this with blueberry muffins, and a cranberry loaf I made last week. (Both of which freeze wonderfully!) You can get both these recipes from the Whole Foods website, which has great recipes (that won’t kill your kids)! You can sign up for their newsletter that is delivered directly to your inbox. Every time I get an email from them I get “excited” about cooking and trying something from their list of recipes! With the hubs off work all week, I’m going to take advantage of his help and try out their recipe for homemade chai tea while I sit back and spend some time reading my new book, Guilianna & Bill! Check out Whole Food’s other relaxing hot holiday drinks here. Jennie also loves making large batches of zucchini bread muffins which freeze beautifully as well! We just recently found this amazing blog about a mom who is also trying to do more “cook from scratch” foods (along with a ton of other things!) and she has some amazing recipes! You should start with her post on Ways To Save On Your Grocery Budget! She has some great ideas on freezer foods that are inexpensive and healthy!
And speaking of great uses for your freezer, check out these great alternative uses for your freezer from Yahoo!Shine. They have a couple great ideas for elimating pop corn duds, getting wax off old candles and unsticking your photos!
Lastly, as the kids are off school for some of you this week, you may want to keep yourself (and the kids) from going stir crazy by checking out a few local family fun activities to keep everyone’s sanity in check! Who wants to spend lots of money going places after all those Christmas presents you splurged on? Most of these are FREE! Enjoy!
*We went to EnterTRAINment Junction today, and they have a pretty cool smaller room with a Holiday train theme set up that’s FREE. It was nice to get out of the house for a little while and let Luke blow off some steam after being at home all day on Saturday.
*If your kid(s) are under 2 you can get them in FREE for play time at Pump It Up in West Chester. When we went here for Luke’s birthday and he RAN, and RAN and RAN around and had a blast. It was a great workout for me too, jumping with him! They are having open play time this Mon-Thurs from 10am-12noon. Perfect timing to get them home for a nap after lunch and trust me – they’ll be ready for one!
*Don’t forget to check out your local library! They not only have great FREE activities for your kids (of various ages) but Luke will sit for ages at the Library looking at all the kids books.
Check out our Coupon Queen for other great money saving ideas! We have added quite a few new things to the list!
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