Weekend Meal Plan Complete!

These last couple weeks I have done a horrible job getting meals planned and groceries bought. Today I had to bite the bullet and make a plan for the weekend and go grocery shopping. Since a budget has been set for the most part and savings are a priority this trip took place at Aldi. The prices don't include things that I already had in the pantry.

Tonight is one of our favorites!

This is 20-Minute Sriracha Shrimp Ramen. This stuff is great and can be found over on the blog Baker by Nature. The total price of this meal is around $10 and could have been less if I hadn't been low on soy sauce.

Saturday is another pasta day. Honestly I have never been a really big pasta eater but since getting pregnant I want it all the time!

I am in love with all the different one pot pasta options. I haven't tried this one yet but this is Easy One Pot Pasta Puttanesca and it can be found at the blog Creative Juice. I got everything to make this one for $11. 

Finally on Sunday since we are finally supposed to start feeling the autumn weather I wanted to do another soup.

Now I haven't tried this one either but I'm a sucker for a crock pot meal on a Sunday. This one can be found at Carlsbad Cravings and is a Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff Soup. This soup was a little more expensive to shop for since it contains beef and came in at $14. 

While at the store I also picked up some snacks for the game tomorrow that cost about $7. There were also a few staples that we needed and they had pumpkins. We had to have a pumpkin! Over all the total for the weekend with tax came up to $54.60. Not bad for three dinners (which hopefully will provide some leftovers) and food for hosting the game.

Addicted to Planning

Not sure why but I'm totally addicted to planning right now. I am also on a budget so I am working on ways to not spend any money or at least as little as possible and still be able to decorate a super cute planner. 

The first thing I did was use a small binder that I had picked up at target a couple weeks ago for a different purpose.

Then I wanted to make dividers and cute pages for my planner. I started by making the dividers from half price scrapbook paper that I picked up at Hobby Lobby.

This is a cover page which I have decorated a little bit but not too much. I wanted to keep it simple!

Next I added this super cool washi tape holder so that I could carry around some of my washi tape without having the rolls all over my purse. This thing is genius! Behind that is a folder that I made.

This is the folder. Right now it is simply holding my stickers that I have printed off. All of these stickers are free on the internets and I will be having a separate post on those in the next couple days.

Above are the other folders that I made. I only spent about $12 dollars for everything that I made! Future posts will show the inserts that I am using right now, how I decorated them, and more resources for free or at least inexpensive planner supplies and printables. 

4 month prenatal visit

Well today was our four month prenatal visit. So far everything is good. The heart rate today was 134 or right around there. I expected it to be higher since Butterbean's heart rate has been running higher than that in the past. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about though.

Next week we have our ultrasound and we are both very excited to finally get a glimpse of the baby again. We are not going to find out the sex. We want to keep it a surprise. Hopefully everything will check out normal and we can continue with the rest of the pregnancy with no worries.

It's a Keeper

I tried a wonderful recipe from Half Baked Harvest last night. Chris didn't even notice that it didn't have meat in it! It is really that good. I did cut down on the cheese quite a bit. We like cheese just not copious amounts of it all at once. I would be interested to try the recipe as written to see how cheesy it really is.

http://www.halfbakedharvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/One-Pan-Four-Cheese-Drunken-Sun-Dried-Tomato-and-Spinach-Pasta-Bake-1.jpg

That looks really good right? Next time I make it I am going to try out a couple of changes. First I am going to add some Italian sausage. I liked it without meat and so did Chris but I would be interested to see how it turned out with some sausage. Also I want to substitute half of the canned tomatoes for rotel tomatoes. The red pepper flakes in the recipe do add a little bite to the pasta but I would like a little bit more without having to add tons of red pepper flakes.

So This Happened!

So many great things have happened since I last wrote a post. Why this is so hard to do I will never know since I love to journal and writing things out!

Let's start with the biggest most recent thing...well there are two but lets start with this last weekend. We got married! I only have one picture right now but there are more to come once we get them from the our friend that was in charge of taking photos.

The wedding was just what I wanted...a little under planned and totally casual. It was basically a cookout and swimming party. It was really fun and low stress. Our friend who officiated the wedding did a wonderful job. We could not have been more pleased with his sermon. It was personal and sweet and perfect for us.

On to the next exciting news. We are also pregnant! It is so exciting. There is so much to post on this that I am going to do a separate post just for this topic very soon and obviously many more after that.

What Started Out As A Relaxing Memorial Day...

It all started out so relaxing. 

A movie on the couch. 

Then something happened and we were pulling weeds in the front yard, then Chris was mowing. 

The next thing I know we are pruning! 

By the time we got done we had a hug pile of clippings that Chris had to take out in the rain! 

Because that is all it does here!

So I didn't post this before but this is what happened to Chris's car the day before we left on our trip. We later found out that we had been stuck in an F1!

Stupid Oklahoma.

Tonight was rotisserie night.

I pulled out a rub that I had tried on the grill last summer.

This stuff was spicy and delicious.

The chicken turned out awesome. 

On to Trail Running or The Reserection of Trail Running

So when we started our running journey it was running on trails that was our passion. We wanted to run 5k obstacle courses. Those were the point of it all. Of course the major goal was the Tough Mudder but we really enjoyed running the 5k distance.

This that time I have explained why we moved to road running and our adventure into the road marathon. Through the exploration of road running we really discovered that tail running is our passion. Both of us agree that there is just something about running on a trail that is soul lifting and that is what we want from running.

At first Chris was like "let's sign up for a trail marathon!" and I was like "whoa! Let's sign up for a trail half marathon. Going from the road to the trail is actually a really big difference.

We signed up for a trail marathon at the end of June. It's the Osage Hills State Park Relatively Flat 1/2 Marathon. We are super excited. There is only one problem. It's been raining every day so there is no way for us to trail on an actual trail. It doesn't even look like there is going to be a break in the rain for at least another week.

It's back to the road for the time being.

The Crack Down

Well we are back from vacation so what now? It's time to crack down.

Spending got a little out of control over the last few months. There was a lot of eating out. Between school and training for the marathon cooking at home was just not always possible...and honestly eating out was a little bit of a treat for all the running we were doing.

Now that we are back from vacation, school is over, and the marathon is run it's time to budget up!

Today I did our grocery shopping at Aldi as an attempt to get the grocery budget under control. Let's see how I did.

Snacks:
Trail Mix                                      4.99
Trail Mix                                      1.99
Veggie Chips                                2.79
Hummus                                       1.99

Produce:
Mandarins                                     3.89
Sweet Potatoes                              2.39
Avocados                                      1.96
Baby Spinach                                2.49
Blackberries                                  1.59
Blueberries                                    1.49
Raspberries                                   2.19
Mushrooms                                   3.18
Mini Sweet Peppers                      2.39
Cilantro                                         0.44
Green Onions                                0.69
Fresh Asparagus                           1.79


Protein:
Raw Shrimp                                  10.98
Boneless Thighs                            6.49

Dairy:
Fresh Mozzarella                           2.49
Plain Yogurt                                  3.89
Greek Yogurt                                3.00

Other:
Organic Granola                            3.49
Passion Fruit Granola                    2.49
Italian Bread                                  1.69

With tax it came to a total of around $79 dollars with tax. I don't think that is too bad. I will be keeping an eye on grocery spending the next couple of weeks to see if I can get it down even more.

Travel Knitting Projects

Okay so I'm just going to admit it, I've been knitting for years and I have never taken knitting with me while I travel. I have taken a couple small projects with me on some car rides but that is about it. In my defense, I have never had the opportunity to travel so I haven't had many chances to try it out.

That is all about to change! I will soon be going on a trip. A ten day trip! That seems like enough time to get some good knitting in. I mean a 10 hour flight seems like prime knitting time. I really have no idea what types of projects to take so I have chosen two. One that is small and a little more complicated and one that is larger but extremely simple.

Lets start with the larger more simple pattern. This one is for a small sweater that I found on the Purl Bee Blog, it's called Short Row Sweater.

Obviously the back of this sweater is my favorite but I can't wait to see it over a few of the new tops that I recently acquired. I think it will look so cute! The best part is that I am going to be using some homespun yarn!

Lets Review Marathon Running Motivation

This is my favorite photo from our training runs...okay it's also one of our only photos from our training runs. I was really bad about not wanting to take pictures. Or have fun at all...they were hard! This is us about to cross the Sky Dance Bridge on our 20 miler.

I would like to take a moment to reflect on what my actual motivations were for running the marathon. What worked and what didn't? What I expected compared to what actually got me through the runs?

Is health a motivator for me?

In the end this was still not a motivator for me and quite honestly I did not feel any healthier after it was all done. I probably am but with an injury it didn't really feel that way.

Is weight loss/looking good a motivator?

This motivator did actually get me through the training. I started seeing changes around the second month and I have to say that I liked them. I was not thinking about looking good on race day though. I was thinking about not looking like I was about to die...I looked that way anyway.

Raise Awareness for a Cause?

So, while at no point was this actually a motivator for me to run the marathon I did end up raising money for the Oklahoma City Memorial. Which was pretty rewarding and fun.

To Mark a Goal Off of Chris's List Together?

This was the reason that I ran the marathon when it really came down to it. When things got really hard I would think about the fact that this was the one thing that Chris wanted to accomplish this year and I would just keep going. At some point during our marathon training so one said you can't run a marathon for someone else. I don't think that is true if you know how much the other person wants it. I do agree that you need some other forms of motivation but you can do it for someone else.

To Make New Friends?

We made so many running friends. This was really the biggest reward of the whole experience. I am so glad that we joined the program that we did and met all the new friends that we have. I look forward to seeing them all out on the road or trail in the future.

The Sense of Accomplishment?

I thought this would be the one that got me through on race day but it wasn't. It did get me through a lot of the training runs. I wanted to accomplish each long run. When I finished that 20 mile training run it was awesome!

We Soooo Did It!

We ran a marathon. That is right a MARATHON. The whole GD 26.2 miles.

It was amazing and amazingly difficult. It was fun and painful. I was going to blog about the whole training process but it turned out that with school and work it was just way too much.

We ran the marathon slower than we had planned but with me getting injured during the training and having to miss the Tuesday workouts we still feel like we did well.

So here are some photos from the adventure. There are some blurry ones from the start. Some of us running the course. And finally one of the infamous Gorilla Hill from the drone that was flying the course.

So what will our next running adventure be? It's already been scheduled so stay tuned for details.