Are you cold? Today it feels super cold. O.K so I know its September but wow I try not to put the heating on until October. I will try not to change that but I am a little concerned because two of my little ones are upstairs watching Netflix and the youngest said to me "Mum, I am freezing, can I climb into your bed?" Well of course I said yes. I don't like the kids feeling cold. I have to buy them all new winter coats this year and I hadn't even started to think about that yet!
Sweet mans mum keeps telling me there are lots of berries on the trees which means its going to be a bad winter. Please don't tell me that, I am not a cold person, I love heat and warmth. The only thing that I don't mind about winter is wearing warm pyjamas and slipper boots whilst reading a good book but that is only because I am then warm.
This was taken from our house a couple of years ago. Brrr too cold!
Today, I have spent the day naming and ironing uniform and buying lunch boxes, I did chuck last years ones away at the end of term because they were gross and no amount of scrubbing could get them clean.
I have also been trying to work out the lunches that I am going to pack for the children next week especially as you know I do have a fussy one. So here goes my lunch menu for next week.
Cheese or egg mayonnaise roll (depending on child)
Cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes
Breadsticks and hummus
Grapes
Jelly
Drink
Tuesday
Sausage roll
Cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes
Breadsticks and hummus
Jelly
Tropical fruit pot
Drink
Wednesday
Cheese salad or egg salad roll
Jelly
Cheese cubes and cherry tomatoes
Chocolate chip brioche roll
Grapes
Drink
Thursday
Chicken drumstick
Boiled egg
Cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes
Buttered crackers
Tropical fruit pot
Drink
Friday
Chicken or Cheese roll
Chocolate chip brioche roll
Apple slices
Crisps
Drink
I am hoping that the lunches are varied enough that they won't get bored and luckily I have got quite a lot of the lunch items reduced or on an offer so they have worked out cheaper than school dinners which are priced at £2.15.
I have decided to go back to logging what I am eating on my fitness pal after reading that my dear friend Nathalie from imperfectly frugally had decided to start doing this. If you have not had chance to check out her site please do she is a great saver and has brilliant ideas for saving money. So I am going to log what I am eating and use my bike to travel to and from work in a bid to lose some weight before Christmas.
Have a lovely evening and I will be back tomorrow with this weeks spending.
Your neighborhood look so cute! Even with the snow! Which I don't miss at all, I hate the stuff. It's so weird to think that you guys are cold right now while we're sweating down here. I would like it to be cooler and less humid, though, but I love our weather most of the time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning my blog, you are too sweet :) Are we going to connect via MFP? I'm so impressed that you're going to bike to work! Is it far? How do you usually get there? You're going to be a skinny minnie in no time!
My kids would loooooove me if I got chocolate brioche for their lunches. Of course, if I got chocolate brioche in the house, it would never make it to their lunches because I would eat it all. Yes I would. And I wouldn't even tell them that I bought some.
It's funny (and I'm impressed!) that you worry about the kids being bored with always having the same lunch. My kids pack their own lunches (they all started packing their lunches when they started elementary school, with some supervision back then of course) and they tend to prefer always packing the same thing. My son likes ham sandwiches (with a slice of American cheese, nothing else), some type of crackers or chips (which I don't buy very often), and a piece of fruit. If we have any baked goods in the house, he'll pack one of those too. My daughter is on a health kick right now so I roast 2 large chicken breasts for her on the weekends and shred them and she uses them to make sandwiches or salads for lunch during the week. She loves almonds so I keep those in the fridge and she toasts them. She also loves grapes and apples and those Special K Red Berries cereal bars (I get her the generic kind from Aldi and she finds them acceptable). Oh and cheese sticks. They don't have access to a microwave at school but I let them buy lunch there once a week ($2.15 for middle school this year, a little more for high school but I haven't actually seen this year's price yet), but my son has forgotten his lunch number (which he needs to tell the cashier for her to charge his account) and hasn't bothered asking someone to help him recover it yet this year so he's been packing his lunch every day. At my daughter's high school they decided that this year they would have a "power hour" and everyone would get 1 hour for lunch at exactly the same time (before it was about 30 minutes at all different times).This means that 1,200 students descend on the cafeteria at the same time and the lines are very long so she, very wisely, decided that she would just keep on packing her own lunch.
Both my kids hate tomatoes so they would not be happy to have those in their lunches! They eat them at dinner time because they know I expect them to eat what's in front of them without complaining but there is no way they would ever pack even just one grape tomato in their lunch willingly, hahaha.
Congrats on being so organized. I'm truly impressed. This should help you a lot with time savings and also food waste and keeping your grocery spending in check!
See that is why I am jealous of where you live haha! We are lucky actually we do live in a nice area with good schools and a lot of amenities. We are only about a half hour train journey away from London.
ReplyDeleteYes lets connect on MFP, I'm not sure I will ever be a skinny Minnie ha ha but I guess its worth a go. (I do like chocolate and cake damn it!) I work about 30 minutes walk from my house and I do usually walk unless Ben is passing on his way to work and then he will drop us off but this is quite unusual. This year I am doing four half days and one full day so on the half days I will go home at lunch time to get some stuff done and then go back for the kids. So four journeys.
Ha ha I try not to have the choc chip brioche and I did get them on such a good offer 32p for four rolls. So I bought three packs. I'm not always that great ha ha
Jeez I don't blame your daughter for not queuing up amongst all those other students, that would be horrific, it sounds like she is unite frugal and has your genes too.
My thirteen year old hates queuing for dinners too, that's why he insists on a packed lunch. One of mine would have school dinners every day if he could (he is my fussy one and prefers hot food) but I like to monitor what he eats as he is a bit underweight and has been ill in the past because if he feels unwell he will stop eating and drinking.
I think that's why I worry about giving them a variety and giving him things I know he will eat. (ah the stress).
I hope it helps Nathalie, after just over a month I am starting to notice a difference and I think that now we are back to school/work I will notice an even bigger difference. Xx
Oh.my. You walk 2 hours a day on half-days?! I'm definitely a slacker, darn it! And here I was proud of myself for biking in front of my TV for 38 minutes yesterday, lol.
ReplyDeleteYou need to give me your MFP user name or email address so I can try to find you on MFP :) If you'd like, you can email it to me instead of posting it publicly. I've added a "contact me" page to my blog that shows an email address you can use :) Talk to you soon!