February Home Store Challenge: February 22nd

I haven't been to the grocery store to grocery shop since mid-January.  I won't be going until March 1st!  This is how my home store (made-up of both THRIVE Life and non-THRIVE Life products) is helping my family eat well and eat healthy for the month of February!

Breakfast:  Granola and milk!  Baby boy had his usual cereal and apple sauce.

 I made some lemon-zucchini cupcakes again, to use up more of the zucchini in our freezer.  Plus it's nice to have them to give away as treats or just have them on-hand for a yummy treat (I freeze most of them).

 Then I had to make milk!

 We ate lunch at my friend Lea's house...  Cheese quesadillas :).  Yum!  But I didn't take a picture...

As part of dinner, we made cornbread.  The other part was chili :).

 We also made instant chocolate pudding for Family Night treat.  Alas, there is no picture of the finished product, because we never really ate it.  Let's just say that, though we had Family Night, we didn't exactly have Family Night treat...  The evening didn't go as planned, with a 2 year old who refused to eat her chili.  Ah well...  you win some, you lose some.

 But here is my chili and cornbread and the baby's squash and sweet potatoes.  He also ate a couple of kidney beans and some corn bread.  I did sprinkle shredded cheese on my chili, but didn't take a picture of the cheese.  I promise I didn't go to the store just for cheese, though ;).  We have about 1/2 of a 5 pound loaf of cheese still in our freezer or fridge.

February Home Store Challenge: February 21st

I haven't been to the grocery store to grocery shop since mid-January.  I won't be going until March 1st!  This is how my home store (made-up of both THRIVE Life and non-THRIVE Life products) is helping my family eat well and eat healthy for the month of February!

(And since it's mostly out of the bag now anyway...  There are two reasons we decided to do this challenge:  1. to bring our grocery budget back under control.  2.  We are almost 100% sure we are moving to Alabama in the next few months.  So we wanted to start working through some of frozen foods and opened stuff, since a lot of it can't be taken with us!)

So this is what we had yesterday, Sunday the 21st:

Breakfast was made by my husband.  He was so very kind to let me sleep in an extra hour!  However, he doesn't share my affinity for taking pictures of food ;).  So he didn't.  You can see my waffles though :).  I finished off the blackberry syrup on mine.  The baby had waffle as well, but no syrup.

 Lunch before church was chicken nuggets, pea crisps, and apple sauce and milk for my girl.  The baby had squash and corn.

 For dinner, since we like to go super-easy on Sundays, I pulled out the new and improved THRIVE Express meal my sweet friend Rebekah brought for me after she got to attend THRIVE Life Leadership Training.  These meals will be available for order in April!  It was just fettucine alfredo, so I decided to make a more complete meal by tossing in some extras -- THRIVE Chopped Chicken and THRIVE Asparagus.  Just tossed them in while the rest of it was cooking.  No extra effort, really.  The baby had mashed potatoes, a small amount of the chopped chicken (small pieces), and cauliflower and a little bit of multigrain cereal.

February Home Store Challenge: February 20th

So I had a jar meal event today.  It was awesome!  I love sharing THRIVE Life!  We did a stir fry (choice of vegetarian or vegetable-beef), and it was very well received!  Nothing like having a meal that can be ready in 15 minutes!

Anyway, so my sweet husband took my babies with him to his parents' house to give me a full day of mommy break!  So we ate breakfast together...  But they ate (are eating) lunch and dinner at my in-laws' house, so you'll just see pictures of what I ate :). 

But I also made dessert -- and you won't want to miss that!  Check it out below!

Breakfast:  Raisin Bran for us and the usual for the baby.

 I have run out of store-bought sandwich bread!  So that meant I was breaking out the ingredients and making a loaf!  (Actually I let the bread machine do the work ;)).

 As I was rushing out the door for the jar meal event, I wanted to eat some lunch.  I grabbed the leftovers from my dinner out on Thursday:  chicken taquitos.

 Bread was finished when I got home!

 My dinner was a cheese sandwich, asparagus, tortilla chips and salsa and root beer -- just because I had a hankerin'. 

 Proof I did have root beer stored under the bed ;).  It actually has a best by date of November 2014.  Haha!  I think it's good to have a little bit of those things that you might get a hankerin' for out of the blue in your home store...  When I was pregnant, I actually went to the store for root beer, because I was craving it so!

 Since I am enjoying some mommy time for just a little bit longer, I had a single-serve sweet treat!  A mint chocolate chip brownie!  Plus I wanted to belatedly celebrate National Mint and Chocolate day, which was yesterday -- I just forgot about it until too late!

 YUM!

February Home Store Challenge: February 19th

Oops!  I accidentally skipped posting last night!  I was engrossed in getting some last-minute stuff done for a jar meal event we are doing today.  I remembered about 11:30 last night when I finally turned out the lights. And by then, well...  I just figured I'd post today ;).

So here it goes:

Breakfast: It was a pancake day!  I threw in some THRIVE 9 Grain Cracked Cereal this time.  My husband ate breakfast with us, so that's why I pictured the butter and milk.  He likes those on his pancakes :).  I pictured the log cabin syrup just in case, but we all ended up using the home-made blackberry kind!

 I did give baby boy a few pieces of pancake, which he loved.  But mainly he got his usual ;).

 Lunch was impressive!  Ramen with peas and celery.  Well, I only added celery to mine, since my girl just picks it out.

 Baby boy had squash and cauliflower with some crackers.

 Dinner was a bit of an undertaking:  orange chicken and fried rice!  It was so good, though!  And kind of fun that we could have an "out to eat" meal using only our home store!  Seriously, this is the best orange chicken ever.  I love it, but don't make it often, because there are several steps to the prep.  But sooooo good.  I was thrilled I could do it with my home store!

 The baby had mainly mashed potatoes and corn.  But he also had very small pieces of chicken (without the sugary sauce, of course) and peas from the rice.

February Home Store Challenge: February 18th

It's a short one today, because I ate dinner out (to celebrate a friend's birthday) and my family ate leftovers for dinner -- but they didn't take pictures.  As you may know...  My big girl things my food-picture-taking is over the top.  Haha.  So she wouldn't volunteer to have it photographed if I was gone! 

But here's the rest of the day!

Breakfast was granola in milk.  Plus I decided to sprinkle in some yogurt bites to see how that would turn out.  It was fun and yummy.

 The baby had plain cereal and some yogurt bites.  He loved them.

 Lunch was cheese quesadillas, carrot fruit crisps, and some leftover cheetos from the scrapbooking event yesterday for my girl.  The baby had plain squash, but I forgot to take a picture.  It was a distracting day ;).

And that's it...  I know my husband fed the baby dinner. (just not sure what...).  And I know he and my girl ate potato salad, black bean burgers, mashed potatoes, and steak.  I had chicken taquitos, in case you were wondering ;). 

February Home Store Challenge: February 17th

Another late night.  Let me just say graveyard shift is killing me slowly.  My days are long and my nights are longer!  Haha.  I'm grateful to say that this is the last week of graveyard shift (at least for now).  Life should return to a bit more normal very soon.

So here is what I made today out of our home store!

Breakfast for me, my girl, and my husband was Raspberries and Cream oatmeal!

Little guy had his usual.  One of these days he'll have the joy of more variety ;).

 I made more granola, since I'd run out.  And I love that stuff!  I made it a bit different this time, since I just added what I had on-hand.  This included coconut, pecans, chia seeds (not a good addition to granola, as they don't stay stuck to the granola very well), and flax seeds.

 Oh, and the cranberries.  Almost forgot about those ;)!

 Lunch was chicken nuggets and carrots and the kids both had bananas (well, the baby had one banana).

 He also had squash and sweet potatoes.

 Finished granola!

 So the kids and I went to a scrapbooking event, and we ate snacks there in the late afternoon.  so we weren't very hungry.  I made stir fry veggies and rice to go with leftovers for dinner...  But we ended up just eating the veggies (I made a lot!).  My girl loved the stir fry veggies, by the way! 

 The baby had mashed potatoes, corn, and cauliflower, but I forgot to take a picture.

And I ended the night making milk.