Menu Plan Monday

It's time for Menu Plan Monday! As always, check out Org Junkie's fantastic website for more menu plans!

Monday: Birthday dinner for Jesse!

Tuesday:Soup and grilled cheese sandwiches

Wednesday (school night): Stew with eggplant, tomato, and garbanzo beans

Thursday (school night): Slow cooker vegetarian curry servd over brown rice

Friday: Leftovers.

Saturday: Ravioli with a steamed vegetable of some sort.

Sunday: Enchiladas! This is a new recipe, I'm hoping Matt will enjoy it while watching Sunday Night Football!

Sorry for this little plug, but I've got to say, I'm super excited for my box of locally and organically grown veggies and fruit to arrive this week! I belong to a local co-op/farmers market organization that delivers a delicious box of vegetables and fruit every week, which is super convenient since I don't have to go shopping for fresh food (and Matt doesn't either!). Most major cities have these kinds of organizations, and I highly encourage everyone to check the web for one close to them!

Weekend To-Do List

Well, my 5 weeks are officially up. Classes started two nights ago, so my time is even more limited than it was before. :( It's even more important to make sure I get done what I need to get done, and have some sort of way to hold myself accountable. That being said, here's what I need to get done this weekend:

1. Donate. I have 2 new bags of clothes (a lot of which are Matt's things that he went through as we organized closets and the dresser) to give to the thrift stores. The sooner the better!

2. Books. I need to return books that I bought from the campus bookstore that we're not actually going to use in class, buy books from Half.com or Amazon that we actually ARE going to use in class, and sell that stack of books back to Auntie's.

3. This is guestroom weekend. It's time to tackle the spare bedroom and make it presentable and usable.

4. Budget! I have a whole separate to-do list of budget-related things, like closing store-based credit cards that I don't use, totalling up receipts, balancing my checkbook, and making a long-term budget plan. This will be greatly helped by phase two of finishing Project #8.

That's about it for this weekend, other than the usual cooking, cleaning, and (now) homework!

Project 8: Decluttering Financial Paperwork

Well, I've officially started the process that I talked about awhile ago. I'm so lucky that Org Junkie just happened to post about office organization today! Basically, what I did was go through my current accordian folder to find things that could be shredded. Then I went through my stacks of paperwork to figure out what could be thrown away immediately, what needed to be acted upon, and what needed to be shredded. I came up with this pile of stuff for shredding:



After the shredding takes place, then it's time for filing! Unfortunately, my accordian file is already exploding even though I haven't filed any of the new stuff. I'll need to find something that better accomodates what I've got. Then it's on to consolidating credit cards and finally making a budget. Hooray!

Menu Plan Monday

I'm totally a list person, and this really helped keep me from buying frivolous food last week! Plus, this is my first week back at school (UGH), so it's going to be even more important to be organized about dinner this week! Here goes again, recipes where I can. And as always, visit OrgJunkie's fabulous website for more Menu Plan Monday participants!

Monday: Stir fry (carrots, celery, onion, broccoli, peas, tofu) over brown rice

Tuesday: Vegetarian Chili in the slow cooker!

1 can each of navy beans, red beans, and kidney beans
1 can vegetarian refried beans
1 can diced tomatoes with green chilis (10 ounces)
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth/stock
Drain and rinse all beans (except refried), throw everything in the crock pot on low for a long time (I always just wait 'til I'm hungry... doesn't really seem to matter!
Season with red pepper flakes if it's not spicy enough
Serve with sour cream and cheddar cheese!

Wednesday: It's a school day, so Matt will be eating Slow cooker chicken with gravy that I'm adding potatoes and carrots to, and I'll be having left overs in class!

Thursday: Another school day, but I'm cooking anyway! Spaghetti - saute tofu in olive oil with garlic and italian seasoning until lightly browned, then add it to jarred spaghetti sauce - we'll have garlic bread on the side

Friday: Pizza - hopefully home made, but lets be honest, probably not!

Saturday: Soup (beef stew for him, roasted peppers and tomato for me!) and grilled cheese sandwiches

Sunday: Leftovers

Project 7: The Closet

This weekend was super eventful, which I'll post about later, but for now -- the closet! I've wanted a functional closet that was actually decently organized for awhile now, but with the lack of a dresser, it was really hard. So, with the completion (and now use) of the best dresser ever, I was able to make my closet organized, clean, and functional. Hooray!

Before:


After:


I basically took the huge thing of plastic drawers out, leaving one on the floor for my workout clothes (which I consolidated to one drawer in a previous poat), and then added a plastic sweater rack that holds my pants and yup, you guessed it, sweaters! I'm lucky that our apartment already had that really convenient shelf for my shoes. So now, my closet doors shut, everything has it's place, and we're all good! Hooray!

Project 1 Update!

To assist with the onslaught of paperwork and important items that are brought into our apartment by way of mail, friends, work, school, etc. I decided add a basket that would collect items before they can be sorted. So now, I have a kitchen bulletin board (for kitchen related papers), a regular bulletin board (for everything else) and a basket to keep the mail from going everywhere. My counter has never been cleaner!

Project 6: The New Dresser!

So, I bought this sweet dresser from Costplus (when it was on sale, of course!) to coordinate with the nightstands. Even though I messed it up a little bit (the top is on backwards... oops!) it still looks MUCH MUCH better than the plastic drawers and tubs that Matt and I had each been using since college!



Isn't it pretty?



Just to prove that it's actually being used! Matt has the top two drawers and I have the bottom one. The drawers are HUGE, so I managed to fit everything from my old set of three plastic drawers into my one drawer on the bottom!

Menu Plan Monday

This is my first time participating in Org Junkie's Menu Plan Monday, but I've been meaning to for awhile! I'm hoping this will help cut down on the number of groceries I buy that end up going to waste because I haven't adequately predicted the amount of food the boyfriend and I consume in a week. It also doesn't help that I'm a vegetarian and he's decidedly NOT. :) Anyway, here goes my first attempt!

Monday: Grilled cheese and cans of soup (Amy's Minestrone for me, Beef Stew of some sort for him)

Tuesday: My italian mac-and-cheese, which I'll post a recipe for at some point.

Wednesday: Pulled Chicken (instead of pork) sandwich for Matt; falafel sandwich for me!

Thursday: Spaghetti with Tofu sauce (saute tofu in butter, garlic, and italian seasoning until browned, then add it to a jar of spaghetti sauce), with bread and steamed veggies

Friday: Dinner out with the boyfriend's parents!

Saturday: We're going to a college football game! Hooray! (who knwos what I'll end up eating!)

Sunday: Left overs, or broccoli/carrot/celery/whatever-extra-veggies-I-have-left stirfry over brown rice.

I'm back!

We had a house guest, followed immediately by a 9 day trip to visit both my family and the boyfriend's family, and then another house guest that participated in the last part of the roadtrip for 3 days upon returning. Basically, it was a fun (but LONG) couple of weeks! And, unfortunately, my classes start again in a week and a half, so my 5 weeks are almost up. :(

We'll be receiving more guests on Thursday night (the boyfriends parents! Gotta impress!), so the apartment really needs to get picked up! I did the bathroom and kitchen cleaning yesterday, so that's all good. But I still don't feel comfortable presenting it to his parents as the home I've made for us (and he has, too, but let's be honest- mostly me! :D ).

I really am a list-person, in that I make lists and function a lot better with a list in the back of my mind of things I need to do. So, with the deadlines in mind, here is what I plan to do this week:

1. Clean up the clothes in our bedroom. This means finishing putting the clothes in the dresser (1 drawer left, for Matt's sweaters), fixing up the closets, donating all clothes we don't need anymore, and vacuuming/dusting.

2. Fix the paper clutter in the kitchen/dining room/living room. It's the first thing you see when you walk in the place, and it's not going to impress ANYONE with the way it is right now!

3. Rearrange the furniture. We kind of have tables, chairs, recliners, etc. all over the place and in various rooms and not in arrangements condusive to entertaining. Shouldn't be too hard to do, but just needs to be done.

4. SELL BACK BOOKS. Those piles I made in a previous post? Still in the middle of my living room.

5. Make a budget. This was actually the thing I wanted to do the most during this whole process, and the thing that's been put off to the last minute. Oops!