Date afternoon!

It's date afternoon!  We're going to TGIFridays today for lunch with a gift card we got for Christmas!  We're so excited about it that we looked at the menu online yesterday to see what we might like to get.  We also have a coupon for buy one entree get one half off!  I can't wait to go!  Is it lunch time yet?  It's been forever since we've been on a date!  I hope that it will be relaxing and enjoyable to get out of the house and spend a little time together away from the stress of everything.     

We're almost to our grocery shopping day so we're getting to the end of our food a little bit.  I've started getting creative with stuff.  Last night I made au gratin potatoes(from a box we had in the cupboard) and then added some hamburger and onions and frozen green beans that I'd cooked.  I stirred it all up together and then baked it for a little while longer.  It was really good and it was just something a little different!  I am always looking for new things to eat so that we aren't stuck eating the same thing all the time.  Chad could probably eat spaghetti every night, but I would get tired of it after a few nights.  I made a menu for the next two weeks so that we have a plan and it will help our grocery shopping have a focus rather than just buying the same things every two weeks.  Some things will be the same, but others are different.  One of the biggest things I've seen as a way to save money is to have meatless dinners at least once a week.  I think as Americans we tend to think that we need meat every night and it needs to be the main part of our meal.  I'm trying to get away from that and make meat just one part of the meal.  Don't get me wrong, I love meat as much as any carnivore, but I also know that our expenses need to go down!  Yesterday I went through Aldi's and wrote down the prices to everything we are planning to buy there.  It helped a lot because then I could see how much everything cost so I could adjust the list a little bit to get things a little cheaper.  I've never thought so much about how to save money and how to make our grocery money go further before, but I've learned so much and knowing that I'm doing everything I can helps to take a little bit of the stress away.