Category: Lifestyle

For one reason or another I have felt compelled to do some silly shopping at TJ Maxx! And by silly shopping I mean shopping for nothing that I need but for the pure fact that I wanted to SHOP!!!

Who else has those days where you just want to shop so you go and find cool things that you know you’ll use but don’t really need well that is what I did!!!

Check out the cute things I got!!!

These cute planners and note books!!! I love planners and note books of all kinds!!! And how cute are these! The floral print is just adorable! And I actually bought the floral planner and note book separately and didn’t realize they matched until I got home! The unicorn one I am saving to give to my best friend for her birthday coming up in September!

Now tell me how anyone could pass up these cute bags!!! The top bag is a light pink make up bag that is actually nicely large and holds everything I need when I’m traveling! (leave me a comment or message if you want to see my what I pack in travel make up). The adorable macaroon bag is made for holding all kinds of cord and different odds and ends while traveling! I am headed into the fall season when I will be traveling some for some different things and this is going to come in sooooo handy when keeping my cords and head phones and what not all organized!

These are a few odds and ends that I found and again couldn’t resist! The far right is a huge tote type bag that is great for the beach or a picnic or even just as a simple over night bag! And of course it has one of my favorite quotes on it! I also found these amazing smelling watermelon scented facial cleansing clothes. I had run out of my normal face wipes and needed some in a pinch and found these in the beauty section and I am so impressed! The clothes or wipes are very large and there are 60 in the back for $4. And when they smell delicious I couldn’t help myself! And the final thing I found was this adorable jewelry holder that I plan on giving to my best friend for her birthday as well! I thought it was incredibly cute and it says “embrace your inner unicorn”! How cute!!!

Well that is all that I have hauled recently from TJ Maxx! Look for more on how I like to use all of my different note books!!!

Keep an eye out for what’s coming up around the curve!

Planning ahead will help you save money in the long run and will also help with making sure you eat healthier and stay on track with your goals!

I will show you how I go about planning for my husband and I for a full month, my grocery list and how I stick to it! I started this a couple of months ago so that I could better budget and so far we have saved so much money by not throwing away as much food because we are using most everything we have!

I Started with a Simple Planner

I’m pretty sure I got this on sale at Target and bought it because I liked the color…little did I know I would use it as much as I do!

The nice thing about planners like this are the different formats for each month and tabs that identify each month. There is a large grid calendar to designate events on each day but the part I take advantage of most is the larger sections for each day that spans each week in two pages. If what I just said doesn’t make sense here is a visual!

These large spacing for each day makes it ideal for writing in recipes and what different ingredients I will need as well as what sides I plan on making with the main course. I also like to put in different instructions that I might need specific to each different recipe.

Now I find most all my recipes on pintrest because it’s the easiest place to find simple recipe’s for the week night. And I find it more fun to look through pictures of food rather than to look through website after website looking for different meals that sound good.

Being that it is summer time I have found a lot of different marinade recipes because we are doing a lot of barbequing. With the marinades I try to make sure that I can get them done the night before if not the Sunday before the week starts.

This is a photo of a couple of the recipe’s that are our favorite! Now this is from the previous month of June but once we find things we like I tend to put them in from month to month. We still get variety but we also get to have our favorites! On this particular week I had two different marinades, two crock pot meals (when my husband was working nights) and one easy meal that we dumb in a pan and back in the oven.

I found all of these on Pinterest! All are easy and don’t require a lot of ingredients or prep-work ahead of time.

Once I have gotten my whole month planned out M-F (I don’t plan the weekends just because of doing different things and not always being home to cook- we usually rely on left overs on the weekend or we wing it) I begin to make my list!

I make two different lists! The first is for all of the ingredients needed to make all of the different meals I have planned. Then the second is what I will actually need when I go to the grocery store. While I am working out my second list I go through my pantry and freezer and look to see what all I already have. This makes it far more efficient when I go shopping to only buy things that I need and therefore help me to stick to my meal planning for dinners. With this I don’t plan on the large items I will need because I plan to buy those things anyway; items like chicken, onions, potatoes, eggs, ect. I do a lot of my shopping at Costco so the large items that we use a lot of I make sure to purchase in bulk.

Now sometimes I will make a third list for perishable items that I can’t buy a month ahead of time or that won’t be easy to keep until we use them and that is the list I make for about half way through the month. Usually this is the smallest list because it only will have perishable items or simple things I forgot from earlier.

I have been doing this for about 5 months now and it’s been the biggest money saver! My husband and I actually stick to our planned meals and I don’t find us wasting money on buying things for breakfast/ lunch/dinner that we don’t need or that aren’t on the menu.

The other nice thing I have found with planning monthly is you can move different nights around and it doesn’t totally ruin your meal planning!

I hope you find this helpful for your budgeting and meal planning! This is really just a brief overview of what I do each month! If you want more in depth please leave a comment or message!

Keep an eye out for what is up around the curve!