Revamping our habits: June's menu

Regardless of what we do with the house Brian and I should try to get better with our grocery shopping and restaurant activities. We are definitely better then when I last spoke of revamping it and I do believe we are better at it then a lot of people....but we could do better.

Last time we revamped it we were going to plan meals for the week and my schedule and Brian's schedule was not the same which made it hard. The change I have been waiting for (I can/will go into more details in a week or so) has come through and a side effect is that Brian's and my schedule aren't so drastically different anymore. Because of this I am going to try planning meals a month in advance. I think another issue we have is there are very few meals we make again. There are meals that we love but just get lost in our list of recipes. I am going to try and rotate recipes more often.

I am going to start with June as we are still in the beginning months and almost use it as a practice round. I think this will also help us keep track of everything we spend on groceries as well. My current goal is to eat out once a week and see how that goes. We can always cut back but I don't want to make life hell by counting dollars if we don't need to. Also, if I can keep up with this and it works some months I can just copy another month's menu which will save time.

June's Meal List

Thursday, June 9^th: BLT's

Friday, June 10^th: Mom's Chicken Dijon

Saturday, June 11^th: Out for dinner

Sunday, June 12^th: RAH @ Carolines, BMC fend

Monday, June 13^th: Mexican Lasagna

Tuesday, June 14^th: Sausage and zucchini lasagna

Wednesday, June 15^th: Fend

Thursday, June 16^th: Chicken w/Gnocchi

Friday, June 17^th: Tuna w/ lime pepper crust

Saturday, June 18^th: Out

Sunday, June 19^th: RAH @ Carolines, BMC fend

Monday, June 20^th: Spaghetti Carbonara

Tuesday, June 21^st: Greek Style Chicken Skillet Recipe

Wednesday, June 22^nd: Fend

Thursday, June 23^rd: Emeril's tuna melts

Friday, June 24^th: Shephards Pie

Saturday, June 25^th: Out

Sunday, June 26^th: RAH @ Caroline's, BMC fend

Monday, June 27^th: Poppy seed chicken

Tuesday, June 28^th: Slow-cooked Brisket in Onion Gravy

Wednesday, June 29^th: Fend

Thursday, June 30^th: Brisket sloppy joes

So this months grocery list based on those recipes is:

5 lbs beef brisket
6 large onions
Garlic
Butter
4 zucchini
Ricotta cheese
Fresh Mozzarrella
Lasagna noodles
Prego
Limes
2 green pepper
1 jalepeno pepper
Brown sugar
Hamburger buns
Sour cream
ritz crackers
Frozen peas
Carrots
Potatoes
Red onion
Tomatoes
Provalone
Crusty bread
Tomato soup
1 box of couscous
Feta cheese
Half and half
Parmesan cheese
Acorn squash

Now I just have to get my coupons organized. Let me know if there are any recipes you want me to post :)

Caroline's House and Frog (the movie)

One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was "Frog". It is about this nerdy boy named Arlow who has a string of reptiles that he studies. He finds a frog that talks to him and teaches him how to get a girl to kiss him. There are lots of fun adventures including going to the movies, being brought to school, and digging through a lake kissing frogs. I have to get this movie not only for myself...but for Caroline.

Caroline has a much cooler son then Arlow. Her son, like Arlow, is obsessed with reptiles and the like. They have a snake, 4 turtles, 1 frog, a cat, a dog, cockroaches at one point, a dragon lizard and a sugar glider. One of her son's favorite activities is going out in the wild and catching these animals and keeping them for a bit. It is not uncommon for Caroline to come home and find frogs in the sink, a lizard in the tub or a snake in the shower.

I swear, Caroline is like Shelly Duval who plays the mother. Take this scene...she will relate totally:

I have never met their frog before. I finally met him this past Sunday. I thought Caroline was talking about Jack (the dog's) favorite toy which is a frog. It is only when I look down I see this as she is cutting up hot dogs.

Meet Pugsley

Pugsley is a weird frog who has to face one certain direction and will move if you try to turn him around

Well one of my favorite scenes of the movie is at the end. Arlow is with the girl he was crushing on eating at an Italian restaurant when they hear a familiar voice break out into song....

Youtube is failing me here so this is the best I can do....

The Muppet Show is helping me out showing you who played "Gus" the frog:

But he was singing this song:

So for the rest of the night I was singing "when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie thats amore" with Caroline looking at me weird. She HAS to see this movie!

The current debate: Brighton house

Brian and I are confused about what to do with the house.

His Uncle called the other day to chat and repeated a lot of what we already knew and what a lot of people are advising us to do. Ever since that conversation and the fact that the builders may/may not increase the rate…we have been hesitant. Papers were signed as we can back out at any time and that gives us time to think. We will find out today about the price and we will go from there. If they don’t change the price on us I believe we are moving ahead, cautiously, while waiting for the items in the provisional contract to happen. Neither of us are sure of anything…

I thought writing out a list of pros/cons of reasons to buy or not to buy will help us sort things out…

1)      We aren’t married. Brian and I have no plans of separating or anything like that but legally we should be married. We are, technically, common law married thanks to SC laws but that doesn’t/shouldn’t count for this. Both of us recognize this but are torn.

2)      We both like the house and location. Neither of us had to compromise like a lot, if not most, of people do. It is in the perfect location and has everything we are/were looking for on the best lot we have seen. Sure there are other houses but I have a sinking feeling that if we don’t get this one, we will be comparing everything to this one and be disappointed in ways with another choice/option. We don’t really want to regret our first home purchase. We have no plans to buy another after this one so it’s not like we can live with the disappointment because next time we will get what we want. We plan on living in the house we buy for a very long time.

3)      There are talks that the FHA loan program (first time buyer) will be eliminated. Unless Brian and I both somehow double both of our salaries, we won’t be able to buy a house for a very long, long time.

4)      The time to buy is now. Prices are still low, may get a little lower, but it is expected/projected to start rising within a year. If we don’t buy this house, the plan is to wait a year and save up some more and hope that the FHA loan program is still around and that prices haven’t gone up. I am not sure we can count on both of those happening at this point. We almost hope prices don’t go up but that means the economy won’t get better which we of course want to happen.

5)      We need to wait for a few things to fall into place and we should probably wait and let things settle before we make such a big change. I agree with that but with the provisional contract, as it stands right now, we have until September for everything to fall into place and the item that we should wait on will happen way before that so we will have time to let the dust settle from that while being able to back out if the dust doesn’t settle like it is expected too.

6)      Buying a house is a risk under any circumstance. Without taking risks you never get anywhere. I hate risks…I hate change…I hate making decisions based on unknowns. However, sometimes you have to bite your lip, take the plunge and hope for the best. If everything goes to plan, and it really should it is really just a matter of when, we can afford the house. It will be tight for the first year or two but I have been told it is tight for everyone the first few years unless you are Bill Gates. Plus Brian and I are willing to sacrifice a bit of our social life to own a home that we want. Plus, with the current interest rates, it is the best investment out there.

7)      People think we are rushing into it. I can see how they believe that but we have been asking all the right questions, people have just been getting back to us really quickly. Plus our “rush” was because we didn’t want them to sell the only lot we wanted/would work. We have definitely been doing our homework and my mom tells us we have been looking into this a lot more seriously then she was when they bought their first condo. If this house was not as perfect as it is we wouldn’t have given it a second thought and honestly didn’t think seriously about buying it until they lowered the price by a little over 15k. Plus, obviously, we still aren’t sure about it and have till September, basically, to make a decision.

We wish someone would/could just tell us what to do and what the right decision is but no one can. I am getting a bit ahead of ourselves as we don’t even know if the house will stay at the right price but we have to plan/think about as much as we can so we can make the best decision we can. If the price gets increased and they wont work with us we are bailing so this is a mute point. If not….this is where we currently stand. It just stinks. On Saturday we were both pretty gung ho about it…now we are not sure.

ETA: The sales lady just emailed and the price was approved

The Lot at Brighton Lakes Part 2

We went and spoke with the sales lady this morning. The meeting went well but apparently the company decided to raise their rates affective Tuesday at 10am so if we have any hope of getting the house at the price we want we need to get the papers back to her by Monday morning. She said her immediate boss is fairly confident he can get his boss to agree to the price we have been talking about. We were walking into the meeting wanting the contracts so we could look them over and have them back to them either Monday or Tuesday evening. This just has put a rush on it which I don't like too much. Fortunately we do have a provisional contract due to the changes in our lives and that provisional contract states very clearly that we can back out for any reason and get our earnest money back. We have signed the paperwork and my Dad has generously offered to go over it and we will wait and see. If the prices don't increase that is great and we move forward based on the contract. If the price goes up by a lot we bail. If the price goes up by 3-4k  we try and get them to include more upgrades as standard, if not bail. If it goes up by less then 3k we need to sit down and decide what to do. Meanwhile, if we find something in the contract that we don't like we can talk about it or just bail.

While we were there we took pictures of the lot.

Looking straight into it

Looking across from the left side

Diagonally from left side

What we think is the property line

The "dreaded" easement....

The part of the land that we can mow even though we don't own it...

The river as I call it

An attempt to get a clear shot of where our land ends and Easment begins

In the above picture you see the big trees on the left right? Then right below that there are shrubs and then a clearing right? On the left of the picture are the shrubs before the "river". Well our property line would end where the small shrubs are.

So there you have it...

PSA from Brian:

For anyone who is wondering what it is like sleeping with Rachel.... watch this

(For those confused...Rachel's the dog...)

Mackerel for dinnner=Yummy!

Tonight Brian and I had fresh caught Mackerel. How?

1) Smile nicely at guest
2) Give guest directions to a fishing charter
3) Guest gets too much fish and gives you extra's
4) Take out all of your lunch from your cooler and put fishy in there covered with ice and prays it stays good until you get home

Here is the recipe we used:

Spanish Mackerel Fillets, Baked
Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients:

2lbs Florida Spanish Mackerel fillets (any Mackerel fillets will do)
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated Florida onion
1/8 teaspoon Paprika

1) Sprinkle fillets with salt and pepper
2) Place in a single layer on a well-oiled baking pan
3) Combine margarine, lemon juice, paprika and onion
4) Cover fillets with the sauce
5) Bake at 350F for 20 to 25 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork

We didn't know what a Florida onion was so we used a Vidalia onion and finely chopped it. I also had a lot more fish then the recipe called for so I doubled the sauce ingredients. I think that was the right choice.  We served it with some Uncle Ben's Long Grained Wild Rice.

It was very good :)

Lets have some fun!

We are still waiting on answers to a couple questions before we move forward but I am tired of having to wait for things. So while we do need to wait and are...I have given myself permission to play interior decorator using the current house as an example.

Master Bedroom:

Brian and I both loved the Porter collection from Ashley Home Furniture (coincidentally where we first heard about the Brighton house). All pictures following are from the Ashley Home Furniture website.

Queen sized sleigh bed with storage under neath

The chest that I would probably use as my dresser

The dresser- we wouldn't get the mirror, Brian would use this

Two nightstands

Media Chest...not sure if we actually get this portion

 For bedding:

I like having a comforter/quilt having a basic color that matches well so I can just have different colored sheets/pillow cases, etc and create a new look without having to buy multiple comforters, etc. Each bedroom would have their own set, etc. I am not sure about the wall color yet but it will be a white/pale yellow color so that should match well with a lot of designs. I can't really find any examples but I know what I am looking for is out there :)

Guest Bedroom #1:

Gabriela Poster Bedroom Set

Guest Room #3:

Both these guest rooms will hopefully be, in reality, children's rooms in the relatively near future so I really like this for a child. It is gender neutral...I just either need pink or blue sheets!

Their bed and a bed for their friends

Dresser

Bookcase

But you want to know what I have heard is great for kids?

Cribs that convert into beds!

I have heard amazing things about these beds so they are definitely on my baby shower list!