Anyway, I would highly recommend this book especially if you are in debt.

I hope to be back soon with OAMC part two, I haven’t had much time online this week…

FIRST STEP:

Decide whether you want to do this alone or with someone else. Regardless of how you decide to do it, I highly recommend not having small children around. Maybe there is another mom that does OAMC that would be willing to swap kids with you on cooking days.

SECOND STEP:

Next, decide what you want to get out of your cooking day. Do you need only main course dinners prepared? Or would you like breakfasts? Lunches? Side dishes? Snacks? Desserts? Personally, I usually do mostly main course dinners. I may throw in a side dish or two and maybe some breakfast items.

If you are doing this alone, you obviously get full choice on the recipes and ingredients used. But, if you will be working with someone, make the time to sit down and decide what each of you wants to cook. If you plan to do a full day, I would recommend starting with about ten to a dozen recipes at most, any more than that and you may become overwhelmed. Also, keep in mind that it will save money and probably time if you use recipes that have some of the same ingredients. This way, you can buy and prepare things in bulk.

A great resource for finding freezer meals is online at Recipezaar. This is one of my favourite sites! If you click on forums, there is a whole OAMC section with lots of great advice. Or, in the search bar at the top just type in OAMC and you will get a list of tried and true (and rated) recipes with comments from people who have tried them.

So in short:

• Pick a friend or plan to do it yourself.
• Sit down and find recipes suitable for freezing and make a list of the ones you (and possibly your friend) will plan on making.

PART TWO: Planning your Big Cooking Day

We each took home:

• Banana Muffins
• Waffles
• Bacon Wrapped Chicken
• Pizza Casserole x2
• Pizza dough w/ shredded mozzarella
• Pizza Roll-ups
• Sweet Salsa Chicken
• Chili Maple Glazed Chicken
• Mini Meatloaves
• Chicken Packets
• Mexican Stuffed Shells

Some of those ended up being 2 or 3 meals, so for 8 hours work we had quite a bit of food. I must say I was exhausted though! I am sure that being pregnant may have made that worse though.

Sometimes, I make extra food and freeze it for future use. Other times, I do some basic prep work like browning ground beef with onions, garlic and green peppers. I then freeze this is approximately one pound packages so that it is ready to use when needed.

These techniques save money because you can buy things in bulk on sale and freeze until needed. Also, when meals are prepared already, or at least partially prepared, you are less tempted to eat out after a busy day!

I am planning to post an OAMC tutorial soon, likely in several parts.

Give it a try, start small and the next time you make pancakes or waffles make some extra and freeze them! (I put wax paper between mine and defrost in the microwave approximately 30-40 sec each, or you can use the toaster.)

So, in June I decided that I wanted to start a grocery budget. I decided to start at $400 a month. That is for 2 adults, a 5 year old and a 4 year old. That may seem like a lot to some people, especially people in the States because of couponing etc. But in Canada, at least where we live, it is hard to really find any super deals on anything and coupons are not anything exciting here most of the time. We have no Register Rewards, Extra Care bucks or catalinas.

In June we started budgeting our food in the middle of the month, so I allowed us $200. We spent $300. July was really hard to even calculate. Because we were over $100 in June, I only allowed us $300 in July. There were some problems with this. We had two trips booked where we knew we would be eating out. I decided to count that as travel expenses (haaa) instead of grocery/food! We still went over by $100. August has been good. Again, I tried to stay within $300. At the beginning of the month, our favourite grocery store ran a double promo. If you spent $100, you got a free package of frozen ribs. The same week, if you spent over $115, you got a nice discount at their gas bar. So, I decided to make a menu plan for the month and do a month’s worth of shopping at once. We walked away spending $157 on food and about $27 on bedding for the boys’ new room. I could not believe that we had spent only that amount and other than milk it should have lasted the whole month! As usual, I forgot a few things here and there and we had to run out and grab a couple things. We also decided to make a trip to the States and stock up on a few things (using coupons of course, oh, I SO wish stores here were like the American stores…) So as of right now, we are approximately at $270 for the month. The amazing thing is that plans have changed several times and sometimes I didn’t need to make supper or I made something extra from leftovers, or a meal has lasted 2 nights and I will have alot of the food leftover at the end of the month to use in September. With that in mind, even if I stay under budget this month (which I should), do you think I could adjust our budget (at least for September) to only $300? It seems like I could!

Last year, I planted some Beefsteak tomatoes in our ‘lasagna’ garden (more about that later). My husband and kids loved them, they said they were much sweeter than the store bought ones. Anyway, I really didn’t do much with them, they ate the tomatoes on sandwiches or by themselves. We gave some away.

So, this year I planted 4 Roma tomato plants, because they are more of a cooking tomato and I wanted to make some sauces. After I planted them, I saw some new plants growing that at first I thought were weeds. When I looked closer, I was very surprised to find that they were tomato plants! My only guess is that some rotten tomatoes had fallen in the garden last year and the seeds started to grow in the spring! So now I have 4 Roma and 3 Beefsteak tomato plants and we are getting tons of tomatoes!

Yesterday, I made a batch of spaghetti sauce using our Vitamix (LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this machine!). I used 3 cups of quartered Romas (and other things for flavour) and after simmering I had 2-2 1/2 cups of sauce. The best thing about using the Vitamix for tomato sauces- no peeling or seeding!! So, not only do you not have to go through the trouble of peeling, but you get the extra nutrients from the skin and seeds. And, no, you dont find pieces of peel or lots of little seeds in your sauce, they get pulverized in the machine (which makes it easier to digest, too).

It costs next to nothing to make your own tomato sauces if you grow your own tomatoes. And, if you can it then you can have fresh sauce out of season!

For anyone with a Vitamix my adapted recipe is here. If you have a good blender, and you peel the tomatoes, you may be able to do this without a Vitamix!

I am thinking…my head hurts!

I am thankful for…the fun day that we had yesterday at the beach and playing games with family.

From the learning rooms…we are going to do a Brown Bear ‘play’ for Daddy today.

From the kitchen…oops, I forgot to defrost the chicken!

I am wearing…shorts and a tank top.

I am creating…a price book.

I am going…to try and have a nap today.

I am reading…the Bible- Jeremiah.

I am hoping….Perry likes his new job

I am hearing…Everyday Food- a cooking show.

Around the house…I need to put some laundry away.

One of my favorite things…apple crisp (can’t wait for apple picking next month!!).

A few plans for the rest of the week: Orthodontist appointment tomorrow, glucose test, Bible study Thursday.

A picture to share:

Last year, I didn’t have much a schedule, we tried a lot of different ways of planning our days. I had some programs that were broken down into lessons and I just did a lesson as often as I thought that subject needed to be taught (ex- Math everyday, Reading everyday, Language Arts 2-3 times a week). We used workboxes toward the end, which I kind of have a love/hate relationship with! I may go into those more thoroughly in the future, depending on whether we implement them back into our schedule this year. My husband was also off of work the entire year, which was wonderful, but sometimes made it hard to stick to a plan. I felt E was already ahead in most areas, so I didn’t feel a lot of pressure to do things ‘right’, also it was only Kindergarten. Of course Kindergarten is very important, but it consists of a lot of information that we deal with in daily life, too, and after all it should be fun!

Shortly after we wrapped up our Kindergarten year, I started to plan out the Grade One year. I had already purchased and recieved all the curriculums that I planned on using for the year (which you can see on my homeschooling section at the top). I first decided how many terms that I would have. I based this on our main curriculum, which this year is Christian Light Education or CLE. We are using this for E’s Reading, Science, Social Studies and Math. Each subject has 5 LightUnits in it. So naturally, I decided to have 5 terms. I figured out approximately how many days the students in our area where in public school and divided that by 5. So that gave me approximately the length of each term, which ended up being about 8 weeks.

I also knew that I wanted to have a long break after our baby is born. So, I planned to have one term finished by the time I would be 38 weeks pregnant. That meant that we needed to start our year in August. I planned a 7 week break, here, but most of the year will be 8 weeks on and 2 weeks off. We also have alot of free days that we will use whenever something comes up.

For the actual schedule, I took the amount of lessons from our CLE curriculum and divided that out evenly into our term. Example- if there were 32 Reading lessons and we have 40 days in a term, that would be 4 days a week of Reading lessons. For other subjects such as Language Arts, Spelling and Handwriting I just decided how often I felt those should be done and added them accordingly. I have tried to find worksheets and/or unit studies that the boys can do together that correspond to the lessons in E’s curriculum. Example- in E’s Science lessons, he is learning about seeing and feeling and there is a lot of mention of shapes, so the boys will work on different activities involving shapes at the same time. I have also added in some other unit studies, which are awesome for them to do together even though they are at different levels.

That’s basically, how I’ve put the schedule together for this year. I am planning one term at a time, but because each term is the same length and same curriculum they will be similiar and therefore easier to plan!

Next week I hope to go into a typical day of our homeschool.

Amberley

1- Use Ziploc bags more than once (unless there was raw meat in them). Even if you use them twice, that’s like 2 boxes for the price of one. Just turn inside out, give a quick was with dish soap. Let dry inside out before putting away.

2- Buy bulk. Bulk is usually cheaper, check the unit prices to be sure.

3- Stock pile. When something that you use regularly goes on sale (especially for an amazing price), stock up

4- Grocery shop with a list and stick to it!

5- Make a menu plan.

6- Use leftovers (I’m working on this one…)

7- Cut back on extras. Do you really need to munch on chips every night?? Maybe air pop some bulk popcorn instead.

8- Use less convenience foods. Seperate kid size portions yourself instead of buying individual packages.

9- Start a price book. Track prices on items you regularly buy. I will talk about this more in the future, but it basically tells you when something is a good deal and how much you should buy.

Have fun saving!

1-Our milk comes in bags, instead of jugs. We buy 4 litres (approx. 1 gallon) and there are 3 bags inside of one larger bag. We use a milk pitcher, put the whole bag in and cut a whole in the corner. And, no it doesn’t go bad with a hole in it!

2-Several years ago, we eliminated the one dollar bill, we now have a gold coloured coin called the ‘Loonie’, with a picture of a loon on it. A few years later, they also added a two dollar coin. It is a silver coin, with a gold coloured centre, it is called a ‘Toonie’. So, yah, there are a lot of loonie’s and toonie’s in Canada

3-There is a French translation on most all of our commercial products (groceries, etc.)

4-We have ketchup flavoured chips.

5-We add a letter ‘u’ to words like colour, flavour and favourite.

6-We have a one year Maternity/Parental Leave where new mothers/fathers can collect over 50% of their previous year’s wage, there are obviously requirements that need to be met, but this is an amazing government benefit. I’ve heard rumors that it may increase to 2 years???

So there are a few unique things about Canada!

Happy Day!

I am thinking…I should be planning some school work for the kids.

I am thankful for…P’s new job.

From the learning rooms…G is continuing to learn how to read.

From the kitchen…not much today, P was gone all day, so no big meals!

I am wearing…some cool pajamas.

I am creating…more schedules for school.

I am going…to the beach tomorrow.

I am reading…The Tightwad Gazette 2.

I am hoping…we have a healthy baby girl.

I am hearing…a fan.

Around the house…it’s hot!

One of my favorite things…my husband.

A few plans for the rest of the week: beach tomorrow, midwife appointment Thursday, kid’s eye appointment’s Friday.

A picture to share: