Updates!

So I was told by a little bird that my follow up on things I have been trying has not been great. I was crossing my fingers no one would notice, because to be honest I had to put a slight pause on everything,

My meal planning was going pretty well until the last month of my pregnancy when I decided I hated the taste of everything except for Crazy Bread from Little Ceasar's and chicken Gyro's. So Jack and I seriously ate out every single meal for the last month, it was bad. I think we managed to spend over $700 on eating out a lone that month OUCH!

My budget has been pretty much thrown out the window due to the fact that our income has gone haywire. I am unfortunately not being paid for my maternity leave so we are strictly relying on Jack's income. Even though he makes enough that we can afford it, he gets paid on commission so it is a little hard to figure out exactly what is going to be coming in and when. Also, since he only started at this job several months ago and his commissions just started coming we haven't been able to figure out exactly what his average pay check will be. This has made budgeting really tough so I decided to simply put a pause on  my budget until I go back to work.

Before I have to go back to work I am planning on making my meal planning organization, I guess you could call it, a top priority. Writing out my meals for the week was working really well, however, I did notice a few issues I wanted to figure out. First off after listing out the meals and going grocery shopping for the week Jack and I noticed that we still didn't follow the menu to a "T" and therefore we were still throwing out food. I think until we get a real good hang of it we are going to have to go to the store every day or at least every other day. This issue is really minor compared to the second issue I need to figure out. Jack and I never seem to remember what foods we already have. Because I was writing out the grocery list while at work I would forget we already bought something and buy it again. Jack and I discovered this weekend we had four containers of chicken broth that all had been open and used just once then expired. This is not okay. So what I plan on doing today and tomorrow is creating a pantry list. I've seen it on several organization blogs and it seems like a really good idea. I'm going to create an excel spread sheet of all the items in our pantry and fridge, put it in alphabetical order for easy searching, and update it every time we either buy a new item or run out of one. I am actually really excited about creating this.

So look for my pantry tracking list sometime this week. I'm hoping to figure it out today if I have time. Mariah didn't sleep much last night so I might spend today napping!