Mommin' It Up!

April 6, 2009April 6, 2009

BeeWell… and raise money for a great cause

Back in December, I wrote this post about how I was going to start the Couch to 5k program. The title was “I’m a little nervous about posting this.” I was nervous to tell all of you that I was going to do it, because I was afraid I wouldn’t.

And as it turns out, I didn’t.

Then, anyway. But I am doing it now! I’m in the fifth week of the nine week program, and I am loving it. Even though I procrastinate and try to put off getting on the treadmill, I really feel great after I run (or as Marcy calls it, trot) and I can really tell a difference in my endurance.

But I still need a kick in the pants now and then, so I was really excited when the folks from Bumble Bee Foods contacted Jenny and me to ask us to take part in their BeeWell Miles program (and they are also sponsoring this fine little post).

The BeeWell Miles program makes it easy to get active, one step at a time. The website has weekly blog posts from experts on nutrition and fitness, useful tools to track your activity and food choices, recipes, fun downloads, and message boards where you can find a community of people who have goals similar to yours.

And here’s the best part. For every mile logged on the BeeWell Miles website between now and October 31, Bumble Bee Foods will donate 15 cents to the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, a support network for women who can’t wait for tomorrow’s cure.

How’s that for motivation to get off your badonkadonk? (That’s Andrea’s favorite term, haha!)

I’ve decided to set a goal of logging 1,333 miles – which would raise $200 for the Breast Cancer Network of Strength. October 31 is 208 days away, so if my math is correct (and it’s entirely possible that it’s not), that means I’ll need to log an average of 6.4 miles a day. I’ll be wearing this handy little pedometer to help keep me on track:

So if blogging about doing the Couch to 5k program made me a little nervous, imagine how I’m feeling now! But the BeeWell Miles website has all the tools I’ll need to accomplish my goals.

I would love for you to join me! I encourage all of you to check out BeeWell Miles and to log your own miles…. you’ll enhance the lives of women fighting breast cancer, and your new active lifestyle will enhance your life as well. It’s a win-win.

So who’s with me?

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April 6, 2009April 6, 2009

Cookin’ It Up!

I told you on Friday that Bobby and I were going to attempt part of the March menu available from the once-a-month-cooking geniuses at Once a Month Mom. The menu contained 15 great recipes which really do make up an ENTIRE month’s worth of meals! To do the whole menu, you need about 8 kid-free hours with a cooking partner. Because of the busy-ness of spring that has already sprung, Bobby and I didn’t have a whole day to devote to OAMC, so we picked our six favorite recipes from the menu and set aside two blocks of time on Saturday – in the morning, my parents came and got the kids at 9. I made a small start getting organized, and after Bobby got home from his Bible Study at 10 a.m., we got to work! Since we were just cooking for one family instead of two (if you cook with a partner and stick with the original menu you’ll have enough meals for both families), I adjusted the recipes according to how many servings we wanted to make of each meal. In our morning session, we made Raspberry Chicken (3 meals), Orange Marmalade Pork Chops/Salmon (4 meals – the recipe called for salmon but I don’t like fish, so we made one meal of salmon for Bobby and the other three we made with pork chops), pizza roll-ups (6 meals) and chocolate-raspberry pancakes (3 meals). We finished up by 12:30, ate lunch, and got ready to go to Sammy’s first birthday party, where we picked up the kiddos. Here are some photos from our morning cooking session, where we made 16 meals!

The marinade for our raspberry chicken. Yum!

Orange marmalade pork chops ready to go in the freezer:

Pizza roll-ups, before & after baking. They smelled and looked so good we wanted to eat them right then & there!

Bobby manned the griddle and cooked our chocolate chip-rapsberry pancakes:

We had originally planned to do 3 recipes in our morning session and 3 in the evening, but everything went so smoothly in the morning that we got four recipes done!! Woohoo! So that night after the kids went to bed, we started on the Baked Chicken Fingers and Mandarin Orange Chicken. We made 3 meals of each, and it only took us about an additional 2 hours of cooking and clean-up!

Here are our finished chicken fingers. We had these for lunch today after church and they were really yummy!

And here’s our Mandarin Orange Chicken, ready to go in the freezer:

All in all, we cooked 22 meals in about 5 hours, including clean-up. And since I only spent about $70 on all the groceries for this endeavor, that means our meals cost us $3.18 each. Pretty darn good for 10 dinners, 9 lunches, and 3 breakfasts! And I can’t even imagine how much time I am going to save this month since I won’t be cooking nearly as often!

Bobby and I had such a great time cooking together. I don’t know if all married couples could stand to do this together, but Bobby is a MUCH better person that I am, which enabled us to have a successful & peaceful cooking day. 🙂 We still loved each other at the end of all that! Here we are about 11:00 at night, after we finished cooking.

We really LOVED the once-a-month cooking experience, and we hope to be able to do the FULL menu and FULL cooking day in April! There is a really yummy menu from Once A Month Mom here and lots of things on sale for it this which, which Tricia posted about here. So get a partner, get a plan, and get once-a-month cooking! Tricia and Cortney have all the resources you need at Once a Month Mom including printable menus, grocery lists, and grocery store sale match-ups.

(I also submitted this post to I am Blissfully Domestic! Head over there and check out all the great posts!)

April 3, 2009April 3, 2009

My First Time at Aldi & a SwagBucks Code

There were really no drugstore deals that excited me this week. That’s right, dear readers, I did not even darken the door of a CVS!! I hear this week is going to be a little better at least. I hope so! I am starting to get nervous!

In the absence of any exciting deals at the grocery stores I frequent, and in preparation for my Once-a-month-cooking adventure, I decided to try my hand at ALDI this week! I had never been there before! That’s right, this frugalista was an Aldi Virgin. Can you believe it?? Here’s what I got:

I got all this for $19.35! I was especially pleased with the price of the milk at $1.89/gallon! The butter, minced garlic, soy milk, and mozarella cheese were all exceptionally good deals I thought. So, I was pretty pleased my first time out and I’ll definitely shop there again when they have good sales!

So that’s all the great bargains I did this week, but I now have one for you! You may have read my “Things I Love Thursday” entry last week where I featured Swagbucks (it’s here). Swagbucks is a fun way to earn prizes just by searching the internet! I use Swagbucks for all my regular Google searches now, and sometimes win bucks which I can then redeem for great prizes! I am saving my SwagBucks up to redeem for some Amazon gift certificates so I can get some books and videos I’ve had my eye on. But there are TONS of prizes to choose from. And now, if you sign up as a new user, we have a special code for Mommin’ It Up readers to get TWO additional SwagBucks! You’ll get 3 for signing up and 2 additional if you enter the code MOMMINITUP (case sensitive) – so you’ll start out with FIVE Swagbucks! Awesome! All you have to do to get started is register here.

Well, that’s all the great saving I did this week. Hopefully I’ll have more next week! To see how everyone else did, check out Shopping Superstars at the Thrifty Mama and Super Savings Saturday at Money Saving Mom!