Happy 20th Birthday Rebecca!

Our oldest Daughter is turning 20 today!


How times flies by!

I know that we hear that saying often but it is so true.

Rebecca has grown into a lovely young lady. She has a heart for God and a sweet and warm spirit.

Our prayer that God will use her in a mighty way to glorify Him!

Happy Birthday Rebecca!

Love your Family!


You can check Rebecca's Blog Here !

Losing Weight Part 3

In this post I thought I would mention a great site that I found Spark recipe.

You can read my other two posts Here, and Here

This site can be a great help in our quest to eat healthier and to lose some weight.

Having a family of ten and trying to save money we end up cooking most of our food from scratch. So how do I figure out the calories, fat, fiber in my recipes.

Most recipes do not have this information :)

At Spark Recipe you can enter all of the ingredients and enter the serving size and it will give you the information for your recipe.

They also have over 131,000 recipes to chose from that are lower in fat and calories.

This site has been a great help to us. My homemade bread that we make from whole wheat grain is pretty high in calories. So for now I am eating some wheat bread from the store that is light.

I know that I am getting more nutrition from the whole wheat bread that I am making, but I thought for a while I would try to reduce my calories to help me lose weight.

So far I have lost 8 pounds. This is quite exciting. It has taken me a while but I feel good and hopefully I will continue to lose.

The most important thing though that I need to do to lose weight I feel is trusting the Lord to help me to continue to eat right.

Praise the Lord for all of his love for us.

God Bless, Kathy

Menu Monday

Dinner:
Chicken Kieve, Couscous, corn, corn bread, Salad
Pasta, Butter horn rolls, Salad
Beef Roast, Mashed potatoes, corn bread, peas, fried apples
Ham, roasted potatoes, corn, baked beans, salad
Pancakes, bacon
Homemade donuts. (Rebecca's Birthday Request)

Lunch:
Sandwiches, fruit
chicken nuggets, yogurt, fruit
chocolate chip muffins (home made)
sandwiches, fruit
hotdogs, pickles

Breakfast:
Cereal, Bananas
bagels, with cream cheese
oatmeal
cereal
coffee cake

Snacks:
cheese sticks
yogurt
apples
bananas
grapes
thin wheat crackers with peanut butter
Check out "I'm an Organizing Junkie Menu Monday"

Saving Saturday!

This week I did not have to go grocery shopping! At least not for a full weeks worth.

Last week I decided to write up two weeks of menu's and I shopped for two weeks.

It was so nice not to have to go to Aldi's and do the weekly shopping.

I thought I would try this out this month and see how we would fair for two weeks on one shopping trip.

So far everything seems to be working out very good!

I actually could not believe my bill last week for two weeks was very reasonable which left a little over for a few extras that I picked up this week.

Since I had a little extra this week I was able to go to a couple of local stores and snatch a few good deals.

Here they are.

At Target this week I was able to buy :

2 Lysol Neutra Air Kits On sale for $5.99 each
Used 2/5.00 mfg coupons and they came out to .99 cents each!
2 Pepperidge Farm Gold fish $ 1.79 each
Used 2/ 1.00 Target coupons paid .79 cents each
2 Nestle Tall house cookies refrig. dough on sale for 2.39 each
Used 2/ 1.00 mfg coupons paid 1.39 each (a treat!) We never buy these!

(Cookies in the oven Great Excitement! )

I also shopped at our Local Stop and Shop grocery store

I was able to buy 4/ Healthy Ones Deli meat

Reg price 3.49
Sale price 3.00
Used 4/ .75 cent coupons which where doubled.
I paid $1.50 each !

The Lord is so good!

Keep looking for those great deals! God Bless, Kathy @ In My Mothers Garden
Go to Money Saving Moms and check out some other great deals!

Spring Cleaning ( Kitchen Oven)

Today I decided to clean the Kitchen Stove.

First I pulled out the oven and this is what was underneath. Not too bad. Considering I seem to have to do this often.

That was a quick clean not to hard :)

Next I cleaned the outside of the stove.

I then placed the stove back and ran the self cleaning for 2 hours!
Praise the Lord for self Cleaning!

The oven went from dirty to nice and clean :)



You may think that by looking at it did not look to bad but in the 22 years that I have been married I have learned that keeping up with things makes it much easier to keep clean then to wait until it is really dirty which will take me twice the time to clean.

Happy Cleaning! :)
Visit Crystal and Biblical Womanhood to see what other woman are cleaning this week.
God Bless, Kathy In My Mothers Garden

Losing Weight Part 2

Today I was reading my son a book it told the story about the tortoise and the hare.

We all know that story right. The hare was always in a rush and wanted everything to happen fast. You know quick results. The tortoise was not in such a rush and by his perseverance he completed the race and won the victory!

I have been on many diets that are like this. Eat only meat and protein and lose weight fast or eat only bland tasteless food and lose weight fast. These diets have never lasted.

Sure they produced some quick weight lost but the results did not last. As soon as I returned to eating normal food on came the pounds.

In my last post I spoke about" The Weigh Down Diet" which really is not a diet it is a new way of life changing the way that you feed your body with the food that you have so you can slowly lose the weight and keep it off.

(Again I just wanted to strongly state that I do not agree with the author of this book in her religious beliefs)

When I last lost weight with this program it took me a while to lose the twenty pounds. I felt good and not deprived.

Well this time I thought I would add a little more to my eating or should I say less. I decided to start eating some food that is lower in fat or calories. Not tasteless but just better for me.

I found this great website called "Spark People". I really like this site.

It helps you to keep track of your calories, fats, protein, and fiber intake. I am using it as a tool to help me with my weight loss.

I love that I can go to the site and look up certain foods and see what their calories really are or I can also enter an item that I purchased and fill in all of the info for that item. I just click add to my food for that day and it keeps count of all of the calories that I have eaten and helps me to see what I am actually eating in a day and maybe where I need to cut back a bit.

The best part about this program is that it is Free! It is wonderful. I had thought of joining Weight Watchers but we really do not have the extra money right now so this program is really helping me.

In my next post I will write about another great site that has been a help to me in my quest to lose some weight.

God Bless, Kathy

Spring Cleaning ( Dresser Drawers)

Well I have been over to Crystals Blog at Biblical Womanhood and she is running a series about Spring Cleaning so I thought I would post about some of the cleaning projects that I have been doing around our home.

With ten people living in our home there is always something that needs extra attention.

While I was lying in my bed last night I began thinking about the boys dressers! They seem to always be in disarray.

My four year old Caleb loves to dress himself so into his drawers he goes and rummages through every drawer until he finds just the right outfit. Here is the results after he is finished!

What a mess!

After about a 30 mins I had the drawers back in order. I removed some of the clothes.
I realized that he had way to much which added to the mess.

So much better!

Now that the warm weather is coming a warm 40 degrees :) I am really itching for Spring!
So getting our Spring Cleaning started sounds good to me! Happy Cleaning!
Check out Crystals Blog Biblical Womanhood and see what others are taking on!

God Bless, Kathy In My Mothers Garden