How I grocery shop

When I was young and just starting out on my own it took a bit of trial and error to figure out what worked for me grocery shopping, and as my family grew so did my grocery bill so my way of shopping adapted with the change in amount spent.
I have come to notice that there seems to be some struggle even in more mature people with how to do grocery shopping.
I don't work outside the home I take care of the house and kids and run the local elementary schools PTA. none of this generates a income so we only get payed on my husbands pay schedule, this happens every two weeks. If we got payed once a month or every week my shopping and budgeting might be different.
Because we get payed every two weeks this is also how I do my grocery shopping.
First I set down and make a list of dinners for two weeks.I add anything I don't have in the house for those meals to the list.  Then I look at my fridge, cupboards, and pantry and make a list of things I might need for breakfasts, my kids lunches and the occasional lunch we are home as a family for. I don't make a actual list of breakfasts and lunches but you could.
There are some things I buy in bulk like flour that I store in a five gallon bucket and fill the canister on my counter as needed.
I get on coupon websites and only look for coupons to the things on my list. Its easy to get carried away with all the coupons and end up buying things you don't need just because you got a good price.
Learn about extreme couponing and apply where it works for you.  I do not extreme coupon for everything I buy because a lot of the things that you can do this for are things we don't eat. If your really really hurting to save some money you might have to sacrifice some of the healthy eating for buying cheap but keep in mind that cheap food almost never has health benefits.
Unprocessed raw food is the best for you and for this reason the biggest chunk of my grocery bill is spent on produce. I don't make a list of produce I just go to the store and get whats in season and available. I live in a pretty rural area and so what is at the store is always anyone's guess. However there are a few things that are always kept on hand and in my house those are things like onions, carrots, celery, potatoes and apples. then we pick and choose from what we can get organic, and what is in season. My bakery is right by the produce in my store and they make fresh bread daily, there are fewer additives in there bread then other brands so that's what I buy plus its almost half the price. There might be a few canned items that I buy and some dried goods but then its off to the frozen section where I get most the veggies that are served as side dishes like frozen green beans or peas. I never buy canned veggies. It is easier to find Organic veggies and fruit in the frozen section so this is where I get all our berries for shakes and desserts. Then I go to the dairy section where I get lots of cheese and yogurt and pick up some almond milk. My husband usually hunts for our meat once a year (don't get all crazed on me telling me about killing animals and such) So I don't really have to buy meat from the market if I do I go with local meat over the name brand stuff shipped from who knows where.
For my family of four (really right now its 4 1/2) It costs me under three hundred sometimes depending on what is still in my house only two hundred for the two weeks this means I spend a average of five hundred a month on groceries. the national average is nine hundred a month for a family of four and I buy what I can organic and spend a lot on fresh produce. If you keep your eyes open you can sometimes find coupons for produce as well. The reason i save so much is the amount of times I walk into the market. the more you walk in the higher chance you have that you will buy something you don't need. I am sure you have heard it before don't go shopping hungry, and stick to your list.
Try to balance nutrition with price if those organic onions are three times the price of the other ones then don't get the organic ones. (you don't need to buy onions organic anyways)
Try to cook as many of your own meals as possible from the most basic ingredients that you can. will you really save a lot of time adding that frozen bag of mixed veggies vs chopping them yourself? Maybe set aside a sunday afternoon to prep veggies if you need to. It probably takes me two minutes to chop all the vegetables for dinner. So the extra spent on the bag of mixed vegetables does not save me time or money I could buy five times the amount of vegetables from the produce section for the price of that frozen baggy. and that means five times the vegetable I will serve my family.
It might take six months to get a good foundation for what you like to buy and saving money but it can be done. 

Up cycle

I had a pair of my husbands old sweat pants I was ripping up for rags. My daughter picked up both leg cuffs and put them on like her own little sweat bands.

Raise Healthy Kids

I've been all over the internet these last few weeks and two things that have really stuck out to me are: women complaining about how much they weigh after having a child. and/or mom's complaining that their children are picky eaters.
So here is my first question to these women:
Did you or are you breastfeeding?
Most often the answer I get is NO. Because it has become taboo in our culture to breastfeed our children or its gross or too much hassle.
The second question is much more obvious:
What's your diet like?
The answer I normally get is horrible.
If you eat your veggies your weight will be lower, the food you eat changes the flavor of your breast milk making your child accustomed to the flavor of those veggies. Breastfeeding does burn calories but thats not a excuse to eat whatever you want or to indulge in more calories.
Often we hear that because pregnancy and breastfeeding can burn calories we should eat 300-500 more calories while this is not only a very unhealthy attitude to have many don't know what 300 calories looks like.
If you want to eat more during pregnancy or breastfeeding EAT VEGETABLES!
Not only will this prepare your child from the womb to like veggies but when mom eats her veggies kids will eat them to.
My husband did not grow up having to eat vegetables as a result he still hates most veggies. Regardless of if he likes them or not I still serve vegetables. He will now eat quite a few vegetables.
but I started introducing vegetables late to him, my children however have had a large veriety of vegetables right from the start.
If you put a plate of green beans or even spinich down in front of my daughter and a plate of hotdogs and macaroni ( a common child staple all over the usa) my daughter will eat all of the vegetable and then if she feels she is still hungry she will eat the other food.
Looking on the web for some fun lunch box foods for my son I came across a article that had a few different suggestions for healthy lunch box food where things like hummus and guacamole made appearances in the food. the comments that this article received were all negative. Every single parent on there said "are you kidding me? hummus and guacamole these are kids lunches what kid do you know that will eat those?" Well instead of complaining about the article which was published on a very respectable parents web site perhaps these parents should look at there habits and why there children will not eat this food.
How often do you think that the kids of these parents have tried Hummus? How often do you think the parents themselves eat it?
The answer is quite simple Eat your vegetables and eat them in front of the kids. if its not too late breastfeed your children it will help you burn calories and triggers a hormone to help you loose the baby weight it also sets them up for a healthier life all around.
Stop eatting processed junk food. sure that broccoli does not taste that great when your taste buds are use to salted potato chips.
Try this for only thirty days do NOT eat any ANY processed or junk food. if you crave chocolate eat organic 70% cocoa. want sweetness in your tea try organic blue agave. eat fresh fruits and veggies cook your meals and after those thirty days try to eat something that you liked before. Now that your taste buds have adjusted regular candy bars taste like wax, soda taste like the can, and packaged food taste just plain horrible. You will wonder how you ever ate that stuff before. Not up for a whole make over, not even for 30 days ok switch just one thing either your ONCE a week candy bar for a organic 70% cocoa one. Or your "syrup" that you pour on your waffles or in your oatmeal for the real thing 100% pure maple syrup. After you have switched to only one of these try to go back and taste to other stuff eww.
Your children are not pre dispositioned to like candy and junk food they learned it from YOU.
So chances are if your children are picky eaters you're most likely also overweight. The only person who can change this is you.

Mmm juice

Before i knew i was preganat i was juicing vegetables and working out everyday. Needless to say i felt great until morning sickness set in. Now that i am five months along all sickness had gone unless i forget to eat regularly. I started juicing again this last week and it has really helped me feel better i wish i could get up and exercise but i am suppose to stay off my feet as much as possible. I sure do wish i had juiced more in my early pregnancy but it was all i could do to function at all in those early days. Anyways the point being when you are not feeling great try detoxing and juicing it csn make s world of diffetence. I'm sorry that much of this seems to be wrote sloppy I'm on my phone so i will go back and edit it on my computer and fix it later.

Its a girl

Yup little girl number two on its way

It's my birthday!!!

Happy birthday to me!

Just spending time with my children is all the present one could want. Okay maybe a spotless house, a spotless well organized house. would be a nice gift but its pretty hard to buy one of those.
I see no need to go out and party, spend the night acting like a idiot, and spend the next day feeling like crap.  I have long ago discovered that the best time one can have is with the ones you love. 

Diet VS Prenatal Pills

This pregnancy is my third and most people i've talked to said that for some reason there third pregnancy had more sickness than others. For me personally the first two weeks were fine but the next eight I was in pretty bad shape as far as even being able to function in my daily life. With two children to care for on top of being sick things like housework and make up soon became memories. I am 16 Weeks In and only now have I felt well enough to do an overhaul of my kitchen and start to get things back on track. One of the things that I could not do for those weeks that I was sick was to swallow down pills, not even the smallest prenatal. I already knew that our bodies do not absorb the vitamins or minerals from pills very well but you are always told how important your prenatals are to the development of your child. Not taking them had me worried and so I looked into the nutrients in them and where else I might be able to get what I needed. Every brand of pill will differ slightly in the amount of each nutrient that is in the pill but since our bodies don't absorb most of it from the pill anyways i just tried to get close to the amount found in my once a day pills that I had on hand.
Getting all of the B-vitamins needed into my diet without pills soon proved to be the most difficult as these are mostly found in animal products, I am not a vegetarian by any means but I also am not a meat lover. And while I make a really yummy clam chowder my taste tolerance to seafood is really low. Good for me then that I learned that you don't actually have to take every vitamin every day and that to get the vitamin b-12 you need having clam chowder once a week actually was enough.
I was also surprised to find out that paprika and chili powder contained most of the vitamins and minerals in my prenatals the only problem was that you could never eat enough of the spice to get a good daily value but adding them to my other foods would help.
One Tablespoon of paprika for example will give you 5% of the daily value of Niacin also called B3. .So by adding this to something like potato salad I improved that dish to include more of the vitamins my baby needs.
Many foods contain more than one vitamin or mineral and these I try to get most every day like Eggs, Kale, Sunflower Seeds, Almonds, Spinach, and even Dark Chocolate.
The amount of seeds that you would need to eat each day to get all of your B Vitamins is ridiculous and so I took Sunflower seeds, Almonds, Pine Nuts, Peanuts, Pistachios, and Pumpkin seeds and ground them all together and made a butter that I spread on my toast in the morning or on a sandwich for a snack or lunch. As for other vitamins I make a smoothie in the morning from yogurt, berries and whey powder with almond milk and some kale juice that I juiced myself to start my day and get my body absorbing what it needs. I scramble about eight eggs in the morning for me and the family and add hot sauce on that also adding things like cheese, milk, green peppers, onions, whatever I feel like that day into the eggs gives them more of a boost.
I also juice fruits and veggies to get a good size glass at least every other day. into this i put things like two green apples two large carrots a yellow bell pepper about three cups of Kale, a cup of spinach a small tomato two celery stalks one half or one tiny clove of garlic and a cup of asparagus if i have it on hand, ,I also throw in herbs like parsley and thyme this will give me a little less than 16 ounces of juice from my particular juicer. this juice gives me lots of vitamin A and C along with the Folic acid my baby needs and a little zinc, calcium, vitamin E, and vitamin B.
So its more complicated to get everything this way but if you eat healthy you're probably already eating most of the vitamins and minerals you need. Plus this is more natural, your body absorbs what it needs easily from the foods and especially the juice. Also you get to control the sources for the vitamins and minerals this way.
add to this routine above a healthy dinner with a serving of meat or seafood and you get everything you need in a week this way without trying to choke down a pill that will in all reality probably not give you the things your body needs.