I haven't had my art room/ office to myself in over six years. For over six years it has been a storage room for the family as various projects have been going on. As of today, those projects were completed, floors finished, things moved out, my stuff unpacked and put back onto my shelves and cleaned up. I now have a place to call my own in this house. Now all the places I have all my little projects going on will finally have a home. So, now I can start cleaning up the little clutter I have going on in each room. I started in the living and dinning room. It is nice to walk in there and see those rooms the way they are suppose to be. Next I will tackle the computer room where I have stashed a lot of my recipes.

I also have been busy with my 12 Step Bible Study. We are on the last book and should finish by the end of October !!!! This will give me some more time on line when we finish. It's been a long year and I am ready for the rest.

I will be participating in the Celebrate Recovery kids program starting in Jan. There is much planning and preparing for that, but not a lot after that once the program actually starts from what I can tell. It's mostly prep work that will repeat each year and can be passed on day from worker to worker with some variances. This won't keep me as busy as I have been.

My food planning has been hurt because of all of this and so has my eating. I have finally realized what working woman must go through, and I stay home ! Now I see why sometimes you have to keep your meals simple. That's what I am having to do. This also helps the budget. I am learning also how to stretch out meals to. Having to cut back on calories actually helps here. With my husband also watching his weight, he no longer wants huge dinners now. So I can use the left overs for his lunches now and not worry what to prepare for him the next day. I can even get real exact on groceries as I know how much a recipe will make since we eat proper portions from each recipe. In other words I can plan on there being a certain amount of left overs because we aren't going back for seconds. This is helping the food budget now too. I finally am getting better at keeping to a food budget.

When my husband first told me I only had so much money each month, I panicked and thought I could never keep to that budget and eat healthy. It helps that I found that eating vegetarian a few nights each week is helpful. It cuts down on the cost and is healthy too. Some fish like Tilapia is cheap and quite good too and is a pleasant change from the constant chicken barrage we eat around here. I noticed that fresh vegetables are not that much more expensive than frozen, but you have to know how to cook frozen veggies to make them taste good. We can now tolerate frozen spinach, corn, and green beans. This helps on cost when I can't go fresh.

I make my own salad mixes, don't care for those pre-packaged salad mixes. I think they are of poor quality and don't think they are any cheaper than making your own salad. I pre chop up scallions, red and yellow peppers, celery, and put them in individual containers. I found they will stay fresh for five or six days this way. When I go to make my salad, I just mix the different blend of lettuce I want with the already cut up veggies. I also use shredded up carrots and seeded tomatoes I cut up fresh each day. I make a blend of Balsamic Vinegar an oil and put it into a bottle, and walla ! Easy to fix salad, easy to poor salad dressing. Just poor your amount... My husband knows he can come in and make his own salad, just put together some lettuce and add the veggies, then pour his dressing. Just like a fast food restaurant. This is how I have been saving money. I do the same thing with breakfast food and lunch fixens and snacks for my hubby. I found out if they are prepared and easy to put together, he will eat them and take them to work. Making trail mix was cheaper than buying it.

Yea, I saw a recipe in the news paper that was similar to mine for trail mix. Mine is beef jerky, dried cranberries, walnuts or pecans. The newspaper used beef jerky, peanuts, raisins, M%Ms. They might have also used almonds. 1/2 cup each. cut into bits. 2 tbs a serving about 190 cals a serving more than that if you use the candy ( 220 per serving )

enough mumbling tonight. The trail mix is good. I liked mine, I haven't tried the newspaper's. I use natural beef or turkey jerky that has no msg or preservatives. Those are more expensive but worth it. They are also less calories.

Talk to everyone later.