A Cookie Cutter Diva's Life

So being on the freezer meal kick has saved me a ton of money because I'm meal prepping a lot more in advance and using a lot more pantry items all at once on more then one meal that save! A few people have asked how I'm doing my budget so low and I wanted to give an example of what I did this month! This is my meal plan but not in the order of what we eat them of course. I just make the plan and it's what we are in the mood for. We do a few "Fend For Yourself" Nights which have been a wonderful thing for me and started when I returned to work about 2yrs ago and was so busy and so tired that some nights it was nice to just have a night off and fend for yourself rather than spending on eating out or getting junk food so much. We were bad about eating out a lot when I worked as we are during sports season. Which is a huge reason why I picked up the freezer meals! I loved loved loved crock pot meals because they were easy for those nights to have it ready when coming in late but I needed a change of pace and a variety! So a lot of these meals below I made with a lot of things I already had at home. I also use a lot of coupons too and break my meat down in smaller portions and use more "filler" items to cut on cost too.

Because I use a lot of coupons and I stock pile so I can only buy items when on sale or with coupons most all of these meals cost me roughtly $3 a meal! So it was more roughly about $75 but we will say under $100 to give or take some!

Fend for yourself nights are simply just that! You find what's in the house that you can cook and that's what you get! It might be as simple as chicken nuggets or pasta that night! The only night that didn't count was our eat out night of course! And Pizza is not an eat out night it's Dijornios with coupons lol


Most of these recipes have been posted and you can find them by searching in the search area on the right. If not ask me about it and I will post it!








1) Deluxe Chicken Casserole
2) Lasagna & Salad
3) Burritos & Rice
4) Steak Stir Fry On Rice
5) Chicken & Dumpling Stew
6) Lemon Pepper Chicken & Veggies
7) Spaghetti & Salad
8) Taco Bowls & Beans
9) Fajita Chicken Bake
10) Parmesan Crusted Chicken & Rice
11) Chicken & Tomato Pasta & Salad
12) Crock Pot BBQ Chicken & Veggies
13) Pizza Casserole
14) Teriyaki Chicken On Rice
15) Creamy Pasta Bake
16) Chili Mac
17) Chili
18) Pizza
19) Teriyaki Chicken On Rice
20) Creamy Pasta Bake
21) Chili Mac
22) Lasagna Roll Ups
23) Chicken Fried Chicken Patties & Rice
24) Chicken & Dumpling Stew
25) Burritos & Beans
26) Eat Out - Date Night
27) Chili Cheese Dogs & Fries
28) Fend For Yourself Night
29) Fend For Yourself Night
30) Fend For Yourself Night

Well this has been one fun interesting week for school needless to say! lol My husband even came home one day and had a nice BIG WTH are you teaching my 5yr old moment when she walked up to him and said "Today mommy showed us lots of no no spots and people pooping out babies!!!"

I had to explain that we were learning about women having larger pelvic areas and they said so they could have babies and she didn't understand because I was not able to have my babies the right way and they were cut from my stomach via c section and she thought I was lying that babies were delivered the other way so we watched a nice educational video lol I never had to explain this to the other two because TLC's baby story did that for me all on it's own and I walked in on them with their mouths dropped in front of the tv! They also went to all of my prenatal appointments so nothing was ever kept hidden. It's a fact of life! lol

Her art work for science this week..






So to top it off my 2nd grader then proceeds to tell my husband later that evening about how we are made of slime and our bodies are full of it! Of course this is not at all what I said but that's what the 2nd grader took from it and I got another mouth dropping reaction from my husband! What I said when we were learning about the digestive system was "Well, the inside walls of your stomach are covered in a thick layer of mucus and This mucus protects the walls of your stomach from the acid."

And to end my week up she proceeded to tell me while picking up a few things at the grocery story tonight really loud after coming out of the bathroom at Walmart "Mom!!!! My pee's the right color yellow because I drank all this water at the babysitters last night!!!" Gold help me.. lol



On the lighter side of things one of their art projects this week was getting to make little cupcakes and paint them with a really neat craft kit my youngest got for her birthday! They had so much fun with that and she was very excited to share it with her sister! I love when they get neat little stuff like that for their birthday!






I had an exciting weekend as well and was very anxious to weight in this weekend and see how I have been doing since trying to get back on track with the start of the New Year (isn't that when we all do it? lol ) I've been doing really good with exercising and calorie counting and I'm down 3lbs and 3 inches on my waist!!! So excited!! I don't ever expect to be super skinny again but if I could even lose 20lbs and 10 inches I would be on cloud 9!

I scored a $10 Walmart e gift card today when shopping when I picked up some batteries on y trip out to refresh my healthy snacks to keep me doing good so that was a huge plus for my night! I also scored the toy I've been eying up for the little one I nanny $25 off online this weekend!!


And my husband and I FINALLY got out for a date night for the first time since this summer thanks to some good timing finally and my best friend being so wonderful and taking my two youngest so we could have some time! We went to see the new Taken 3 movie and then headed out to the city to have dinner at Outback with a gift card given to him when he coached this last fall for soccer combined with a 15% off coupon!! Gotta love when you get to relax even more on date night with some goodies like that!