I worked for about 4 hours today. DH was home from work today. So we spent the afternoon together. I love spending time with him during the day during the week. Our goal is to one day both work from home together.

I tried a new recipe today. I made mini chicken pot pies. They were pretty good! The recipe is so easy. I cooked chicken breasts. Once the chicken was done, I shredded it. I also seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper, and herbs de provence. Then I mixed it with 1 can cream of chicken soup. You can add peas and carrots but I did not have any. Take a muffin pan and spray with non stick spray. Open a can of biscuits. Put one uncooked biscuit at the bottom of each muffin can. Press each biscuit down and at least half way up each individual muffin can. Put the chicken/cream of chicken mixture in each biscuit. I topped each with a little shredded cheddar cheese. I cooked it for about 15/20 minutes. It was so good!

DH and I have eaten out way too much in the past. I am changing that. Plus it is not healthy to eat fast food all the time. So I am trying to come up with quick and creative recipes to cook on week nights. I do love the traditional dinner and usually try to cook a good meal on Sundays. We are also going to start eating together at the table. We don't have any kids yet so it is easy for us to just plop down in front of the tv with dinner. But that is a habit i want to change too. When I was growing up my parents always ate breakfast together every morning before the kids got up. We always had a family dinner in the evenings at the dinner table. Those are traditions I want my husband and I to have together too, especially after we have kids. Breakfast every morning may be a little harder. But maybe we can aim to have breakfast together at least one morning during the week and on the weekends.

Another great thing about meals at home: we save a lot of money. That's always good!

I am so glad today is over. I'm actually glad this whole week is over. I was dreading this week last Sunday. So now that it is over I can breathe a sigh of relief. I had a lot of extra work this past week. I try to have one or two days off a week. But I worked everyday, all day everyday this week. We are still getting the car worked on. I have no idea how long our car is going to be in the shop. I don't think I will ever use this mechanic again. I'm not even mad about the $700+ that we will have to pay him. My problem is that he does not communicate. He puts in a $150 part charges us $200 for labor and then tells us what he did to the car. He never even asked us if he could put the part in! And then when you call his shop he won't pick up. If he says he'll call you back the next day, he won't call you back for two days! Meanwhile we're calling trying to figure out what's going on! It's so frustrating! What makes it worse is that he is a family friend. I feel like he has taken us for granted. Hopefully we can get through this without it ending on bad terms. But I will never use him again.

DH and I had dinner plans for tonight but they fell through. So we got take out and I am doing laundry at my parents' house. We need to buy a new washer and dryer. I was actually about to start saving for it. This weekend I am thinking about slow cooking bbq pork or slow cooking spaghetti sauce in the crock pot. I'll see what DH wants. He'll probably want spaghetti. We're are supposed to go out to lunch with my Aunt and Uncle on Sunday. I'm really looking forward to that. It's been so long since we've spent some time with them.

Well time to check on laundry...

February was a blur to me. It went by so fast! I did not do well updating my blog during February. Hopefully March will be better. I did calculate my savings for last month. We we able to save a total of $900. I still want to increase that number but I feel good about what we did save. We are going on vacation for 10 days at the end of March. We are paying cash only for this vacation. So no credit will be used. I've been paying our credit card in full every month. So it feels good to not have any credit card debt.

This month we have a little more to save towards vacation. But we will have no problem saving the rest of the money we need. I've been cooking more at home. We've been able to save a lot of money by doing that. And I have "discovered" freezing food. In the past I would cook a good size meal and put leftovers in the refrigerator, hoping to eat it later. Many times we would forget the leftovers. It would eventually get thrown away. But now I've been freezing our leftovers and our freezer is packed! I like that I can come home and warm up food without spending a lot of time preparing it.

On Monday I finalized my financial goals for 2011. I would post them now but I left them at home. So I will post them later. I received a $100 bonus from one of my clients on Monday. So since it was money I was not expecting to get that $100 immediately went to long term savings. Any unexpected money goes straight to savings. I don't even think about it, I just do it. If I start to think about it I'll rationalize a way to spend it. So I just "blindly" put it in savings. Out of sight, out of mind :-)

I'm still working on the to do list that I made for this month. This week I'm going to try to finish that spare room. It shouldn't take more than half a day to do. I have time since I have some time off. My pantry shouldn't take long either. I almost finished the pantry last week. I bought a 5 shelf open bookcase for the kitchen. I have a big, long kitchen. So it will help me stay organized. I keep my spices, potatoes, fresh fruit, flour, sugar, etc on it. It looks really neat in my kitchen. I took advantage of Kroger's sale on vegetables recently. I bought over 20 packages of frozen vegetables at 88 cents each. Plus I am buying 2 or 3 meats every time I go to the grocery store for lunch items for the week. So my freezer is looking pretty good. My goal is to get my freezer and pantry well stocked and then maintain it. I don't want to get super low on food anymore. I find when I do that, I'm more tempted to buy fast food. My mother in law freezes everything. It's just her but her freezer is always packed. So she inspired me to be more conscious of stocking up more. She always has food to cook or reheat.

My DH and I were talking this week and are planning on going to the beach in March. So we are going to save up for it and pay cash. We'll probably stay for a week. Our last vacation was a couple of months ago to Orlando. It was nice but we were constantly on the go every day going to amusement parks. So I'm ready to just relax and do nothing on the next vacation.

I have had a great Saturday. My house was clean because I had it cleaned on Thursday. I have someone else clean my house....for free! I don't pay for my weekly cleaning services. I will explain later. So I did not have to worry about household chores this weekend. For dinner tonight we only spent $4.35. We had Fettuccine Alfredo. I have started making my financial goals for 2011. So I will be working on that for the next few days. We also will be choosing our health benefits for next year this month. We have to decide by November 19th. We are seriously considering just paying a higher deductible instead of having low co-pays. Hmmm...decisions...