Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Gratituesday: Just What We Needed

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I have been craving sunshine like crazy! Maybe you can relate? Those of us who live in colder areas have been deprived of warm rays and Vitamin D for quite a few months. Just about the time I thought I might go stir crazy for lack of sunshine – God gave us a hint of summer!

It hit the 70’s outside both yesterday and today. We opened up our door and curtains, brightening up our house with sunshine. We set up a table outside to eat our meals. We took our math book and read-alouds outside. We put on shorts and short sleeved shirts to get as much sun on our skin as possible. We pretty much didn’t come into the house all afternoon. The warm weather and sunshine was too hard to resist.

Tonight we fired up the grill to make Italian Chicken (Let’s Do This eCourse, Lesson 1  ). Mmm, that grill and the chicken smelled so good! Don’t worry, that little chunk of chicken you see on my plate was just my first helping. :)  —>

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The entire day was glorious. It was just what we needed. Maybe, just maybe, we can all survive the remaining few weeks of crazy winter-to-spring weather. Praise God for sunshine!

Now your turn. Share what you’re thankful for!  Leave a comment on this post letting us know how God is working in your life. If you’ve written a blog post about what you’re thankful for, leave the link in the comments so we can visit your blog to read about it. We love sharing and reading about God’s blessings!

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Do You Use the Cash Envelope System?

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Set your budget. Pull out cash each month. Separate it into envelopes. Spend only cash, according to the set amount allotted to each envelope category. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Voila, you’ve stayed within your budget. It’s an awesome budgeting strategy. Matt and I love the idea behind the Cash Envelope System. Great as it is, I have to admit, we are cash envelope rebels.

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Is it possible to have a well managed household, avoid credit card debt, and stay within your budget even without putting cash into envelopes each month? I’m happy to share that it is very possible. It takes discipline, for sure, but a cash-only policy is not the only way to have a well managed budget.

Let me stop here to say that if you are new to budgeting and a cash envelope system is helping you get and stay on track – you keep at it!  Do what works for you! But if it’s not working for you, or if the idea of pulling out cash, dividing it into envelopes, and paying with cash everywhere you go is preventing you from budgeting wisely – allow me to introduce the lovely Online Envelope Budgeting system from BudgetFocus.

Seeing this online envelope option on the BudgetFocus website is what really pushed me over the edge to love what they offer. They agree that assigning a dollar amount to each spending category each month is the way to go. But they also understand that cash isn’t always a convenient option. Sometimes swiping a card at the grocery store saves time. Paying for gas outside at the pump instead of heading inside to pay with cash is super helpful when you have little ones in the car (or when it’s freezing outside). Shopping online can save both time and money – but you can’t use cash when you do this.

So how can we use the envelope system without cash? Once you have an account set up at BudgetFocus, you simply input your dollar amount into each “Envelope.” As you spend from each envelope, you transfer that money to keep track of where you are for the month. It is so easy!!

budget focus envelopes

I give a huge thumbs up to BudgetFocus for creating this simple online tool for all of us. This way, we create a workable budget. We set up envelopes. We keep track of spending. We transfer money from one envelope to another as we spend. We stay on track, we don’t overspend, we save time and effort, and we are in control of our money!

Thank you, BudgetFocus, for keeping this process simple and workable for us. Have you signed up for your 14 day free trial yet? I think you will love all BudgetFocus offers as much as I do.

So tell me – do you use a cash envelope system? Does that work for you?

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Basketball, Daylight Savings Time, and a Menu Plan. Wait, What Menu Plan?

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This has been such a fun weekend! We’ve been in Kansas since Thursday night with our homeschool basketball teams at our final tournament.

This tournament is always such a blessing. The fellowship with families on our team, plus families and friends we get to meet up with while we’re there is priceless. Having hundreds of homeschool athletes together in one place makes for a wild and crazy weekend. It’s a highlight of our year. We watched so much basketball this weekend, I was dreaming basketball last night. As if the weekend of games wasn’t exhausting enough. :)

After little sleep, hundreds of miles, and loads of basketball games, I’m not sure if/when I’ll get around to creating and posting a menu plan to share. Instead, I thought I’d share some photos of the weekend. By the way, who decided that daylight savings time should coincide with a night we were getting home in the wee hours? Ah well…

Here’s our girl’s team. They played better than I’ve ever seen them play – going up against some super tough teams and holding their own. So proud of them and grateful that these young ladies are in our lives!

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Here is our boys’ team, just before the tournament started Friday. Asa is #23; Justus is #32. Asa got a lot of playing time this season. Justus is an eighth grader, so this was a big learning year for him. His time is coming. :)

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All three games our boys played were nail biters. They have got to stop doing that to us. Parents and fans can only handle so much stress, you know? Phew.

God bless the younger siblings of these athletes. They’ve been dragged to game after game after game – almost every weekend since the beginning of January (and a few in Nov. and Dec. too). They have so much fun playing with each other on the sidelines during games.

At the end of the day Saturday, our boys played in the championship game in their division. We are so proud of them! They played hard, worked together better than ever, and pulled out the win against a tough team. It was so much fun watching them work as a team to pull out the win.

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Here’s Asa receiving his 1st place medal:

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And our entire boys’ team posing after the championship game:

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Now we’re home again, catching up on work and laundry, and getting ready for a new week. Praise God for all the fun and friends He gives us!

Just for giggles, I’ll leave you with this gem. We went out for dinner Friday night, and found this among the drink choices. Read it carefully:

natural flavors

Awesome marketing. “Naturally flavored with other natural flavors but probably not the ones you would expect so we would rather not post them here. Instead we’ll print words that don’t really make sense, along with a delightful picture of some fresh raspberries. Drink me.”

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Our Light and Momentary Troubles

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Rarely do our trials feel light or momentary. We know in our hearts that God is in control, but living peacefully in that truth is hard when we are focused on what is seen on this earth. After all, much of what we experience on this earth is challenging.

While praying for some friends of ours, God led me to this passage in 2 Corinthians this week. I was so encouraged by these words from Paul. Truth:  We are being renewed daily. We fix our eyes on Jesus, knowing that our eternal glory outweighs everything we struggle through on this earth.

Praise God for His truth and promises! Knowing my tendency to rely on myself and on the things that are seen, I printed this verse out so that I could post it on my fridge and be reminded of these truths.

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I created a printable of this passage to share with you.

Download the Being Renewed Passage for your encouragement.

Hold on to truth!

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Lilla Rose Sale – Ends Midnight March 8

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I’m late in letting you know about this – so you’ll have to hurry to catch this!

The Lilla Rose Flexi-of-the-Month, a hummingbird named “Flying Jewel,” has finally arrived, and is on sale at 15% off. In addition, specially marked items are 10% off. Be sure to check it out!

march celtic sale

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Prepare Your Veggies For Quick Cooking (and a day in the life, sort of)

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You might read this little time saving tip and say, “Hey, it takes the same amount of time to prep veggies no matter when you do it. This isn’t a time saving tip at all.” And yet, in an effort to save us all from walking wearily into our kitchens at 5:10, with no motivation to peel a carrot, much less prepare an entire healthy meal – I felt this was worth mentioning. While you still have to get this work done sometime during the day, at least this does save a few minutes of effort at meal time.

Following this simple method is always so helpful to me. My day is a big mixture of schooling, working at the computer, doing household chores, cooking in the kitchen, and keeping up with the kids’ activities. I often hop around from math, to mixing up a recipe, to history lessons, to answering emails, to phonics practice, to putting lunch into the oven, to helping with an algebra question, to answering the door, to responding to potential website advertisers. You can see why I always give people a deer in the headlights look when they say, “So what does your schedule look like?” Schedule? I don’t have one. I just work and parent and parent and work all day. I love it. Every day is different, yet it is very much the same. The kids know what they need to get done. Matt and I know what we need to get done. Our routine is un-scheduled.

Yet one thing is pretty constant about our days:  From about 3:00 to about 5:00 in the afternoons, the kids take turns having their “play Minecraft on the computer time” while Mom tries to write something that includes helpful information and complete sentences. Therefore, section 4 line 8 of the Coppinger Household Rules Handbook states:  “Do not interrupt Mom while she is in writing mode unless one of your brothers just blew up.” Since “Do not blow up your brother” is printed in large, bold letters at the beginning of section 2, I think we can all agree that there should be no reason to interrupt Mom while she is in writing mode. Okay then.

I tell you all of this life in the Coppinger house information for one reason:  As I pull out of writing mode and back into the hungry people will need to eat soon mode, I find that I am slightly weary and brain dead from thinking, making decisions, and working all day. I do not feel like cutting broccoli into cute little trees. I am not excited about preparing cauliflower for roasting. I do not want to do anything in the kitchen but the bare minimum. This is where all my Getting Ahead in the Kitchen practices are invaluable. The kids get to come in and help get dinner on the table (their reward for not blowing themselves up during my writing time). And since I’ve already prepped the veggies earlier in the day, all we have to do is roast them, stir fry them, or steam them. Hallelujah!

Prep Your Veggies for Easy Cooking

So the Eat Healthy, Save Time tip of the day is this:  Sometime while you have ten minutes during the day, prepare vegetables for steaming, roasting, stir frying, eating raw – or however you’re going to serve them at dinnertime. Cover and put them into the fridge for later. (Hooray for Pyrex bowls with lids!)  Pull them out and cook them quickly for dinner. Not home much during the day? I’d suggest doing some prep in the evening before bed. The next day, after you get home from a day at work, school, or running errands – pull out your prepared veggies to cook with your meal.

Prepping veggies doesn’t take long, and it isn’t difficult. But it is something that we have to be intentional about – otherwise we’ll likely skip the veggies…again. Don’t do it. Focus on the veggies (section 13 line 4).  Prepare them when you have a few spare minutes for effortless, brainless dinner prep later. Then, not only have the kids avoided blowing themselves up, our bogged down brains have not exploded either. It’s a win-win.

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Black Bean Chicken Nachos – A Last Minute Meal

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Where does the time go? My kids are not babies anymore, I’ve been married for almost 20 years, and just last week, I realized that it was almost lunchtime and I had forgotten to put the chicken into the crockpot. Yes, time flies after breakfast. And when you’re happily married, raising kids, and all that.

I have no advice on keeping time from moving so quickly. I can, however, give you an idea for a quick meal for when you haven’t managed to prepare anything in advance. It all starts with frozen chicken. This is because not only did you not start lunch or dinner on time, you also forgot to thaw the chicken. For all of you perpetually prepared people out there, don’t worry – thawed chicken will also work in this recipe. For the rest of us, we rejoice in the fact that frozen chicken and a cold crock pot does not prevent us from putting a great meal on the table in a short amount of time.

This recipe is a result of me realizing at 11:30 one whirlwind morning that while I had been planning to serve Chicken Tacos for lunch that day, not only was the chicken still frozen, I didn’t have any tortillas prepared or purchased. Without thinking too hard, I chucked the frozen chicken into a saucepan on the stove, dumped on salsa, and hoped for the best. I covered the pan and turned the heat on low. Within an hour, my chicken thawed, cooked in delicious salsa flavors, and was ready for lunch – which we had with chips instead of tortillas. It turned out so delicious, I decided we would make it this way again and again. This recipe turned out to be a “six out of six” which means that all six of our family members loved this. A brainless, effortless, healthy recipe that we all liked? Score!

Black Bean Chicken Nachos

Black Bean Chicken NachosYum

Black Bean Chicken Nachos - A Last Minute Meal
 
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Author:
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • 2 cups salsa
  • 2 cups cooked black beans (or one can of prepared beans, if you've - you know - not remembered to soak and cook them ahead of time while you were busy not thawing your chicken...)
  • tortilla chips, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, and other nacho toppings of your choice
Instructions
  1. Place chicken and salsa in a medium-sized saucepan.
  2. Cover and cook over medium-low heat for 20 minutes (if chicken is thawed) or 45-50 minutes (if chicken is frozen).
  3. Use a fork and knife to shred chicken and stir it back into the salsa.
  4. Stir in black beans, and continue cooking until beans are hot - about five minutes more.
  5. Serve with shredded cheese and other nacho toppings of your choice.
  6. Scoop up Black Bean Chicken nachos with tortilla chips and congratulate yourself for throwing together such a wonderful meal with such minimal effort.

Then, before you forget, get out the meat for tomorrow’s meals so it can be thawed and ready to use. Not being prepared certainly worked for this recipe, but let’s not push it.

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My Newlywed Budgeting Memories – And How BudgetFocus Can Be a Blessing To All

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It was our very first year of marriage. At the wise ages of 20 and 21, we began to navigate the world of doing whatever it was that married people did with their money. Seriously, I had no idea. I knew how to shop for clothes on the clearance racks, buy off-brand peanut butter, and write a check when the phone bill came. Neither of us were big spenders, and because of that, in my mind, we would be just fine when it came to finances. We would simply pay our bills, buy on sale, avoid going out to eat much, and live happily ever after.

Matt, on the other hand, has always enjoyed crunching numbers. He’s also always been good at seeing the big picture when it comes to money. I will always be grateful for the day a few weeks after our wedding that he called me into the living room so he could show me the budget he was putting together for us. We knew how much (how little rather) was coming in each month, so we needed to figure out how to make it stretch.

Now if it was up to me, we would have had about six line items in that budget:  Rent, Insurance, Gas, Food, Phone, Utilities

Oh it’s a good thing I married Matt. Hello, Laura? Ever heard of medical bills? Car tags? Gift giving? Trash service? A savings account, perhaps? Christmas gifts certainly weren’t on my radar. It was only September, after all. We only paid car tags once per year, so why add that to the budget? Our cars were running fine at that very moment, so why think about car repair money? And apparently, it never occurred to me that we would need money to purchase those great clothing bargains I’d find on the clearance racks. Big budget picture? I hadn’t a clue.

Matt, on the other hand, had a line item for everything and then some. A whole new world opened up to me on that 1994, first year of marriage, budget spread sheet of ours. Since we knew we needed to pay for car tags in November, we came up with a conservative guestimated total amount needed, divided by 12, then set that money aside each month so it would be available in November. In order to have money for Christmas gifts, we set aside a certain amount aside each month to be used for gifts. Just in case one of our cars was to break down, we set aside money each month in our budget for repairs. And on it went.

I thought Matt was a genius. He just thought it all made sense. And he thought I was cute for thinking he was a genius. Ah, newlyweds…

More than anything – even though we had very little income at the time – I appreciate that our budget gave me financial peace and security. The income was small, but we never had to worry about where the money would come from for expenses because we had broken everything down and put a name on it. We never spent money “just because we had it.” Nope, that money was allotted for something else – not for random spending.

This practice has proved itself to be very effective during our 19+ years of marriage. Having a line-item for each spending category really takes the pressure off knowing how the bills are going to be paid each month. It has meant that we’ve said no to many expenditures through the years in order to be disciplined and stick with the budget. It has showed us that God always takes care of us, no matter what the income level.

So let’s talk about budgets, financial security, and making it all happen easily. Seriously, budgeting can be fun – even if you aren’t a newlywed. :)

I’ve recently been introduced to BudgetFocus, an online budgeting site that takes all the difficulty away from budgeting. See there, over on my sidebar, how they are now my top sponsor? We’ll be working together, helping you get your budget on track, because that’s a major part of heavenly homemaking. I really love how BudgetFocus breaks everything down, creates line-items for everything, takes all the pressure off, and provides a simple way for you to manage your family’s household expenses.

ad3Truly, no matter how much or how little you have, you can prosper. Prospering doesn’t mean you’re rich and have everything you want (from a worldly perspective). Prospering means you can breathe easy, trust God to take care of you, and let your budget help take away financial stress. BudgetFocus is all set up to help you with this. I very much encourage you to give it a try.

I’ll be sharing more about BudgetFocus soon as we continue to work together to help you achieve financial peace. For today, I highly encourage you (whether you already have a budget set up or not) to head over to BudgetFocus and get all set up with their 14 day free trial. Signing up just takes a few seconds. They don’t ask you to give them a credit card or any other personal information. Simply let BudgetFocus help you walk through the basic steps to put together a workable budget.

Get started with your free trial.  Right away, you’ll be given a free eBook on How to Make a Spending Plan and Stick to it. Free trial, free eBook – you can’t go wrong!

Happy budgeting! (Seriously, it can be happy. You’re in charge of your money – it’s not in charge of you.)

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Vitacost is Offering FREE Coconut Oil With Purchase (Plus Tons of Other Great Sale Prices!)

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I’ve looked through the Vitacost site thoroughly today and found many items I use regularly. I’m loving this sale!! (If you are a new customer with Vitacost, you can receive an additional $10 off too! Info at the bottom of this post.)

~ Buy any of the products on this page, receive a free 4-ounce container of Organic Coconut Oil. It’s a lovely bonus with your purchase. You’ll see on that sale page that they offer several sizes of coconut oil, both virgin (coconut flavor) and refined (flavorless).  Expired

~ Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips are only $3.27 right now. I love these because they are soy free. They are also dairy free if that is a need for you. This is a great time to stock up on chocolate chips. Why? Because if you order them in the summer, they might melt while they are shipped to you. Ask me how I know.

~ Spectrum Refined Coconut Oil is only $5.99 for a 14 ounce jar. This price is less than the Vitacost brand mentioned above, so I’d go with this one and buy a Vitacost Virgin Coconut Oil for the above free coconut oil deal. I love having both virgin and refined on hand for different cooking/baking needs and preferences.

~ Spectrum Organic Palm Shortening is only $5.19 for a 24 ounce tub. Because this is made from palm oil, it is a very safe and healthy variety of shortening!

~ Farmer’s Market Organic Canned Pumpkin is $1.90 per can.

~ Rolled Oats are $3.49 for a two pound bag. Gluten Free Rolled Oats are just $3.99 for the same size.

The best news yet:  Are you a new customer to Vitacost? Sign up through my referral link and get $10 off your first order of $30 or more! Once you sign up, you’ll receive a coupon code to use on your first order, which will knock ten bucks off your total!

Shipping is free when you spend at least $49. It is also free if you purchase at least $25 of Vitacost brand products. Otherwise, shipping is a flat $4.99.

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Gratituesday: Shopping With Boys

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I used to love clothes shopping with my mom. We’d skip everything at the front of the store and head directly for the clearance racks. We’d find great bargains, which made the shopping so much more fun!

My four boys aren’t so much into shopping with me. When they were little, they hid in all the racks or tried to stand up in the cart, making my shopping experience more than a little bit stressful. As they got bigger, they just stood by the racks, bored out of their minds. “Do you like this shirt?” I’d ask. They’d answer with a blank stare. I gave up, deciding I’d just need to wait until they got married, then perhaps my daughters-in-law could go shopping with me.

But over the weekend, I actually experienced about twenty minutes of enjoyable Mother/Son shopping. (Yes, twenty minutes. Total. I know better than to push a good thing.)  We were in a city, and our oldest needed new indoor soccer shoes, so we briefly hit the mall.

We entered the athletic store, and saw that they had a total of two varieties of indoor soccer shoes. One pair was $55, the other $65. Not terrible for high quality shoes, it’s just that we have a lot of kids and they have a lot of feet and they play hard and it just all adds up. We told the salesman what we were looking for, and asked if these two varieties was all they had. He replied with a yes. And then as an afterthought he said, “Oh, except for whatever we have in the back on clearance. But those are for really big feet.” Um, hello? Have you seen my son’s feet? Big.  Show us the shoes!

Would you believe this? They had one pair of men’s indoor soccer shoes on clearance. One. And guess what size it was? Asa’s size. And guess how much it cost? Ten dollars. Seriously. Who has name brand, high quality shoes for a big footed boy for just 10 bucks? What a blessing. They fit perfectly. We were so excited.

That all happened within the first seven minutes. The rest of our time was spent at the clothing clearance racks I had found by the shoes. Everything was half off of the clearance price, which, if you can even believe it, got my two older boys excited about shopping with me. Long story short (20 minutes, remember?), we walked out of the store with a pair of shoes, two very nice hoodies, and a pair of high quality athletic shorts for less than the cost of the $55 shoes we had originally found when we walked in.

In conclusion: I shopped with two of my sons, and we all had fun. It may be a miracle. Let us all take a deep sigh and hold these memories in our hearts as they may never happen again.

Now your turn. Share what you’re thankful for!  Leave a comment on this post letting us know how God is working in your life. If you’ve written a blog post about what you’re thankful for, leave the link in the comments so we can visit your blog to read about it. We love sharing and reading about God’s blessings!

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