Meal Plan: Week 4

 

Cadbury mini eggs.  They are my downfall this time of year.  Once you start, it’s just so hard to stop!

For the week ahead, I’m avoiding the Easter aisles 🙂 Back to the fruits and veggies.

Breakfast

  • Smoothies (Go check out Weelicious for smoothie ideas. She just put out a smoothie project sheet that is amazing!)

Lunch

  • Buddha Bowl
  • Creamy Avocado and White Bean Wrap http://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/252442/creamy-avocado-white-bean-wrap/

Dinner

 

I’m working on a post about how I meal plan and grocery shop.  I try to keep it simple and easy to manage during the week.  I’ll show you how I use Pinterest and Hannaford To Go to make it as painless as possible 😉

 

Meal Plan: Week 3

From Grandbaby Cakes

The last couple of weeks have flown by and my clean eating goal has been much easier to stick to this time around than in the past.  I think that allowing myself a couple of “cheats” a week has made it more attainable.  I can say no to a cookie during the week because I know that I can have a small bowl of Ben and Jerry’s on the weekend.  I work hard to stay within the guidelines 90% of the time, so my 10% of “cheat” food has to be worth it!

As my meal plans show, I have kept it pretty simple and repetitive as well.  If I have to spend all day in the kitchen or rethink what I’m having for lunch every day, I would be likely to grab a bag of goldfish out of convenience.   I don’t mind eating the same thing during the day and mixing it up at dinner time.  Convenience is key!

Breakfast

  • Smoothies
  • Chia-Coconut pudding with berries (made with toasted coconut almond milk)

Lunch

  • Chicken salad wrap with walnuts, dried cranberries and lettuce
  • Leftovers

Dinner

From Paleo Running Mama

Renovating East Street

When we purchased the house on East Street, it was unoccupied, unheated and outdated.  The downstairs was functional, but the upstairs needed some modification.  Bad layout, beat up floors and walls, gold ceiling fans and dark woodwork. What’s not to love?!?

 

 

 

 

 

We decided to change the layout of the second floor, shifting around closets and bathrooms, to create two bedrooms, an attached master bath and a (very!) small powder room across from the kids’ bedroom.  The downstairs layout remained the same, with a living room, dining room, office, kitchen, half bathroom, laundry area and a mudroom/storage space.  We also decided to replace the forced hot water baseboards with kick space heaters in the upstairs to allow for more wall space for furniture.

Demo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The interior walls were removed upstairs, insulation was blown into the exterior walls, the plaster was strapped and the new walls were framed in.  We stole some space from the boys’ room to create a closet in the master and reoriented the bathroom to avoid another shower in the knee-wall space.  We also layed down new subfloor through out the upstairs.

The one thing that we decided to hire out was the sheet rocking and mudding and it was worth every penny!  Within 4 days, the upstairs was ready for paint.

For the boys’ room, we decided to go with light gray with a navy accent wall. The master was painted a blue/green and the bathrooms were painted a warm gray.  Dark wood laminate was put down throughout the bedrooms,  and in the bathrooms we used a matching vinyl plank.

The master bath was small, but we devoted a lot of space and time to a beautiful tiled shower with a bench.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the downstairs, we added insulation between the living room and the porch, retreaded the stairs, painted the walls and the trim work and layed the same dark wood laminate.  The downstairs “bedroom” did not have a closet and contained the entrance to the basement, so we turned it into an office.

My husband took on the task of building a sliding bookcase that would conceal the entrance to the basement.

The kitchen cabinets were in great shape and fairly new, so we just added a backslash, replaced the appliances and covered the linoleum with stick-on, grout-able tiles.

The finished and listed house:

We were sad to leave the house and the neighborhood, but we were moving on to a bigger home, with more space to grow (and a lot more projects to complete)!

Meal Plan: Week 2

Breakfast

Lunch

  • Chicken salad made with almonds, dried cranberries and mayo in a wrap with lettuce
  • Leftovers
  • Buddha bowl (rice with roasted veggies and an egg)

Dinner

My snacks this week will be apple slices with almond butter, “cutie” oranges and guacamole with sweet potato chips.  Check out my Healthy Eating Pinterest board for more ideas and links to recipes!

Real Estate Investing-The Beginning

Real Estate can not be lost or stolen nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care it is about the safest investment in the world. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Our journey into real estate investing began with the purchase of a foreclosure that we intended to keep as our primary residence.  We had bought our first home as an estate sale in 2005 and had pretty much ripped it down to the studs and built it over.  It was a wonderful home, but we had outgrown the yard and were leery of living on a fairly busy road with 3 active boys.  We had tried to sell it a couple of times with no luck.  The market was slow and we didn’t want to walk away with no money.  We found the foreclosure nearby, on a dead end street with a town-owned field and hiking trails bordering it.  We decided to go for it!

We lived in our first home while renovating the foreclosure.  When we moved in October of 2014, we rented out our first home to a couple that we knew from our childrens’ school.  We settled into our new home, while enjoying the cash flow from renting.  The tenants were reliable and treated the house like it was their own.

Lucas sledding off the porch of our first home

After about 9 months of living in our second home, we realized that it was just too small for our family.  The boys were all sharing a room and, while it was working fine, we knew that it would eventually become a problem.  We found a much larger fixer-upper in our favorite neighborhood, so we bought it and listed the now-renovated foreclosure.  The renovated foreclosure

We sold the foreclosure soon after listing.   That meant that we had cash from selling the foreclosure to fix up our new home and we had an stream of income coming in each month from our rental.  We realized that real estate investing, rentals and rehab were a way for us to achieve financial freedom.  It wasn’t easy or “passive” in any way but we were learning from our mistakes and educating ourselves online and with books and webinars.

Next time…another rental property!

Meal Plan: Week 1

On February 3rd of last year, I completed my first Whole 30.  If you haven’t heard of the program, it is a month long “reset” that eliminates dairy, grains, legumes, alcohol and sugar of any kind.  It emphasizes eating whole foods and really allows you to focus in on why you are eating what you are eating and how it makes you feel.  It was a great experience for me and I felt great by the end of the 30 days.  However, over the next year, I fell back into old habits, especially during the holiday season.  Nightly drinks and ice cream became the norm and my sugar cravings  were back in full force!

I have decided to jump back on the bus, with some modifications to (hopefully!) make the changes longer lasting.  I am allowing myself a teaspoon of maple syrup in my coffee, one serving of healthy grains a day, one treat meal a week and a drink on the weekend.  Planning out the week makes it easier for me to stay on track.

Grab and go snacks that follow the “rules” are hard to find, so a little planning before I get hungry is important!  I try to prep some snacks on Sundays that I can have ready during the week, like hard boiled eggs with prosciutto, homemade Larabars or apple slices with almond butter.  I also keep lots of flavored seltzer water on hand to drink.

Here are my week one plans!

Breakfast

Lunch

  • Chicken salad wraps, made with dried cranberries and walnuts, with apple slices and sweet potato chips
  • Dinner leftovers

Dinner

  • Crockpot roast with balsamic and Dijon mustard, carrots and potatoes, served on top of riced cauliflower (http://www.thewickednoodle.com/chuck-roast/)
  • Carne Asada tacos with guacamole, lettuce and salsa
  • Pulled pork stuffed sweet potatoes with cole slaw
  • Buddha bowls: roasted brussel sprouts, red peppers, onions, butternut squash, red cabbage and potatoes served over rice with a fried egg and sesame ginger vinaigrette
  • Crispy chicken stew with artichokes, capers and olives on rice (http://stupideasypaleo.com/2015/12/19/crispy-chicken-stew-lemon-artichokes-capers-olives-recipe/)