Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Unshopping Unplanned Menu For Today - Day 3

As if all that I've been juggling in the past few weeks hasn't been enough, I've added a little home re-model to my plate. (I'm a glutton for punishment.) Whenever my kids are gone to summer camp with Grandma, I like to take on a house project since they aren't underfoot to BUG me. The looming project that we've been talking about has been to move the master bedroom into our basement rec room, put our teen daughter in the old master so she can have her own bathroom, and split the two little boys up into their own bedrooms so all four kids have their own space.

And to do it cheap and in 4 days.

Let me just set the stage.....
  • wood paneling
  • pink carpet in a boy room
  • broken baseboard heaters
  • no closet in the rec room

And I won't settle for having my bedroom oasis look like a 70's reject. So it's a serious Trading Spaces week around here. But with a WAY smaller budget and an already stressed out woman. I'm looking forward to posting before and after photos when it's all finished.

So when I woke up this morning I knew I better stick something in the crock pot for dinner or we'd be tempted to spend the remodel budget on fast food.

Today's Unshopping Unplanned Menu looked like this...

Cinnamon Toast and applesauce for breakfast



Lunch was sandwiches and grapes



And dinner was creative. I had some stew meat in the freezer so I tossed it in the crock pot with potatoes, carrots, 3 cloves of fresh garlic, 1/3 bottle of red wine that company left at our house a few weeks ago, water, onion soup mix, salt, pepper, and a bay leaf. It turned into some yummy beef stew.


Not bad for a cupboard-scrounging meal. And if you're just tuning in, I decided that grocery shopping was overrated this week and I just wasn't gonna do it. Instead I'm shopping from my cupboards to see what kind of meals I can come up with.

6 comments:

Sarah said...

I went grocery shopping today.

And the entire time I was doing it, I was thinking, "I have plenty of food in my cupboards, WHY am I spending MORE money?!"

But it didn't stop me. Eighty bucks later...sigh...

You're rockin' it. Way to go!

Katy said...

You're amazing!!! All the best for the room moving, I don't envy you, but look forward to seeing the results.

Anonymous said...

Yes ... please do post before / after photos of the reno ... can't wait!!

Rhonda said...

I once dyed pink carpet using navy blue Rit dye in re-used Windex bottles.
It was very cheap, took a few hours - the results were not perfect but it was much better and was all I could afford at the time.

Monica said...

WOW!! I cant wait to see the before and after pictures. I ran across your blog a few weeks back. And just wanted to let you know what an inspiration you are to me.. Thank you so much. I haven't moved up to the menu planning yet but Im working on it!

Chef Owings said...

just went thru this myself. I ripped up the carpet and painted the floor with paint left in basement, coated it with 2 coats of poly.

I never had a closet, shadow box is the most I ever had when growing up..shadow box closet is a space beside the chimney that you can hang clothes in but have to turn the hanger sideways to hang it up. a lot of them just have pegs like in the 1800s-1900s.

I use a book shelf( no dresser either) with cardboard boxes as the drawers.I then nailed together some wood to make supports..they looked like a clothes line pole with a fake Christmas tree base and then put clothes line on it to hold my hanging clothes, Covered it with a flat sheet. We don't heat bedrooms, nothing unusual to have water turn to ice in the drinking glasses beside the bed. have plenty of quilts....I did 3 rooms for around $200 including new sheets and pillows. Love to see what you come up with. I need new ideas LOL