Moolah Monday - Groceries

I previously told you that our life schedule was changing.  We're now 1-week into our new schedule and overall I love it.  The best part about it is that my husband has taken it upon himself to step-up his game on being a dad and husband.  I mean big time.  I don't think the two are related, necessarily, but instead it's a coincidence in timing that makes this whole transition in our life just wonderful for mie at the moment.  In response, I'm trying to be very supportive of my husband as well as I know this change is major for him and has some not-so-great side effects for him that he's more than willingly taking on for the sake of the family.

He would tell you it's working for him too with all the extra cuddles from the kids he's receiving.  Last week I went to a focus group after work one night and he sent mie this picture.  Apparently after putting #10 to bed the kids all, on their own, joined him on the couch to cuddle and watch cartoons.

If you must know, I was happy for him but also wanted to punch him.  It is not cool that everything went so easy for him the first night he had them by himself.  Seriously...even Mr. Logan No Sleep went to bed on-time without fighting at all and was asleep before I got home.  But really I was happy for him or he wouldn't want to do it again!  


And yes, those are my stockings on the fireplace still hanging from Christmas.  And yes #9 is wearing Christmas PJs.  That's real life around here folks.


Back to the point of this post.

With the change we've had to figure out how to do some things differently in our schedule.  We used to go grocery shopping together mid-day on the weekends but that no longer works for us.  In anticipation of this change I decided a few weeks ago to start shopping 2 weeks at a time.  My thought was that this way I'd only have to take the kids with mie shopping 2x a month rather than 4 and maybe I'd also choose to buy less extras because I'd cut my chances down by half.  So far, only going shopping 2x per month (and still Costco weekly - for the tradition of it mainly) has worked out really well for us with Costco being a good shot at filling-in with fresh bananas and milk every week.  I have learned though that I need to find a different time to go.  Waiting until 6:30pm on Sunday night to head out with all the kids in tow was probably not the best choice of times, especially having to shop for 2 weeks worth which made it a looonnng shopping trip for all of us.

And, I have to say to the sweet lady who encouraged us at the store - thank you.  Except for one thing that was well meaning but not effective for us...she said "Just blink and they'll get older".  I wanted to say - NO!  They never get older!  They are always the same age.  We persistently have 1-2 year olds - they never get older we just start over with them every few months.  :)


As I was saying - my hypothesis was also that we'd spend less because we'd shop fewer times.  I believe we've found a winner with this strategy even though it's not necessarily the plan of hard-core couponers who shop when the deal is right.  Our plan is slightly different - we shop for what is right when we go shopping - meaning, we stock up on things that are a good deal but are shelf-stable when we're on our shopping trips and then try to minimize the cost of things we "need" when they aren't on sell but we need them.

For example, last night I purchased 10 boxes of health food Hamburger Helper.  That normally should have cost us $16.50 at this particular store.  Instead, it was on sale for a price of $10 and I had two coupons that saved us $1 each.  That meant we paid $8.00 and saved $8.50 off the regular price.  SCORE!  Will we eat all that in the next two weeks?  Not a chance - we will have hamburger helper ONCE in the next two weeks and I might decide to make 2 boxes of it to have leftovers for my lunches.  The rest will be good for a while. I also purchased AXE shower gel, the kind preferred by my husband and his son who wants to be just like him.  The price was $4.17, which was marked as a sale price but admittedly I don't believe it was a real sale.  Nevertheless, I had a coupon that was expiring before I go shopping again and it was buy one get one free.  My husband didn't need any new shower gel, but for $4.17 I got two bottles of it - $2.08 is a good price for that type of shower gel - and we'll stock that in the cabinet.

On the other hand, we needed to add some fruits to our selection.  I scoured the displays to find a few kinds that were good prices.  Rather than saying "we're out of apples so I'll buy apples" regardless of price, I found "Cuties" - those clementine oranges "for kids" - and grapes on sale for a good price so I bought some of those to last us the next two weeks.

We really stocked up yesterday.  I already had all the meat I needed for the next two weeks because I'd stocked up on my last trip when I found a few great deals (50% off the meats I'd purchased).  Now that I stocked up on several non-perishables (or, really items with long code dates, they will perish some day), I'm set for a while.

I did get a bit nervous as the clerk was ringing things up - the bill went all the way to $228.  That would be on-par with what we normally spend a week, not a savings.  That would be ok, but I was hoping to save both time (energy) and money going every two weeks.  Normally we'd spend about $120 per week at the grocery store and $75-$80 on stuff at Costco.  That adds up quickly.  Then I scanned my rewards card and he added my coupons in.  The bill went all the way down to $161.  I saved $67 or 30% off the regular bill.  That was cool and meant we're saving money with this tactic - about $160 per month just with stuff we're buying at the grocery store.  I've been really careful about what we're buying at Costco too.  With the exception of diapers/pull-ups, we usually only need about $10-20 more worth of stuff - bananas and milk and maybe a few other things like waffles or peanut butter or syrup (see the theme!).  So, we're saving a boatload there as well.

Now, if I can just figure out when to go I'd be set!

Working Mama Wednesday - Breakfast & Lunch

As a working mama, breakfast & lunch are two meals that are almost always eaten out of the home.  If we're not careful (and we're not always careful) we can easily end up eating out for breakfast and lunch too.  That's not good for our stomachs or our wallets. 

I haven't quite figured out how to avoid too much eating out.  I mean, the solution is obvious - prepare meals at home.  It should be esay and frankly it is except for our apparent aversion to eating leftovers and delight in treating ourselves by eating out.  I can't tell you how often we have really yummy leftovers that go bad because we just didn't eat it.  I also can't tell you how often I've lost tupperware in the fridge here at work because I left it in there so long I forgot it was there on deep cleaning day (which is this Friday...better go take a look!).  I'm not mad about it - it's what I get for preparing a decent lunch and then choosing to go out and buy something anyway.

Nevertheless, I'm trying to do a better job at preparing lunches that I eat and making sure we eat breakfast out only on sporadic occasions.  It's easier now that I have two kiddos who need to eat breakfast at home instead of one.  It used to be that the fosters attended a school that fed them breakfast while Logie had to eat breakfast before school.  He's not a big eater in the morning so that usually meant a piece of fruit or a cup of cereal with milk that he "ate" on the way.  Now that #4 is in school with him and has to eat breakfast early too, we are getting up earlier, eating breakfast together at the island, and then going to school (and work) all filled up.  That has helped me not buy out this week much.  Except of course daddy thought it would be special to take them out to donuts before school this morning.  Such is the life of a daddy who works a different schedule!  Not taking that from him.  Especially since I have a few pancake days up my sleeve...

For breakfast then I'll eat cereal with the kiddos (we love frosted mini-wheats) or yogurt with berries and granola and sometimes I'll add my homemade Chai that I drink on the way to work.

For lunch the kiddos eat at school, except on Fridays when I need to make their lunches.  I almost always make "ham and cheese rollups" - nothing more than ham and cheese rolled up with a tortilla and mayonaise.  My kiddo prefers that over anything else, even store-bought lunch or PB&J, and LOVES that his mommy makes it for him.  I'm cherishing these days and hoping #4 catches on to the love of rollups.  We've also added a rotating lunchables day - not that I love lunchables and wouldn't go for the crackers and cheese (unless homemade) - he picks the pizza which is still gross to me but it comes with fruit and water so I compromise there.  #4 isn't going to get the rotating lunchable day for a long time!

Lunch for me most always consists of the remaining leftover as a core element - usually a meat of some sort, this week it has been leftover tamales - edamame from Costco (really convenient), a piece of fresh fruit (oranges are my favorite), and a diet soda, usually Coke Zero but can be Diet Pepsi if my mom has been in town recently.

Of course, I often forgo the prepared lunch for yummy alternatives - a "Steak Queso Burrito" from Qdoba or In-N-Out.  Those two get me to stray from my prepped lunch all-too-frequently. 

What gets you to stray from your more healthy/cheap lunch and breakfast?  Please tell me I'm not alone here...

Working Mama Wednesday - Grocery Shopping

In case you were wondering, I stand corrected as there has been no word yet on the fate of new baby.  That being said, I am starting to look into vacation options for me and hubby because we've saved all this money and vacation time and we're still pretty sure it won't be used for new baby.  On the bright side, that means we have possible options for vacation, which we weren't thinking would happen for a long time.  Not ruling anything out, but trying to look on the positive side.  Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

We face quite a challenge having 4 kids - grocery shopping.  It's not the expense that frightens us, though I suppose that could be an issue too, it's the logistical nightmare of making a shopping trip happen.  We know relatively few parents with that many kids, so it's not something we see everyday and can glean tips and tricks for.  One day, my husband and I were thinking of a family that we know with 5 kids and were wondering how they did it - then we realized she stays home and 4/5 are in school - we figured she probably does grocery shopping with one during the day.

That's not an option for us.  Nor is leaving the kids home with one parent while the other shops.  Our schedule just doesn't work out that way.  So, we try to make grocery shopping a family affair.  Usually on the weekend, we (all 6 of us) use 2 of the available 4 hours we have together to go grocery shopping.  It's just what we do.  We all pile into the car and head to the store, do our thing, and go home.  Depending on the time we go it will usually fall before or during lunch so we plan accordingly by eating during the shopping trip or making something when we get home.

Of course, this means we are limited in where we go shopping.  Though all of our kids can walk, you can imagine the chaos if they were all allowed to walk on their own in the store.  Two of our kids definitely need to sit.  One is highly recommended to sit because of impulse control issues. One insists on sitting because the other 3 are.  We've come to appreciate Walmart because we can get McD's there and push around 2 carts (their "family carts" never have seat belts and only have 2 seats anyway)...each of the little girls sit in the seat-belted spots, one in each cart and each of the boy sit inside a cart while they eat.  Or, we really appreciate the new Target nearby that has a 3-kid seat...two in the "family cart" part and one in the regular cart-seat.  Of course then there's a major fight as to who doesn't sit (ironically).  That kid gets a "treat"...an icee. 

If you know anything about couponing you know that Walmart is not a great place (they don't double/triple coupons) and Target is a close second-not-best because it doesn't double or triple either but you can find deals when you match a Target and Manufacturer coupon together.  That's pretty cool.  We've been sacrificing cost for convenience though just for our own sanity.  I prefer our local Kroger - I like shopping there and can do a good deal of couponing.  BUT, they didn't seem to have an option for all our kids.  They do have kid-sized carts, which our son loves, but that doesn't help with all our other kids too.  That is until our kids insisted on sitting in one of those family-cart kid car cart things.  The boys ran in and sat in one and although we were going to tell them they had to get out, as we approached we found that not only did it have two seats in the car (perfect for our boys), it ALSO has two seats in the regular spot on a shopping cart instead of one.  So, now our favorite place to shop ALSO is the only place we've found so far with 4 legitimate kids seats.  We've now switched to Kroger.

It's quite an interesting experience.  I have one shot a week to do it together with my husband.  Otherwise, it's all mie and all that craziness.  We get lots of looks, but that's ok.  We don't really care.  We try to make the best of it and enjoy the time as a family.  And for the most part, our kids are pretty good.

Still...it would be easier if I could go grocery shopping by myself while they are all in school like a SAHM...but then we'd miss this fun experience that not many people get to 'enjoy'.

By the way...I started writing this yesterday (wednesday) and got caught up in working.  Since then we've had some updates on baby's case and indeed, as I predicted, there surely was decisions made and lines drawn and lots of churn over where the baby is going.  Although the decision is not final yet, we do believe the baby will not be adopted by us and we are saddened, angry, and frustrated by the situation.  That being said we are also trying to find the positive and wondering what God has up His sleeve...stay tuned for the play-by-play.

Moolah Monday - The Cost of Eating

Right now we are a family of six going on seven.  So weird since two years ago we were learning we'd biologically stay a family of 3.  In all honesty if we weren't infertile I'd bet that we would have probably hit 3 and stopped or, maybe 4.  Though I had 5 on my heart, my husband was happy to take it 1 at a time until 3 and there wasn't that much interest in talking beyond that.  Yet here we are having been parents to so many kiddos, now a family of 6 with a 7th maybe on the way, just 2 years later. 

Side note - if you are happening on my blog with new infertility on your heart, or really if you are struggling at all with wondering how God's plan is playing out in your life...I hope this is encouragement to you.  2 years ago our dreams of being parents and developing our family died.  We had to mourn that death.  But now that death has grown into a bigger dream than we'd ever hoped.  I pray that you trust God and find your dreams growing soon.

You know by now that we are trying to figure out how to pay for not one but two unplanned, unfunded adoptions.  I talked to you a bit about how we had to come up with money for me to stay home at a relatively short notice, which we were able to do.  I talked to you a bit about how we needed to come up with both adoption expenses and monthly expenses pretty quickly.  We are currently working through that plan, hoping God helps us figure it out!

In the process both my husband and I have seperately looked at our budget to see where we could trim down spending.  He did something I've done several times in the past - he started from our monthly actual spend and categorized up.  Since I've done that before I used the budget we had as a guiding principle to see how we could rearrange dollars.  We both found the same things - the money would be tight but we'd have to really watch our spending and there probably wouldn't be too much room for wiggle.

Translation - we were looking for approximately 2K in our budget.  Disgustingly (gratefully) we have that 2K in our budget as extra cash now.  So though we're very grateful that we have those resources, it's a bit ugly to look at how we've mismanaged our finances recently.  We both knew we were doing it, but because we had that "extra" money we didn't pay attention, and when you don't pay attention and put your money to work for you it will be bad in two ways.  First, you may make financial decisions you otherwise wouldn't have (spend on things you wouldn't have, fail to pay off debt, etc.).  Second, you end up building habits that are, in my opinion, just gross and irresponsible.

We're not talking anything super bad, but it is something we deserve to be called out on. For example, my husband did the math and in the first 11 days of May we averaged spending $375 per day. That's over $3750 in 11 days. Now granted we had some of our big monthly expenses come out then, but admittedly that did not include our bigger house payment or our car payment.  To me, that's just gross and irresponsible of us.  Thankfully my husband agrees and we're back into the cost-saving mode we both need and secretly love.

The other area that was disgusting was our actual spend on eating out.  I don't know the actual number, but it was well over $1K, probably close to $1500 or so.  (that does not include the $1K or more that we spent in groceries).  To be fair (???), we work weird hours and it's really hard for me to cook meals consistently that he and I can eat together, which leads him to eat out more often than desired and/or me to do the same.  I always try to make it a fun traditional thing for the kids - like Kids Eat Free tuesdays at Jason's Deli (no longer the case) or Friday's at Cici's pizza - both chosen for their frugality but add up quickly with 4 kids.

Now we're back to trying to keep spending under wraps.  Here's what we're shooting for:

• $600 per month - groceries
• $100 per month - eating out
• $400 per month - various entertainment budgets (Dad, Mom, Child, Family) - which could be used for eating out if we so chose.

I'm not sure we're going to hit that this month; we may need to adjust it because we went over that a bit when my parents were in town.  The good news is, that's $1100 per month vs. $2500-$3000 per month we've been spending.  Of we can meet our goals there we could possibly get close to the $2k just in those budget lines.

So, what do you think - for a family of 6, 4 of whom are under 5, is that a reasonable food budget?  Where would you caution me to look differently?  What suggestions would you make?

Working Mama Wednesday - Healthfood Super Mom

Ok - so I for sure am not the healthfood super mom.  In fact, my kids have had Chili's (pizza + sundae's), "homemade Taco Bell" (Quesadillas, the kids helped me with), and pizza for dinner the last 3 nights.  To be fair, this isn't typical and I do try to make sure my kids have consistent healthy meals but I decided Sunday night to paint my kitchen.  We finished last night as we watched the storms come through, but that time brought late night comfort popiscles to two little boys who were scared of the storms. 

The real supermom is Brit over at Living With Three Boys.  You know I love her - I've linked you all to her blog many times before.  She recently posted her recipe(s) for making smoothie pops using a Zoku popsicle maker, that makes the popsicle while you watch.  That's just supercool.  And, quite possibly a wonderful way to get my kids to eat healthier.

You see, I typically insist on healthy snacks.  Low-fat string cheese, low-sugar applesauce, and 1% sugar-free chocolate milk (ok, I'm totally lying about the sugar-free part!) is a typical night-time snack for the boys.  #7 has a really hard time with real health food - these snacks are probably the healthiest things I can get him to eat (and he doesn't get them if he doesn't eat his presumably more healthy dinner).  This is my vomiter - if I put anything green, or really any fruit or veggie or anything he doesn't want to eat on his plate during dinner (it can be a hot dog if he doesn't want to eat that at the time), he'll vomit.  And not just a little bit, but a lot.  Real vomit - all over the dinner table.  Quite (un)pleasant for the rest of us.  So I've learned some tricks but really that just prevents the vomit but doesn't mean he'll eat the health(y) food.

Before I decided to paint this weekend I decided to (and prepped for) sneaky cooking a la The Sneaky Chef and cooked and pureed more than my share of veggies and fruits.  A ton.  I had a whole mealplan about how I was going to make yummy foods with these hidden goodies.  But then the kitchen project got in the way.  (and, honestly I'm a bit nervous to be disapointed if #7 or #8 don't eat my food).  So, though I have plenty to do the recipes later this week or next (and into the next month I'm sure!), I'm thinking I can repurpose some of the purees into smoothie pops.  What do you think?  We'll see how it goes (though I'd love to win the Zoku!).

You have until noon today (5/25) to enter the contest.  Head on over to Brit's place for more info.

Say What (?!?) Sunday - Sunday, Son-day, Sundae - Monday?

Sunday is such a fun word.  I bet it throws poor linguistically challenged (e.g., those still learning words) right through a loop.  So we get a lot of play-on-words that are completely unintended by our kiddos that leave us with pure delight.

I already told you about our son Logie's insistance that we treat him special...you know there's mom's day (mother's day), dad's day (father's day) and son's day (Sunday).  Lucky for him he gets to be celebrated weekly!  And us poor daughters....

Then of course there is the utter confusion when we ask our kids if they would like a sundae after dinner...when it's on Sunday I bet that just makes it even worse.  It doesn't help when I ask the waiter to bring us sundae's and he too says "what's that"....at a nationally recognized family-friendly restaurant.  Seriously dude...I already have to explain the various combos of sunday to 4 kids - you're at least 20...(and yet, I did explain it to him.  Turns out it's not on the menu even though we always ask for it.  I was shocked!).

And then there's our little boy B (kiddo #7 if you're following our kiddos. We'll call him Benjie, because for some reason his school teacher calls him that and we haven't figured out why.  He responds (and all his stuff is labeled that at school)...so we'll run with it even though that isn't his name.  Suitable anonymous nickname for the website.

Mie: "Benjie - if you obey the rules without throwing up at dinner then you can have a sundae.  Would you like the sundae?".
Benjie: "I WANT MY MONDAY!"
Mie: "Benie - it's called a sundae"
Benjie: "I WANT MY MONDAY!"

Alright dude...monday will be here tomorrow and your sundae will arrive as soon as the waiter figures out what that is.  Thanks for not vomiting on the restaurant table or on mie. 

Sometimes you pick your battles.

Moolah Monday - Not Too Proud To Beg

Freebies are the best.  I'll take almost anything that's free.  One of my favorite activities is to drive the neighborhoods on bulk trash pickup day...I have picked up 3 pieces of wood furniture to restore, 1 spiderman bicycle, a Step 2 slide, a toddler princess bed frame, and a few more things I'm sure.  Recently I picked up this load:

Don't worry, I didn't get these out of the trash - but they were to be thrown away.  At work this past week we had a national conference that I helped facilitate.  One of the presentations involved a need for rotten bananas.  In the absence of rotten bananas, we used perfectly good bananas, put them in the refrigerator for a while, then scratched the peels up and squished them a bit so they didn't look a-peel-ing (I couldn't resist).  At the end of the day we had about 100 bananas left over plus a basket full of other fruit.  Most of the people were in DFW from out of town and since the bananas were in the condition they were in they were going to be thrown away.

Not with me around!  I rescued these bananas for future use.  I filled my refrigerator fruit drawer with oranges, apples, and pears.  I gave away a ton of bananas to people I knew were going use them for baking.  Then, I came home with the ones above.  I did end up throwing the worst of the worst away.  Then I made 4 mini loafs and 1 full loaf of banana bread.  Then I bagged them in freezer bags perfect for 2 loaves of banana bread and stuck them in the freezer.  I used 4 bags - good enough for 8 loaves - which means 80 bananas. 

And to my brother-in-laws pleasure, I will use them all.

Moolah Monday - Cheap Dates & Club Stores

What do club stores have to do with cheap dates?

My husband and I have been memebers of Costco for the entire time we've been married.  I'm not sure if we were given a gift membership or if we used leftover money from our wedding to buy our first membership (which we shared with my sister who lived 2 doors down), but I know that in my first membership card picture I still had the braids I got on my honeymoon, so it was really early on.

Since then we've taken a weekly trip to Costco.  We love club store shopping - as long as you make sure that you are purchasing things you need and watch the premium brand pricing you save a bundle.  As an example - I usually get 2 loaves of bread for about $4.50 at Costco - the same bread is about $4 per loaf at a regular store so I save a ton.  Of course, that's assuming I'm not normally buying the 99cent loaf of white bread, which I can assure you I'm not. (though I have on occasion so no guilt tripping here).  On the other hand, I almost never buy meat at Costco because they offer the super good quality meat for a higher price per lb than I can get on the "going out of code" section at the grocery store.  I know we save a ton of money shopping in bulk when we're careful how we do it.

But there's a side benefit.  If you're frugal like me - your local club store can turn into a weekly date.  I know, I know, it's cheesy and really "cheap" not in a good way, but we've turned it into a family tradition that has lasted 6 1/2 years. 

Believe it or not, when we first moved here we were broke.  We didn't have kids so the time to go on dates was pretty much endless, but we didn't have the money to do much either.  So, every Sunday after church we'd stop at Costco on the way home.  We'd pick up anything we needed (and could afford) which usually amounted to a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, or a package of bananas.  We'd spend $5-$10 at the most each week.  But we took our time walking the aisles, chatting, dreaming of things we might want to buy in the future - and sampling the various foods they offered.  Even though we went in to buy 1-2 items and could have gotten out quickly (Costco in TX isn't nearly as busy as Costco in LA), we usually would spend an hour shopping.  Then, we topped it off with lunch - 2 slices of pizza and 2 drinks which you can get for about $6. 

Fast forward more than 6 years.  We still go shopping after church.  We still take our time getting samples and seeing what's out there.  Our big kiddo now knows this tradition and makes plans around the Costco trip.  Our order has changed - now we get 2 slices of pizza and 3 drinks - for an extra 55 cents we don't have to share with our 4 year old - and depending on how many kids we have at the time we might add a hot dog (which comes with a drink, by the way).  We usually spend 10x more than we used to each week.  But our family has grown and so have our resources.

And we have a good time as a family. 

Working Mama Wednesday - Batch Cooking

Taking the lead from my girl Brit, my previous posts on how bad we're doing eating out, and the frigid temparatures in the DFW area that prevented me from going out to eat on Tuesday night, I spent some time cooking several meals that my family can eat without much trouble over the next few weeks.  This was so much fun and as a working mama will do wonders for my sanity (not to mention my pocket book and family's nutrition).  From 5:30 - 9:30ish I made enough food for at least 10 meals, plus leftovers.  Of course, during that time I also made and served a separate dinner, gave the kiddos a bath, put them to bed, and did plenty of rounding up, cuddling, and correcting - normal stuff for a mom with 3 kiddos literally running around - so the actual time I spent on all this with clean-up was about 2 hours.  Super duper.  Essentially it took me as long to prepare for and clean up from 11 meals as it usually does to do 1.  I'll take that. 

Here's what I ended up with:

From the Betty Crocker's Fix-It-Fast: Family Favorites Cookbook:

• Super-Easy Chicken Manicotti
• Gingered Apricot Chicken Breasts
• Almond-Stuffed Pork Chops (1 recipe = 2 meals for us)
• Rice and Onion Chicken Casserole

From the Fix-It and Forget-It Big Cookbook:

• Creamy Pork Chops
• Spicy Pork Chops

Additionally, I prepared:

• Generic pork chops - for broiling with seasoned salt, steak seasoning, salt & pepper
• 2 meal/servings of cut chicken breast - for all those recipes that call for "canned chicken breast" that my frugalness & natural tendency gets freaked out about.
• Pancakes - the green tub has an extra batch I made at breakfast time for my hubby to eat in the mornings if he so chooses.

My kitchen during the cooking - Yikes!

With all of this food, it will probably take us a good 3 weeks to get through the 10 meals.  I plan to supplement these pre-prepped meals with easy-to-cook standards like spaghetti, chicken nuggets, and burritos.  Additionally, I already had a meal of chicken spaghetti in the freezer and am in the process of making baked potato soup (with extra to freeze).  This should limit our eating out to 1-2 times per week instead of 4-5.  Love it!

This really was super easy, but I learned a few things:

1. I need to organize my freezer and pantry - they have become way out-of-hand and we got the call from the "random" licensing inspector (took care of the pantry today!).  As you can see, the freezer space is limited.
2. My freezer doesn't hold a 13 x 9 inch pan.  Note the top shelf of the freezer - not sure that's safe but I'm planning to use on Friday, which meant thaw on Thursday night so we should be ok.
3. I had way too much fundraiser cookie dough in the refrigerator!  You can see one shelf with two tubs and some more in the door.  This doesn't count the box I went through during the day when I made cookies for my husband to take to work to share with his buddies who had to go out in the cold. 

And here's the kitchen before I was done - remember I mentioned clean-up time was included in the total-time I spent cooking.  I had a paper to write before midnight so I had to leave it as it was here, but as you can see it wasn't too bad!  Now, if only I can be cool enough to keep this up.