Pre-Pantry Diet List

   I also would call this the Hurricane Diet since the reason we have so much in the pantry is because of stocking up on foods that don't require electricity incase our power went out during/after a hurricane. But Orlando was soooo lucky to miss the last one, or at least our part of town. So I wanted to make a list of everything I have in the pantry and the freezer before starting the Healthy on a Budget post in a week or so (whenever all the pizza and ice cream is gone, although if you ask my brother, he considers pizza to be healthy, which is definitely fair for him to say since he also lost 15-20 pounds while he was in college the same time I was at Full Sail, and he owes it all to his "pizza diet" and walking around campus to all his classes).
   Starting with the Freezer- Southwest Quinoa, two different brands of salmon, green beans, those pasta with veggies skillet bag meals, a couple frozen meals with chicken and veggies (but I may end up eating those over my 3-day work weekend starting tomorrow), Organic Pesto Tortellini from Trader Joes, frozen bananas that I chopped up for smoothies, Lean Jimmy Dean sausage and egg biscuits, bag of couscous and spinach.
   Fridge- maple apple chicken sausage (good until Emma's birthday!) that I haven't opened yet because I was getting tired of eating eggs for breakfast, but that does sound good again now. Two lemons to cut up into a water bottle, most of those little gala apples I got from Save A Lot, cottage cheese (nope! nevermind that smells sour... trash!) and cilantro avocado dressing that is good until July, so I should probably make a couple more salads. We have a jar of pickles.. I wonder what else those would be good on besides hamburgers?
   Pantry- lots of granola bars from Dollar Tree, peanut butter crackers, Great Grains cereal, Blueberry (the Belvita knock offs, also from Dollar Tree!), guacamole chips, two big containers of V8, Carnation instant breakfast which would make a good ice cream replacement, four boxes of oatmeal! A bunch of mini bags of kettle corn, prunes and dates, Triscuts, regular butter crackers, two cans of lentil vegetable soup, at least six cans of beans (white and BBQ), tomato soup, peanut and pretzel trail mix, healthy almond bars, two jars of spaghetti sauce to go with the five boxes of various dry pastas, four boxes of rice, four other "fancy" boxes of dry pasta where it is suggested to add chicken, 12oz can of tuna, five cans of green beans... and I guess Michael has already eaten all of the hurricane rice, which is fine!
   So yeah, I definitely should not need to spend more than maybe $30 in June on groceries for myself, on things like eggs, milk, lettuce.. We will be buying food for Emma's birthday party in two weeks and we are expecting there to be maybe 15 people there! Hopefully we will have lots of left overs for the few days after that too.

  I have been using the shower in our bathroom since Christmas probably, because I didn't want to have to clean two showers. Also because the guest bathroom, where I keep most of my products, doesn't have a shower liner in it and lately the shower head can't be turned to face down- it keeps popping over so it is putting all the water against the tile wall. But tonight after my walk I thought I would try it out and maybe it wouldn't be so bad. It wasn't! I did have to put a towel down on the ground and my shower was faster than usual, which is another plus. When washing the right side of my body I had to keep my hand up and hold the shower head so it was sending the water where I needed it, but washing my left side against the wall was fine. I think I'll keep using that shower instead! It made me really thankful for all that we have, while Kate Davis (young woman from a rich family who now lives in Uganda and is raising her 14 adopted daughters and two biological sons) was once living in a house that was the size of a bathroom!

   Michael made dinner for our anniversary and it was really nice. He had flowers set out on the table and I wondered when and how he got those if he hadn't been able to leave the house all day with Emma since I had been at work. He picked them from the front yard!! I loved that and they were so pretty so he kept them on the table for a few more days. I used to say that flowers were a waste of money because they just wilt and die in a few days, but now I really like having flowers in the house for special occasions. We definitely don't bring flowers home every time we go to Publix, although I have been wanting to have some sunflowers in a vase lately. They are so bright and sunny looking!

I love this cute little set up with the skinny barn doors, wreath and window that Michael made/put together!!!