Bittersweet Sunday

I love Sundays. I love spending time with friends at church, I love worshipping God, and I just love relaxing Sunday afternoons. BUT - I also dread Sundays because they are my last day of freedom! I realllly, reallly, enjoy my weekends. Don't get me wrong, I like having a job. In fact, I think I need a job for my sanity. I get SO bored when I am home for more than a day due to sickness, personal day, etc. Tyler and I really tried to make this a good last weekend day.

This morning, we made a stop to Dunkin Donuts on the way to Sunday School, and even brought some goodies to share. Always a good start to the day. After church we went out to eat, stopped at Verizon (grr...that's a whole different story), and went weekly grocery shopping. Never a good idea to go to Wal-mart on Sunday afternoons, but we still.have.not.learned. We do it EVERY week. Anyway, in order to save time and money, I decided to strategize our meals this week ahead of time. I've tried to do this before, but I get lazy when I get home from work, or forget what recipe I had pulled for which night, etc. Today though, I took time (yes, during church, Tyler, don't judge me - I need to multi-task!) to plan out my weekly dinners. So, here's the plan folks:

Tonight - Spaghetti with meatballs, salad, and Texas Toast. Thanks to a few hints from my mom (i.e. diced tomatoes and sugar), I am getting pretty good at making a semi-homemade spaghetti sauce. :)
Monday - Grilled chicken on the George Foreman with mixed veggies and chicken/broccoli rice.
Tuesday - homemade pizzas! These are inspired by mom. She and my dad have been making homemade pizzas as a type of date night every Friday for some time now. I got all kinds of veggies, pepperoni, cheeses, etc. Yumm.
Wednesday - I figured, it's hump day and we'll be feeling kind of low. So what better pick-me-up than some real comfort food?! I'll be making Blue Plate Specials with mushrooms, beef gravy, and mashed potatoes. This is a really good recipe and makes great leftovers, so I posted an appetizing picture of it above. You can easily find it on the Taste of Home website.
Thursday - Taco Thursday! We crave Mexican about once a week, however, we've been trying to be "good" and put some money away in savings. So, I'm trying to make some yummy international food in our home kitchen. Thursday will be Taco Bake Casserole night with all kinds of yummy toppings (including my own personal sour cream as Tyler can't stand the sight of it).
Friday - well, to be honest, I really hate cooking on Fridays. But, to curb the urge to eat out every week, I've been trying to keep "Friday night/hang out night" foods in the house. I got yummy, bad-for-you-but-oh-so-good frozen pizzas, mozzarella sticks, etc.

Anyway, nothing TOO particularly exciting, but this did seem to really save me a lot of aimless shopping time and money at the register today. Who knows, maybe I can make this a regular thing.

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend and enjoy what's left of it!

xoxo,
Emily