What I've Been Up To Lately

I'm still in my funk.

I can't seem to snap out of it.

I blame the weather.

It's been raining and cold for days...I feel like I'm in Oregon, where ironically it's been warm and sunny all weekend.

Funk or not I've been striving to really get some things around the house done, because no matter how much I do there is always something else that needs to be done.

So, the last few days I have...

Finally put hooks on my groovy wall sticker coat rack that I bought here, so that instead of just looking like pretty wall art

it is now a proper coat rack

and now my coats have somewhere to live other than the back of all the chairs around the dining room table.

I also managed to paint this dresser that we inherited from Dom's storage unit...it was one of the pieces that we thought we had ridden ourselves of years ago but alas surprise! it was in a storage unit. I might ultimately sell it but I think it turned out rather nice. Unfortunately I forgot to take a BEFORE picture, but it looked similar to this, same color, same condition:

and now it looks like this:

I have also managed to discover the wonderfulness of the spaghetti squash, have you heard of a spaghetti squash? It's AMAZING. You poke some holes in it, put it in the oven for an hour, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and then run a fork along the sides and it comes out in long strings like spaghetti! Add some homemade spaghetti sauce and voila! It's absolutely delicious and a fantastic substitute for pasta!

I know the rest of the world had a nice sunny weekend and you probably didn't spend near so much time indoors painting furniture and cooking, what fun outdoorsiness did everyone else get up to this weekend that I missed out on?

Once a Day or Once a Week

I'm talking about grocery shopping people.

I have a little problem with grocery shopping. My problem is that I go to the grocery store EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

I'm very very interested in meal planning and absolutely LOVE the idea...in concept.

When in comes to actually DOING it, I fail miserably.

For example, I've been here for 4 weeks now...to the day, and I have done a BIG grocery shop, ie. spent $200 and stocked my pantry with essentials, exactly once.

I have things like tomato sauce and corn that I stocked up on, but no matter how hard I try I end up at the grocery store once a day to pick up the little odds and ends...ok the majority of the ingredients because stocking up to me is 2 cans of tomato sauce and thus I'm always out of that too!

I want to break this terrible habit of mine.

But my NYC/Sydney mentality of having no car and thus no way to carry more groceries than I can carry has not left me.

Enter what I hope to be the solution - MEAL PLANNING.

If you know what you're cooking for the week you can theoretically buy everything all at once, right?

Who out there does meal planning? Does it work? Do you stick to your plan? Any tips?