WINTER – A Blog, A Magazine. It's JustsumInspiration!

I have a couple of questions for ya..

Are you on a budget? This girl definitely is!
Do you like Soup? Of course I do…(anything dealing with food really…haha)

So, yes…I’m on a very tight budget and I can’t or don’t I should say always have money to go and break a 20 on lunch only to have a couple of dollars left – Yesssss, food establishments make a killing off of our “lunch” dollars because they know 1 of 2 things to be true…

You either left your lunch at home. -or-
You were too lazy to cook.

And let me just say that I have been at the helm of both of those statements. And after going through what seemed like fifty dollars or more a week for lunch; I decided that enough was enough!

In which inspired this post >>>>> Lunch on a Budget for $20 or LESS!

With the cost of food seemingly going up every second it seems, it can be challenging to try and map out meals to bring to lunch everyday. I mean, who really wants to munch on PB&J or slurp up salty Noodles and Oodles. So, while shopping the aisles for lunch choices one day, I decided to get a couple of staple items and mix and match the ingredients for each day of the week – I even had a solution for snacks in between.

I have to be honest with you, shopping for food for lunch can be a little crazy; because you want to eat something different every day of the week and depending on your tastes buds, that can get a bit costly as well. So, listed below are a couple of things I picked up off the shelves and freezer section that lasted me all week and guess what (all of it was well under 20 dollars!!)

Here are my buys for Lunch:  Total Cost: $10.08

Minute Rice – Multi Grain Medley – 2 @ 1.84 each
Bag of Mixed Vegetable – 1 @.57 cents
Green Giant Steamers Vegetable Medley/Broccoli Cheese – 2 @ 1.18 each
Green Giant Harvest Protein Bowl (Vegetarian) Southwest Style – 1 @ 3.47 each

Here are my buys for Snacks:  Total Cost: $8.81

Great Value No Sugar Added Pear Cups – 2 @ 1.43 each
Great Value No Sugar Added Mandarin Oranges – 1 @ 1.43 each
Great Value Dry Roasted & Lightly Salted Almonds – 1 Bag @ 4.52

What I had at Home:   
Sam's Choice Organic Bone Broth Chicken Total Cost: Free

Overall Cost: $18.89

So this is how I did it:

First, let me start with snacks. It’s 4 cups of fruit to a carton, so I had two snacks a day. A fruit cup and some almonds. I measured the almonds out according to the serving suggestion and put them in zip lock bags and took them all to work along with my fruit so I wouldn’t have to remember to take it everyday. So there were my snacks for the week. Two cups of fruit and almonds a day.

And then there was lunch. So for lunch, it was pretty easy. 1st Day: I had a cup of rice medley and some steamed veggies. 2nd Day: I had the steamed veggies with some chicken bone broth ( I made it like a soup). 3rd Day: I had the broccoli cheese and rice medley. 4th Day: I had the rice medley and the bone broth. 5th Day: I changed it up and brought in the Green Giant protein bowl, which was very delicious by the way, see below….

Green Giant Harvest Protein Bowl – Southwest Style

So, as you can see – lunch was not only cost efficient but different as I didn’t feel like I was eating the same thing every day……ever felt that way about a salad?? Any-who, the key to making this work is making sure you choose what it is you want to eat for the whole week. For instance, I knew that I wanted veggies – the only thing I needed to do next was find a partner to go with them and once I did….everything else was simple.

Don’t forget to incorporate items you may have at home, so another suggestion I would make is to check your cupboards before you go shopping. That frozen broccoli that’s been in the freezer for a month, could be paired with something delicious.

Think of things that you can use multiple times throughout the week without breaking the bank and going to the store everyday for items to eat (I’m still working on this feat for dinner as I do this currently). Don’t look at me like that, I’m a work in progress – say a prayer for me…lol.

Well, I hope your lunch time can now be an adventurous one. Oh and psssstttt, by the way, don’t be afraid to shop the yellow tags. I got some soup on sale last week at Wal-Mart for $.86 cents that usually run $2.87 cents. Now you may want to hurry and eat it up, because I mean, they put yellow tags on items for a reason, right???? rightttttttt…..but it can also save you loads off your pocket, especially for LUNCH!

Below is one of the creations with the products I purchased up top:

Soup and Broth Ingredients
Soup and Broth

BON APPETITE!!

As a people we’re programmed sometimes to – put off things until tomorrow. We put many things on the back-burner with the intention of going back and retrieving it later only to find out that many years have passed us by and the things that we constantly put off with the intention to do – has turned to ashes.

We constantly put our busy lives, schedules and appointments before us as if that’s going to make us better, wiser or popular. So, we create bucket list – lists of the fun, awkward and adventurous things that we want to do before we die, in hopes that we really do get to achieve at least one or two before we kick the bucket and in most cases, some people never get a chance to complete one.

BUT WAIT……ARE YOU DEAD YET???, NO – YOU’RE NOT.

Sure, we’re all going to die someday, but why wait until that time is near to start taking risks and become adventurous. It’s amazing because when “LIFE” happens to us (as I like to call it) it’s only at that time that we really began to smell the flowers and acknowledge the itsy, bitsy things in life that we on any other hand would have ignored. But why does it have to take us to be in a tragedy or at deaths door, to really appreciate life – OUR LIFE!

So, if you have a bucket list of things that you would like to do before you kick the bucket, I’m telling you right now……TEAR IT UP!!!!

Now, I know this may be somewhat of a SHOCK to your system…

But, you’ll be fine. The purpose of Life is for us to live in the NOW, not in the LATER. Make the most of every inch of time we have now and appreciate them. So, let’s tear up and put a line through the ~~SHOULD~~, ~~COULD~~ & ~~WOULD~~ list and let’s replace it with DO or DID. We only get one shot at this Life and do you really want to put it on hold until later down the line?….I think Not!

This summer, let’s plan to do something fun and great. I know it’s almost over but that doesn’t mean that you still can’t get the most out of it before it says BYE-BYE! but just because the summer is ending doesn’t mean that your list of TO DO’s have too. You can create a list for Fall & Winter as well. The goal of having a list is to make sure that we continue to move and stay active daily. If your list is filled with things to do – you’ll not only be exploring and having fun but you’ll be creating memories and living out your best life NOW! as life is meant to be lived with having NO REGRETS!

So, to help you out with your summer and your fall and winter lists – Below I have come up with a couple of suggestions that you can do, to crush those list and Live your Life!

You may have already done some of these, but just in case you haven’t here is something else to add to your list.

Have a Bonfire
Make Homemade Popsicle’s – we used to do this with Kool-Aid.
Have Breakfast in Bed
Have a Movie Series Marathon
Blow Bubbles – You can get these at the dollar store. Go to a park and blow bubbles with the kids, your family or friends. See who can blow the biggest one.
Play Frisbee
Go Fishing
Have a Game Night with your Family or Friends or Both.
Roast Marshmallows and tell stories of when you were young or ghost stories.
Watch the Clouds go By
Barbecue – I love a good ole backyard Bar-b-cue.
Go to the Beach and Find Shells
Make Root Beer Floats – Yummy!
Go on a Picnic at the Park
Have or Host a Water Balloon Fight
Get a Pedicure/Manicure
Send a message in a bottle and put it in the river or pond, you might be surprised where it ends up
Play on Monkey Bars – Okay, so I did this and let me tell you. This girl is not what she used to be, but it was seriously fun to be a kid again..
Read a chapter book and set a time to finish it before summer’s end.
Eat Ice-Cream every single day of the summer – and try some different ones. My new favorite is Pistachio Almond by Blue Bunny. So Delicious….
Take a picture of a lighthouse – I’ve always loved lighthouses, it would be nice to see one up front.
Write Letters – This world has gotten so TECH savvy until we forget about the pen and paper. Take out time to write a letter to someone special and mail it to them – they will not only be surprised but your words on paper would be more meaningful than an email or text.
Take a family walk through a trail.
Go Swimming or Snorkeling.

This is just a short list of things that I came up with but if you need more ideas, you can visit REAL SIMPLE here and check out their summer fun activities checklist. So with all of these new ideas or maybe old ones, there’s no reason for you to leave the summer feeling like you haven’t accomplished anything. You can now let the Summer go and get to creating your lists for Fall & Winter. Being the person that I am, I couldn’t just leave you hanging out there like that, so I created the list below for you to print off and have a healthy start to living out that bucket list all through the rest of the season.

FALL & WINTER BUCKET LIST IDEAS

So what are you waiting for – You have some LIVING TO DO!