15 days until Fall

If you have ever been to our house before, you know that Vic would like us to keep it like an igloo. During the summer, I am most successful at keeping it at a reasonable temperature, we compromise at 70 degrees to keep our bill from being over $300 during Virginia's ridiculous summer. Some days, the cool house is a blessing, most of them it means that I am in sweat pants and a sweater, with socks and Ugg slippers, sipping tea trying to stay warm. Today, on this first Sunday of the NFL season, we decided to play with our cold house and pretend that it was fall!

We made it to the grocery store bright and early this morning, we walked in at about 9:15 (that's early for a Sunday!) and we sat down in Whole Foods' little restaurant, The Porch, and had a great breakfast and mimosas. Vic had a huge breakfast, I left hungry because our little guy ate half of my breakfast burrito, taking bites that blow my mind because where does he put all that food? We've been making a point to only buy exactly what we need for a week, no more getting excited about stocking up, and it has really helped keep our bill down. Our food budget still rivals our mortgage, but we are getting better at keeping it down. We decided to shop for week 6 of the meal plan in Danielle Walker's newest cook book, you can find it here. I'm obsessed with it and super stoked for this week's dinners. We were able to get ground beef, steak, chicken and all the needed produce for just over $200, keeping us under our $250 budget. Don't have a heart attack, that makes our lunches, too! I've also decided to participate in meatless Monday's which is helping our meat supply not diminish so quickly. Today we made football buffalo chicken bites that turned out amazing, you should totally google her recipe.

Before I started cooking today, I ran out to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get our favorite Fall Yankee Candles to get the house smelling like the upcoming season. I just can't help it, with football being on today, it is totally Fall, whether or not it doesn't start until late September! I went a little crazy and got two giant candles and let me tell you, our house smells AMAZING. After our football meal, a day of playing cards and watching the Bears lose (damn it!), we settled in with some hot apple cider with a shot of Firefly Apple Pie Moonshine. We got the moonshine while we were on our Southern Vacation this last March and have barely touched it. Thank goodness, because it was meant to be served in cider and it is amazing. You really should be jealous, and I'd invite you to have some, but I don't want to run out of the moonshine too quickly!

Ryker is a walking monster, literally, he's half monster. He's into everything, and he whistles! The kid walks around purposely whistling. A story about whistling...Vic loves to whistle. He's a whistling machine. So is my little brother. I hate whistling. It might be the most annoying sound ever. I can appreciate it in a song, but just around the house drives me nuts. But, now that my little guy can whistle I think it's pretty cute. Vic is literally whistling that "I got one less problem without ya" song right now. Ugh.

Well, there's a minute and forty two seconds left in the San Francisco/Dallas game, and my Fantasy team is getting killed. Time to put the kiddo to bed, have a good night!