It has been a busy week and I really need to unwind. I decided to whip up some chicken enchiladas with homemade enchilada sauce, Mexican rice (will share recipe later), and lemonade for an evening on the couch with my family. We needed this. I needed this. A little quiet, a lot of good food, and some Simon.

I am pretty proud of how we are doing so far with the No Spend Challenge. I will not say there hasn’t been temptations, but I have been doing my best to ignore them as much as I can.

How are you all doing with your own challenges? I hope it is going well! I think of all of you that are doing the same thing as me and wishing we all lived close so we could have coffee at my house.

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Want to join in on the MomAdvice No Spend Challenge? Make sure to add your name to the linky list and read more about our challenge. You can also join our No Spend Challenge Flickr Group and upload your pictures of what you did each day.

To read all the entries on not spending, you can visit our No Spend Challenge category!

I packed my coffee and a lunch for two. Emily and I headed over to my friend Jessica’s house for a fun play date and visit with our friends. Emily was pretty tired when she got home, but we made it home in time for…

Another play date with another great friend. I actually met my friend Renee (@ReneeCrabtree) through Twitter, if you can believe it. She was my first friend that I made virtually that I met up with in real life. She saw me tweeting about knitting and said she wanted to learn. I offered to have her over and teach her and we have been friends ever since. And her knitting? Amazing! She has been doing lace patterns and whipping up things I haven’t even dreamed of trying.

Best of all, she is a work-from-home momma and has two kids around the same age as my children. It is so good to have a friend who can understand the trials of working from home and juggling the children. I am very thankful for my friendship with her and look forward to our knitting dates more than I can say.

Good friends. Good coffee. Good yarn. What more can a girl ask for?

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Want to join in on the MomAdvice No Spend Challenge? Make sure to add your name to the linky list and read more about our challenge. You can also join our No Spend Challenge Flickr Group and upload your pictures of what you did each day.

To read all the entries on not spending, you can visit our No Spend Challenge category!

While Emily played with some of her homemade play dough, I worked on making dinner and tidying the house. Of course, there is no fun in having a meal and not sharing it with someone else so I called my parents to see if they would like to join us for dinner. I worked on making my Rotini with Turkey Meatballs, garlic bread, and even managed to make some Oatmeal Muffins (still testing recipes, but I promise to share a really good one when I find it!)

They were so excited to get to spend time with their grandchildren and we looked forward to sharing a meal with them. Sometimes the days feel longer without me running around so much and having some company during the evening helps to break up the length of the day. Best of all, we can spend as much time as we want together while relaxing in our own home. No waiter to give us the boot and I won’t even ask for tips!

This No Spend Challenge just gets better and better.

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Want to join in on the MomAdvice No Spend Challenge? Make sure to add your name to the linky list and read more about our challenge. You can also join our No Spend Challenge Flickr Group and upload your pictures of what you did each day.

To read all the entries on not spending, you can visit our No Spend Challenge category!

I will admit that I really did not feel like cooking this Valentine’s Day. I spent the entire day working on a Notebook Experiment (which I will share with you on Wednesday and which I failed miserably at) and I was tired of cooking and cleaning up the kitchen.

I really didn’t want to eat out of the pantry though so I threw the ingredients in the bread machine to make my pizza dough and cut all of the little pepperonis into hearts to make the kids smile.

I called the kids to the table and no one commented on the hearts.

“Ethan, look! Mommy made hearts for you & sissy for Valentine’s Day? Do you see them? Aren’t those cool! It’s because I love you so much!”

He started to smile and then pointed to one on the pizza, “That one isn’t cut right. It looks like a circle.”

Regardless, they all enjoyed the homemade pizza and then we spent the evening playing on the Wii together as a family. The rest of the evening was spent sacking out on the couch with my sweetie and savoring those quiet moments after the kids go to bed.

Maybe we will go out next year… or maybe we will do this same exact thing again, minus the cooking marathon!

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Want to join in on the MomAdvice No Spend Challenge? Make sure to add your name to the linky list and read more about our challenge. You can also join our No Spend Challenge Flickr Group and upload your pictures of what you did each day.

To read all the entries on not spending, you can visit our No Spend Challenge category!

I never did use my free coffee coupon at the airport and decided to save it as my reward for good grocery shopping. I love to give myself a little reward for staying on budget. It is usually a giant Diet Coke for a $1 at McDonald’s, but I thought I would use my coupon instead and stay true to the challenge.

The grocery shopping took much longer than I had anticipated though so once again I find this coupon is still waiting for me for when I need a little pick-me-up.

I budgeted $250 for groceries and I spent $219, leaving me just enough for our milk money for the rest of the month. I tried to cash on the coupons that I have been hording for a rainy day. I hope that we can stay on budget and I can prove to myself that with good discipline and thoughtfulness that we can put away more money than we thought.

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Want to join in on the MomAdvice No Spend Challenge? Make sure to add your name to the linky list and read more about our challenge. You can also join our No Spend Challenge Flickr Group and upload your pictures of what you did each day.

To read all the entries on not spending, you can visit our No Spend Challenge category!