Baby Steps Updates for weeks 11-19

1. Updates 1-10 found here.
11. Buying in Bulk-Yes, I'm still doing it.  This month I bought another 50 pounds of whole wheat flour and 10 pounds of brown rice.  Next month, I'll be looking into a better alternative to the evaporated cane juice.  By then, I might do away with sugar altogether, who knows.
12. Eliminate cans-I haven't purchased a single canned good since week 12.  I still have a few cans that linger from my former stockpile.  There's 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 can of evaporated milk, 1 can of green chilies and 2 cans of tomato paste.  I have switched to pouches for tuna and salmon and tomato juice in a bottle instead of tomato sauce/juice in cans.  And, fresh tomatoes for diced tomatoes.  The one area that I haven't had to deal with yet is tomato paste.  Pom has strained tomatoes in a Tetra Pak, but I don't think that has the consistency I would be looking for.  This summer, hopefully my tomatoes will do well and I can try making my own.
13. Reduce Food Waste-This week has been an epic failure, but before that I was doing pretty good.  I am switching our portion sizes around a bit and overbought on produce, so I have some lettuce that is going bad and I let a few pieces of bread get moldy on the back of the counter instead of tossing it in the freezer.  Perfect, I'm not, but I'm trying-no leftovers have gone bad (I'm clinging to that!)
14. Healthy oils-I received my gallon bucket of coconut oil a couple weeks ago and now that it is warm in my house, the oil is really easy to use.  The downside of this is that with baking less, I'm not using it as quickly as I was before, so I hope I can use it before it goes bad.  And, we're still using butter, but I've cut my butter consumption by half by not baking as often.
15. Eating Out-We haven't eat out for quite a while (that I've paid for).  We ate out a couple weeks ago, but the in-laws paid (and it was planned because we were out of town all day).  I picked up a drink for the kids at Sam's last week, and against the children's better judgement, we went home to eat lunch.  We will eat out this evening as I have several things to pick up for the Girl Scout lock-in before it starts at 7 pm.  With leaving at 5:30, we won't have time to eat at home since we ate all the leftovers last night.  But, the kids will be eating pizza at 9, so they will have salads and fruit for dinner.  They don't need junk on top of junk.
16. Sleep and drink-8 hours of sleep each night.  You've got to be kidding!  I am miserably failing this one.  I recognize that it needs to be a priority, but it keeps getting bumped.  That goal is on hold until school gets out and I don't have quite so many obligations.  Drinking water?  Now that is going well.  Especially since it has been 80+ degrees in our house, I've been drinking 6 or more big glasses of water every day.  I also think that drinking water is helping me to eat less between meals.
17. Party planning on a budget-I did it reasonably well.  I don't have to host parties very often though, so I don't know how often I'll need to do this.  I'll let you know how it goes next time, if there is one.
18. Portion control and deodorant-We've cut down on the amoung of grain we eat from 5-6 down to 3 each day (cut from snacks mainly).  I've lost 3 pounds, which could be attributed to either the grains or increased water consumption, but I'll take it regardless.  The deodorant is on day 2.  I just sniffed my armpits and no stink.  Yesterday I was super self-conscious about it and felt like I smelled like a chocolate chip all day.  I think that was the cocoa butter (That's the only ingredient the two have in common.  I even went to read the bag because I thought that was an odd thing to smell like.).  I did have stink issues (not sure if they were in my mind or not), but I washed a reapplied in the middle of the day yesterday and had no problems the rest of the day.
19. Exercise-So far, so good.  I walked on Monday with the kids.  Then Wednesday, Hubby gave me some time to power walk around the block.  It's got a couple serious hills, but I finished in 22 minutes.  Hubby thought that it was at least 1.25 miles (maybe more).  And last night, the oldest didn't have an opponent for their volleyball game, so the parents played them.  We had a good time and I can still walk today (without pain).  Tonight is the lock-in and between the dodgeball tournament and volleyball, I think I'll do some moving.  Yea for me!

So there you have it.  I need to sleep more.  Otherwise, we're still plugging along.