Who's Hungry?

This month, we've been thinking about scaling back and I've been exploring ways to make that little extra to keep the budget balanced.  As a result, I've been investigating babysitting, tutoring and even getting my substitute teaching license.  I've always worked from home and it's just starting to be felt that I haven't done very much of that in the last 18 months, thanks to shrinking training budgets for most companies. 

We're committed to making stay-at-home mom and homeschooler work, so this will definitely be a time of adventure in our family while we figure out a new balance.  As a planner and natural worrier, I've felt a lot of peace in this untried ground and time of uncertainty which has been surprising.  I gave our finances over to God about a year ago.  I've struggled to not be anxious about this bill or that (including over $14,000 for an emergency surgery that was miraculously completely paid for us through insurances) and have had to continue turning things over to God, sometimes by the hour! 

So, feeling peace and a little excitement about what work I might do or what changes lie ahead for our family that are spurred by being financially prudent for our future and our daughter's is surprising.  I know it is only grace that keeps me from being anxious about new and different situations that may present themselves through this new adventure. When I stop to think about my lack of worry, I'm confident I'm on someone's prayer list because the grace is overwhelming. 

Part of being more thrifty this week included something that turned out to be a great family project and I'm sure will be a great memory.  Every few weeks, we order out on one of the weekend nights.  So, last night, I turned to the pizza websites to look for coupons.  Not seeing anything that was that great of a deal, I started thinking about making our own pizza.

One online recipe later, (Pizza Dough) I started raiding the kitchen.  Sure enough, I had all the ingredients for the pizza dough.  Add to that crushed tomatoes with garlic for sauce and ground beef, bacon and ham for meat with garden tomatoes and poblano peppers and we have a family project.  We shredded blocks of cheese together and even ripped apart a few pieces of string cheese to add some gooey stretchiness to the cheese topping. 

The recipe estimated the pizza would take about an hour start to finish to make, but with all things family project, it was a little longer.  We were all anxiously watching it cool when it came out of the oven.

As it cooled, we examined our sections and talked about how great it was that we could get exactly what we wanted on each of our sections. 


We also took the baking and cooling time for some photo ops (see below).  My daughter is actually yelling "pizza", but I think this might be the perfect "evil genius cackle" :)

Once it was cool enough to eat, we dug in.  It was thoroughly enjoyed by all and as we sat eating, I thought to myself about all the fun that had gone into it (not to mention the healthier ingredients like garden fresh produce and whole wheat crust). 

We never would have had such a special pizza if we hadn't been looking to save a few dollars.  Sometimes when looking to live more simply, we find the most priceless things of all.