Back to School !!! and review of yesterday's dinner

The stuffed shells went over very, very well - matter of fact - I made an entire box (35 shells) and stuffed the rest with the extra spinach stuffing I had made with the chicken, plus drizzled just a bit of FF mozz. cheese the last 5 minutes of baking - and it's gone this a.m. Definately a do over. Sounds like a ton of work - stuffing all those shells - but it took me maybe 15 minutes total - and that includes the boiling of the noodles (hint, underboil by just one minute, makes the shells easier to stuff) I made mine ahead of time - put the sauce on them, with a little bit of the pasta water (used it first to swish out the remaining pasta sauce in the jar) and left it in the fridge covered in plastic wrap. After my eye Dr's appt (by the way, the Dr. informed me I had eyes of a much younger person - still 20/20 here !!) I took it out of the fridge, removed the plastic wrap and baked about 30 minutes at 375* Wonderful !! Now the chicken had mixed reviews. Next time I would stick it under the broiler for a bit - it didn't brown very much in a 375* oven. Or maybe next time I would brush a bit of butter on the top and sprinkle some bread crumbs? Something to color the top - white chicken breasts don't appeal to me. The taste was good - but .... I like my food to look good.

Now - back to school shopping - yes, I do homeschool year round, but I still hit the back to school sales to stock up for the year (actually, I probably have enough 1 cent notebooks and pencils to get my 4yo through college....) This year I stocked up on Elmer's glue (12 bottles.....but really, at 5 cents a bottle?) and 3 ring notebooks (again 12 of them - but I do have 4 kids....). Some of the online sites I'll be watching are -

Office Depot - keep your eye on their clearance - you can get some really neat stuff for under $5. If you are shopping online - EMAIL me for coupon codes. I usually will get back to you within one day. There are so many coupon codes out there for most online sites - and some are stackable (meaning you can use more than one) Why pay full price???

Zoobooks - give it a try - you get one free issue - if you don't like it - simply write cancel on the bill - you know how it works. You get a free Tiger poster right now - pretty cool. My 7 and 8 yo's really like the magazine - anything to get them reading.

EdSoup - this is a new site - I really haven't checked it out - but wanted to include the link so I didn't forget it.

Another new one - Monster Learning Center looks interesting - I will post more about it after I check it out.

Of course, there is always the standbys - Staples - if you live close enough to one - watch the weekly paper, or check out their sales online - Last week was teacher appreciate day around here - got a great classroom planner, lots of pens/pencils/ neat stuff - all wrapped up in a binder (I got pink!) If you homeschool, you can also get a teachers discount card - definately worth the few minutes it takes to fill out the form !

Guess thats it for today - oh, if you have a few minutes - fill out a RaquetBracket entry - even if you don't play tennis - pick the names that appeal to you. You never know - you might win - it's only T-shirts and stuff - but the grand prize is $500 worth of Prince stuff - if you don't play tennis - you can give it to me - dh LOVES the game - it would make an excellent birthday gift for him next year LOL

Have a great day all !!