Sunny Saturday - Birthday

Today is Frankie's 25th Birthday so this Saturday we celebrated with family, games, homemade pizza, and some music!

For presents Frankie asked for people to match his $25 donation to CHF for Food Paks, he set his goal to $250 and we met it that night! 

Thanks everyone for coming out and for helping other families have a chance to gather around a table together to eat well.  Thank you Lord for 25 great years of life filled with blessings and love.  

Pushing Pause

Well, here we are more then half way through our adventure and we have come to the realization that this isn't working... :( No excuses, no ones fault, things just aren't working.  So after talking about it over lunch we decided that it would be best to put aside our challenge for now and start fresh in a few weeks when we are a bit more organized.

So just to share the little bit of how our eating was going here are a few pictures. :)

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday and Thursday and Friday

Tuesday

Like I said today at lunch is when we decided that things were not turning out as planned so that was our last meal, so to speak. 

For dinner we had all the food that somehow found it's way to our kitchen...

And for dessert we made a real treat!  Dulce de leche!

Our friend Talia shared a recipe on her blog and we had to try it!  

Thanks Talia!!! It was delicious!!!

We still plan on matching our goal to CHF this week.  :)  And we still invite you to join us if you feel moved to give. The fact is others don't have the luxury of deciding when they need the Food Pak and when they don't.

"From the Frontlines: Taylor & Frankie"

In May, Fred Martin (Director of Communications, CHF) was in town from California to shoot some video in San Antonio. He took the oppurtunity to invite us down to CHF so that he could meet us and interview us about our adventures with the Food Pak. We happily accepted! We got to meet him, visit our CHF friends, and answer some questions about what we are doing and why. It was really fun! We didn't really talk about it much here though because we weren't really sure of what was to come of it...well, while we were on vacation in CT, we recieved an email that our video had been posted! And what an amazing job they did! This video is a wonderful testimony and summary of what we are about and why we are choosing to challenge ourselves in our everyday eatting! Take a look!




It's really neat to be in the spotlight for a little bit, but even better is the way that God has already used us and will use this video to change and challenge others! (It's also really encouraging when people get excited about what we are doing.) To Him be the glory as we try to stay humble and as we continue to serve His children!

You can also watch the video:on Facebook
on YouTube
on the CHF website (here, you can also see the awesome banner they made of us!)

Thank you, CHF for sharing our story!
Love,
Taylor and Frankie :)

Menu Monday

Welcome to our first, weekly "Menu Monday"! We're so excited to share with you in this way about our new project! Each week we'll reveal what the game plan is for the upcoming week and how we're utizlizing that week's food items. But first...

The Big Idea:
This is a take off of our original Food Pak Adventure, but this time it's bigger! For an entire year, we are going to take what we learned from living off a Food Pak and apply those experiences to a new set of rules. This time we are really stretching our dollars! Our plan is to spend only $10 a week for both of us! This includes all food and drink purchases, grocery and dining out. To add variety, we aren't setting limits on the types of foods we eat, only the amount we spend. Creativity is key this year! If we want to eat out, we have to plan ahead and save money from our weekly budget until we can afford it. Also, any and all freebies and coupons are fair game! We follow this really great blog that makes this part really easy! She posts all sorts of deals, coupons, and freebies that we regularly take advantage of!

So that's how we're going to do it!


Here's an update of our first week (officially started on 1/3 - 1/9):

• Spent only about $16 for the first 2 weeks. (Budgeted a little less since we already have some groceries at the house.)
• Enjoyed a free Burger Meal at Daily Grill, free Chicken Finger Combo at Raising Cane's, and free Fresco Tacos from Taco Bell. Frankie also had two work lunches this week (this happens occasionally and is paid for by the clients) and we picked up a free bag of Stacy's Pita Chips!
• Had a lot of rice, beans, and quesadillas!
  

This week we are looking forward to free ice cream cones from Ben and Jerry's and whatever other deals that come our way! We also still have some beans and rice, a bag of pasta, canned soups, canned veggies and fruits, half a loaf of bread, a couple slices of cheese, lots of snacks and lots of Christmas popcorn! Stay tuned for picture and meal highlights!

Happy New Year!

We are back! Back to Texas and back to blogging! Well, we've been home since Sunday but we are back to the blog today... and we have so much to tell you about!

First of all, we had a great trip up north for Christmas in Michigan and New Years in Chicago. We got to see a lot of family and some great friends. :) And we got to spend a lot of quality time together in the car on the 27-hour, one-way, non-stop, roadtrip!

Taylor, Falyn, and Frankie in the snow in Chicago.

One of the exciting things that happened on our trip is that we used our seed-a-need cards! Woo Hoo!!! The first one was right before we left Houston. We stopped at Chik-Fil-A on the way out and picked up the tab for the person behind us at the drive-through. The next card went to our New Year's Eve waiter at Navy Pier- we left a hearty tip to bless his holiday! And the third card stayed in Illinois at a Bob Evans in Mt. Vernon. We got a gift card two Christmases ago and because we don't live by one we used it up on the way home- that was another big tip. So that was a fun way to start the year!

We also got to share all of our great gifts with our family :) But we will post about that in a few days... sorry you will just have to wait! Also in that post we'll tell you about all the gifts we got, because we got some really wonderful, amazing gifts!

Finally, we are starting off the year with a little challenge... actually, a big challenge! Hopefully, with enough creativity and dedication that it will span the entire year! We're starting off with the $25 Food Pak allowance and stretching it for two weeks at a time. We aren't necessarily limiting ourselves to specific items, but we are incorporating some of the foods and ideas we started out with in our original Food Pak adventure! It's different and exciting and it may or may not prove to be such a big challenge! We'll share more details soon!

So Happy New Year to all our readers! We're glad to be back!

A Gift for You!

We love comments! And we have received a lot of great ones. You always encourage and support us with the love you show by leaving us messages. Some of our favorite comments to read are from our friend Anonymous, it's so unexpected and excites us so much when He/She stops by. ;)

Yesterday we received a comment from someone who has just found us- those are always the best, and to that reader we wanted to say "Welcome!" We hope you stay and we wanted to tell you that we have a big announcement in the works for next year that you may be interested in following...

So in appreciation to all of our readers we thought we would give you a gift! And since the FoodPak was one of our first adventures we thought it would be fun to donate one in your name- to our readers! You have made our experience so much fun, and we are so thankful that you have given your time to stop by. :)

Hope you like it! And we pray this one goes far!

Merry Christmas from taylorandfrankie!

More Free Food!!

So we haven't bought groceries for 3 weeks!!! We've been living off the free food from G'ma's house and whatever else we had in the pantry when we started. We planned to go without grocery shopping for only two weeks, but by the end, we still had tons of food leftover! So we started week 3!



This week has been a little more difficult since we've pretty much run out of breakfast foods and snacks...but take a look at the picture above...all of this we have recieved for free this week! Free samples in the mail from my new favorite website- shop4freebies.com, free snacks after donating blood, free Whataburgers for wearing orange on Tuesday, and 2 free $10 Panera gift cards from the mall! Plus, my mom sends us home with leftovers everytime we visit! lol! Also, Frankie's week has been packed with lunch meetings and office dinners where he feasts on someone elses dollar!



So we have made it through 3 whole weeks of Food Pak inspired eating without spending a dime on groceries!!! (Although, we did slip a few times on the last week and had some fast food meals...totally unplanned. :/ But they were still pretty cheap.)



We still have some canned goods left in the pantry so we will see what happens next week!

All We Want for Christmas

It's that time of year again, and family and friends have started to ask the question "What do you want for Christmas?" And even though we would love for everyone to participate in Advent Conspiracy, some people still like to give gifts. So for those people, here is our response... this is the Official TaylorFrankie Christmas Wish List!





1. A reusable water thermos from charity:water. Thermos partnered with charity:water to create hydrationforall and this really cool thermos. The best part is that 100% of the profit from this product goes to building wells for people who need clean water.

2. This H2Africa hand made bracelet by Amy Smith is at the Water4Christmas Etsy shop. This shop features a variety of sellers whose product sales are donated 100% to finding a solution for clean water in villages in Liberia, West Africa.

3. Children's Hunger Fund Menu features great gifts for giving and receiving. You can send food, Bibles, shoes, bikes, toys, and other goods to people in need. Anything from the Menu would make us happy, as well as a lot of other people.

4. charity:water bracelets are a great way to show support to a good cause, and again, 100% of the profits go to building wells!

5. A stained glass water drop ornament by Barb Bulluck also for H2Africa at the Water4Christmas Etsy shop.

6. For every pair of TOMS shoes sold, another pair is sent to a child in need. These shoes are awesome and are a two-for-one deal!

7. This Every Child's Right Shirt raises money for a family's adoption. Also, when you purchase this shirt, you can mention another family (we found out about it through the Block Family) and a portion of the profits goes to help fund their adoption as well!


Water, food, homes, shoes, life... this is what we want for Christmas.

Mystery Can

Out of all the food we received, one can stood out from the rest.
One can was just a little too plain and had us scratching our heads.
This can was large and had no paper label, instead printed on the side were the words Pork in Juices.

I think that the fact that it was meat, and not tuna or chicken, made us grab it. But what we would do with a can that looked like it could have a whole snout in it, was a mystery. After pushing it aside for a week, we decided it was time! We looked online for something to make and found a recipe for BBQ pork. We opened the can to find a solid chunk of meat (about the size of a snout, lol!) and forked it out in clumps into the pan. It actually turned out to be like pulled pork sandwhich meat. :) I made some BBQ sauce from a few things we already had and also some rice and beans. When it was all done the scariest can in the pantry turned out to be the best dinner we've had during our Food Pak inspired eating!

Week 2

This is our second week of our Food Pak inspired eating, thanks to the free surplus we found at Grandma's house.

Lunch today is tuna and crackers... yum!

Free Food

Here's all the freebies we collected from Grandma Lita's house! Mom also helped out by throwing in the two boxes of pasta! Thanks!

This is the basis of our meals for the next two weeks...

Advent Conspiracy

As the Christmas season is drawing nearer and we begin to be bombarded by Christmas ads, we thought we would share this option with you. For two years we have participated in Advent Conspiracy. For those of you that are not familiar with it, the basic concept is this:

Worship Fully
Spend Less
Give More
Love All

Instead of buying gifts for Christmas spend time with your families and friends, quality time. Make gifts, volunteer, sing carols, do something to create memories. Then take the money that you would have spent on the gift you would have bought and put it to better use. Show love to the people that need it the most. For $20 (the same amount or even less than that sweater you were looking at) you can give a person clean drinking water for 20 years, through Charity Water. I bet that sweater wouldn't last as long...



Last year Journey Fellowship teamed up with CHF and their Menu: Meals Served With Compassion. Through this you can buy just about anything to send to people in need- Bibles, shoes, bikes, toys, beans, pasta, seeds, first aid kits, small cars, and Food Paks (that cost about the same to pack your self but go four times farther). Last year, our parents all got either beans or pasta sent in their names to feed people who could use the help. Taylor even received 25 pairs of shoes sent in her name! This year we are taking the money saved from the free food we received and we are buying gifts from the Menu.



This video says it all! Enjoy and be inspired.

Back at it!

While we were home in Devine for the weekend, we discovered Grandma's pantry stocked full of tons of canned food products brought from the visiting Arizona family. They recieve mass amounts for some reason and brought it along to share. So we stocked up! Today marks another two weeks of Food Pak inspired eating!

This time around we are limiting our eating to what we grabbed from Grandma's and what we already had at home in the pantry and fridge (which is not much, just some random odds and ends of things.) We will be saving our grocery/eating out money to go towards our Christmas gifts that we will be buying through CHF's Menu - Gift Catalog, featuring "Meals served with compasion". (More on this later.)

Read along as we update about new food explorations and our past adventures (that we have neglected to post about over the past couple months. :P sorry!)

“In this life we can’t always do great things,

but we can do small things with great love .”
-Mother Theresa

Do Something!

We've been so encouraged by others who have decided to take the Food Pak Challenge, that have volunteered their time, who have donated Food Paks through CHF and the Oak Hills Food Pak Campaign, and also people who have decided to just do something, anything bigger than themselves.

There are so many different ways to give and different resources to give from. Find something in your budget that you don't need. Evaluate it against the needs of others.

• Frankie has had internet service on his phone for the past year. It's handy, but the monthly fee is enough to sponsor a child through World Vision. Internet bill or help a child and their family be healthy, sucessful, and learn about Jesus?? He's letting go of the internet.

We learned about another program through CHF called Skip1, a simple concept of skipping just one thing to give of your time or resources. Check out the site for ideas of what to skip and to see how their Top Skippers have contributed!

• Mom figured last night that if they (2 adults, 1 teenager, and 2 children) skip eating out after church on Sundays, just Sundays, they could fill a Food Pak every week! Or, take that money to buy groceries and donate them to the Agape collection baskets at church! The simplicity of eating out could easily be replaced by a crock pot the night before for much less!

Even if your budget is already tight and you're skipping a lot of things just to get by, there are ways to give of yourself for free! Give of your time- volunteering is amazing! I can think of a few ways people would be blessed by your time: volunteer in children's and youth programs at your church, visit the elderly, spend time at a homeless shelter or a street ministry.

• Not only can you give of your time, you can give from what you already have. I love Agent J's blog about "making love an action verb". She posts about her experiences of showing love to others without spending money. Do you have some extra clothes or shoes in your closet? Take them to someone who really needs them!

There are so many ways to be a part of something bigger than you. That is why we started this blog. We wanted to share our experience as we journeyed through a Food Pak to help others who rely on them. Keep reading along as we find fun ways to give and continue with our adventures!!

We have a winner!!

Well, we put the name into the hat, and when we drew it back out it was the same... Congratulations to Trevor from Thoughts B4 Conviction N2 Action! He is the winner of the our box. A good friend from Journey and a great man of God, he joyfully accepted the Food Pak Challenge!

Thanks to everyone who left a comment, we were so glad to hear from you, even if you didn't qualify for the contest!

Good luck Trevor! Stay tuned to read about his week.

Mission Accomplished!*

All 10 boxes loaded up and ready to drop off at Journey Fellowship! It is so hard to believe that we came to where we are. Thinking back to the launch of the Food Pak campaign at the Bigger then You service at the AT&T center we remember saying to our selves "Yeah, maybe we can give a box." We weren't even going to pick up a box on the way out, but somehow we ended up with three... and then that little voice that God puts in your head started with "what if...". Then "what if" turned into "I think we can do that." Then doing it turned into doing it again. And then maybe giving a box turned into buying 10 boxes and volunteering time and meeting people and going so much further then either of us would have imagined. Thanks to God for the simple "what if" and his opening of doors and clearing paths, and many blessings along the way. And thanks to Mom and Dad who gladly offered to pay the processing fee for the boxes, you guys are so great!!! And of course thanks to all the readers who supported us on our journey- we couldn't have done it with out you.


*Although our Food Pak experience is complete for now, our mission isn't over. We will pick a winner later in the week and post updates about CHF and other people who try the challenge. We will also continue to blog about our adventures as we continue to find new ways to give, so stay tuned!

Going Shopping!!!

Today was shopping day, and it could not have been more fun. After buying just enough for the past few weeks we went out and bought 10 times as much!

Filled up the cart!

Unloading.

Our cashier clocked out after us, I think she was a little overwhelmed.

It covered the table!

10 boxes!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wait! Eleven!!!

So, here is the deal. This isn't a box for us- it's for you! Well, one of you at least. We would like to post a challenge, and at the same time our first giveaway! We will send this box to one randomly selected reader willing to take the Food Pak challenge. Leave a comment and we'll reveal the winner next week! Eat from this box, then buy another or even two, to give back to CHF. And we'll feature you on here! (Umm...some rules apply: you kinda have to be in the Houston, San Antonio, or Buc-ee's area. Unfortunately, shipping the box would cost more than what's in it.)

Large Families - just pick a few people to eat from the box, keep track of the savings and see what you come up with at the end of the well. Couples - this will be great for you, we laughed so much during the process, and had a ton of fun trying to come up with things to make. Singles- you will have it made! Just make sure you have strong will because this challenge can be testing...

However, if you are not our contest winner, we would still love to hear from anyone who decides to try the Food Pak experience! Let us know how it goes and we would love to share your story on our blog!

So start commenting and check back soon to see who the winner is!!!

Day FIVE! In the Field!

So, this morning was GREAT!! We went down to the Children's Hunger Fund warehouse in San Antonio and we helped out with "repacking" the boxes. (Checking for variety, adding extras/fillers, and checking expiration dates, etc). It made us just that much more aware of what the whole process and experience is like.

Plus, volunteering is a great way to really get into something and be a part of something bigger. The people there were great! The staff was amazing and the other volunteers were so happy to be there, too! The 25 of us together processed 7 palletes of 75 boxes for a total of 525 Food Paks that are now ready to serve!

Being around the staff also gave us a deeper understanding of why Children's Hunger Fund operates. The Food Paks are a vital key to nourish these families but to also open the door to share Jesus! His love is so much more nourishing than beans!! Here are some of the pictures from this morning:

To finish up our second Food Pak we had the rest of our fruit for breakfast, pineapples for me and pears for Frankie.

For lunch we had tuna crackers and peanut butter crackers with some dried apples.

It was all good and tasty until dinner...dinner was a different story tonight- the rice and refried beans did taste good, but I craved something different, really craved something more. Not peanuts. Not noodles. Not pintos. My mom was making scrambled eggs with ham and cheese for the kids. I love my mom's scrambled eggs. I wanted them. I thought about just eating them and scrappping the last meal of our box, it was so plain and we've been doing this all week... Duh! That's the point self! When people get to the end of their groceries they don't just give up get something better, that's what's left, and they eat it. This is what they are living off of, and they've been eating it for much longer than a week. So suck it up, self. This was probably the hardest moment for me out of both weeks, but also the most real and revealing.

So tomorrow we get to take all of the money we saved from the two Food Pak weeks and go shopping!!! The amount we did not spend going out to eat and living from our box is equal to about 10 boxes!!! 10 families!!! 10 oppurtunites to share God's love!!! We are so excited!!!

[Awesome side story! Not only did we save a ton of money, but God greatly blessed us in a very specific way. Last week, we were at a benefit dinner for Frankie's aunt Chita who has ALS. This event was complete with bake sale (including our cupcakes! post delayed, but coming soon!), silent auction, raffle, dinner and dance! It was a great night and they raised a good deal of money, but what was interesting were the silent auction items we won... we bought only $15 worth of tickets (15 tickets) to bid on some of the over 70 items that had been donated by kind companies and friends and family from all over town. Tons of items, we bid on all kinds of stuff. Guess what we won... a $25 gift certificate to Joey's Surf 'n' Turf, a $25 gift certificate to Rocky's Diner, and a $50 gift card to Pappasito's! $100 worth of FOOD!!! God is just too cool! (We also won back our very own Buc-ee's basket- a blessing all it's own, since it wasn't generating enough interest to make it worth our donation.)]

Day IV - To Go Box!

We have very exciting news! We are taking our box to go... We are hitting the road and driving to San Antonio, as a matter of fact we are posting from a rest stop! We felt like we really needed to take this a step farther so Frankie e-mailed CHF in San Antonio for information about volunteering. We received an email back the same day, and after a few emails back and forth, we found out that they were having people come in and help assemble boxes on September the 18th, as in TOMORROW!!! So Frankie took the day off and we said that we would be there!!! So that is where we are heading... Isn’t it perfect how God's timing works? So we will be able to share a new aspect of our project tomorrow, we are so excited!!!

Also exciting is the dinner we packed for tonight! I made refried beans (Mexican Style), with rice and chicken, and a side of mixed veggies! The beans were already flavored in the can and they tasted so good! The total cost was about $2.22! Cheap, filling, and delicious!!

For breakfast, I finished off the trail mix! (I also, thoughtfully laid out Frankie’s breakfast this morning and he got it to work, but forgot to eat it! Oh well…more snack for tomorrow!)

For lunch, Frankie had leftover mush (always better the second time around) and I snacked on some peanuts, some peanut butter, and dried apples. (I’m over the tuna mush.)

So, the rest of our box is packed up and in the backseat, to faithfully feed us tomorrow! :D
Stay tuned, tomorrow is going to be a BIG day!!

3rd Day

Today was a better day, but food seemed to be a focus point... They took the fence down between the restaurant and my office window today so I had a great view of people eating delicious Mexican food all day. Ugh! And our Wednesday night TV tradition- Wipeout, was food themed!! Little things like this remind us of what we are missing, but it was a really nice feeling to know that we were strong enough to overcome the temptations of eating outside our box and remember what we are doing this for.

Breakfast for Taylor was Granola Bars...I keep forgetting mine.

For lunch it was hot broccoli/tuna/rice mush- not the best but it did it's purpose.

And for dinner we had Spaghetti with carrots (yes, there is sauce under there)! Something we have been looking forward to since grocery shopping Sunday night! Definitely a good dish to keep us strong in the middle of the week.

And after dinner snack! My new favorite - granola bar with peanut butter spread over it and fruit on top, this time it was dried apples. YUM!!!

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We wanted to share this video with you to give a better understanding of the big picture. It's from Children's Hunger Fund, but specifically features Oak Hills Church. It really shows why we are doing this and for whom we are being strong. It puts a face to hunger. Check it out.