2016

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Sheila

This project actually took us two days to complete but mainly because we had lot of other things going on at the same time. One side of the “addition” has an area of 6 inches or so from the wall that we have been attempting to grow grass in for the past three years. Last year, we bought specific “shade” grass and it still did not work. So after so talk and planning we decided to make it a flower bed. We decided not to attempt to grow vegetables in this area because it is in the shade for the majority of the day and would have a huge expense associated with it attempting to buy dirt to make sure things could grow.

I woke up bright and early Saturday morning and head out to the local “plant sale” that is by the master gardeners in the area. In the past, I have not arrived early enough to find as much as I have wanted. This year, I arrived at 7:50am for the sale that was scheduled to start at 8. I did miss out of a couple of specific things I was looking for but was successful over all. I focused on purchasing plants that were known to grow in the shade. I purchased 6 different shade plants for a total of $18. As I have been looking at the front flower bed which touches this new bed, I realized that at least one of the hosta plants was too close to other plants so I decided to dig it up. I was able to spread this one plant into 5 different sections which saved at least $20. I know this plants spread and grow very quickly so by next year they should be back to the right size. After coming home and going to Zach’s soccer game, we stopped at Lowes to purchase brick blocks to line the bed and some mulch. We ended up spending $100 total for this new bed. I am so pleased and excited about this huge accomplishment.

This is an attempt to view the entire side.

Wordless Wednesday- Growing Garden

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Sheila

Square Foot Garden

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Sheila

The focus this week has been on getting our garden in the ground and growing. I am proud to say that we actually got most of it accomplished.

First is the map I worked on Monday and Tuesday night

I have 100 corn seeds planted in addition to the 100 squares above. The blank box will be sweet potatoes. I am trying something new this year and growing our own slips for planting. Currently they are sitting on the kitchen cabinet and look like this.

We have tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, green beans, snow peas, red and yellow onions, lettuce, jalapeno peppers, sweet peppers and banana peppers, watermelon and cantaloupe. If you look closely you can see where we attempted to use seed pods to start some of the plants. I have spent right at $100 between seeds and plants so far this year which is less than last year with almost double the amount of items.

Today we used the sprinkler to water everything. I hope to get a good harvest this year and also do some steady pictures over the next two months so I can see what worked and what did not.

5 things Friday- 4/22/2016

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Sheila

Usually I am really tired by the end of the week and I can blame it on my crazy work schedule. This week that is not the case, we have been work outside trying to get the yard and garden in shape.
The goal is to plant the 100 squares of corn in addition to the 90 remaining squares by lunch on Saturday.
The kids have a lot of activities in the next two weeks including school field days, a wax museum, art show and Dare Graduation. I am fortunate to have known in advance about most of these days. But it will be a juggling act to balance work and kids this next week
We have already blasted past our grocery budget for the month.
I love sleeping in the rain and tonight should be the perfect night to do this.

Tuesday Garden Thoughts 4/19/2016

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Sheila

I have been able to finish up fairly early at work the last two days, which has given me the chance to spend some time outside working on the square foot garden and other needed yard activites.
Yesterday, I spent the majority of the time working on moving hostas from the spot where we have plans to place an rain barrel. Next I needed to plant flowers purchased two weeks ago. I am very hopeful that our last frost has pasted. The official date is April 30th.
Today, we mowed the yard and spent the majority of our time working on our square foot garden.
Matt has help me to develop a drawing of the garden that will be reuseable for the next several year. I need to sit tonight and figure out just what plants are going where and what will need to be purchased. I will be using a spreadsheet to get a fair count on what all we need. The goal is to plant everything but sweet potatoes this weekend.
The sweet potatoes have started to spourt and I am excited to see if this experiment is going to work. Not spending even $7 on new sweet potato plants is a savings.
We are expecting to plant around 100 stalks of corn. In addition I have 100 other square to plant.

Signs of Spring Wordless Wednesday

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Sheila

Saving on Saturday 3/19/2016

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Sheila

The weather has been warm and sunny the last week. This has made Saving a little bit easier for us. We decided to turn off the heat and air around 2 weeks ago and managed a solid 10 days without the use of either until today. I am hopefully that we can again turn it off next weekend. My goal is always to go an entire month without use either which will reduce our electric bill by approximately $100 for the month.

The warmer weather has also got me thinking about our garden. I purchased some new netting and some lawn fabric to use. The netting is specific to square foot garden but is also much cheaper than wire so I am hoping that it will last for several years. I am also trying something new this year. We still have sweet potatoes from our harvest in the fall, so I am trying to start a new crop from the ones we have. The kids enjoying helping with this project. I am not sure if this will give us enough but I am thinking that once I see it working I may start a second batch as well to equal the amount we planted last year.

I read last month that you could grow romaine lettuce using a similar water method. The red cup you see is out second head we have attempted. Last week, Zach and I planted the first one in the garden.

I realize that we may not be able to have a continual harvest and most like will only get a few extra leaves from this but as I have said before, every little bit helps.

Other areas of saving is our grocery budget, so far we have managed to spend $125 out of pocket for the month of March in addition to less than $1000 for the entire year so far. This has been the best and most controlled my grocery budget has ever been. I will admit that monthly meal planning helps but we also are buying on a rotating schedule. Our March spending should remain well below $200 however I will need to purchase meat in April so the budget will again be higher.

Finally, I am attempting to save money by using Swagbucks. My goal for each month is to earn one $25 gift card.

What are your saving secrets?

5 Things Friday-3/18/2016

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Sheila

Amanda purchased a new to her car yesterday, so we should be able to stick to our gas budget for the next several months. Which means paying off the tires on my van and for the last couple repairs on her car that finally died.
I splurged today and got a new color and haircut. I can’t post a picture because my allergies are going haywire and my eyes are swollen.
Matt has made some progress on the kitchen this week, hopefully he will be able to finish up plumbing and we will have our new dishwasher next Friday. My plan is to wait and post pictures once the dishwasher is completely in place. I am also optimistic that with the purchase of the dishwasher and new upper cabinets, we will stop spending for the summer.
I will be travelling to Raleigh tomorrow alone for a workshop on correct documentation. I am sad to be missing Zach’s soccer game but not sad to miss sitting in the rain to watch it.
We will be starting gardening in the next couple of weeks. I have been growing lettuce from scraps and plan to start sweet potatoes from our leftovers on Sunday.

Saving on Saturday

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Sheila

I have mentioned before that this is really a “choice/lifestyle” more than just here is what I saved at x store today. To illustrate, I want to blog about my weekend. I ended up with a ton of pictures, and don’t want to distract at all from the cuteness of the kids so I will limit pictures and post links to the pictures.

The weather over the past week has been predicting the possibility of a “freeze/frost” which turns out happened Saturday night. Many of the activities this weekend directly or indirectly related to this. Friday evening, Matt and I decided to go ahead and harvest all the green peppers and basil that were of any size. I ended up freezing 4 bags (1 cup ) of these and chopping up the remained for salads and cooking this coming week.

For breakfast, Saturday morning, we decided on BLT. I have been making our own bread for the past 18 months, only buying hot dog or hamburger buns. I wanted to use up the loaf so I could make fresh this weekend. We used both fresh lettuce and tomato from the garden. Most of the morning was spent digging sweet potatoes. Around lunch we decided to venture out to a fall festival at my best friend’s church. They provided chicken stew, hot dogs, homemade ice cream and kettle corn in addition to candy that was given as prizes. We ended up enjoying this so much that we spent 4 hours. After getting home, we fixed an easy dinner of grilled tenderloin and baked sweet potatoes. Kendall said that this was an AWESOME day, one of the best ever! Total spent $0. I was concerned a little about the drop in temperature so we chose to clean the oven last night in addition to completing several loads of laundry. The temperature in the house did drop to 67* but this is only a degree below where we set the heat so not a big deal. Unfortunately, I did not move the rising bread dough from the top of the stove and it actually cooked during the oven cleaning. We used old milk containers to cover our lettuce and cabbage plants from the freeze and picked all the tomatoes that were eatable prior to the temperature drop which turned out to be our first freeze. This is what our kitchen window looks like currently.

Sunday morning, we made biscuits and gravy for breakfast, I did freeze half of the gravy to use one morning when we don’t have the time to make it. For lunch, we had bacon cheeseburger pizza, This afternoon, I am going to head to CVS to pick up Diet Coke, Matt is taking Zach to registers for indoor soccer and Kendall has a friend over to play. We are choosing to eat at home in order to keep our spending down for the month. I realized this morning that all three of the little kids are in need of winter clothes. This afternoon I have made a list and contact a friend from whom I have previously bought clothes for Zach from. I should be able to purchase enough from her to set him for the winter at about 1/4 the regular cost, I am going to check out ebay and a couple of other sites to purchase the girls clothes before we head out to Winston in a couple of weeks. I may even check out a couple of consignment store, I just have not had much luck finding clothes for Lily at these before. As you can tell, we are doing a lot to try and stay within our budget no matter to surprises/changes that happen.

Sweet Potatoes

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Sheila

We spent the first part of the morning digging up our sweet potatoes in anticipation of our first freeze/frost today. The kids had a blast and we really did find about 25 pounds of sweet potatoes.