All about the Food

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Sheila

The past several months have been a struggle in regards to food/groceries and our budget. We have been attempting to eat what we have and maintain a $600 a month grocery budget while keeping a crazy schedule. I am very thankful that when school ends this Friday, our schedule will become a little bit simpler because the kids will be able to sleep in a bit later in the morning in addition to getting a nap during the day if we are really late getting to bed. School ending will not have an effect on our grocery budget however. We have been packing lunches all year long so in theory we should be eating the same amount of food.

With our busy schedule it has been several months since I have been able to devote time to restocking our freezer with items that make life easier at dinner and breakfast time. The good news is that this weekend, I have been able to accomplish a little bit of that. I am trying to be creative and use food before it ends up in the composite pile as well.

Saturday cooking included: French toast, deviled eggs, potato salad, mandarin salad, watermelon prep, sour dough bread, banana chocolate chip muffins, Mexican rice and a baked spaghetti.

I made a huge batch of French toast, using sour dough bread that needed to be eaten. The down side to making my own bread at this point is that I have to feed the starter every 7-10 days, I could simple toss a cup of starter after feeding it but that feels like waste to me. I was able to use up a loaf and half of bread this morning. Matt is also planning to make pretzels for a treat and it will use the same dough as well.

My kids love to help in the kitchen and I know that I need to encourage and develop that skill as well so this weekend, the little three have been taking turns helping to prepare food. Kendall read the French toast recipe and Zach dump in the ingredients. Lily was able to make “mandarin salad” following the recipe with just guidance from me. For Zach next turn, he was able to help dump and turn on the blender for mixing up bread dough. Kendall helped with deviled eggs today as well. The kids really enjoyed working in the kitchen. I was able to get all the food prepare that I had planned so it was definitely a win this week..

One of the areas that is always a struggle for us is Sunday. I really like the idea of not cooking and having a day of rest. In order for it not to turn into a eat out day. I am trying to prepare things ahead. The muffins were made on Saturday. Lunch was prepared on Saturday night and will cook while we are at church. Dinner is also all prepared and will just need to be heated up or in the case of most of the food just loaded on plates.

Overall I am very pleased with the food progress we made this weekend and hope that with some extra prep we can avoid eating out and still maintain a budget during June.

Now to the menu plan with some notes about our work on Saturday.

Breakfast-French toast (leftovers from Saturday) , Banana Muffins (made for breakfast on Sunday) Cereal, Poptarts, grits and toast.

Lunch-Lunches are going to be packed later today(Sunday) and I will be taking either a salad or leftovers.

Dinner– In addition to the kids “normal” practice this week we have a meeting for Matt on Tuesday and for Sheila on Thursday.

Saturday- Lunch: Potato salad, Mandarin salad, watermelon, deviled eggs. Matt needed some meat so he eat leftover steak. Dinner- Mexican rice with salsa, cheese and chips.

Sunday- Lunch- Baked Spaghetti (noodles left over from last week and I need to use up the mozzarella cheese , Dinner- Left over meat choice of chicken, steak or pork with the sides from Saturday or a salad.

Monday- Hamburger steak with sides ( whatever is left) from Saturday
Tuesday- Tacos
Wednesday-Rice creole
Thursday- Options include leftovers, breakfast, pizza chicken or pulled pork. (I will make the decision Wednesday night based on what the refrigerator is looking like and my mood.)
Friday- Cowboy beans that will be reheated in crock pot. We may add some corn bread just to make things fun.

Finally the budget discussion, after much thought, prayer and analyzing the numbers, I have decided to increase my grocery budget to $700 a month beginning in June. Food prices have been on the rise for the past several years and I have maintained the $600 budget for almost 3 years. In addition as the kids are growing they are beginning to eat more. With this realization I will be add the $100 a month in hopes of making the budget more realistic and obtainable . Is your budget changing?

5 things Friday

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Sheila

1. The white van left me completely stranded yesterday. Luckily after some investigating, Matt was able to replace the battery with one we already had so no out of pocket expense.

2. Our house appraisal came in much higher than we anticipated, which sounds like a good thing but it means more choice and decisions to be made. I am going with the lesson my mother taught me “never count your chickens till they hatch.” so waiting to actually share numbers and our new budget after everything is settled.

3. Lily and Kendall have 1 more week of school left. Both are excited for the summer! Lily finished required testing this week and scored 5 out of 5, the highest possible on both Reading and Math.

4.My work is crazy. For the first time EVER, I actually worked 40 hours this week. I was really nervous about going over 40, which is not allowed. I managed to stay inside the 40 by 3 minutes.

5. The weather is much cooler than normal and it has rained every day this week. My garden is loving it! We even have corn spouting from the seeds I planted last Saturday.

Saving on Saturday-5/30/2015

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Sheila

This saving on Saturday was one that sort of happened. If you had ask me even on Wednesday about it, I probably would have not had a clue. First the story and then lots and lots of pictures.

One of my co-workers is starting a small nursery. I decided to take all the plastic trays and small pots that I have been collecting for the past several years. to her to see if she could use. I did not realize how expensive they were but really I just hated to throw them away. She was very excited to get them, and a couple of weeks later when I mentioned that one of the pepper plants I planted had died, she offered to bring me some. She ended up bring me 6 “rainbow peppers” this week. Next my friend bought at Costco a vegtable/herb growing kit at Costco with little seed pods that are guaranteed to grow. She ran out of room and brought five to me on Friday. I was sort of at a lost because we are all out of room in the square foot garden, but mentioned to Matt that I might go see if I could find some wood to add another section.

The abandoned wood pile deserves at least a paragraph of it own. We began really digging in the pile to finish the composite bin several weeks ago. This wood is actually from the deck that was on the house when I purchased it 22 years ago. About 13 years ago before meeting Matt, I had a friend to tear down the old deck and replace it with a larger one. Instead of recycling or even burning to old deck, he simply cut it into 6 foot sections and deposited in the woods behind the house. These boards are now what we are digging out and reusing.

I walked down to the edge of the woods and spotted a section of decking, I was even able to pull it out of the weeds all by myself. After bringing the wood to the front of the house, we knew exactly what section we wanted to add.

This morning after a trip to Lowes, I planted the remaining 5 “rainbow peppers, three of the garden pods that my friend gave me. After counting out the remaining squares I decided to head in the freezer and plant another 45 stalks of corn. So the only real cost to this project was $40 worth of dirt that we purchased. I am very very pleased with the way this project turned out and am also very hopefully that we will reclaim that $40 in the month of August with a second harvesting of corn and peppers. Here are the pictures I took after finishing planting and watering today!

: view from driveway!

: from driveway

5 things Friday

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Sheila

1. I sent my list of “sit down” dining reservations over to our travel agent this morning. She will be making these on Sunday! It is so exciting!

2. Today is our 11th anniversary. We celebrated by adding on to the square foot garden.

3. I made our first official harvest of the year, 1 small squash a ziplock gallon bag of dill and another bag of cilantro.

4. We are waiting not so patiently for our house appraisal so that we can refinance.

5. Swim season has officially started with practice 3-4 nights a week. This week I have been working until 6:30 then picking up Zach and Kendall from swim practice before coming home. I really dislike this schedule!

Random Thought Tuesday

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Sheila

I have lots of these to share!

Happy Cinco De Mayo, we celebrated by having cheese Quesada and Mexican Rice for dinner. Matt and I ended the day with margarita wine! Yes we are partying hard.
The white van is having even more issues, currently I have a flashing light and it is running rough. I am frustrated. In fact I am so frustrated that we are discussing options for purchasing a new to us car and making payments. The goal right now is to wait several months in order to reduce our debt load and make sure we can afford a new huge monthly expense.
I purchased 48 bottles of water at CVS for a grand total of $0.10 yesterday. This was in fact all tax. I have not been shopping regularly at CVS for over a month now but was excited to actually grab a great deal and use ECB at the same time.
Our bean plants have spouted! I have had horrible luck with planting seeds this year that I was becoming concerned that the green beans would not grow either. In fact I was trying to find a store to purchase live plants from. But yesterday, they started popping out of the ground and today I am counting a close to 90% growth rate from the seeds.
Spring/Early Summer has finally arrived in North Carolina. The high temperature this week are crawling slowly into the 80s. We have not needed to turn on our air condition yet but I am sure it will not be long. The great news is that we have now been a month without use heat or air. Our electric bill should remain below $200 for the month of May as well!
Amanda has applied for and been accepted into the community college starting in the fall. I am so excited and proud of her.
On Sunday both Lily and Kendall participate in their final cheerleading competition for the year. Lily’s team received a special honor of best tumbling for the entire day! My plan is to post lots of fun pictures for Wordless Wednesday. Pictures not only of the competition but also from the rides we enjoyed at the amusement park where it was held.

Food For Thought

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Sheila

Up until this Saturday, I had done no grocery shopping in the month of April. Matt actually ran to the store to pick up milk after we came home from the beach. Because of the limited shopping our budget has stayed very low for the month. My goal for the month was to keep our grocery budget low and to use up as much as possible from our stockpile so I had already decided that I did now want to spend a great deal and I am pleased to report that I was successful. Saturday turned out to be a very rainy and nasty day, Amanda had planned to spend the day with the kids so she offered to watch all three of the little one while Matt and I went to the grocery store. After ten years of marriage, this even is considered a date! Matt has a free drink from Starbucks so that was our first stop. Next we went to Harris Teeter, I saved around 50% and only used 3 coupons, $3 off a 12 pack of diet coke, $3 off 2 boxes of Starbucks K-cups and $5 off purchase of $50. This last coupon was after all other coupons as well. I did shop in the clearance buggy where I found 3 boxes of ant bait. We also purchased sausage, bacon and pepperoni with our total our of pocket being $47.67. Next we stopped at Food Lion where we purchased 10 boxes of fruit snacks, 5 boxes of pop tarts and a gallon of milk for $22. I was very pleased with our trip> I am actually still under $200 for the month so I may go to Food Lion for a couple more rounds of Fruit snacks.

After keeping our food budget extremely low for the month of April, I am already looking ahead to May, I know that we are going to need to make a Costco trip at the beginning of the month and it also appears as if we will be purchasing 40# of ground beef from Zaycon to last us through the summer. My goal is to stay under $600 for the month so between these two large purchase we most likely will continue to adapt and ate things that we have on hand. Otherwise if the budget goes extremely high it will negate our positive gains in April.

Next item on our food list is that our square foot garden is growing! I am so excited that not only did all the plants that I have initially planted survive but they are growing. Matt has also added a 2×6 box that we will be planting corn in. Depending how well the corn grows and if we really like it, we may add a third box just for corn.

Finally, meal planning for the week. This will be a special week as both girls have Field Day this week, several appointments on Thursday and we are headed to our last competition for Cheerleading next weekend.

Breakfast-French toast (leftovers) , Cereal, Poptarts, eggs and Baked oatmeal.

Lunch-Lunches are going to be packed later today(Sunday) and I will be taking either a salad or leftovers.

Dinner– Crazy evening schedule with several quick and easy meals thrown in.

Saturday- Lunch: new chicken recipe, Dinner- Homemade pizza with sourdough crust.
Sunday- Lunch- at my parents, Dinner- Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, veggie and fruit.
Monday- leftovers
Tuesday- Hamburger helper
Wednesday-Chicken pie and Squash casserole, I am taking the day off so I will be cooking!
Thursday- hot pockets or pizza roles
Friday- Pepper steak and rice.

Random Thoughts Thursday

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Sheila

It does not feel like just a week ago we were enjoying some fun at the beach!
Matt’s birthday was Tuesday but due to our schedule we decided to celebrate tonight. He wished for things to slow down and I just laughed!
I am amazed at the difference in the weather in different parts of the country. Today it was windy but 65* but in Michigan it snowed! I am also very thankful I don’t live where it snows in April!
I was able to plant most of my square foot garden today! The current plan is to finish it in two weeks and replace anything that does not survive. I thought I had checked the weather better but it turns out that we have a chance of going below freezing today so I hope everything survives. I am so excited to get things growing!
. We are doing really well on our budget for the month. I knew in advance that our beach trip would cost us extra and I am hoping to cover the additional repair to the van as well. As of today, we have spent only $121 of our $600 grocery budget and that includes not only the plants you see above but steaks for Matt’s birthday dinner! In gas, we have spent $309. This amount does include our gas for travel to and from the beach but not the repair that was made on the white van prior to going. I don’t see that we will be spending anything more in gas but do expect to end up spending around $150 on groceries by the end of the month.
Weird things excite me, as you can tell from the numbers above, we have not been grocery shopping this month. On Monday, we went down to our building where we have both our freezers. In the chest freezer is all veggies, it is starting to look a little low except for the zucchini which I froze over 2 years ago. The other freezer now only contains chicken and is less than half full. I am excited to finally be using and seeing a difference in our grocery budget. I definitely don’t want to use up all our stock pile but like the idea of starting fresh at the end of the summer and attempting to maintain the same $600 budget after cutting it down to a fourth for a couple of month.
Our next and final cheerleading competition is only two weeks away but it at Carowinds which is an amusement park. It will be very expensive but a fun trip. I am actually really looking forward to decreasing our schedule by at least one night a week for cheerleading! Swim team starts everyday in the month of June so I am not sure what we will do for the month of June this year. I would love to take a month off from cheering but just don’t see that happening!

Yard Work

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Sheila

I am not a person who enjoys working in the yard, well except for mowing. As a mom, who can say no to an hour of uninterrupted quiet time? I do however, want to have a yard that is pretty and looks like I care. I really enjoy flowers at least looking at them. We are finally at a season in our life when we have the money, time and energy to attempt to beautiful the yard. We are also focusing on making our square foot garden not only productive but at least not an eye sore. Yesterday, we spent most of the day working outside, the biggest project was adding a “platform” to the square foot garden as well as getting it ready to plant in a couple of weeks. I am so excited that it turned out this well.

Next after twenty years, I decide to replace the brick chip with mulch on both sides of the house.

We also ended up replanting some grass up front and I did some rearranging of the flowers in the front bed. Finally, I replanted tulips and love my flower pot in front of the house.

I am exhausted and sore but very pleased with the results.

Five Things Friday 4/10/2015

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Sheila

So glad that Carla did this post today! So I “borrowed” her cute picture and will share my five things!

The white van was treated to yet another set of repairs yesterday. A new heater hose and air conditioner compressor. This depleted our emergency fund by $450. I am hoping to be able to add a little bit back to the fund this month but even more so am praying that this is the end of repairs at least for a couple of months.
I was driving the van to cheerleading last night and on the way home suffered an allergy attack. After a little bit of thinking, realized that it was most likely due to “dust” that had accumulated in the air condition system. This morning, Matt spent another $10 to replace the cabin air filters. I am so frustrated with this van at the moment.
I did have a major success in saving for Groceries. Our menu plan called for Baked Potato on Thursday. I realized when getting out the potatoes that I still had about a fourth of bag of potatoes that were starting to spout. In order not to waste food, I filled the crockpot with potatoes, used the remaining ones after dinner to make mashed potatoes. One 2 cup set I will use for “shepherd pie” this weekend and the others (2) are frozen for later use. I also started a crock pot with “potato corn chowder” which will be a second meal for the weekend and then at least two additional meals in the future. So I have managed to cook a minimum of 5 meals in one day using crock pots and food on hand.
I am working toward a goal of significantly lowering our grocery cost for the month. To accomplish this I want to stick to shopping at CVS and Aldi, no Costco trips. So far for the month, we have spent $38 on groceries. The goal is to spend less than $50, purchase some landscape items and plants for the square foot garden with another $200 and use the remainder to now cover the unexpected van expense.
In NC on Saturday, the temperature is suppose to be in the low 70s and sunny so we are planning to spend the day working on the Square Foot Garden. I hope to post pictures of all the yard tomorrow.

Playing in Dirt

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Sheila

That is how we spent most of this beautiful Saturday! Playing in the dirt! The temperature was around 65 degrees and it was sunny! I would call it a perfect Spring day in North Carolina!!

I started the day with a long list of small projects that needed to completed to make our yard at least presentable.

.~~Mix new dirt into square foot garden.~~ (See above).
~~Weed all three flower beds and place new mulch.~~
~~Fix square foot garden where it was hit this winter.~~
~~Drill holes in large planter and re-plant.~~
Move and straighten playhouse.
~~Place lime over wet area of yard.~~
~~Mow and trim yard.~~
~~Fix Matt’s van, (small leak).~~
~~Fix cup holder in white van and add cup holder for Lily.~~
~~Wash and hang to dry all sheets.~~
~~Apply mulch to playground~~ and then Preen It (this will prevent weed growth).
~~Wash dog and all his bedding.~~

As you can tell we did accomplish a lot. The ground is simply too wet right now to get the playhouse adjusted, so hopefully in the next couple of week we can get this marked off the list. Applying the weed preventer, need to happen just prior to it raining so I am going to do this on Sunday in anticipation of rain late Sunday night or Monday.

This is one area that I will admit that I usually forget to budget for however this year, I did not. I had budgeted $100 for the yard, after using this I ended up pulling $25 from the yard sale profits to keep us even for this project. I am so excited to have this behind me and to not have to borrow money to complete. One of the ways that I ended up saving money was buying plants off the “clearance” shelves at Lowes. I ended up purchasing all but 2 of the plants from this area this year. I had great success with these last year as most of the time the plants are simply not blooming or missed getting water prior to being placed in this area.

Lily is a bit of a prissy girl and does not like playing in the dirt but because we were all outside, she was required to at least sit outside as well.

And finally a picture of the mulched beds and planter…