Saving on Saturday

Today the focus was on using what we have!   We headed out really early for Braxton’s ballgame. I did not want to stop and purchase breakfast, so I made a German pancake and a package of sausage links from the freezer.  For lunch, I made meatballs and lil smokies in the crockpot.  And for dinner, I added sour dough waffles.

We also finished taking down all the Christmas decorations. I absolutely LOVED having the curtain rod with ornaments over the kitchen sink. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided that I needed to purchase a curtain to go on the rod.   However, when I found my bag of Valentine’s items, I decided I could use some of these items and hold off buying a curtain. I do love the way it turned out.

I also went ahead and decorated the sign outside again with things we already have! It also turned out as well.

Total spent today was $20 for entrance into the game.

Every little bit counts!

Christmas Celebrations

As you can see below, we have been celebrating Christmas several times already this year!

First we hosted a Christmas Dinner..

Next was a “traditional Chinese lunch with friends.!

Finally Christmas Eve at my parent’s house… food, fun and Rook of course!

Oh yea in between lunch and Christmas Eve, we took family pictures, here is a sneak peek.

5 Things Friday

  1. It is the Friday before Christmas. Christmas is on Monday. We have exciting plans for every day between now and then.  Tomorow, we are hosting a dinner for friends.  Sunday is Christmas Eve services at church as well as my family Christmas.
  2. I have spent most of the day working on the dishes for the dinner. The kids have helped especially with the cleaning. We tried something new and I had everyone come in the kitchen, pick a recipe and then assembly. It worked super well!  We got 5 casseroles assembled in less than one hour!
  3. The kids requested and got to open one present tonight after dinner. Kendall is the happiest with her new journaling Bible ESV version.  Lily loved her present of makeup brushes until she saw Kendall!  Zach is confused. He opened a double pack of baseball for a pitching machine that he does not have.
  4. I am planning to get most of the breakfast items prepared ahead for Christmas morning. We are going to plan to breakfast all day along with some leftovers.  I do want to clean out my refrigerator and not let food go to waste.
  5. We leave for Florida in 5 days.  My mother, Amanda and Braxton will be joining us on this trip. We will spend 4 days in Florida including a day at Disney Spring and another Christmas celebration with Haley and her family!

Wordless Wednesday – Christmas Decorations

 

This is probably my favorite thing!

January in Review

January is always a slow slow month for us! In recent years it has also been a expensive month.  I started the year working on the pantry challenge. I have been mostly success with this and I want to continue to use up alot of the items we have. I will be buying items we are totally out of so but I plan to continue with limited meat and vegetable purchases until at least the end of February. Swimming has been the main event of the month!   I am glad these five weeks are behind us!

Groceries- Budget = $975.  Goal Met!  We spent $218 including stocking up on Diet Cokes and our Amazon subscription order!  I would like to keep the spending under $250 for February as well but I know I have a Costco trip so is this even realistic? A bright spot is that we have not needed to buy eggs this month. We are currently getting 2 eggs per day. This has been just enough and I look forward to more and excess in the coming months!

Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600.  This does include any traveling as well. This month we are under budget just barely at $539.55. We did some extra weekly driving for swim meets.

Blogging- 15 post per month. GOAL MET!  This is post number 15 and I am not cheating and back dating either!

Exercise- Does tripping and falling count for the month.. Nope then the answer is NONE.

Expenses: This month did contain a few unplanned for expenses. First was the washer. Our 14 year old washer died and we ended up replacing with a new washer for $800.  I am hopefully that it will help decrease the energy we are using. Another big expense was we decided to put metal on the outside of the Beetle building. Most of the expense came from money that was designated for the Beetle but another $117 was needed. Finally a HUGE expense this month was our electric bill. This is officially the highest amount we have ever paid $345.  This include the extreme cold at Christmas along with the camper.

Overall not a bad month but hopefully we have gotten some spending under control!

 

5 Things Friday- Final Friday in 2022

  1. The extreme cold last week caused a little bit of panic for us. The automatic closing house vents that we purchased 18 months ago have started to fail. Meaning that we had 3 or so that did not close at all and another 3 that did not close completely.  Fortunately for us, our pipes did not freeze under the house, but we could feel a significant difference in the floor temperature. We decided to go ahead and replace these. The cost is not the issue as finding daylight hours to complete the project is.
  2. We have never been entirely happy with the very expensive sink faucet that we purchased and installed when we moved the kitchen sink.  It has started to become difficult to use, setting off our breaker on several occasions and requiring some engineering in order to continue to use.  Another decision was made to go ahead and replace it as well. We did decide to go with the low-tech option. Matt was able to install this in one evening.
  3. Positive news from the blast of cold air, although both of our water barrels frozen neither cracked so we did not need to replace either of these.
  4. Our chickens also survived the cold. We ended up adding some additional bedding and a separate water bucket which needed to be emptied and filled every day but otherwise they appear to be doing great!  The price of eggs has jumped to 4.49 a dozen so I am very hopeful that come March we will not need to purchase eggs!
  5.  After testing positive for the flu a week ago, my goal for this weekend is to get Christmas decorations put away, finish up some canning projects and make a couple of meals for the weeks to come!

December Catch up!

It has been 16 days since I last posted a blog. I am not sure but that may have been the longest that I have gone without posting ever.   The last two and a half weeks have been full of fun with some sickness throw in to make things interesting.

Lily and I really enjoyed our short girls trip to Disney for four days.  I am going to try and get up a post with some more details but things are moving fast and furious as the end of the year approaches quickly.

The week before our trip, on Sunday (December 11) I made a visit to Urgent Care with a sinus infection.   By Friday of that week I was some better but fighting face pain which was thought to be a bacterial infection.  On the plane trip down to Disney, I started with  a cough. Full blown yuckiness occurred on both Wednesday and Thursday of our trip.  We arrived home late Thursday night and I tested positive for the flu on Friday.

Haley and her family arrived on Friday.   I actually felt some better on Christmas Eve which was spent at the Fire Department with the Youngs. Christmas Day was at home with Haley’s David responsible for the meal.

As on today Monday December 26th, I have a lingering cough but we managed to get Family pictures, a trip to Winston and the camper under a tarp so  things are starting to look up!

Saving on Saturday

We all know that our grocery bill in one of the highest budgeted items.  And to be honest, I have been going way over budget this year most of the year!  Today, I spent the afternoon making sure that as little as possible of our food goes bad and is wasted.

We also managed to eat at home all three meals which is a huge money saver.  Matt used the Black stone to make sausage links and patties and bacon. I was in charge of eggs and hashbrowns.  Matt also used the Black stone to cook 3 pounds of hamburger to use in several different things today as well.

I opened the vegetable draw to discovery that most of the items were on the brink of going bad. I did fine one orange pepper that was fed to the chickens.  I chopped up 4 and half cups of peppers and 2 cups of celery that went into the freezer. I also left out sliced peppers to be eaten as lunches this week. I chopped 4 cucumbers to snack on. I used the remaining green onions in our loaded potato casserole that was made to prevent the remaining potatoes from going soft.

I used up a couple of boxes of Chex mix for reindeer crack and muddy buddy Chex mix. We also discovered that a couple of half boxes of Chex cereal were stale, but they were not wasted instead the chickens enjoyed a treat.

For meal prep, I made a batch of cheddar and bacon burgers, two loaded potato casserole went in the freezer for later use. I made a batch of my chili for dinner and to use with baked potatoes this week.  Matt made a batch of his chill for dinner and lunches next week.  We also have a pound of ground beef cooked for a taco pasta this week.

Finally, we saved money by wrapping presents this evening using the paper I found in the attic last year and tape that was purchased on sale several years ago.  I have enough paper to last several more years of Christmas.  By that time, may I can sell my “vintage” wiggles wrapping paper!