Category Archives: Saving Money

Saving on Saturday

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We have been spending quite a bit of time working on getting the yard and garden ready for the Spring and Summer.

This old jeep wheel makes a perfect hose holder!

When we finally got the deck replaced last year the construction cause us to lose our compost box as well as one of the side flower beds.  Since the weather has turned a bit nice, I have been working to get these spaces back to use this year for either flowers or vegetables.

All the wood has been reclaimed from the “waste of the deck” I have been adding shredded paper in order to make a weed barrier.  We also “salvaged” some lumber screws in order to connect the pieces to make it more stable.  This actually has taken several weeks to get together. Finally,

this weekend, I was able to purchase dirt on sale. I am really loving it’s new look. We will be adding cattle panel across the bottom to help give it more of a separation and hopefully keep animals from under the deck.

Next I ended up paying Zach to level the area where the old compost bins sat and He used brick edging that had been removed from our front yard. I am thinking that I will plant either watermelon or Sunflowers in this area.

I think that it is small details like these that always improve the look of our house!

5 Things Friday

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  1. The weather has absolute beautiful with highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s.  I have decided to turn off the heating and air unit in order to save money. In the past I can typically turn this off the first of April but even if I need to turn it back on then we are still saving money!
  2. Zach has been having baseball games or practice 5 days a week which means that our evening are even more pushed and busy.  I am learning that for away games we need to have a food option with us and home games we can typically eat at home if something is ready.  Unfortunately, this was an expensive lesson as we ended up spending $65 on a game day for food and entry.
  3. I am hoping that we are able to complete some outside upgrades and maintenace this weekend as we have 5 weeks till our typical last frost date.  I am planning on continuing with my weekly garden updates on Sunday.
  4. Zach’s truck sold this week.  I have decided that we will not be on the lookout for another vehicle until the end of May.
  5. The pantry challenge is starting to work. I heard from kids yesterday that “there is nothing to eat at home”   In reality we have plenty of food but things have to be prepared and made ahead. I have plans to also do some of this prep work this weekend.

Sunday Garden Update

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I like a schedule and routine. So I am going to start attempting to post a garden update on Sunday for the gardening year. I have really enjoyed looking back and figuring out when we did certain things and being able to document and decide if I am right on track or ahead of schedule. For example, I have been doing some reading and realized that the years I have had the best harvest, I started my tomatoes this early!  Last weekend, we ended up doing some major renovations to the gardens. First, we needed to replace the front board on the tomato bed.

After much thought and discussions, we decided to add cattle panel trellises to out beds in the back. This really doubled our growing space!

In total we spent a total of $96 for the upgrades.  I also purchased a 1000 worms to place in the front beds to hopefully prompt and encourage soil. The current plan is to add chicken manure at the end of the session in order to allow it time to age.

We currently have over a dozen pepper plants that have sprouted along with radishes outside and 7 broccoli plants inside.

I think we are off to a good gardening season!

Saving on Saturday

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The weather today has been absolutely beautiful!  So we spent a good amount of time outside prepping for the garden.  I had purchased these metal signs you see below at Dollar Tree at 25 to 50 cent each. We have label most of the beds where we plan to plant. This was also a good way for me to plan out my space.

I did plant out some sugar snap peas yesterday and some spinach. Matt and Zach were able to trim all three of rose bush. They also were able to prune out trees. This is the first time we have attempted to prune the trees.  We planted these trees in November 2016, with the pecan trees planted in April 2017. So most of the trees are beyond the time we need to prune. I am hopefully that this will also increase our production as well.

We are about 6 weeks away from our last frost. So it was definitely time to get the tomato plants started.

We started peppers and broccoli about 2 weeks ago.

I am trying to get back to making our bread products. Today I started loaf bread, biscuits and English muffins.  The biscuits turned out beautifully!

I did spend some time, making sure we used up leftovers and vegetables so I did a fair amount of food prep.

 

Saving on Saturday

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Matt and Zach have been able to finish the deck!  Total spent $0.  I will post those pictures on Wednesday.

Today I split myself several times and actually got a lot accomplished. First, I worked on our taxes. I have always completed my own taxes in recent years with the help of a tax program.  This year was not good we ended up owing 3800 to the Federal government and after some deep digging, I did not find much I could do to change this.

Next up I decided it was a good day to start working toward our garden, so I needed to clean out the greenhouse. I am very happy with the results

Before

After

I was able to “find” 4 5 gallon buckets of dirt that will be put in the tomato beds after they are completely repaired.

Next a trip to the grocery store with mom, I discovered an awesome deal on soda so this is the result

Finally we added a vertical growing space to the raised beds. I did not get any pictures but will try to include in a garden update.

 

5 Things Friday

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  1. The weather continues to be very different.  This week has brought 2 days of beautiful snow (Wednesday and Thursday).  Both the kids and I had a remote day on Wednesday. I had a second remote day on Thursday while the kids had a total day off.  The good news was that it was a very dry snow and mostly melted so we all returned to school on Friday.
  2. Our electric bill was significantly higher than usual this month. It was over $300 to be exact $319.  This is likely due to the cold weather so there is really not much I could do about this.
  3. Speaking of cold, we have realized that both my office and the living room are much cooler than the rest of the house.  We set up small thermometers in both room and have discovered that overnight the temperature drops to 63 degrees in both rooms with the heat pump set at 67* After discussion this is likely not a new problem but something that continues to happen and with the colder temperatures means increasing bills. We have purchased two small heaters to use in these rooms when we are in them.
  4. The 2025 gardening season has started.  We planted pepper seeds and broccoli seeds last Saturday. We actually have a couple of broccoli plants starting. These will likely go outside in the next couple of days.  I am planning to get out and try and straighten out the greenhouse later today. The next big project is to prune both the rose bushes and fruit trees hopefully next week this will be possible.
  5. Kendall and Zach have been participating in a weekly Bible study with some other from our youth group.   They have been meeting at Starbucks but this is expensive and hard to hear. We offered our house and we will be providing drinks and snacks.  This will affect our grocery bill but both Matt and I agree that we don’t want to change this so a higher bill will be the expectation.

Saving on Saturday- Food Edition

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Food is always a huge expense for us, and I am constantly trying to find ways to save money on this expense. The biggest way to save money on groceries is to not throw away food.  We are fortunate to have chickens that pretty much like anything and what they don’t eat they poop on which can be used for fertilizer to grow more food.   I should also mention that yesterday was Valentine Day which added a bit of “celebrating” to this post.

We typically have a special or meal out for Valentine’s Day, but I did not want to deal with the crowds yesterday. Matt offered to pick up take out, which was a great idea. We have been going to the same local Chinese restaurant for at least 20 years so that was my choice for dinner.  We have discovered that recently, ordering out actually gets you more food than eating in. We ordered a Sesame chicken combo dinner which included rice and a soup, and a large shrimp lo mien, total $21.75.  This actually was enough food to feed 4 people dinner and one lunch!  Matt and I headed out early this morning to attend Braxton’s basketball game, we planned to head to Costco to do a stock up trip as I had over 15 items on my Costco list.  I had purchased gift card for a couple of restaurants last year with my Costco reward certificate, so this was a perfect time to use the remaining $25 one for Bad Daddy’s.  Matt and I ate for $8 including tip after the gift card, and we decided to add a Starbuck’s just for fun. Total cost for “Date Day” not including Costco $25! ($8 was to enter the ballgame).

Now on to more food content, I purchased a rotisserie chicken for $4.99 at Costco.  For dinner today, we chopped up some and made chicken and rice, this will also probably be enough for at least 1 more meal and a couple of lunches so that is enough for 10 people to eat, I also will be making a double batch of chicken enchiladas, one for this week and one to freeze, another 10 meals.  That means we spent approximately 25 cent a meal on meat.  But to make this an even better deal, I currently have my roaster oven going with a huge batch of chicken stock with I will can tomorrow!

We have some mini cinnamon and raisin bagel that we purchased a couple of weeks ago and 5 are left, which are beginning to become stale, I have cut these up and will be using for a French toast casserole for breakfast in the morning!

Finally, I have a couple of ears of corn left in the fridge along with a small portion from a can, this will get used for a new honey corn hamburger casserole this week!

I don’t mind food going to the chickens but I prefer to use what we have!

Pantry Challenge Success or Fail?

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This actually depends on how you are determining success or failure.

The quickest way to look at pantry challenge is based on money.   I completely failed at this as we spent $771 on groceries in the month of January. But wait this is still almost $50 less than our budget of $820.  But significantly more than my goal of $300.  I actually spent some time researching and checking out numbers today.  The only other time that I have spent over $500 during a pantry challenge was in 2019.   The year the world imploded so this does concern me a bit!

I also did some checking into what the US government is using as a standard.  Based on the numbers from December 2024 we should be spending $1309 on food. Or this is what food stamps would be based on for our family of five.$1309 is considered the “thrifty” amount so this is the lowest amount that the government thinks we could survive on.   Looking a bit deeper this amount indicates an increase from December 2023.  Another interesting fact is that for the year 2020 to 2023 the amount stayed the same! I had thought and even mention increased the amount to $1200 for grocery spending for the first three months of the year.  Now I am leaning toward using the $1309 amount.  Can I feed our family of five for 3 months for the thrifty amount that the government has set? In reality between some stops  at the grocery store already this month and our Amazon subscribe and save our current total for both January and February would be $984, leaving $325.   That may definitely work, I think I just talked myself into this amount.

The other method I could look at the success of the pantry challenge would be to look at the goals I have set.

1.Purchasing items that we are completely out of that are staples such as diary as well as buns or other items that will help use items we already have. Total spending for the three months of the 2025 will be less than $1309.  Discussed above!

2. Use at least one “meal/meat portion of the meal” from the stand-up freezer each week. (This is where most of the meals are)  have been consistently doing this and I can start to see a difference and the ability to re-organize this freezer prior to the summer stock up period.
3. Use at least 3 jars a week from the canning pantry. I am beginning to see several lines of empty shelves and I am thinking about ways to use items. I currently have enough empty jars that I could use up pears that have been vacuumed sealed to make pearberry sauce and do a large batch of beef broth.  Again this has been a success!
4. Use one item a week from the connivence freezer in my room. This is also starting to show. My goal would be to completely empty this freezer prior to May in order to organize and use it more efficiently this summer.
5. Each Monday after menu planning provide a list of how I followed the guidelines for the week.  This also has been consistent.

So based on goals I am successful with the pantry challenge to date!   I am going to continue with this challenge using the same guidelines except for increasing the spending for the month of February.  I may need to re-evaluate at the end of February to determine if it is sustainable for the month of March?  Only time will tell but I am at least seeing a benefit.

Saving On Saturday

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We spent over half the day in Greensboro for the Swim Regional watching both Zach and Kendall.  The weather has changed significantly with the start of February. It was so nice that I was able to work outside with just a light sweater.

I am starting to think about and plan for the garden this summer. I have decided to try and grow cucumbers on a old chain link fence panel that was in the back yard. This meant we needed to move the panel and also secure it to the garden bed.

Next this particular bed was starting to warp really badly so we try to add a couple of pieces of wood to help straighten and prevent huge gaps that dirt can be lost thur.

We also removed a piece of cattle panel from the front that I am bending to use as an arch between the tomato beds. Total cost of garden repair was ZERO!

I was also able to plant some onion seeds and radishes in the container in the side year. I am hopefully to get an onion harvest this year. The radishes are going to the chickens, but I want to use the seeds I have and if they grow 3 or 4 radishes great if not then no harm done. If the weather stays really nice, I may go ahead and plant out some broccoli, lettuce and spinach in the next week or so just to see what we can grow.  It is currently about 11 weeks till our last frost date.

Zach and Matt have been working very diligently on building a bar on the back deck.

I am unsure of how often this will actually get used so I did not want to spend any money. So far they have been able to accomplish this!  All materials are from other projects!  Even the Blackstone is from Luzader’s in Florida. It will require some cleaning and oil before it can be used.

This Saturday was a success!

5 Things Friday

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  1. The weather has remained extremely cold. Today is the first time in a week the temperature has been above 45 degrees.  We are actually expecting even colder weather next week with the temperature to remain below freezing from Sunday night until Thursday. There is also a chance for snow as well.
  2. Zach and Kendall have attended school 4 days in 2024 and if they are able to continue with the schedule they plan. Then they will go 2 out of 5 days next week which will put them at 5 full days in the month of January.
  3. On Wednesday this week, I picked up a foster dog who may become a permanent part of our family. He appears to have some hound dog in him and some pit bull.  We decided to go the foster route just to make sure that he will be a good fit for us. So far, he appears to be very sweet but is having trouble remembering to pee outside.
  4. I am continuing to work on some budget items and plans.  I want to make a significant dent in our overall debt but I also realize that we can’t cut back to a bean and rice budget due to the kids and I want my kids to enjoy their high school years not think about what they can’t do.  Look for a post in the next week or so with some more specific details.
  5. I am staring to look ahead to our junk food Sunday!  I plan to purchase at least the chicken wings we need this weekend along with some bacon and sausage that we are currently out of.   The pantry challenge may be a bit more of a challenge as we look and plan ahead.