Monthly Archives: October 2016

Menu Planning

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We survived the last couple of weeks!  This week things are a tiny bit slower with no baseball game on Monday!  We have changed to a monthly menu plan and I am really enjoying the way it is working. First, Matt and I both know what is on the plan for dinner but we also know that if something changes grab another night. Second, it allows us to know what items we need to purchase and what things can wait. My goal for the last 3 months of the year, is to keep our grocery budget to less than $300 a month. This is a low low number for us but we have several large meat orders that we are working our way through which helps to significantly reduce the budget in addition to several family birthday and trips that mean we get to eat out more. Finally, we are finally not wasting food, or at least wasting a small amount which gets tossed in the compost bin so not really a waste. In fact that is the theme of this week’s plan… eating up leftovers!

Breakfast–   Saturday-Cereal, Sunday- Trisha Yearwood Breakfast Casserole.  The rest of the week will be a choice of leftovers, cereal, fried eggs, yogurt or breakfast bars.

Lunch- This week, I will have already made a chicken salad for Monday, and Tuesday- salad. Wednesday and Friday will be leftovers.  Zach and Kendall have 2 days of chicken nuggets, 2 Uncrustables with cheese crackers. and a sandwich. Lily and Matt will have frozen burritos or leftovers or pizza or chicken nuggets.

Dinner-  Saturday- Lunch- grilled cheese sandwich. (Trying to use up some bread)   Dinner-Leftover of choice
Sunday- Lunch- Friends provided . Dinner- Pick your left over meat, I cooked green beans, stuffing and fried apples to go along with this.
Monday- Chicken Fried Rice
Tuesday-Amanda’s birthday- Eating out to celebrate
Wednesday- Hamburger Helper
Thursday- Turkey pot pie (To finish up the left over turkey)
Friday- Homemade pizza night

One other important note, Lily is enjoying cooking and is making usually one meal a week. This past week, she actually made stuffed green peppers on Thursday, a cake on Friday and the breakfast casserole on Saturday for Sunday morning.

Saving on Saturday-10/08/2016

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I did not have a chance to share my Food Lion trip from last week, it was a needed trip but not a fun and exciting trip. It also ended up being my large trip during this sale. I spent a total of $104 and saved $43 or 30%. What I did accomplish on this trip was to grab soups for cooking, such as Cream of Chicken and Cream of Mushroom, in addition to canned beans and fruits. I also grab Kendall’s favorite tomato soup as it was on sale.

Now on to more fun savings.  I did return to CVS this week to grab deodorant and Diet Coke. A nice surprise to start my trip was 2 ECB from quarterly savings. I was able to grab 4 deodorants for Matt and 3 12 packs of Diet Coke for a total of $10.34 saving 74%.

A final trip to Food Lion happened on Thursday night as well. A friend told us about the frozen burritos that are part of the quarter back sale. The original price on the burritos is 2 for$1.  I did not go to my normal store but instead left Lily at cheerleading and went to the store in Welcome. I was only able to find 15 burrito but I grabbed all of these. To get my total up to 40 items, I grabbed 2L sodas, cans of beans and corn.  I  honestly did not have any of this transaction planned but am certain we are stocked up for in our pantry now. The second transaction was much more fun, the reason why it was FREE!

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Food Lion has an additional promotion this week, where if you buy 5 items on there list you automatically receive $5 off. Kelloggs Poptart 12 count boxes are on the list. I purchased 5 boxes for zero.

This has again been a bigger than normal shopping week so I hope the rest of October goes smoothly.

5 Things Friday 10/07/2016-

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5thingsfriday-logoREDMost if not all this weeks event are financial!

  1. Several of our monthly bills are lower than expected this month including cable (refund on over tax), water and electric bill.
  2. I purchased an Orchard In A Box. We will be planting when it arrives in November. I am super excited!  We should be harvesting fruit in 3-5 years. This is long range planning for sure but in 5 years we will have 3 teenagers including a boy so I am fairly certain that our food bill will go up instead of down! I did take this expense out of our normal grocery fund.
  3. Zach is growing! I really this morning that we are going to NEED to purchase at least 5 new pair of pants for him. He and I will be heading to the local goodwill tomorrow. If we are not able to find things there it will be a major trip to Winston on Sunday.
  4. I have finished the majority of my Christmas shopping!  I still need to buy my nieces gifts and we will be purchasing pictures for my parents. I am so excited to have this expense out of the way.
  5. In addition to the orchard, we are going to add pavers around the square foot garden in order to make it easier to maintain!  We are using gift cards earned from Lowes and Swagbucks to cover this expense.

Menu Planning-10/02/2016

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I tried to get things planned and prepped ahead for this week as it would appear to be one of the busiest so far. I will not even make it home on Monday till after cheerleading. I am actually taking two meals with me that day.   One thing that has been working the last couple of weeks for us is Soup on Sunday. It is easy to put everything in the crockpot and let cook while we are at church. After lunch, I have been turning off the crockpot and we can enjoy a second time for dinner. I plan to continue this at least for a month and see if anyone object loudly.

Breakfast–   You will notice I am planning on cooking a lot more than usual this week. One of the reason is I am heading to work later. I always store the leftovers for the next week. Saturday-Gravy Biscuits by request, Sunday- leftovers.  Monday- Breakfast Burrito Bowl- I am not scheduled to work till 9:30 and I have already cut up everything to cook. Tuesday- Cereal or yogurt, Wednesday- Baked Oatmeal, Thursday- Tricia Yearwood’s Breakfast casserole, Friday- Leftovers.

Lunch- This week, I will have leftovers and salad. Zach and Kendall have 2 days of chicken nuggets, 2 Uncrustables with pirate booty and a sandwich. Lily and Matt will have salad or leftovers or pizza or chicken nuggets.

Dinner-  Saturday- Lunch- leftovers.   Dinner- Meatloaf, squash casserole, mashed potatoes and cake.
Sunday- Lunch- Taco Soup. Dinner- Sloppy Joes and French Fries
Monday- leftovers
Tuesday-Chicken pie, green beans from freezer and fruit
Wednesday- Pulled pork, carrots and fruit
Thursday- Country Style Steak, rice and fruit
Friday- Homemade pizza night or leftovers. .

I am amazed to look back and realize how far we really have come in the past year. In October last year, I was excited to say that our eating out budget was contained at $200 which was half of September. This year we have more activities and I am excited to say that we spent less than $50 in September on eating out, except for Zach’s birthday meal.

Saving on Saturday-10/01/2016

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This has been a fun week for saving. I am planning to do a separate post about my Food Lion trip, so look for it on Monday or Tuesday.

National coffee day was on Thursday. Coffee is Matt’s absolute favorite thing in the world! He and Lily celebrated big. First they headed to Sheetz to claim a free Iced coffee, and the next stop was Krispy Kreme. They grabbed 26 donuts and 2 coffee for $9. The only sad occurrence of the day is they used the last sticker on our BOGO card. Krispy Kreme is no longer printing these cards. We do still have our calendar which has a deal of donuts at least very other month.

I have enjoyed using the McDonald’s app. I have always since downloading had a free large drink with purchase. It is awesome and for less than $3 I can purchase breakfast on the run.

The weather has finally decided to cooperate, the temperatures have been low 80 during the day with 60s at night. We have been without air condition for almost 2 weeks which I estimate to be around $50 of savings.  The other good news is we finally received some rain. Our water bill dropped again this month to where I hope it stays around $27 a month.