Monthly Archives: August 2025

August In Review

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As August comes to an end, I am sad.  I really enjoyed the summer! September brings Zach birthday and a consistent school schedule.  Things should get a lot of crazy before settling down for October!

Emergency Fund- Goal is $1000- $300. No progress this month. We have huge expenses including school shoes, big birthday and graduation expenses as well.

Groceries- Goal $820 per month.  Goal met with $647 spent including stocking up on corn ears and sodas.

Gas- Goal is $500. August  total is $342.29. I am going to assume this cost will rise as I am driving to and from work now.

Blogging- For 2025- the goal will be 10 posts per month. This is actually post number 11 not bad for the month I returned to work.

Debit- Goal is 200000 total debit for the end of the year!  Slow progress and I am going to save for a big update in December.

Health/Exercise-Things are heading in the right direction. I am down 12 pounds for the summer and my watch told me that I have walked 2 miles for 15 days this month.

Reading through the Bible this year-Still on track!

Saving on Saturday

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It has been a long time since I used coupons. I still deal hunt but find that for the majority of the time, I can save money without coupons. However this changed today!  I have had several reels of Dollar General coupons pop up on my feed. After watching a couple with the same results I decided to give it a try. All these coupons were digital so easy enough in the DG app. I was able to get Diet Cokes for 23 cent each and Mt Dews for 17 cents each, vegetable seeds for a quarter a pack. On my first receipt which included the drinks, I spent 21.06 and saved 40.68!

I also ended up going to Belk’s, where I purchased a sweater for $7.69 which included a $10 birthday coupon for a savings of $62.13!

 

5 Things Friday

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  1. We have survived our first full week of school. I am tired but at least we survived. Things have been busy as Zach is working on getting his truck ready for driving and we are trying to complete a rather large outside project as well.  The initial goal was to work on it and complete this weekend with the extra day on Monday however I am not at all convinced that will be the case
  2. Zach’s football team has won both games so far. Zach is starting on defense and was announced as a captain last night. Tonight both Zach and Kendall are dressed in togas for the student section for the varsity game tonight.
  3. Zach’s birthday is Monday, we will be celebrating both Saturday night with a large group and then again Monday at lunch for a small group. We had initially planned just one celebration but he now has football practice on Monday and works both Saturday and Sunday.
  4. Lily is going to Florida for the weekend and that is one of the reasons that we are doing two separate celebrations for the birthday.
  5. Summer jobs end on Monday/ Labor Day. The kids have been super busy and honestly I am ready for jobs to stop. Kendall is going to continue working two mornings a week during the school year!

Saving on Saturday- When Life Gives you Lemons Edition

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This year we have new neighbors move in beside of us.  Nothing concerning until he came over and started asking about the property line.  I did not even get concerned then. Next he said that he was having a fence installed to help keep some of his animals from coming over to our house. Sounds like another great idea as I am not fond of having goats on our deck. Next we noticed that he marked the property line from front to back but still I was not all that concerned. We left for our beach vacation and the work started that same day. This is the view we came home to…

 

Frist this is extremely close to the road, 23 feet from the center with 30 feet being the state right of way.

Next it is just ugly you put the back side of the fence toward us!  This fence goes from the road to the woods.  We began talking about how we improve the appearance from our side. Now is where the saving money comes in.  After talking and checking prices we decided to add pickets on our side.   The total cost for just the pickets and nails to attach was $875.  I am going to estimate that we saved the same amount!

 

5 Things Friday

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This first week back at school has been extremely busy, but not in the overwhelming busy way but as in productive busy.
1.We started working on  and almost finished adding pickets to the fence that our neighbor placed on the property line.  We ended up finishing this project on Wednesday evening. I am hoping to post pictures and more of the explanation on Saturday.
2.The chickens have taken more time than normal. On Friday and Saturday, we left the dog cage open and closed it at night. On Saturday night instead of closing the door we moved the new chickens into the coop. The new chickens have responded beautifully, they go up in the coop every night.  HOWEVER, two of our oldest chickens have decided that they do not want to go in the coop.   For the first three nights we moved these stubborn chickens but we have decided to let them be. The coop is secure but they need to learn.
3.On Wednesday, I noticed that my favorite farm stand had corn on sale for fifty cent an ear when you bought 5 dozen.   I purchased these along with several other good things. I was able to vacuum seal these into our family size portions.  Zach also worked on his truck most of the evening.
4.Both Zach and Kendall have been schedule to work every day this week. We did not complain as this is the last week before they head back to school. Zach has had football practice everyday along with a game on Thursday.
5. I want to end on a positive note, I have continued/restarted listing to my Bible reading in the afternoons coming home from work this has given me back a good half an hour.

5 Things Friday

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1. I have been struggling with our chickens integration this week.  After spending around an hour each day watching the chickens, yesterday I left the chickens for a couple of hours. Today we are leaving the door open all day. So far so good, at least everyone is alive.
2. The weather continues to be very strange, we have had rain, rain and more rain. The temperatures have remained below average for about two weeks now.
3. I have completed my first two days of the school year. I am happy to report that I feel good and have been productive by completing continuing education!
4. My attempt at expanding our menu has failed 3 of the 4 new recipes that I tried this week are a no go. Zach has even asked that we return to normal food.
5. I am very hopeful that we will finish installing the pickets on the fence tomorrow, We actually started and got several sections completed one evening.

Chicken Adventures

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Every good chicken adventures begins with Chicken Math or in this case the timeline of chickens. We purchased 6 week old chickens from Tractor Supply the beginning of August 2022. Unfortunately, we lost one within a week or two so that leave 5 chickens.

These 5 chickens have never been good layers. We have never had an abundance of eggs. After doing some internet research this is a common problem with chicks from Tractor Supply.

April 2023 we added three new chicks from a friend. Unfortunately, one of these turned out to be a rooster and after he was a little too rough with the girls he was re-homed in June 2024. This left our chicken count at 7. At this point we were averaging 3 eggs a day which was not a lot but still not horrible for “pets that produce”

Things started going down hill from here as well, first we lost a chicken to a racoon in October 2024. Then another died from natural causes in November. We lost a third from the original 5 in February.  In March we were down to 4 total hens. Our egg production was so low that an egg a day was exciting.

At the end of March 2025, Zach brought home two four week old hens that had been hatched and raised at his school. Unfortunately we are still at an average of 1 egg a day with a total of 6 chickens.  I have stated before the introduction of these two to the flock was quick and simple.

Neither Zach nor I really liked the idea of raising small chicks again as they require a lot of work. I have been on the hunt for some additional hens since then. So now begins our current chicken adventure.

Last Saturday, we purchased 4 “golden comet” pullets from a local feed store.  I was very hopefully that would be easy to integrate.   Well they may be easy but not as quick as I had hoped. These new chickens are in a dog cage in the run. I am going out at least once a day and sometimes twice a day to let them out of the cage. We currently are dealing with chickens pulling feathers and I am managing with a stick.  They do have a water dish in the cage and we allow to eat to they stop when we open the door. I am hoping that by next Saturday they can at least stay out for a whole day without constant supervision. The next step will be moving to the coop at night and teaching to go up in the coop as well.

But I do have good news, the chicks we got in April are starting to produce. Since Sunday we have been averaging 3 to 4 eggs a day!  That is exciting and would mean we should be getting 7-9 eggs per day. I will be happy with 7 a day!  Stay tuned for more chicken adventures!

 

Monday Menu Post

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I am not excited to return to work this week but so is life. Last week only two of the four new recipes that we tried ended up a hit.  We ended up eating out on Friday because it was just the two of us and it was just easier. This week we are going to continue to try new recipes to add to the rotation.

Breakfast- Saturday-Hashbrowns, sausage, bacon and eggs  Sunday- Apple Cinnamon Baked Area Monday- Store bought muffins, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday– find it (oatmeal, omelets, cereal and milk ,sausage, pop-tarts, grits and eggs.

Lunch- Saturday-left-overs Sunday-Kimono’s  Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday-Left-overs . Thursday and Friday-I go back to work so I am going to give myself the luxury of eating out.

Dinner- Saturday-Left-over,  Sunday- More Left-overs    Monday-Sloppy joe cheeseburger pasta. Tuesday-Billion Dollar Chicken Wednesday- Poor Man Casserole  Thursday-Pesto Chicken Lasagna Friday- Slow Cooker Hamburger Helper

Thursday Thoughts- Every Bit Counts/ Pantry Challenge/Goals

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I talked a little bit on Monday about the changes/ goals I have for the next school year. My goal is to use up  the food that we have both in the freezers and pantry. At the same time, I want to reduce the amount of money we are spending on food as well. My goal in that area is to spend less than $475 a month on groceries. I would also like to put at least $300 a month toward meat purchases next summer.  The final piece of that is that we have to have meals that are easier to fix on some days just because of your busy lives.

After watching a video on You Tube, I decided to start a meal rotation to make menu planning a little bit easier for me. I tried to make a good list of all the items we have to use for meals. Looking at this list I am estimating that I have at least 100 full meals that can be made with the items we already have on hand.  This should be at least 3 full month of meals. So in December, I may need to purchase some additional meats for the remainder of the school year. At that point it should be very easy to purchase what we need as we continue to use up the food we already have on hand. The hard part of this challenge is that we like certain foods and we gravitate to those foods/meals. I am going to have to be very diligent on making a variety of foods using what we have.

Part of my planning was to try a new recipe for each day for the next two weeks.  On Monday I made BBQ short ribs. It was very good and it will definitely be something we do again.  Tuesday was a Beef Enchilada, not a repeat, just not.  Wednesday was chicken parmesan casserole, this one will be a repeat.

I have been canning ALOT this week.  I always want to fill up all the empty jars so that we have plenty of food in the winter and this summer I am successful. I also filled the extra 5 cases of jars that I purchased from Walmart.  I added 10 quarts and 2 pints of beef stock, 18 pints of pears and 6 quarter pints, 2 half pints and 8 pints of pearsauce to the canning closet.

Not  bad for four days!