Merry Christmas
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Author Archives: Sheila
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
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
Thursday Thoughts- Groceries!
- Groceries has consistently been one of our biggest expenses. It is also one of the expenses that I monitor very closely using this blog! I was able to find my groceries expenses all the way back to 2011 this morning! Which we will discuss in depth in just a few minutes.
- Last night, I decided that I would finish up my grocery shopping for the month. Mom and I went into Aldi to grab some fresh veggies and other things in ended up spending $110, this was much more than I had anticipated. I had also decided to grab both Zach and Kendall and head to Costco. My grocery budget does include paper goods, cleaning products and most other things you can purchase at Costco. We also needed to purchase some extra drinks to take with us to Florida. My total at Costco for last night was $650.
- I decided the last week of November, right after Christmas to try out Walmart grocery delivery. I will not be continuing mainly because I am too cheap for it. But I am also disappointed with the level of service and being able to get all the things I want. I had an order for today which is around $70 and probably one final order before we leave if needed.
- Wow that sounded expense and it is! For the month of December, we will end up spending around $1600! Ouch
- My next step was to see what my average monthly spending was for 2023. We have spent over $10,400 in 2023 which is an average of $866 a month. My goal was $975 a month so YAY! I did manage to stay under budget for 7 of 12 months! Totally unexpected that I managed to stay in budget this year, but this is a HUGE success! One that I plan to build on see below.
- Lets’ review some numbers for fun: in 2011 which included diapers for one kid we spent an average $821 per month. which was the high amount spent prior to the this year. Our lowest amount spent on groceries per month was $460 a month in 2013. A more shocking comparison is that in 2019 we averaged $506 a month. Rising to $550 in 2021 which is expected as we were stuck at home and rarely ate out. Finally the average for $2022 was $700 a month.
- After taking all the in and mulling over the numbers. I am going to maintain the budget at $975 for 2024 especially with a teenage boy in the house and the planned purchase of a cow next summer.
- Starting in January, I would like to start saving to purchase another whole cow in the summer. Ideally, I would put $500 a month in a saving account for six months to make this happen. We have a ton of food in multiple locations, and I am really working on keeping it organized and to work through the food that is here before buying new things. I also need to start to clean out the freezer of all the prepared meals that I made this summer. I will definitely need the freezer space. My plan is to start the year by participating in the pantry challenge for both January and February which should also jump start the saving fund.
Wordless Wednesday- Kendall Swimming
Before each meet the group has a prayer circle. Kendall was nervous about swimming the 500 this day and she was “pushed ” to the middle and prayed over!
She is excited and surprised to learn that she not only won the event but has a consideration time for regionals!
Wordless Wednesday – Christmas Decorations
This is probably my favorite thing!
Saving on Saturday
Our grocery bill is one of the highest expenses each month. This has been true since I started blogging many years ago. I am continuing to gain knowledge and skills that I hope in the future will continue to control our spending.
We are currently in a busy season. I am struggling to keep our eating out to a manageable level. Manageable meaning paying in cash and not adding to our credit card debit. Hopefully, the things I am sharing will help this as well.
On Thursday, between running Zach to appointments, I was able to get three complete meals made. A turkey chill, which was eaten for dinner and then froze for a fourth meal. I also assembled two turkey casseroles. One was frozen and the other saved for use next week.
This morning everyone pitched in and we made up 30 “omelet bags” We can simply add the bag and two eggs to the frying pan for a quick and nutritious breakfast.
I also ran two loads of kidney beans in the pressure canner. These will be used in the future for both soups and chill.
I am preparing for an extended pantry challenge during the months of January, February and March. I decided to subscribe to Walmart plus for the month of December. This way we can continue to stock up on items that we are running low on or out of. I will cancel before going to Florida at the end of December but this allows me to add things slower and also keeps me from overspending at the same time. I am really liking this convivence but definitely not enough to spend $98 a year on it!
November in Review
November has flown by! We have stayed much busier than expected. I am hoping to get a handle on my life and schedule but seriously December is going to be just as busy!
Groceries- Budget $975 $726.18 Goal met! Going to try something new in December. First I am using Walmart Delivery for this month. My goal is to get and keep stocked while controlling the budget. I do like the fact I can see what I am spending as I go. Second I will be moving any amount left in the budget to a separate account marked for meat purchases.
Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600. Goal Met! We have spent $384.64 this month. Gas prices are coming down. Lots of driving planned for December!
Blogging- 15 post per month. 10 post this month. Small increase are always good!
Exercise- I am struggling both with my health and how to improve it! I am losing a small bit of weight. The goal for December is to maintain with more weight loss focus in January.
Earn extra money: a $50 gift card from Fetch. I am at 40000 need to get to 53000. This has been such a slow process. Doubt I will get this card this month!
Menu Planning with a twist
This is officially the week after Thanksgiving. Leftovers are still heavy in the refrigerator, and I do not want to waste any food plus we really like to eat! One thing I did different this year is that we added several appetizers to our evening meal on Thanksgiving to get some variety going! But in reality we also have more leftovers as well. This week has also turned out to be one of the busiest on the fall. Zach has all county band, Kendall has a swim meet. I have multiple meeting at work that will run late. Zach gets his braces off and has a physical appointment. Did I say busy?
Breakfast are pretty standard around here. You find it and make it. We still have some prepared items in the freezer and eggs and yogurt to spare.
Lunches will be leftovers for everyone.
Dinner are a little bit more challenging. So after doing some planning and thinking. I decided that we would have leftovers for dinner at least Sunday, Tuesday and possibly Friday unless they are gone. Saturday evening, I made a turkey soup that was actually really good. So that is another option for Friday or I could change it up and use rice instead of potatoes. .
Here is the twist, I was able to assemble a meal for Monday and a separate meal for Wednesday in 30 minutes on Sunday afternoon.
Monday- Gnocchi bake. This is a recipe that I found from watching “Acre Homestead” on Youtube. I used store bought Gnocchi, diced tomatoes and tomato sauce from this summer, frozen onions and a jar of canned ground beef.
Wednesday- Queso chill mac- This is a recipe total I made up. I used about half of the leftover queso dip, add a jar of ground beef and boiled the remaining pasta in a jar sitting on the cabinet. So far everyone wanted to know if that was dinner.
Simple meal using what we have!
Saving On Saturday- Subscriptions
November is one of the most expensive months for us. It includes tags/ taxes on the Tahoe, and 6 months of car insurance along with regular and holiday expenses. This also happens to be when most of our yearly subscriptions renew. This made the perfect time for me to sit down and consider each subscription and make a decision on rather to keep it or not, I am including my entire list of subscription just as a point of reference.
- Amazon Prime- $139 a year. We live in the middle of nowhere with the closest grocery store not a Dollar General being a 10-minute drive. Definitely keeping this one. Additional benefits include subscribe and save and music in the house.
- Microsoft Office $106 a year. We did discover that we have two accounts and are paying for both. We will keep one of the accounts but the other has to go. This was a very expensive lesson to learn.
- Modwash- This is a car wash and a very recent decision to include. We get unlimited car washes and use of vacuums and other tools. $53.99 a month or $648 a year. This is definitely a luxury and one that we are keeping at this time.
- Discovery Plus- price increase of $2 a month to $9.99 a month or $119 a year. I am the one who was watching this the most and really it has been reduced to maybe once a month. This subscription was cancelled.
- Disney Plus- price increase of $60 a year or $5 a month. I did some research and found we could get Hulu, ESPN and Disney + for $14.99 a month or $179.88 a year. This is really not a savings but when you look at the two “television” subscriptions together which would equal $22 a month. We are going to get additional options and save $7 a month.
- Abode- This has been a must for many years as Matt used it to design and work on websites. However at $32.99 a month or $395 a year. We have not seen this benefit for at least 2 years and his current job does not require it’s us. This is a huge savings so off it went.
- Onstar Data in Tahoe- $15 a month. This is for unlimited data. It equals to the cost of purchasing one additional gig of data a month from Verizon. With any trip this is very much worth it!
- YMCA membership- $27 a month with Lily’s discount. This is another fairly new membership. This is a huge savings compared to any other gym membership and currently everyone but me is going on a regular basis so definitely a keeper.
- Apple Storage- We curently pay an additional $2.99 a month for this. I am trying to reduce but this is a long and long process. This will stay currently.
I did make some changes to our auto insurance this time. We are dropping the collision on the Equinox as it is paid for and I don’t like insurance so what we can get rid of I am going to. We do have a AAA membership which will stay due to towing of the camper. This is significantly cheaper than having insurance on the camper.
Subscriptions take time to manage and really should be looked at yearly. This year we did not really save much but it helped to switch our money to things we find more important and useful.