Category Archives: Square Food Garden

Tuesday Thoughts

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  • On Saturday, we spent most of the morning working in and around the camper. We also practice setting up and taking down the tent.  We have started to add some drinks and food along with electrical cords and fans that we are anticipating needing on our Disney trip.
  • Saturday afternoon we ended up going to Costco which totally blew our grocery budget for the month. I also found 2 pairs of shoes and Matt found one.  We purchased all the drinks except for individual milks that we plan to use in April along with some drinks for my lunch and for Zach. Total spent was $207.  This amount seems large but I decided to figure out what we would “likely” spend at Disney. We will be there for 8 days, I think 2 additional drinks a day is good with 6 people going. That starts at $60 a day just for drinks multiplied by 8 days is $480 which is double the amount I spent at Costco.  Guess that turns it into a huge saving.
  • We are experiencing Spring-like weather which really has me thinking and anticipating our garden.  I am planning to plant lettuce and broccoli in the front beds and cover them with glass jars along with some broccoli seeds which I will cover when they begin to grow. I will be starting a packet of peppers in the house.  I have a packet that was purchased last year so if they don’t grow I will not be too concerned.
  • We are continuing to eat from the freezers and pantry.  I am looking forward to repeating some of our favorite meals in March as I wanted to give us a lot of variety during February. We actually had no repeated meals this month.
  • I have taken on several additional schools in Guam which should bring me to around 10 hours a week or double what I am currently doing. I decided that the extra money would be a nice boost to keep us on track with lots of planned spending happening this summer.

5 Things Friday

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  1. The weather continues to be very different and mostly cold. Monday, I had a teacher workday while Kendall and Zach enjoyed a 3-hour delay.  Today, it is 69*. We are expecting more winter weather on Sunday…. I am so ready for Spring!
  2.  After our trip to the grocery store to finish purchasing food for Junk Food Sunday, we have spent $106 for groceries this month!  This means we are on track for another $200 month in February!
  3. Because of the nice weather, we decided to have a trail run putting up and taking down the tent.  The good news is that the tent is definitely going to be a huge benefit at Disney, giving us a whole room for storage and to allow the girls to get dressed in a much larger area than the camper beds. The bad news is that it took about 30 minutes each to put up and take down.  Guess we need a lot more practice.
  4. The plan for the weekend is to trim back the rose bush. This needs to be completed in February each year and it is much easier to do at 60 degrees than 30 degrees.
  5. I will have to work on Junk Food Sunday, but we are still planning on have lots of good food!

5 Things Friday

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  1.  We are expecting our third snow in three weeks tonight. I have no plans to go outside the house before church on Sunday!
  2. The greenhouse continues to work really well. I am already beginning to think about what we could possibly grow next year…a lemon tree is high on the list.
  3. I have officially been able to complete my grocery challenge of $50 a week or $200 for the month of January. I even included my Amazon order which in the past I would have not!
  4. Our lives are on the uptick with events and practices, so it is really nice to have another weekend at home with most practices and events being cancelled due to weather.
  5. We can finally start to see a reduction in our freezers which is nice. I am currently making plans to start slowing adding more convivence meals back to the freezers using only the ingredients that we have!

Five Things Friday- Food Edition

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  1. Food Waste- I am actually excited and pleased with the way we have been able to reduce our food waste this week. For dinner on Monday, we used the remaining hot dogs from our camping trip and I used the single remaining bun for a bacon and egg sub on Thursday morning.  We all ate leftover PF Changs for Tuesday lunch with Matt finishing the leftovers on Wednesday at lunch. Thursday night I used the finally 2 remaining apples from December along with 2 applesauce cups to make Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal for breakfast on Friday!
  2. Eating Out- We have managed to eat at home exclusively since we returned on Monday. I will be eating out lunch today since I am at work but with the weather so cold our only restaurant meal will be Sunday at lunch!  This is a huge accomplishment for us especially since we are eating out of freezer and pantry.
  3. Grocery Budget-We currently have spent $90.72 including the additional camping treats that we purchased.   I do have an Amazon subscribe and save order that will arrive next week which will increase the spending to $184.75. I also have $121 left in our grocery budget envelope. We are on track to spend less than $200 for groceries for January.  Currently, my plan is to keep as much of the grocery budget as possible even at $50 a week so that we will have the cash this summer to purchase meat, chicken and pork in bulk!
  4. New Recipes- Since we have been spending an extended amount of time at home, we have been exploring what we can make with the items we have on-hand. I made a copycat version of Olive Garden Breadsticks  which will be a definite repeat. Matt made a cheeseburger pie for dinner on Thursday from a new recipe, unfortunately it will not be a repeat as it was just eatable.
  5. The greenhouse is working great!  We actually were able to eat a salad from the lettuce we have been currently growing!  The kids were so excited and we hope to enjoy more of the garden soon.  We have been pleased to learn that first the heater is working well even on extremely cold day! And to Matt’s surprise the plastic roof is holding strong and providing the protection and heat that is needed!

Tuesday Thoughts

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  • We all (even Lily) enjoyed our 4 day camping trip to Conway SC this past weekend.  We arrived home on Monday (Martin Luther King Day_) to about 6 inches of snow in our driveway. The kids were super excited to “play in the snow.”
  • Today (Tuesday) was an official snow day for the kids. The community college even cancelled class!  I however worked remotely with a two-hour delay. I am grateful to be able to stay nice and warm and earn a paycheck. The same thing will happen again tomorrow.  We are actually supposed to receive more bad weather Thursday night and Friday morning, so this is turning into an interesting week.
  • We have our first official harvest from the greenhouse. Matt was able to harvest a bag of mesclun lettuce today. We will use this as part of our salad with Lasagna for dinner tomorrow. Matt was also pleasantly surprised to find that our greenhouse roof of plastic did not break or tear in the sleet, snow and wind. We are now strongly considering getting a lemon tree this summer to keep outside in the summer and in the greenhouse next winter!
  • So far this month for groceries we have spent $90.72. Which means I currently have over $100 sitting in the grocery fund. I have trade and left a $100 bill in the envelope to encourage me not to spend it. I am also on track to spend less than $200 on groceries this month. I do have a subscribe and save delivery that should arrive on January 28th but that still should not throw me over the $200 budget. My next decision is to keep saving the excess in the grocery fund until June or use this money to pay for some other items.  Right now I want to build an emergency grocery fund of $200 to start with.
  • Braxton has been staying with us this week so that both of his parents can work.  I will be the first to admit, I am glad daycare is open tomorrow because it is difficult to work with a toddler in the house!

5 Things Friday

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  1. My Christmas break starts today and last for 2 weeks. Zach and Kendall actually have school on Monday and Tuesday next week and they get an additional 2 days off after New Year’s. Lily does not start back to school until January 10th!
  2. We have our first official camping trip planned for next week. We are headed to Biltmore to enjoy the lights and an art exhibit!
  3. The greenhouse is being productive!  We have around 10 containers growing cooler weather foods. I am so excited about this and can’t wait to try some. Based on trial and error we have decreased the temperature for the heater to come on at to 45 and we are waiting to start watering again because some of the plants looked drowned.
  4. Our electric bill rose by $100 with an increase usage of 22% from last year. We are currently in the process of trying to determine how much of this we can control and what is to be expected with the greenhouse and camper. The good news is that it did not exceed the budgeted amount but is close.
  5. We started making Christmas treats last night… Reindeer crack and candied pecans.  I may work on cookies today if I get MOTIVATED!

5 Things Friday

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  1. Matt has been working on getting the greenhouse functional this week which including install shelves to hold the planter boxes. We had originally screwed the plastic boxes to the wall and some had already started to crack with the weather change. We are running a small heater at night which has increased our overall electricity usage so this is something we will need to monitor.
  2. We planted 8 more boxes with more fall vegetables. I am hopefully that we will be able to have a mid-winter harvest that carries into the spring. It does appear that some of the lose leaf lettuce has already started to grow.
  3. Matt was able to try a new recipe this week for Impossible Cheeseburger Pie.  Matt, Lily and Zach really liked it. Kendall said it tasted like beef. This will definitely be a repeat for us!  I also found a breakfast recipe that I am going to try in the morning!
  4. We have NOWHERE that we have to go tomorrow. My plan is to work on cooking as much as possible for next week so that I can spend the extra time working on Christmas decorations!
  5. Food Lion finally has a sale on 2 Liter Diet Cokes!   I have already stocked up on 30 with plans to add at least another 10 this weekend.

Saving On Saturday

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I have been really quiet the last two weekends, actually really busy. Today, I am going to share why.   Initially before purchasing the camper, we decided to add a couple of driveway spots by extending our current driveway. One of the main reason for that decision was the fact we just re-built our square foot garden beds this spring. Once we got the camper in the driveway, I realized how big it actually was  and then Amanda hit one of the bed with her new car, we decided to rethink .  It was decided that we needed to expand the driveway all the way to the road.   I debated and thought about how we could salvage as much or all of the beds.. I also knew that I did not need to worry about the dirt as it was totally useless and needed to be replaced.  The concrete guys offered to move the beds however I was not sure or even hopefully that they would maintain them in one piece so for the past two Saturdays, we have been working.

I ended up paying each kid $10 an hour to help with this huge mass undertaking. With a total of $200 spent to the kids each weekend.  We also needed to build a small retaining wall next to the driveway to prevent dirt from eroding into the driveway.   A third component of this massive project was the square cement pavers that we had place under and around the beds. I was able to purchase most on sale for between 75 cents and a dollar each, however currently they are costing $1.48 each.  We have over 100 of these.

I am so happy to save that we have managed to save all the pavers, move the beds and it actually appears like we plan the whole operation.

The garden beds have been moved and filled with dirt except for the new sweet potato bed and one last raised bed.  We decided to place two beds directly in front of the house.

The other beds are currently behind the beetle space.

I have no idea what we actually saved but I am very thankful that the entire project is complete.

 

Tuesday Thoughts

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  • Lily was rear ended on Friday while driving her car, unfortunately the person who hit her did not have license, insurance or a tag.  She is very shaken up and we are now trying to figure out what and how to fix her car.  She loves the car and wants it to be perfect. So this will be a huge balancing act.
  • I have declared November to be a no spending month.  I have even gone so far as to tell both Matt and myself that we do not need anything from Amazon!   I have gotten into a bad habit of eating breakfast out 2 to 3 times a week, in addition to my 2 or 3 days of lunch out.  I am definitely cutting back this month. We have been gifted 3 to 4 dozen eggs so it is much easier to find a different way to eat an egg for breakfast every day this week.
  • We have given in and turned on the heat on October 28th was the official date.  We should experience out first freeze this coming week.  The temperature today was a cool high of 59.  I am not ready for winter in fact, I would love to move to a spot with summer all year long!
  • The kids all did awesome during the first grading period of the year. Lily has all A/s even in her college classes. Kendall has all A’s and Zach has all A’s and B’s.
  • The past several weekend have been spent relocating the garden beds in order to expand the driveway.  Hopefully during the next 2 weeks we will be able to start some seeds in the green house.
  • We have harvested our sweet potatoes. This year was a very small harvest of sweet potatoes but small is better than no harvest at all.
  • Tonight for dinner, I took out our entire green bean harvest for the year, and it was all eaten. Again one family serving is better than no servings.

5 Things Friday

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  1. I have a couple of hours at home alone tonight without it including work!  Matt and the kids headed out to the North vs Central football game.  I have had an exhausting week at both jobs plus I had to take a Humera shot in the middle of the week.  This is my small price for sanity.
  2. The first person we decided to contract with for a driveway addition has disappeared along with my $1500 deposit.  I have tried to contact him several ways including sending a certified letter this week. My goal now is to reclaim the deposit money even if it means a trip to small claims court!  We have decided to add a full second driveway to ease the parking problem we have.  That unfortunately means alot of work!   We will be spending most of tomorrow moving dirt and pavers and eventually the square foot garden beds we built in the spring.
  3. The weather has finally cooled down! But fortunately for us it has not gotten cold enough to need heat yet.  We have met my goal of at least 3 weeks without heat or air.  Now I am setting my goal for six weeks without heat or air that would actually put us around Veteran’s day.
  4. Zach plays his last scheduled baseball game on Monday night. There is a strong possibility that it will be cancelled due to COVID outbreak that cancelled a game on Tuesday of this week with the same team.  The tournament should start on Thursday of next week.
  5. Because of the weather and due to the driveway expansion, we will likely dig up our sweet potatoes in the next two weeks. On a bright garden note, we are still able to harvest one or two tomatoes each week to eat. This is the latest I can find that we have been able to pick tomatoes.