Saving On Saturday

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Sheila

This week I have several things to share!

First up is the garden, I have already been able to make: 3 batches of Cucumber relish, most of which is frozen to be enjoyed the rest of the year. 4 bags of squash to be used for squash lasagna. 2 bags of frozen tomatoes (they first started getting ripe yesterday, so I am hoping that by the end of the week I can add 30 or more bags to my freezer. 1 gallon of pickles, we will be taste testing these to determine if I can make more or not.
We have enjoyed fresh produce almost daily with just enough squash to fry up at least once a week, green beans once a week. I know that if the temps don’t cool off soon and we start getting more rain then I am most likely at end of both cucumbers and squash but I am praying to see much improvement this week. I was so disappointed today that I ended up finding the first batch (6) green peppers that are rotten. We still have several watermelons, a cantaloupe and at least one pumpkin growing!

Next up for saving was my quick trip to CVS on Sunday. I will be really honest and say that I am becoming a little more disappointed with CVS each week. This week I purchased 3 cases of Diet coke and paid $0, out of pocket! The sale was 3 for $12, I used a free 12 pack purchased with coke points, 2 ECB from several weeks ago and the $8 remaining dollars came off a gift card that I received several weeks ago for purchasing $30 of certain products.

Finally, Harris Teeter is running a super doubles event this week. They will double all coupons up to $2, with a limit of 20 daily. I ended up spending $34.08 but saved $74 or 70%. This may sound like a high amount but I ended up with 12 boxes of Hamburger Helper, 4 boxes of Suddenly Salad,4 bottles of shampoo, 4 cans of hair spray, 2 bottles of spray gel and 2 bottle of mouse along with several other items. I am so excited because we use ALOT of hair products around here!

How are you saving money?

5 Things Friday

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Sheila

1. The closing on the re-financing of the house is set for Monday morning at 8am. I will be so glad to get this finished. The company that was eager to help and answer questions up front has turned out to have very sad communication skills. We found out the date of closing when an attorney called to schedule with us around 2pm this afternoon.
2. With the rain the last several days, our garden may not fail! This evening we picked another batch of green beans (plan to use on Sunday), several cucumbers (made another batch of cucumber relish) and more importantly we found a pumpkin, several watermelon and a cantaloupe growing along side of our green peppers. We should also start with tomatoes in the next week.
3. I have managed to demolish our new food budget of $700 this month. I purchased 40# of ground beef to be picked up in July, which puts me currently at $792 for the month. Uggg when does this get better?
4. If the weather cooperates, we will be spending the majority of the day at the pool tomorrow, I am in need of some rest and non stress time BADLY!
5.Both the girls are practicing piano in the morning before I head to work. I was able to recognize one of the songs that each was working on. I am so pleased and proud of the way they are learning music.

Random enough?

Saving on Saturday 06/06/2015

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Sheila

I cheated a little this week. First of all, I actually did the saving on Friday night although the deal is good through Sunday. Next, no picture I forget till everything was put away so…

This week I am saving on groceries and adding to our stockpile. The only grocery store in town Food Lion is running a fairly decent sale this weekend, combined with coupons I was able to save 55%. Here is what I purchased; 9 2L soda $0.99 each
2 box of Pasta Salad $1.50 each(coupon machine in the front of store gave me $1.00 off 2)
12 boxes of Hamburger helper $0.99 each, used 4 $0.75/3 coupons, from SS 5/03 insert
1 bag of self rising flour(ran out last week and Costco does not sell)

Total spent with taxes $22.51, total saved $27.12 or 55%

Anytime I leave Food Lion with saving more than I spent I consider it a major accomplishment! As I was checking out with the usually “coupons” that they given I received a free 8×8 hardcover book from Shutterfly. I came home to try it as I am always doubtful but it worked! I was able to order our third autograph book for Disney and paid shipping only! That officially makes it a great trip to Food Lion!

May in Review

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Sheila

Blogging: Goal: 15 per month Goal Met! I am at 17 or 18 post for the month!

Weight: Goal: Met and maintain weight of 175. This goal will be considered met each month that weight loss is achieved and once this weight is achieved, each month maintained is considered achieved. Goal met for the month. I am moving in the right direction.

Spiritual- Goal. I want to spend time reading and or studying the Bible at least 5 days a week for the year. Biggest Fail of the month.

Financial Goals-
1. Pay off all debit by December 2015, except for mortgage.
a. Home Depot-   I am now planning to pay this completely off in June, but this is going to be depended on a couple of factors that I don’t have any control over.
b. American Express   – Smaller than anticipated payment. I only paid $200 this month.
c. Personal Loan (used to purchase van) .The current scheduled payment is $217 a month with this scheduled to be paid off in December 2015.

2. Emergency Fund to $2000. Fail

. 3. Groceries: Spend $600 a month . After what seems to be an extremely long month. We ended up spending $712 for the month This was not a true success but it really is a success because our monthly average is down to .$572 for the year so I am back on track.

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month with any remaining to be move to Auto fund for repairs. Goal Met. I spent $402 on gas this month including covering tags, taxes and inspection on Matt’s van, a new fuel filter on the white van and new radiator cap for the car. This is a huge success.

Disney- No progress

May seems like a very long month. In the area of finance it does not appear that we made any progress but we are in the process of refinancing our mortgage which will dramatically change our path. Currently we are waiting on the appraisal. Once things are more settled, I am planning to share details, as well as plans. Looking ahead to June, I anticipate another month of close to or over our budget for Groceries just based on things we are starting to run low on. I have not changed the budgeted amount in 3 years even with the significant rise in price and an increase of consumption of food due to growing kids, so I may need to readjust in July based on our actual spending in June. Gas prices are suppose to stay close to their current rate however with us going to the pool on a frequent basis I think we are going to keep that amount the same at least for the summer. I will definitely share changes and new goals in June so that should make things interesting overall.

CVS shopping 5/26/2015

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Sheila

Consistency is the key when shopping at CVS. I will be the first to say that in recent months, I have not made a trip to CVS in weeks. But this week was well worth the effort. I ended up with 3 separate transactions. I started the week off with 5 ECB from the Coke products I purchased last week. I ended with 5 ECB from the Nail polish.

Total spent was $5.30 and total saved $41 or 89%. I like to think of it as free nail polish and bath wash with half price sun screen. I should also say that I purchased 3 photo prints to use for Kendall’s poster as well.

Random Budget Thoughts on Thursday!

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Sheila

This month I am really paying attention to our budget. The goal is to get our spending under control and be able to pay down most of our debts except the mortgage over the summer in addition to saving to pay for our Disney Trip. I keep reminding myself and Matt that every dollar is important at this stage and that each dollar we save puts us a step ahead. I am also trying to enjoy the small victories like using the clothes line!
I was able to hang out 3 loads of clothes today on the clothes line. While shopping at Walmart this morning for a toaster, I picked up 100 wooden clothes pins. Let me tell you these are the cheapest made clothes pins that I have even seen. I had to use 3 to hold up shorts and even some shirts. Matt was excited to smell the fresh laundry. I would love to say that I am going to start hanging our at least one load of clothes a week but in reality I don’t see it happening. So I am simply going to enjoy the fact that it happened today and not worry about when and if it happens again.
Our square foot garden is actually growing really well. We have only lost one pepper plant and one cucumber plant, otherwise everything is growing. I am excited each evening to check out what is growing. We have pumpkin and corn in addition to our green beans that are all growing from seeds. The other plants are also growing. We have been watering about every third day so I hope in another month to be harvesting!
Over the past several months we have been keeping the budget low by using up our stockpile. We currently have 2 freezers in our building. In January, both of these were filled to the brim. Today, I could combine the contents of both into one and it would not be full. My goal for the summer is to completely restock the vegetable freezer. I am hopefully to accomplish a lot of this with our garden but otherwise I am going to budget $50 a month to buy in season fruits and veggies. In the month of May, strawberries are in season. Last weekend we picked a total of 3 gallons and froze at least 2 of these. I am hoping to get another 2 gallons this weekend. One to enjoy and one to freeze. The second freezer is for meat and the only meat left in it is chicken. I have already planned a trip to the meat market/butcher the second week of June. This will take about half of our grocery budget for June but hopefully will last the rest of the summer.
The white van is continuing to cost us. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with it. I just don’t like the idea of continuing to put money into something month after month after month. Currently the discussion is what is our best options. I honestly don’t feel comfortable driving it on long trips and especially going to Disney. So depending on our budget and saving we have some tough decisions ahead of us. Currently the goal is to keep the van running until September and then re-evaluate the situation.

Celebrating Success with Ham!

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Sheila

Today is April 30! I am celebrating the fact that we have maintained our grocery budget at $195 for the month. I will be honest this has been a challenge especially this last two weeks while the list of things we are out of continues to grow! But we did it! I should also include as part of this celebration that $50 of that budget went to purchase plants. These will eventually provide food for us but this month they were just an expense. Today is another busy day with dentist and doctor’s appointments so I was trying to figure out a dinner that would work with the items we still have on hand. We do have food but the problem is using the ingredients that we have together. I am proud to say that not only did I come up with a dinner plan but add a choice for lunch as well.

My parent served ham this past Sunday, we were given the left over ham on the ham bone to use. I honestly learned how to live cheaply from my mother so of course she would not simply just throw out the left overs. First I made ham salad, which is one of Matt’s favorite and decided to use the ham bone for soup. I decided to include both these recipes with a couple of changes I made.

Ham Salad: diced ham(ended up around 3 cups), mayonnaise, red onion( about 1/2 cup), mustard( a generous spat) and pepper. Simple easy but very good.

The soup I used the basic recipe from here. But used frozen kidney beans, a can of corn, frozen baby carrots and sautéed the remaining red onion, and finally sprinkled heavily with Mrs Dash. The soup actually smells really good and I will add a verdict later today!

Food For Thought

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Sheila

Up until this Saturday, I had done no grocery shopping in the month of April. Matt actually ran to the store to pick up milk after we came home from the beach. Because of the limited shopping our budget has stayed very low for the month. My goal for the month was to keep our grocery budget low and to use up as much as possible from our stockpile so I had already decided that I did now want to spend a great deal and I am pleased to report that I was successful. Saturday turned out to be a very rainy and nasty day, Amanda had planned to spend the day with the kids so she offered to watch all three of the little one while Matt and I went to the grocery store. After ten years of marriage, this even is considered a date! Matt has a free drink from Starbucks so that was our first stop. Next we went to Harris Teeter, I saved around 50% and only used 3 coupons, $3 off a 12 pack of diet coke, $3 off 2 boxes of Starbucks K-cups and $5 off purchase of $50. This last coupon was after all other coupons as well. I did shop in the clearance buggy where I found 3 boxes of ant bait. We also purchased sausage, bacon and pepperoni with our total our of pocket being $47.67. Next we stopped at Food Lion where we purchased 10 boxes of fruit snacks, 5 boxes of pop tarts and a gallon of milk for $22. I was very pleased with our trip> I am actually still under $200 for the month so I may go to Food Lion for a couple more rounds of Fruit snacks.

After keeping our food budget extremely low for the month of April, I am already looking ahead to May, I know that we are going to need to make a Costco trip at the beginning of the month and it also appears as if we will be purchasing 40# of ground beef from Zaycon to last us through the summer. My goal is to stay under $600 for the month so between these two large purchase we most likely will continue to adapt and ate things that we have on hand. Otherwise if the budget goes extremely high it will negate our positive gains in April.

Next item on our food list is that our square foot garden is growing! I am so excited that not only did all the plants that I have initially planted survive but they are growing. Matt has also added a 2×6 box that we will be planting corn in. Depending how well the corn grows and if we really like it, we may add a third box just for corn.

Finally, meal planning for the week. This will be a special week as both girls have Field Day this week, several appointments on Thursday and we are headed to our last competition for Cheerleading next weekend.

Breakfast-French toast (leftovers) , Cereal, Poptarts, eggs and Baked oatmeal.

Lunch-Lunches are going to be packed later today(Sunday) and I will be taking either a salad or leftovers.

Dinner– Crazy evening schedule with several quick and easy meals thrown in.

Saturday- Lunch: new chicken recipe, Dinner- Homemade pizza with sourdough crust.
Sunday- Lunch- at my parents, Dinner- Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, veggie and fruit.
Monday- leftovers
Tuesday- Hamburger helper
Wednesday-Chicken pie and Squash casserole, I am taking the day off so I will be cooking!
Thursday- hot pockets or pizza roles
Friday- Pepper steak and rice.

Random Thoughts Thursday

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Sheila

It does not feel like just a week ago we were enjoying some fun at the beach!
Matt’s birthday was Tuesday but due to our schedule we decided to celebrate tonight. He wished for things to slow down and I just laughed!
I am amazed at the difference in the weather in different parts of the country. Today it was windy but 65* but in Michigan it snowed! I am also very thankful I don’t live where it snows in April!
I was able to plant most of my square foot garden today! The current plan is to finish it in two weeks and replace anything that does not survive. I thought I had checked the weather better but it turns out that we have a chance of going below freezing today so I hope everything survives. I am so excited to get things growing!
. We are doing really well on our budget for the month. I knew in advance that our beach trip would cost us extra and I am hoping to cover the additional repair to the van as well. As of today, we have spent only $121 of our $600 grocery budget and that includes not only the plants you see above but steaks for Matt’s birthday dinner! In gas, we have spent $309. This amount does include our gas for travel to and from the beach but not the repair that was made on the white van prior to going. I don’t see that we will be spending anything more in gas but do expect to end up spending around $150 on groceries by the end of the month.
Weird things excite me, as you can tell from the numbers above, we have not been grocery shopping this month. On Monday, we went down to our building where we have both our freezers. In the chest freezer is all veggies, it is starting to look a little low except for the zucchini which I froze over 2 years ago. The other freezer now only contains chicken and is less than half full. I am excited to finally be using and seeing a difference in our grocery budget. I definitely don’t want to use up all our stock pile but like the idea of starting fresh at the end of the summer and attempting to maintain the same $600 budget after cutting it down to a fourth for a couple of month.
Our next and final cheerleading competition is only two weeks away but it at Carowinds which is an amusement park. It will be very expensive but a fun trip. I am actually really looking forward to decreasing our schedule by at least one night a week for cheerleading! Swim team starts everyday in the month of June so I am not sure what we will do for the month of June this year. I would love to take a month off from cheering but just don’t see that happening!

Five Things Friday 4/10/2015

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Sheila

So glad that Carla did this post today! So I “borrowed” her cute picture and will share my five things!

The white van was treated to yet another set of repairs yesterday. A new heater hose and air conditioner compressor. This depleted our emergency fund by $450. I am hoping to be able to add a little bit back to the fund this month but even more so am praying that this is the end of repairs at least for a couple of months.
I was driving the van to cheerleading last night and on the way home suffered an allergy attack. After a little bit of thinking, realized that it was most likely due to “dust” that had accumulated in the air condition system. This morning, Matt spent another $10 to replace the cabin air filters. I am so frustrated with this van at the moment.
I did have a major success in saving for Groceries. Our menu plan called for Baked Potato on Thursday. I realized when getting out the potatoes that I still had about a fourth of bag of potatoes that were starting to spout. In order not to waste food, I filled the crockpot with potatoes, used the remaining ones after dinner to make mashed potatoes. One 2 cup set I will use for “shepherd pie” this weekend and the others (2) are frozen for later use. I also started a crock pot with “potato corn chowder” which will be a second meal for the weekend and then at least two additional meals in the future. So I have managed to cook a minimum of 5 meals in one day using crock pots and food on hand.
I am working toward a goal of significantly lowering our grocery cost for the month. To accomplish this I want to stick to shopping at CVS and Aldi, no Costco trips. So far for the month, we have spent $38 on groceries. The goal is to spend less than $50, purchase some landscape items and plants for the square foot garden with another $200 and use the remainder to now cover the unexpected van expense.
In NC on Saturday, the temperature is suppose to be in the low 70s and sunny so we are planning to spend the day working on the Square Foot Garden. I hope to post pictures of all the yard tomorrow.

Teens Tots and Everything In Between

Life, Love and Coupons

Category Archives: Groceries