Category Archives: Saving Money

Saving on Saturday

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The chicken coop needed to clean out and new bedding added. I am allergic to both hay and straw so I have been purchasing shaving to use. Although it is not extremely expensive, every little bit counts so we are cleaning out at work and have an abundance of paper.  I bought home some of the paper and shredded it using my shredder. Today, we clean the chicken coop of the shaving and filled the coop with shredded paper bits.  We re-used the bedding and chicken poop by adding it to our tomato beds to help with growing.  Total spent for new chicken bedding was $0.

Last week, I had meal planned but that plan went out the window. This meant that I had 2 cups of chicken left in the fridge. I had also planned to do a fried rice with brown rice and a cup of black beans.  These items needed to be used.  I ended up making chicken enchiladas with enough leftovers for 2 lunches.  and Lily used the brown rice, black beans and added a can of chicken to make herself a rice bowl for lunch. This actually made enough for 4 meals for her!

So far this month we have spent $215 on groceries. This includes $144 Amazon subscribe and save. This has become a huge money saver for me as it allows me to stay stocked up without buying everything at once. This month I have also used rewards from a couple of credit cards as well. I am hoping to keep the grocery spending under $350 for the month.  The kids have been bagging up snacks for school at night was we have used most of the individual bags but have plenty of larger bags. They also have been “digging” in the freezer for treats such as popsicles and “Hot Pockets” I know the Hot Pockets were purchased in August of last year and forgotten about.  Money spent on food this weekend $0!

We have started 34 tomato plants and 24 pepper plants from seed this year. Today we moved all these plants to the greenhouse. I was so excited to find that my “mosquito” plants have all survived the winter in the greenhouse. The goal is to keep as many plants as possible alive so we can transplant the first of May!

We did use a bit of sweat equity today but we also saved alot of money!

Tuesday Thoughts

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The temperature outside is currently 38* with wind gusts up to 20 miles per hour so of course, I want to give a square foot garden and chicken update.

I had decided last year that with all the additional expenses we had including 2 new Greenstock’s/vertical planners that this year I would try to just use up the seeds we already had.

I had purchased bare root strawberries last year which did not survive well. I contacted the company and received 25 more this year. I planted these in one of my green stocks. The goal is for this entire planter to be strawberries which will be a total of 48 plants.  These bare root strawberries have really taken off. I currently think we only have 5-7 empty spots on this planter. I will be hopefully using runners to fill these. In the future, I would like to have 2  entire green stocks filled with strawberries.

I did my research and started my pepper plants on February 4th.  I did break the rules and buy a heat mat that I was hopeful would help with germination.  I was wrong. Using the heat mat we got one of 20 plants to germinate. I think that the mat actually dried the soil out too much. We did go ahead and attempt to start a second 20 seeds as this was a packet that I already had, We currently have 11 small pepper plants!  I did not use the heat mat this time.  After thought and debate. I am planning to plant all 11 of these in our greenstock.  I am also going to plant some basil seeds in the green stock with the pepper plants.  This will be a total experiment to see how well they grow.  One plan with the green peppers is to make and can sloppy joes for next year. I would like to can 8  pints of sloppy joe  mix.

Tomatoes were started on Monday February 20th.  We had almost an 100% germinate rate with these.  I think we have close to 30 tomato plants. We planted a variety of different kinds including Roma, and cherry tomatoes. . We currently have 7 bags of diced tomatoes and 10 jars of spaghetti sauce left from last year. My goal is to can at least 24 quarts of spaghetti sauce and freeze 20 bags of diced tomatoes by the end of the year.  Both the tomatoes and green pepper plants will be relocated to the greenhouse during our Disney trip (approximately 2 weeks) and then moved outside to their permanent beds after we return and when there is no frost risk for 2 weeks.

My plan is to plant one 12 foot bed of cucumbers. The goal would be to can up some whole pickles as well as pickle slices to use instead of buying. I also would love to find a good bread and butter pickle recipe to use for canning as well.

Another 12 foot bed will be filled with succession planting of green beans. I will start one 4 foot section then 2 weeks later another 4 foot section and finally 8 weeks later a third 4 foot section.  The goal is to freeze 50 packs of green beans before canning. I would absolutely love just to freeze 50 packs.

I will be planting a 8 foot bed with snap peas.  The goal is to eat as many as humanly possible and freeze the rest of stir-fry in the winter.

As I have already mentioned, I will not be planting sweet potatoes this year.  I currently have carrots planted in this bed. I will be adding watermelon seeds to this bed. I have never had much success with watermelon but want to use up the seed packet I have.  I also plan to plant the remaining cantaloupe seeds in a couple of ground planters again to just use up seed.

I am still working on plans for both squash and zucchini plants.  These will likely either go in a bed with green beans or be split between several beds. I know I do not want to plant them directly next to each other as I don’t want cross pollination. I have 4 packs of zucchini left in the freezer so this is a definite need for the year. I do have plenty of squash in the freezer so squash may be a fill in or not at all plant this year.

Currently, I have Kale growing both in a black plastic bin and in one end of a bed.  This will be used to feed the chickens.  Again I am using up seeds that we already have.

Speaking of chickens, we are consistently getting 4 eggs a day with 5 eggs about 3 days a week.  I am leaning toward purchasing 3-4 new chicks this Spring to add to the flock. This should give us enough eggs to share with my mother. I also am thinking about the 1-2 month laying break for them in the winter.   I will make the final decision once we get back from Disney.

With the plan limits on our grocery budget, a huge garden with lots of stuff in the freezer is going to be essential for the summer.

 

Monday Menu Planning

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To be quite honest, I am done.  I am tired of cooking food, tired of planning to cook food and maybe a little bit bored with the food we have.  But I know in my brain we can do this. I can keep the grocery budget low for the rest of the month and then enjoy Disney with all it’s wonderful food that I am not responsible for planning, preparing or cleaning up from.   So for the time being I have to figure out how to make this work.  This week, I wanted to use up food that is already in the fridge. I did have enough time on Saturday to do some preparing ahead. I hope this makes lunch this week much easier.  I am also very hopeful that I can stick to the plan!

Breakfast- Saturday- Big Breakfast including sausage, bacon, eggs and a hashbrown casserole. Sunday-Biscuit and Gravy casserole Monday- Left-over biscuit and gravy casserole. Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it:  oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, French toast sticks, bagels, Thursday- zucchini bread (I was able to find several more packs of zucchini in the freezer and would like to completely clear it out before May.
Lunch- Saturday-left-overs Sunday Mexican at Don Juan’s. This week I fried up 3 days’ worth of beef liver and onions, I will add some left-over veggies to make this a complete meal.  Matt has made 3 hamburger patties to use up the 3 hamburger buns that are on the table.  The kids can either take leftovers or sandwiches or grab and go.

Dinner- Saturday-leftovers um yum chicken (not a repeat) and squash casserole. Sunday-My Dad’s chicken stew (this leaves only 1 additional soup in the main freezer).  Monday- Left-overs (I will encourage either left-over breakfast or soups, but we will see how this goes). Tuesday- Baked Ziti (one more in the freezer) Wednesday- More Left-overs (We have most of a tater tot casserole to eat) Thursday-Cheesy Chicken Pasta (This was a hit a couple of weeks ago). Friday-Hamburger Helper Stroganoff (These are the last two boxes on the shelf).

My overall thought is that if I can make it through this week, it will get easier and we will be ready for some easy repeating food.

Saving on Saturday

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So, an interesting fact is that I have not done a “Saving on Saturday” since December 10th!  That is 11 weeks!

Today we focused on food!  Not wasting and making the best possible use of the space and food we have.

To start the day, I found a container of “French Toast” mixture in the freezer.  I combined it with half a loaf French bread purchased at Walmart yesterday.   I knew that I needed to clean out both the refrigerators today as well. I did have to throw out a couple of serving of chocolate pudding and Almond milk that expired in October 2022.  I did find several containers of taco dip from “Junk Food Sunday”.  In order for this not to go bad, I decided to make some elbow pasta and combine with some canned beef, to make a taco pasta.  I will count this as a win!

We have decided to can up some ground beef for convivence and to free up space in the freezers.   We currently have 23 pints of canned beef and 1 half pint of beef.   I also made 14 bacon cheddar burgers and froze those for our Disney Trip.

When I put it on paper it does not look like a lot but I am exhausted so I know it was work!

5 Things Friday

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  1. One of the things that I have realized while participating in the #3RiverPantryChallenge, is that over the past several years I have spent alot of money “stocking up” and really have not been making using of the items I already have. For example, in April 2020 I purchased 90# of chicken. I processed all but around 20#.  I currently have 3 or 4 bags of this processed chicken left.  I also realized that I am a food hoarder, even if I have a lot of stuff when finding food on sale I purchase. This is not neccessarily a bad thing, but I am spending money on items that are not really getting used. My goal for this year is not only to reduce the amount of money I spend on groceries overall but to use items we have in addition to only purchasing items that I know we will eat within a year.
  2. Our chickens are currently producing exactly the amount we need!   I have been able to use all the eggs we are getting and honestly have not put a single dozen in the fridge it.   The debate is currently do we just keep what we have with exactly enough or do we attempt to purchase more chickens?  This is a work in progress and a decision that I don’t have enough data to really decide at this point.
  3. Our living room is currently home to a table full of dirt. The hope and goal of this dirt is that we will have pepper and tomato plants to plant in the garden so far, our only seeds that have germinated have been a lettuce mix.
  4. We have decided not to plant sweet potatoes this year.  I realized that some of the potatoes we harvested back in October were beginning to sprout.  Matt and I spent several evenings baking the remaining sweet potatoes and bagging up in 1 pound bags. We currently have 13# of baked sweet potatoes in our freezer for use during the next year.
  5. I stopped at Walmart on my way home from work today. I decided to check out the marked down bread. I grabbed a loaf of French bread for $1.03. Half was used for  our garlic bread tonight and half is drying to use for French toast tomorrow. I was also able to find 2 bagels of everything bagels for $2.20. But overall my best find was bathroom cleaner with bleach for $0.98 each!

Pantry Challenge Thoughts/ Update

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I was very proud of how we stuck to the pantry challenge in January. We ended up spending only $218 on groceries for the month.  I also realized that we were beginning to finish up and need to restock some necessary items in February.  Things like toilet paper and bread flour that yes can be bought in a small quantity but the whole idea behind the challenge is to save money not increase your spending.

So, in order to purchase items at the best price for us we headed to Costco. I am proud to say that we pretty much stuck to the list except for a couple of items that we needed for our Junk Food Sunday this week.  Nothing will go to waste!  I ended up spending $349 at Costco. This did include a chicken that was used for 2 full meals and we also made 9 pints of chicken stock.  I grabbed 200 paper plates as well.

While in Winston, we also made a stop at Target. I needed to get some hair spray.  This is also a need not a want. While at Target, I found and purchased 4 boxes of pint canning jars. The jars end up costing around $1.00 including the ring and lid.  I have not been able to find jars for less on Marketplace or in the Goodwill stores. In fact, $1.00 a jar is less than most of the jars I have found on Facebook Marketplace.  This Target stop added an additional $80 to my grocery total.

This places my grocery spending at $450 for the month of February. I know that I will likely end up spending at least another $50 if not $100 in February. However, adding the two months together still places us less than our grocery budget for one month.  So I am going to revise my goal for the rest of February and March. I have budgeted $975 a month for groceries this year.  My goal for the months of January, February and March is to stay under that total. I am currently at $675 which leaves an additional $350 in the remaining two weeks of February and March. This will not include my trip to Costco prior to our Disney trip.   I honestly think this is a very doable goal and will in the long term save $1800 for the first quarter of the year.  We are going to continue to eat what we have and buying/ restocking only items we are completely out of.  I have a list of 20 meals that we will begin to repeat and use next week to help continue to use our items. I am running low on sausage and chicken but will hold off buying these unless absolutely necessary. The chicken have significantly increased their production of eggs so that we should not have to purchase any for quite a while!

In the long run this allows us to enjoy food and save money.  The goal for the second quarter of the year will be to restock and replenish will continuing to stay under our grocery budget each month! .

Successful Sunday

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Sunday are usually a less stressful day around here. Today was less stressful but I am so happy with all we were able to get accomplished that I wanted to share.

We did the usual of course, church and lunch out! Then we came home and I got an hour nap which was much needed!
This afternoon, Matt worked on getting some plants started in our living room. I live in zone 7b, which means we have long summers but still not long enough to grow a ton of peppers. So this year, we are trying something different. We have sown approximately 35 pepper seeds in our living room. I am not currently planning to purchase any seeds this year so I am hoping that we get at least 15 pepper plants to grow!   I did purchase a grow mat to keep under the seeds until they germinate.  Matt also planted a batch of lettuce seeds.  If we get to eat some leaves I will be happy if not we have only wasted time.
We ended up purchasing a Costco chicken yesterday an ate for dinner. Last night I pulled off all the meat and threw the skin and bones in the crockpot. They finished 18 plus hours this morning before we left for church.  This afternoon I was able to can up 9 pints of chicken booth and used the remaining bit for dinner and for a chicken pot pie later this week. I used the remaining meat from the chicken along with several bowls of vegetable soup I found in the freezer to make a chicken pot pie. I will add a topping for dinner on Wednesday this week.
Matt was able to fry up 6 pounds of ground beef on the Blackstone. I used a pound for green pepper soup, a pound for a taco casserole I am going to try this week and the remaining 4 turned into my chili.  I ended up canning 5 pints of chill with one left out to use for Junk Food Sunday.
This week gets slightly more busy with baseball workouts starting but we no longer have swim in the morning.

Saturday Happening

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Wow has this been a day! We decided early last week not to spend time working on putting metal up this weekend due to a couple of factors. The main one was the weather. The temperature this morning was 23 with the expected high of 40.  That did not mean however that it was going to be a slower take it easy kind of day either.

This morning, Matt worked on installing a new clothes drying rake in our toilet room.  The one we have been using was broken and starting to cause problems. It can and was fixed with cable ties so we just moved it to the camper!  Of course this required a trip to Lowes as does any good project!  He also was able to fix my office chair for me. He had been waiting on a wrench to use!

The chickens were definitely part of the excitement of the day. Lily discovered 6 eggs around lunch instead of the expected 4. Her next discovery was that we had caught a possum in our trap.  We decided to relocate this guy to keep our chickens safe.  As though that was not enough, Lily closed the automatic solar powered chicken door to gather eggs. Unfortunately, it decided to not work after she closed. Matt, Lily and Zach spent around an hour working with it trying to get it to even just open. The final solution was to simply to remove the door. The chickens have learned and do go up in the coop every night and the entire coop is enclosed on all sides. The real benefit to the door was to help hold in some of the heat. Hopefully this is more of a convivence problem than anything else now.

Zach had a birthday party to attend in Winston-Salem so we decided to make a trip to Costco.  We ended up spending $349 but we were out of several important and expensive items. I stuck to my list except for a few extra items for the Super Bowl party next week.

Lily and I managed to file her taxes today!  And we ended up with Braxton spending the night because Amanda likely has the flu and needed some extra help!

Man am I tired!

January in Review

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January is always a slow slow month for us! In recent years it has also been a expensive month.  I started the year working on the pantry challenge. I have been mostly success with this and I want to continue to use up alot of the items we have. I will be buying items we are totally out of so but I plan to continue with limited meat and vegetable purchases until at least the end of February. Swimming has been the main event of the month!   I am glad these five weeks are behind us!

Groceries- Budget = $975.  Goal Met!  We spent $218 including stocking up on Diet Cokes and our Amazon subscription order!  I would like to keep the spending under $250 for February as well but I know I have a Costco trip so is this even realistic? A bright spot is that we have not needed to buy eggs this month. We are currently getting 2 eggs per day. This has been just enough and I look forward to more and excess in the coming months!

Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600.  This does include any traveling as well. This month we are under budget just barely at $539.55. We did some extra weekly driving for swim meets.

Blogging- 15 post per month. GOAL MET!  This is post number 15 and I am not cheating and back dating either!

Exercise- Does tripping and falling count for the month.. Nope then the answer is NONE.

Expenses: This month did contain a few unplanned for expenses. First was the washer. Our 14 year old washer died and we ended up replacing with a new washer for $800.  I am hopefully that it will help decrease the energy we are using. Another big expense was we decided to put metal on the outside of the Beetle building. Most of the expense came from money that was designated for the Beetle but another $117 was needed. Finally a HUGE expense this month was our electric bill. This is officially the highest amount we have ever paid $345.  This include the extreme cold at Christmas along with the camper.

Overall not a bad month but hopefully we have gotten some spending under control!

 

5 Things Friday

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  1. This week turned out to be fairly busy with doctor’s appointments, conference swim meet and regular life. Here are a few highlights.
  2. Kendall swam in the conference meet on Wednesday night.  She improved her butterfly time by 4 hundredth of a second. Next Friday, she will compete in Regionals with two relay teams. She decided that her goal for next year is to make it to regionals in an individual event.
  3. Matt had several doctor’s appointments this week about the basil cell skin cancer on his face.  He will have surgery either February 13 or 14th to have it removed.
  4. I have not bought eggs in the month of January!  The chickens are laying around 2 eggs a day. We have add some bedding and pine shavings to the chicken run to ease the mud.   I have purchased 2 bags of garden soil to start some seeds inside in the next couple of weeks!
  5. Tomorow, Saturday, we are planning a big project to convert the “Beetle building” from canvas to metal.  Hopefully I will be able to share some pictures soon.