Wordless Wednesday –
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Monday Menu Post
November of this year is a rare month. We do not have any games or sports practices to interfere with dinners for the entire month! I am also actively trying to keep our grocery budget as low as possible to help save money for gifts.
Breakfast- Saturday-Bacon, eggs and toast Sunday-Tator Tot Breakfast casserole Monday-Bagels Tuesday- Croissants, Wednesday Thursday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, French toast sticks, bagels, breakfast burritos and pancakes.
Lunch- Saturday-Left-overs Sunday-Mexican Restaurant Monday-Left-over pepper steak for me . Tuesday- left over chicken and dumplings Wednesday- Arby’s Thursday-lunch out Friday- sandwich or left-overs!
Dinner- Saturday-Church dinner Sunday- left-overs Monday Grilled chicken and pasta salad Tuesday- Walking Tacos Wednesday-spaghetti Thursday- Cheeseburger pizza Friday- Beef stew (new recipe)
Yeap this is doable!
Thankful Thursday
November is one of my favorite months of the year and it is definitely not the weather. I absolutely LOVE Christmas, but Thanksgiving is a close second. I need the reminder to be grateful for what I have!! This year I am going to try something different. I want to take some time each Thursday to express specific thanks. I am going to add my normal disclaimer that I am always very thankful and appreciative of my husband and kids, but I want to be more than superficial with these post.
First, I am thankful for our garden this year. We are continuing to see small (2 cherry tomatoes and 2 carrots) harvest, and this is November. We are still enjoying tomatoes as they ripen on the kitchen cabinet! I honestly can’t think of a better harvest than this year.
Next, I am thankful for steady jobs for both Matt and myself. At this time last year, Matt was expectedly unemployed. This was a huge hit for us and lasted much longer than expected. Thankful we were able to survive and even enjoy his extra time!
Jeremiah 29:11-12 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.”
Wordless Wednesday Halloween
October In Review
Busy busy, stress and more busy are the words that I would use for the month of October. I am slowly catching up at work so hopefully by the end of November that stress will be back at a minimum. November is the first month in a long time that has no traveling planned in it and I want to get my budget and spending under control.
Groceries– budget amount is $700 Not Met! $1175 is an accurate number that includes a drink stock up. I am also going to say that this is the first month that I have seen a significant increase in prices. We are continuing to eat from our pantry and freezers, and I am very hopeful that will reduce the amount that is needed to be spent at the grocery store
Auto/ Gas. My goal is $400 a month. NOT met! $709.74 was spent . Yikes if this continues I am going to have to rethink this budget
Cash Envelope system- We have done much better this month and I am beginning to see where money is going.
Blogging- 15 post per month. This is post number 11 so not horribly bad for the month. I was able to hold steady with a slight increase maybe in this month.
Exercise days- yea no
No Spend Days-No idea!
I am starting November with some better ideas as what we need to do and how we are planning to spend the next two months.
Saving on Saturday
A Saturday at home, yes this is a treat. We decided to go ahead and get ahead on some projects around here, so it was not a leisurely Saturday.
Matt took the pressure washer to the back deck. We will need to purchase a water sealer to place on it but it does look much better, and it is still structurally sound so we will continue to use what we have.
I am really enjoying my electric pressure canner and have started to get a good stockpile of items. We still have tomatoes ripening on our cabinet from the garden and I am determined to use what we have and waste as little as possible. I decided to venture out today and make enchilada sauce. I started by dicing and cooking all the tomatoes that were on the cabinet. Which produced 4 cups of tomato sauce! This was enough to make a double batch of the recipe that I had. It turned out perfect, I have a batch of chicken enchiladas in the fridge for a meal this week and canned up 4 half pints so that should be another 4 meals!
I have been researching pressure canning meat. One of the benefits is having it shelf stable in case the power were to go out. Another benefit for us is that with it being canned it will be in the house instead outside in the cold. We (Matt and I ) decided to tackle this project. I defrosted 25 pounds of hamburger meat from the freezer, Matt cooked it on the Blackstone! I currently have 13 quarts and 2 half pints of ground beef that is shelf stable. Th e next project will be to make taco meat and can it but first I want to use up what is in the freezer.
A final saving money thought is that we are actually using the food in our freezer and pantry. I can actually see a difference even without the canning which is not using but moving around. My goal is to keep the grocery budget for both November and December below $400 which is half of the normal.
Wordless Wednesday- Braxton’s Birthday
Saving on Saturday
A constant theme for my blog has always been the rising cost of food! I have managed to keep our average monthly spending on groceries to around $500 to $700 for many years even with two babies in diapers. But wow this year, things are going crazy. We purchased a whole cow, and the garden has set a record but that has not been enough to control the spending. All five of us eat breakfast, lunch and dinner from our supplies most days. Lily is home and can use water or something here but everyone else takes drinks to work and school. We made a trip to Costco at the first of October to purchase mainly drinks. I grabbed a package of bath tissue because well because. I spent a total of $448 for this trip. I am in total shock! So again, I am trying to focus on reducing/ maintaining the cost of food!
We have actually been working on emptying our freezers since September and I can finally see a difference. We can now arrange the vegetable freezer so that things are not falling out and we have most of the meat in the chest freezer. As I was grabbing beef broth, I realized we were almost out. I did not have room for the bones when I ordered the cow and we don’t have any steaks with bones. I did find multiple packs of short ribs. The plan is to make the short ribs today and then use the bones for broth to can tomorrow. I can’t remember if I post that we ended up cleaning out the hall clothes of towels and sheets and made it a food storage cabinet mainly for canning!
We had at least two nights this week with the temperature below freezing, so last Saturday, I pulled all the green tomatoes inside and feed the vines to the chickens. I ended up dicing up several that had ripened to use in our stuff green pepper soup planned for Sunday. And stewed the remained that were ripe for Taco pasta on Tuesday! Using it before it goes to waste or chicken feed in this case.
We have a set of lights that is currently not working in the kitchen/ dining room. Matt has been spending time trying to locate the problem. It is a time-consuming task but at $100 an hour for an electrician, it is definitely a money saving endeavor.
5 Things Friday
- The weather: We have had 2 nights with temperatures below freezing already! I don’t like cold so it appears I will be going into hibernation soon.
- We received our Electric bill for the month of October. It is $153! This is the lowest it has been since October 2020! Yes I checked!
- Our best purchase so far for the chickens has been the automatic door. The chickens are going up at night and we don’t have to worry about something getting to them. It opens at daylight and closes at dark. We are still checking on it since we discovered that it was closed accidently one evening this week.
- Kendall has decided that she will swim on the school swim team. This is a huge first step for her! She even had to approach the coach on her own to get the information!
- Zach missed two days of school this week due to being sick. I am glad we had a couple of extra COVID test. It was negative and he is old enough to stay at home without the need for an adult present to watch him sleep.
Wordless Wednesday Senior Pictures #1
Lily is enjoying her senior year of high school at Davie County Schools and DDCC. We had some awesome senior pictures so I am going to share 5 at a time over the next couple of months!
