Bare Essentials Challenge: This Week's Shopping Trip

Well, I spent 150.00 on groceries this week.

I finally decided I had to do it.  One reason was that I was so out of it last week I just plain didn't do much shopping other than for milk and Coke for the son unit (and cat litter and freebies...I think I spent maybe 20.00 on groceries total throughout the week...it was like 19.35 or something), which led to me being out of pretty much everything today.  I also forgot to take pictures of said groceries being out of it, which is why this update is actually for my shopping period beginning tomorrow for next week (confusing I know).  I decided to get the majority of it done the last couple of days just because I was in the area of the stores doing other things, so I felt it was a good idea to save gas.  Course than I found out from the Carrs ad that strawberries are on sale 2/5.00 tomorrow as part of 5.00 Friday, so I'm probably going to go back to Carrs for some of those, but that can be taken care of with pocket change and I have to go to the bank anyway, so really it's not any extra gas (so I convince myself *laugh*).

The next reason is because of the kids.  My daughter has been having issues with her stomach cycling this week, which luckily we've caught it before things went south every time an episode hit, but she's still tired, sore and cranky from the week as a result.  So, she requested some of her favorite fruit and I was not going to say no to that on a good day, but to help her feel better I would have taken a special trip just for fruit for her.  Thus why I'm going armed with a 5.00 bill to Carrs tomorrow to hopefully get her strawberries (I'm hoping they're not 3/4 rotten...this time of year it's such a gamble on whether produce is worth bothering with or not up here, I'm kind of praying for a good thing of produce for this sale.  Fingers crossed) and why I shelled out 2.99 lb for grapes today (on sale actually.  They've been running about 5.00 or more lb all winter).  I also got her some navel oranges at Fred Meyer (.99 lb on sale this week).  I have some in the fridge right now, so I figure I'll rotate out the older ones first for her. 

My son was in an awful mood Tuesday and Wednesday this week, which actually correlated with him getting 8 hours of sleep a night those two days.  I felt kind of bad as I woke up for the first time in years those two days feeling awesome.  No jaw pain, no fatigue, in a good mood with the universe, etc.  My son was the polar opposite and was barely making it through school those days.  His OT figured what was going on was that he was getting sleep, yes, and more than he has in ages, but he wasn't getting near ENOUGH sleep for a growing kid his age (which he should be at like 10 to 12 hours of sleep a night), so he was still cranky even after having gotten sleep.  Figured.

Anyway last night he slept MAYBE an hour or so total, so he was back to normal today at school.  I'm once again feeling like a walking zombie and missing sleep so much now that I know how much better I feel as a whole when I get some, but at least my son had a decent day at school.

He's definitely growing again, though, as I saw when I put his pants on this morning and they were high waters on him.  So, I decided that with how he's been this week and him growing he really is going to need extra food in the house as he starts to blow through it like mad when he's growing, so I got him some store bought bread and hot dog buns (he won't eat home made bread as it's not soft enough, so I have to make do with the store bought stuff).  I also picked up a BUNCH of tuna salad kits as they were on sale for about 50% off what they normally go for and they are the ONE source of meat my son will actually eat.  He doesn't eat the crackers out of the kits, only the tuna salad.  But it was definitely worth stocking up as they were essentially buy one get one free.  I throw the can of tuna salad into his lunch for school and then put some rice in so they can mix the two together at lunch.  My son really likes it and really that's about as close as he comes right now to a balanced meal.

The Velveeta shells and cheese are for school too.  They are trying to train my son to hopefully use a utensil to help his brain and body coordinate more around his mouth area (which helps lead to communication), so they asked me to send some in as my son SOMETIMES will eat them.  Sometimes.  I'm hoping he gets excited as he hasn't had them in a long time and maybe use a fork.  Fingers crossed folks!

My husband requested snack packs for his lunches, so I got those this week too.  Not terribly expensive, but still one more thing to get.

I decided that if I was going to have to have one real "over" week on groceries one thing I desperately  needed to get was meat as we are down to basically chicken (and I'm actually starting to run lower on that!), a ham, a turkey, a package of fish and a couple lowly packages of hamburger in the freezer mixed in with the odds and ends.  Sadly I haven't so much seen holes developing in the freezers so much as have land slides each time I open said freezers as I seemed to have removed keystones from the freezer shelves as I went through things that needed to be used up.  My feet have suffered *laugh*.

My husband took me with him to go look at a job in Eagle River yesterday (a town about 1/2 an hour away from us) and as soon as I found out where we were going I pulled out my cash and asked if we could stop by the meat store while we were in town.  He said sure.

I was able to get hamburger for less than any of the stores sell it for around here, some thin cut steaks and a really HUGE nice looking chuck roast that I cut into two roasts before putting it into the freezer.  I spent 41.00 there, but also got 5 lbs of hamburger (split into 1/2 lb packages and put into the freezer.  I'll cut them with ground turkey or chicken for things) two roasts and some steaks.  And it is MUCH better quality than I would have gotten at the boxed store, so all the better :).

I also got pork steaks on sale at Carrs on their buy 1 package get two free sale.  So for 18.00 I got three big packages of pork steaks.  And we found one of the seasonings that Carrs puts on the steaks that we like (garlic rosemary), so I got the three packages with that seasoning on them so they could go directly into the freezer when I got home (okay, so I'm lazy what can I say).

The pasta was on sale .99 a lb at Carrs.  I like to get the mini penne as it's great to try and get my son to use a fork at school since it's JUST small enough.  I have a pantry still pretty well stocked with angel hair and thin spaghetti, but I'm saving those for home use as he likes to fling the noodles around as much as he likes to eat them so he makes a MESS.

The foot cream was on clearance at Fred Meyer for 1.69.  The conditioner was another request of my husband's as he didn't like the other brand of conditioner I had bought.  But, bright side is that it was on sale for .79 anyway, so at least it was cheap :).

The Goldfish crackers are also for the kids.  Mainly for my son as he's been trying in his own non-verbal way to badger me into getting him Pringles lately.  But, I don't like the way his skin reacts after he eats Pringles, I don't like the way he INHALES Pringles and I don't like the cost of Pringles on top of everything.  So, I got him Goldfish as sort of a "consolation prize" as he likes them.  Not as much as Pringles but that's what he's getting.

The yogurts were free from Freebie Friday coupons.  One from me and one from my friend giving me hers.  These will be going into daughter's lunches for school.

Oh and not pictured are the normal Coke, Doritos and Cheetos I buy every week.  I just didn't feel like hauling them all up the stairs to take pictures only to haul them back down the stairs to put away in the pantry.  Sorry, I got one hour of sleep last night.  Thus why all the groceries are in one shot too.

Anyway, all totaled this week I spent 151.20 on groceries. 

Plus what I'll be picking up in cash tomorrow, which will hopefully include strawberries.

I will be going back down to 50.00 per week on groceries after this week just to save money to help with the 800.00 in bills I have to make this month and next and reducing the grocery budget has definitely been helping with making money go further.  I'm also having problems with my car.  It's a problem we've had before, but we thought we fixed it a year ago.  So, either we have a part that was really crappy in quality or we have another problem.  Sigh.

So, anyway, that's my plan.  How did you do on shopping this week?