Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Times 2)

I opened this fortune cookie the other night (I bought a big thing of fortune cookies at the store to have as dessert on Chinese food night and it has been a huge success to make dinner feel more special and has been a lot of fun), and I have to say I wanted to say something nasty about what the fortune cookie could do to itself.  Unfortunately, the darned thing ended up being kind of accurate and I've had to learn to accept being flexible in my plans the last little bit.  Mainly when it comes to what I had been planning on how we would spend out tax return when it comes in.

I had planned on paying a bill ahead and then paying off the credit cards, but now...now I'm going to hold it in the bank until we know how much braces will cost for the daughter, hopefully pay off some credit cards and then bank whatever I can to go toward home repairs and things as it seems like every time we turn around there is something else that needs repair or replacement.  We are getting there with the earthquake damage.  Slowly, very slowly, but one room at a time.  Which is how the son's flooring is getting replaced as nails started coming up through the carpet that popped in the earthquake and the carpet split its seems in a bunch of different places, preceded to get gross things under the carpet because of it which led to nasty situations and such (we picked that up this last weekend and it is currently stacked up in a corner ready to go).  We are, somehow, going to have to figure out how to do the kitchen soon as the floor in there is getting water under it through the holes in the linoleum and things, the counter top is chipping out from where it was damaged in the earthquake and...yeah...we're looking at one expensive bunch of repairs there.  But, we'll get there.  One step at a time.

I had a lot of stuff going on the last few weeks.  There was Valentine's Day, which went well for the most part.  My husband got me a single rose again this year (which I really loved that he did that) and got me some chocolate covered strawberries (which the daughter ended up eating most of them as she goes nuts for them *laugh*).  I actually spent some money and got the kids some nut free Valentine's chocolates, which the daughter really loved (turns out that she loves the fruit cream chocolates that most kids run for the hills when they see them in the box *laugh*) and the son enjoyed his Hershey bars and his small valentine's chocolates (I just made some out of Hershey kisses and gave them to him, which went over well).

We also had my daughter's birthday, which went great and she had a blast.  She had a decent amount of family show up and even a couple of her friends came.  By the end of the evening she actually admitted that she wished the day didn't have to end, so I'm calling it a success.

On top of therapy, birthday, holidays and school it was busy enough, but the antibiotics also started to really hammer my energy levels and I was actually really grateful when I was off of them.  I still have a residual cough, but it is slowly getting better, so I'm focusing on the improvement rather than getting depressed that I'm not 100% well yet.

So, yeah...we've had a lot going on the last few weeks.  So, let's get to the money saving bits shall we?

1.  Instead of paying for delivery on the flooring for the son's room, my husband went and picked it up himself.  He also did the measuring of the room and figuring out the square footage of the room, which also saved us some money (and led to a practical math lesson for the daughter on area).

2.  I mended two pairs of pants and a couple of tears in a comforter.  Still got a ton of mending to do, but progress was made!

3.  I made an angel food cake.  I then cut it in half and froze half of it so we could have it for dessert a little later on.  I went online to make sure that you could freeze angel food cake before I did it so I didn't inadvertently wreck it.

4.  I ordered a few small things from Amazon that the tax return money will pay for.  Bright side, by figuring out what we needed and would definitely use I was able to really cut down on what I wanted to buy.  I'm really working to streamline things around here to keep food ahead, but in realistic amounts that we'll be able to use in a decent amount of time.

5.  I used some potatoes that were going past their prime by putting them into a meal I cooked low and slow in the crock pot.  It worked great and no one noticed if I was using wrinkly potatoes :).

6.  I took a bag of strawberries out of the freezer that were looking a bit freezer burned and macerated them with some sugar.  We had those with the one half of the angel food cake we ate.  They turned out great.

7.  I took a bag of raspberries that were getting freezer burned and cooked them on the stove with some sugar.  I then added some cornstarch to the mix to thicken it to a pie filling consistency and we had that, along with some blueberries I defrosted and some breakfast sausage I am trying to use up, to go with Swedish pancakes a couple of nights in a row.  I really enjoyed the dinner and am really thinking of doing more of those nights in the future :).

8.  We had a parent meeting at therapy for Alvah and we discussed a bunch of different things including some issues I'm having with how he uses his talker.  We came up with some plans to get him to make some connections when it comes to communication and to hopefully get him to use his talker more and expand his communication horizons.  I came away very pleased with how the meeting and the new goals worked out.  Here's hoping the new plan works!

9.  Shopping went well the last couple of weeks.  I've been able to keep it way below what it has been of late by carefully picking up just the essentials of what we need.  I know eventually doing it this way that I'm going to have to go on a big shopping trip, but in the meantime at least I'm saving money.

I also got a bunch of freebies the last few weeks!

I was checking my Just 4 U coupons and found that the coupon for a free gluten free pizza had reset for me AND had added a free thing of granola (which honestly the free granola excited me the most *laugh*).  So I picked those up one week.

I also won a free thing of Hummus through the Monopoly game, which kicked off the last few weeks as well, so I redeemed that while I was there.

A few days later I was surprised to get an e-mail, once again, offering me a free pizza and a free bag of granola through Just 4 U.  I added them to my card to use later. and honestly I was kind of surprised when the coupons worked when I went shopping (I mean I now have three free pizzas and two free bags of granola...surprising to say the least!).

I also went online and put in all of the online codes I had from the Monopoly game and was able to win a pretty good amount of tokens.  So, I redeemed enough to get a free 5.00 gift card.

I had also, before January rolled over to February, redeemed the 1 fuel reward that would net me two free boxes of pasta.  I went and got the pasta while shopping last week as I kept forgetting to pick it up and I finally remembered to write it down on my shopping list.

Overall I was really happy to how shopping went the last couple of weeks :).

10.  I was able to participate in a continuing study on autism and family relationships dealing with autism.  As repayment for taking the surveys they are going to send me a 10.00 Amazon gift card which I will use toward paying for laundry detergent :).  Every little bit helps.

11.  I signed my husband and son up for Special Olympics swimming again this year, which is a great program that will allow them both to get another day of swimming in every week.  The son really enjoyed the program last year and even won some ribbons, so I'm hoping he'll enjoy himself as much, or more, this year :).

And there you are folks.  A few things that have happened the last few weeks.  I'm glad I finally had time to get this post done as I've been working on it for a good week (see above about being crazy busy).  How has the last couple of weeks treated you all?

Reconsidering Shopping Goals: Freezer Inventory

So, first, where is the "Frugal Friday" post for last week?  Well, a bunch of stuff happened.  We ended up buying flooring for the son's room way sooner than we had planned when we discovered his flooring was in worse shape than we had at first thought, so while we saved 50.00 by buying during a sale and using a coupon...we spent a LOT more than that on the flooring and the other things we would need for installation.  While working on the son's flooring to see if I could save it for a while I overdid it and my body had enough and my cough got way worse.  So, off to the doctors I went and I'm on antibiotics again.  Between that and just general life things, like grocery shopping, we didn't so much spend money last week as bleed it.  Nothing to be done about it, but yeah...there wasn't a lot to report on the money saving front, unfortunately.  I will, however, have a ton of stuff to report on monthly goals in the next couple of days.

Anyway, part of what we spent money on this month was because I had a kind of rethinking of how I do some of my grocery shopping, especially when it comes to meat.  

So, allow me to drag you down an interesting rabbit hole.  

It all started with me going through all of my cookbooks and things looking for ideas on what different things you could make with hamburger to use up some of my surplus I have in the freezer.  And I happened to stumble across this in my collection of vintage pamphlets and booklets.  I had bought it at one of the used stores for .25, mainly because it was from 1949 and I LOVE vintage reading materials like this.  What can I say.  I'm a home economics nerd *laugh*.  Anyway, while reading through all of my booklets on how to use up left overs and things from the same era, I decided to flip through this booklet to see if they had any recipes tucked into its pages.  I didn't find any recipes, but I DID stumble across this neat item... 

A suggested freezer inventory for a 6 cu. ft. freezer.  

I read through the list and was kind of like, "Interesting" and then went about my business.  And then later as I was taking stock of what was actually left in my freezers, I remembered the inventory and that the pamphlet had a bunch of advice on what to stock in the freezer and things.  So, intrigued now, I went back and read the booklet.  And then I read it again.  And again.  Every time I read it the advice and the method for what you should keep in the freezer and when to use it made more and more sense to me.  

I'd always kind of approached my spare freezer as a kind of food hoarding mechanism (which was against EVERYTHING the booklet suggested you use your freezer for).  Sure, I used the meat and things in it, but I also used it to hoard sale items (such as the pie crusts which were 1.25 per package right after Christmas and I stocked up a ton of them to use later) and would hold onto free things that I always ended up cooking and we'd end up choking down because they were free and we weren't going to waste food.  Now, I started to look at those items as wasting space that I could better use putting up something my family would actually want to eat willingly.  The, "put cheap meat into the freezer and use it" method was a product of my childhood and I hadn't thought much of it.  And the hoarding everything like the end of the world was coming was pounded into my head over years of dealing with the feast or famine pay schedule that my husband had at his old job.  But, I finally realized that I could rethink things a bit now that my husband's pay schedule is regular and I could still stock ahead, but I could maybe do it in a way that better suited the needs of my family.

Mind you, I probably wouldn't have even attempted to start a new freezer system if we hadn't eaten down the freezers so much over the last year (earthquake matters and lack of money DUE to said earthquake really helped to motivate me there) and the lack of good meat sales hadn't helped it along. But looking at the nearly empty fridge freezer and the second standing freezer that had a bunch of empty space in it and I thought, "You know, this whole freezer inventory thing might work.  Let's give it a try."  

So, I give you a new thing I'm trying out this year.  I'm going to try and work around a freezer inventory.  Not an inventory of things that are currently in my freezer, which is what I have done in the past, but actually making an inventory of things that we would want stocked in the freezer and working hard to make sure that we have those things in the freezer at all times.

Mind you, this is still a list in progress.  I started with the above freezer inventory they had listed, made the amounts more realistic for us, and honestly some of them I'm still trying to work out in my head (10 lbs of steak for instance...I still need to take stock of how much steak I have and how much 10 lbs would equate to *laugh*).  Of course, I also deleted things that I plain didn't want on the list (liver for instance is out for us) and tweaked this and that, but finally got a basic beginning list of things I wanted to put in the freezer.

So, with a supplemental list of things I wanted to put in the freezer in hand, I sat down and went on our local Meat Market's website and started figuring out how much things would cost to add to the freezer.  My husband and I both decided to go to a really nice big meat market in Anchorage (my husband stopped off after work one day to get my list of things I gave him) and I had him pick up a few specialty items, along with the basic items on my list, that I wanted to put in the freezer for future projects and/or just because I liked them and wanted a bit more variety to the meat we had in the freezer.  I used some birthday money combined with a home school reimbursement for some supplies I had bought earlier (and already paid off) and off my husband went :).

So, for about 100.00 we got enough meat to stock up the freezer nicely with enough room left over for some corned beef briskets that I want to add when the sales go on for St. Patrick's Day coming soon.  

Right.  Here's the list of things that I'm hoping to keep in the freezer at a minimum...

Meat, Poultry, Fish:

2 Beef Roasts (totaling about 8 lbs).  At the moment I have 2 chuck roasts. 

Steaks -- Still in progress on amounts (at the moment I have a few packages of steaks, but ideally I'd like to have enough steaks for 2 meals of decently thick cut steaks and 2 meals of thin cut steaks for things like fajitas or beef teriyaki and things). 

2 Pork Roasts (boneless pork loin or bone in pork roasts both count toward this).  Currently I have two bone in pork roasts. 

Pork Chops, 8 lbs (since I can get the big value packs of chops pretty cheap on reduced a lot). 

Lamb Shoulder Chops, 3 lbs (this was a purchase I made at the meat market and would like to keep stocked in the freezer because I really like these for a change of pace for dinner.  3 lbs netted us enough chops for three meals). 

Hamburger (6 lbs).  Currently I have about 20 lbs in the freezer since I was able to score hamburger so cheap, so I won't have to buy that for a while. 

Bacon (2 lbs).  This actually works out to be, what, about a pound a half I'm sure with product shrinkage, but I just bought a big slab of thick cut bacon on sale and that'll last us a long while. 

Sausage (breakfast or other):  3 lbs 

Chicken, cut up (4 big value packs of chicken or 16 lbs, depending which is accomplished first).  We eat chicken a lot and I can get the value packs of chicken thighs or drumsticks for 5.00 per package on 5.00 Friday about once every month, so I THINK that should be enough chicken to see us through until the next sale comes about.  I might have to tweak the amount but we'll see. 

Ham, 2 steaks.  With the husband's blood pressure we just don't eat much ham anymore and this really is a good amount for us I think. 

Fish/Shrimp:  Enough for 3 meals, at least.  I'm hoping to get more fish into the freezer as we really should be eating more of it, but we'll see how the budget stretches as fish is not cheap price-wise up here.

Hot dogs (1 big package) 

Corned Beef Brisket:  3 

Miscellaneous Meats, sometimes for specific projects (as needed). 

Fruits:

Strawberries (4 lbs)

Blueberries (2 lbs) For waffles, muffins and pancakes and things. 

Other fruits as I need them or put them up (like I have applesauce in the freezer from getting apples cheap earlier in the year).

Vegetables:

Broccoli in cheese sauce (4 boxes) 

Edamame (3 bags) 

Green Beans (2 bags) 

Carrots (4 bags...I use these in stews, corned beef brisket and things instead of fresh as I've found that this leads to less waste on my part). 

Asian style vegetables (2 bags) 

Onions and Peppers mix (2 bags...for stir fries and things) 

Greens (currently I have spinach and collard greens):  2 big bags

Miscellaneous:

Pies (2 baked).  I plain don't have a lot of time to do things anymore, so I'm putting things up ahead of time for the sake of my sanity. 

Cakes:  2 baked (I'm planning on just making a 2 layer cake and freezing both layers separately.  This will give us cake for two meals at least). 

Cookies/Cooky Dough:  2 dozen.  Baked or unbaked. 

Muffins:  1 dozen (at least)

Bread:  2 loaves, baked (currently in the fridge freezer...this is where I'm figuring on putting a bunch of the baked goods as they'll be more easily accessible there). 

Rolls:  2 Dozen, baked 

Waffles/Pancakes:  Enough for at least four meals.

Ice Cream:  1 Gallon (or as close as you can get anymore) 

Butter:  4 lbs (I wish I could go for more, but unless a great sale pops up, that is where the number stays) 

So, yeah, that is what I have been up to for a good portion of my spare "when the kids aren't sleeping well" time of late.  It's definitely still a work in progress, but I think I'm starting to get things dialed in where I am finally getting down what we like and will eat and what things I definitely want to keep stocked in the freezer to use on a day to day basis.

Will I still shop sales?  Oh heck yeah.  Will I stock up on things?  Sure.  But, I'm really trying hard to make sure that I'm only stocking up a realistic amount and an amount I know we will use in a decent period of time.  It's just another way I'm hoping to keep my grocery budget more tightly under control.

So, let's see if I can do this and if it actually works.  I'm going to be curious to see if this actually saves me money or if it will fail spectacularly and I'll feel really dumb for putting so much effort into it initially.

Let's find out in the coming months, shall we?

How about you?  Do you have a freezer system?  Any advice on what works for you and your family?  Please share as I'm sure I'm not the only one that looks for new ways to do things!

Goals for 2020

Oh my GOSH this is a month late already, but it's been one of those lists where I kept going back and forth on what I really wanted to accomplish this year.

Enjoy a miscellaneous goal I have this year (photo up top there) and that is to try and keep at least a small bowl of produce in the center of the table as much as I can in the hopes that the son will take a bite out of some of it (he will spin apples and chew on the peel every once in a while, so here's hoping).

And without further ado, here's my list of things (so far) that I want to accomplish.

My Goals for 2020:

Home Goals:

1.  Well, basically the biggest goal I have is lots and lots of home repairs.  I still have a ton of repairing, painting and things to do inside.  This includes, it looks like, replacing the flooring in my son's room as it split all of its seams in the earthquake and after years of abuse, combined with the earthquake, it is just NOT holding up anymore.  I want to look into replacing it with some type of waterproof flooring as he's hard on things and I need something really easy to clean that won't get wrecked by constant spills (which happen).

2.  Replace gutters.

3.  Replace broken doors in the garage.

4.  Build shelves in various parts of the house to replace broken bookcases that are held together by a wing and a prayer anymore and also build more shelves to get clutter up and out of the way (and get books out of storage so we can actually use them).

5.  Find something that works for curtain rods in the den.  Make new curtains that fit the den better.  Hang said curtains in the den.

6.  Try to rip up some of the carpet in the den around the door to the garage and put down a tile pad so that we have somewhere decent to put shoes and things when we get in the house.

7.  Tighten up the cabinets in the kitchen to the wall to make sure they remain steady (some of them have a gap between them and the wall due to the earthquake and I need to empty them out and tighten them up again).

8.  Repair the rock/retaining wall for the driveway.

Financial Goals:


1.  Get the daughter braces.  Figure out a budget to get that paid off as soon as possible.

2.  Freak out only OCCASIONALLY about bills and money (I AM doing better at this...sometimes... *laugh*).

3.  Pay off as many bills as possible.  If not pay off bills, pay down bills as far as I can this year.  We have a lot of bills that have increased or are going to increase (like we just got out property assessment in the mail and that is definitely going to raise our property taxes this year *sigh*), so it's going to be all the more important to watch our Ps and Qs.

4.  Figure out what it will take to reseal the deck and the front porch as both of them suffered a lot during the earthquake and after it (I need to wait for the gutters to get replaced before I can do that, though, as the dripping water from the broken gutters has been hard on both of them).

5.  Get a haircut.  I know that seems like a miscellaneous goal versus a financial one, but since my husband is scared to cut my hair and my hair is about 40% split ends and is down to my waist, I really need to go and just invest in a good haircut at this point.  I'm tired of shutting my hair in doors (sorry to those who love really long hair, but I with my life it just isn't a really good feasible option for me).

6.  Try to figure out a way to save on the grocery budget and get it back under control.


Personal Goals:

1.  Remain calm and keep breathing (I've actually done pretty well at improving at this goal every year, so I'm going to keep it on there).

2.  Try new recipes that are within the food budget.

I'd like to try some new recipes that use frugal ingredients like hamburger and dark meat chicken.  I want to avoid good old fashioned monotony, which has been hard the last year with me being as busy as I am.  I have everything but a nice high quality blender (which I'd love to buy one, but 150.00 is a BIT out of my budget, so I'll continue to make my cheapy blender work for as long as I possibly can.  It's finicky, but it works).

3.  Try to get out of the house more and do more with the kids.

This has been hard because taking trips hasn't been in the budget, like ever, so it's been really hard to scrape together money to take trips and go and do things.  Last summer was a complete disaster trying to get out and do things because of all of the fires that broke out and made it so the kids didn't want to spend more than 2 minutes outside before their allergies started flaring up in a bad way.  But, I am hoping we'll be able to get out and do some things this summer one way or the other.  Hopefully it works out.

4.  Get the son to pick up new foods.

Yup, I'm taking feeding therapy personally.  I hope to have the son pick up at least two new foods this year.  I might fail, but I want to work and work some more at this.  I pray I'll succeed as he needs to get an expanded diet going.  Like bad.

5.  Get more organized.

I'll explain this a bit more in another post, but I'm hoping to keep things more organized on the home making front, so that I can streamline stuff better.  It is so hard since home school started to find time to do much of anything because between school, therapies and things like swimming and clubs we are just constantly going somewhere and doing something.  So, keeping the house clean, getting food on the table within a budget and things have been REALLY hard to juggle around everything else.  So, I'm trying out some new ways to help me get things done, keep organized and hopefully stop myself from going crazy while doing everything.  I know there are people out there that juggle WAY more than I do and somehow make it work and MAN do I hold them in awe anymore as I feel like I'm barely holding it together most days.

Getting organized is even more important as I somehow need to squeeze more time from the day to keep everything running around here, getting everything done AND finding time to repair and paint more rooms to get us more and more complete on the earthquake repair front.   Every room we redo, ever nail I pound back into the wall and get repaired and things the more happy the son is in his environment and that is worth all of the extra work and effort for sure.

6.  Get back to blogging regularly.

I actually not only have goals to get back to blogging on a regular basis, but I also want to expand to blog about things like what we are doing in home school.  Things that I found that I really liked and even things that kind of failed.  I have had more than a few e-mails asking me about what I am doing to teach Alvah at home as other special needs parents would like to home school their kids but are unsure where to start. so maybe I can give a few ideas on things to do.

I think if nothing else it might be fun to share in the continual adventure that is home school.

Garden Goals (Yup, I actually have some)

The last couple of years have seen me not do a garden at all due to all kinds of different things, but this year I am determined to put in a garden again.  Will it live?  Will it get wiped out by more moose?  Or some of the huge amounts of rabbits in our area (we are invaded in my area with rabbits and they keep breeding like...well...like bunnies.  I had to stop a bunny from jumping into my truck the other day when I stopped to get something at the gas station)?  Who knows.  But I'm determined to at least TRY again.

The plan is to work this into home school, especially with the son.  I am putting together a unit on the plant life cycle and how food moves from farm to table as well.  I think getting dirty and helping in the garden might do him a world of good, not only on the learning front, but maybe JUST maybe showing him that the food we are eating can be trusted and won't do him any harm.

Here's hoping!

I will need to buy seeds or seedlings.  I'm still debating on what to do there.  I'm thinking I might just buy some seedlings from the nursery and then supplement as I need to with seeds throughout the summer.  We'll see what ends up being the final plan.  Just send up a prayer that it will be a decently mild summer and that the animals and bugs will let at least most of the garden live.

And no.  I will NOT be planting cabbages.  The moose will have to look for those elsewhere.

And there you go folks.  My goals for this year.  I know the length of the post, for me, is actually pretty short, but man I have a lot to do this year, so even though it is a decently short list, it's going to take a LOT to get everything done.  Wish me luck!

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Thanks for the e-mails and things asking how I was doing with my cold.  I'm on the mend, I hope.  I still have a residual cough, but I finally have my voice back for the most part and the cough is coming and going instead of just being there all the time, so that is something good to report.

I have to say that when it came to money saving things that happened this week...eh it was a mixed bag.  I spent more money than I would have liked to have spent, but I did it with the plan that I can pay back said money when our tax return comes in, so while it hurts now, it'll pay off in the end.  I hope *laugh*.

So, let's get to the few money saving things that happened this week.

1.  I got some freebies this week!  I had a coupon that I could load to my Carrs card for a free cauliflower crust gluten free pizza and I was able to redeem it when I went shopping.  I also used 1 grocery reward before the rewards changed for February to get a free container of ice cream and I redeemed that as well (seen up top).

2.  I was able to order some female undergarments from Amazon for really cheap this week, which was great because they were needed :).

3.  A friend of mine sent me a nice little package with some embroidery floss and an embroidery hoop that she wasn't going to use.  It was a nice thing to find in a week that got pretty hectic.

4.  My mom sent me a packet of coupons in the mail and I was able to use a couple of those when I went shopping, which was a couple pennies saved.

5.  I found something at the used store that I was thrilled to find.  I'm a Downton Abbey nerd and I have wanted a jam/jelly serving jar since I saw the first episodes a few years back.  I found a few on Amazon, but they wanted nearly 20.00 for them and I just didn't want a serving jar THAT much to spend that kind of money.  So,  I just put them in my shopping cart, saved them for later, and then just kept looking around the used stores to see if I could find something similar to use to serve jam, jelly, honey or the like when I wanted to do a fancy type of breakfast for fun.  

Oddly enough I was at the used store looking for picture frames.  I had started to clean out my desk looking for my art pen (long story *laugh*) and I knew it was in the desk.  While I was at it I started to organize things and put them into file folders since I have this thing called a "filing cabinet" now.  While I was doing that I found a ton of old photos from when the kids were younger, when my husband and I were younger, etc and I thought it would be nice to be able to put them up in some nice frames on the gallery wall I have made over the years.  

I didn't find much in the way of frames, but we cruised through the rest of the used store while we were there (we were wasting time until my daughter got out of dyslexia therapy) and I saw it.  Sitting on a shelf with a bunch of other decorative glassware.  And I thought to myself, "Nah, that can't be what I think it is."  I decided to pick it up and be disappointed, so I reached over and picked it up and immediately saw the slot that had been built into the jar to fit a spoon and was thrilled and amazed that I'd actually FOUND a jam/jelly serving jar!  At a used store!  For 1.99!!!  And it was in great shape *mutters under breath, "Even after I accidentally dropped the lid as soon as I decided to buy it"* and everything!  So, the jar is now cleaned up, has a 

6.  I finally started getting back to making menu plans again which is really nice being able to know what I needed to pull out to make dinner any given night.  With how our schedule has been of late and how crazy life has been, this has been a real God send.

And yeah, I know the list is short, but that's really all I have to report at the moment.  How about you all?  Anything neat to report on the money saving front?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

Well, after taking stock of my freezers I have to say that I was kind of depressed at my meat options.  Unfortunately, the sales on meat just haven't really been there in any "wow I need that" type of way, so I've just been steadily eating down our stockpile of meat in the freezers.  So, when I went and took stock I realized that I have a decent supply of hamburger and chicken and otherwise we're kind of down lower than I want on everything else.  I did pick up some shrimp and a meal's worth of fish while grocery shopping yesterday as I was completely out of fish, but still...I need to keep an eye out for things to put in the freezers in the coming months.

But, yeah, since I have a good amount of hamburger AND hamburger still seems to go on sale decently cheap, be prepared for a lot of hamburger recipes in the coming months as I'm really trying to cut down the grocery budget (which seems to be impossible with the way the kids are growing like weeds) and still making food interesting to eat.

Oh and as an aside, the photo above is actually a Jello No Bake cheesecake I made the other night.  I put about 1/2 tsp of ground ginger into the crust when I made it and then I made the topping from this recipe, although I used apple juice instead of apple cider and I had to use about a tablespoon of cornstarch to thicken it to pie filling consistency for the top (not called for in the recipe, but just a personal preference).  It turned out awesome and we enjoyed it for a few nights for dessert :).

So, here we go, this week's menu!

Wednesday (since I made my list yesterday):  Leftovers/help yourself night

Thursday:  Pizza night 

Friday:  Homemade soft pretzel twists and Knockwurst (from the freezer...this is a REALLY, REALLY late Octoberfest type of meal that I promised to make for the husband ages ago) 

Saturday:  Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura and salad 

Sunday:  Easy Mongolian Ground Beef over rice with edamame on the side 

Monday:  Swedish Meatballs (I'm going to use straight ground beef for these and use up the other 1/2 of the package of ground beef that I didn't use for the Mongolian Beef the night before) over noodles, salad 

Tuesday:  Baked Chicken, rolls or bread, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy

Breakfasts:  I'm hoping to make pancake muffins, blueberry muffins, cranberry orange muffins, some breakfast bowls and things to give us some quick and easy breakfasts to choose from, but it all depends if the kids give me time to get that stuff done.

Desserts:  Lemon Bars (Sunday), bread pudding (Tuesday...Use up odds and ends of home made bread in the freezer to make).

And there you are folks.  My menu for this week.  How about you?  Having anything good?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Well, first off, thank you to the people who have e-mailed me and messaged me and things asking how I'm doing with this cold.  So far I have avoided going to the doctor, but, per usual it seems, my cold went directly into a chronic cough and I'm still really tired, so I've decided that if this isn't better by the time my husband is off work next week I'm going to the doctor just to nip the cough in the bud before I'm sick for months with it.  I'm praying it doesn't come to that as I just had to put a pretty significant chunk of change on my credit card to pay off the first wave of medical bills that have come in (I'll pay off said credit card as soon as the tax return comes in, so at least there is that), but we'll see how it goes.  With the kids being home schooled now, me remaining healthy is even more important than it used to be.

Speaking of the kids, we went in for the daughter's first dyslexia tutoring session at therapy Friday.  She did really well and is getting along really well with her therapist, so here's hoping she starts to improve quickly :).   My new lesson method with the son is to work hard on one skill at a time while doing school and right now the main thing I'm focusing on is the tripod grip to improve his writing and his ability to use utensils when eating.  It is going well and his therapist is thrilled that he wrote his name pretty much 100% by himself with a normal pencil last week.  It's wonderful to see forward momentum with him and I'm really proud of him.

So, right, money saving things I did this last week, let's get to those!

1.  For the first time in a long while we went to the used stores on Friday, mainly because the daughter and I had worked ahead on school work a bit to accommodate the first day of dyslexia tutoring, so we had a bit of time we could kill.  Anymore, when I go to the used stores I go in with a set list of things I need and see if anything I need is there.  I did find a few things that were on my list this time.  

I got a small Pyrex bowl as I love the small sized bowl to do things like beat eggs and things in when baking and it seemed like I was always running out of the small bowls when doing any significant amount of baking in a day.  I found one for 1.50 so I picked it up.  I kind of kicked myself for not getting a few more in larger sizes as I run out of those sizes of bowls too, but for now this was enough.

I also picked up a dish drying mat that you can just throw into the wash when you are finished with it for the day.  I have wanted one of these things forever as I'm always washing my non-stick or other items that can't go in the dishwasher and I'll just put them down on a dish towel on the counter until I am done with washing them all and then I dry and put them away.   Inevitably the dish towel is just not thick enough and I end up drying up puddles.  The drying mat, on the other hand, works awesomely well and I have found I can hang it up on my towel hanger on the front of my sink cabinet to dry next to the dish towel and it'll last me through a few days before I throw it into the wash.  It sure beats the collapsible drying rack I was thinking of getting for a lot more money.  The drying mat cost me .75, which was definitely a cheaper option :).

2.  The last few things in the photo above were not used store finds.  The first is actually something I ran into online while watching YouTube videos.  I watch SteveMRE1989 on YouTube every once in a while as he taste tests MRE meals and gives reviews.  I find stuff like that fascinating and I've run into some cool, shelf stable, products through him.  One video I was watching he had something he called "fruit soup" which was a powdered mix that was basically thickened fruit juice when it was reconstituted that you could drink as a hot liquid or turn into a soup for like dessert.  I was fascinated as I kept going back to Alvah and feeding therapy and how awesome it would be to be able to introduce fruits to him that he would have a hard time spitting out.  I hate to make the comparison as the poor guy is far from a baby anymore, but it is kind of like the idea of introducing flavors through baby food purees.  I was just enthralled with the idea, but really wanted to try out the texture of how the Kiesel (or other names depending on what country you would hail from) would turn out before spending a fortune on actual fruit to turn into the soup.  

Amazon had the powdered version of the fruit soup, but it was TERRIBLY expensive.  Like 12.00 for six servings expensive.  I kept reading up on the fruit soup and found out it was very popular in European countries, including Eastern European countries and I had a light bulb over the head moment.  So, while the daughter was in dyslexia therapy the husband and I jaunted off to our local Eastern European Deli and I found what I was looking for!  I got one of each flavor that they had of the fruit soup/drink to give a try for myself and to mess with the consistency to see what would work best to try out on Alvah.  Best part was that each flavor cost me 2.50 versus 12.00, so it DEFINITELY saved me money doing it that way!

3.  The other thing in the photo is a six pack of Corelle lunch plates that I ordered from Amazon.  The lunch plates always seemed to be unavailable in white, or anything remotely affordable, so I would just pop onto Amazon once every day or so and do a search to see what would pop up.  And I hit pay dirt.  Amazon had gotten some lunch plates in that were being sold through Amazon via Corelle and the white lunch plates (which match the dinner plates I bought) were 14.00 for a six pack of plates after a coupon was applied that they had on the item page.  I ordered them before they went out of stock again and was happy to get them in the mail in one piece.  I will miss my old dishes, but not the cuts I was getting from them I have to say.  

4.  One benefit to the children being home for lunch most days (the son gets out of therapy early enough that I can just cook him a late lunch/early dinner when we get home, or he goes just late enough that he can eat a large breakfast/early lunch before he leaves, so he just tends to bring snacks to therapy) is that I have a big pile of reusable lunch containers that I'm no longer blowing through in a couple of days.  So, instead, I've been trying really hard to start putting left overs in those instead of using plastic wrap, freezer bags or  the like to put the left overs away.  It's been working well and it's nice to be able to just throw them into the dish washer and reuse them instead of having to throw some wrapper away.

5.  As part of an effort to get more organized to hopefully save some money this year and get bills paid down, I cleaned and organized the freezers this last week.  I now have a much better idea of what I have for meat in the house (I was surprised to find I used up all of my whole chickens, for one thing) and my fridge freezer, since I've been working really hard to save money by eating down our freezers of late, is downright bare compared to what it was before I reorganized everything.  I'm hoping to keep up on keeping the freezers organized in the coming months so I don't end up overspending on things we don't need, having lost said item in the depths of a freezer somewhere.

6.  I went searching online for a set bunch of things I wanted for the son for home school types of work sheets.  Not finding anything that fit the bill for what I was looking for, or if I did the site wanted me to pay for the privilege of printing it, I decided to Heck with that and have started making my own work sheets as needed.  I am working on some simple cooking visuals to help with feeding therapy right now and they will literally cost me my time and some computer paper.  Which to me, is definitely worth it.

7.  I finally finished one late Christmas gift this week.  I finished up the embroidery on one of my daughter's pillow cases I made for her.  Since I had promised her a purple fox about three years ago and just doing the gift is now two years later than I wanted, I was super happy to finish it and give it to her to see.  The shot above is before I washed out all of the old colored pencil marks from the pillow, so I apologize for the kind of sloppy appearance of the pillow case :).

The pillow case cost me .50 originally and the embroidery floss was floss I had around the house that my step mom had sent me, so making this cost next to nothing, except my time.  This did take quite a while to do as the design is actually rather large and there was a lot of fill work to do.  The daughter absolutely loves it, though, so I was happy with how it turned out in the end.

8.  My truck was running on empty in a big way the other night.  We stopped off at a Chevron to get gas so we could make it home and found that we were able to use our Carrs fuel rewards there, which was a nice find and saved us some money by being able to use them.

9.  We took advantage of a free field trip the home school was putting on to go and tour our local fire station.  The son wasn't overly impressed, but it did get the kids out of the house and the daughter enjoyed seeing the fire man putting on all of his gear and sounding like Darth Vader *laugh*.

10.  I needed rice, but found that Carrs no longer sells the large 20 lb bags of medium grain rice.  I sat and compared prices on the smaller bags (the son prefers medium grain to large grain, so I try to get him what he likes as rice is one of his major food groups) and found that buying two five pound bags versus a ten pound bag was a lot cheaper and would save me a good 3.00.  So, that's what I did for now.  I'm going to see about shopping around to see what other options I can find to buy rice in bulk, but in the meantime this was the best deal I could find.

And there you go folks.  Some of the things I've been up to of late.  How about you?  

Shopping Goals: January 2020

Right, first.  "Where's the Frugal Friday post?" you may ask.  Well, the answer is simple really.  I didn't do much at all this week.  Period.  I started Alvah on antibiotics, which I have to do a huge shout out about how proud I am of my young man on taking those.  He doesn't "do" pills, so they had to give him liquid antibiotics and the stuff he had was grainy, nasty, super duper bitter and just horrible stuff to take, but he took it like a champ and we got through all of the doses without losing any from it coming back up, which honestly positions reversed...I don't know if I could have done that. 

Anyway, we started him on antibiotics, what, Sunday?  Monday I started to get sick.  And I was MISERABLY sick till today.  The only time I've been more miserably sick was with the flu.  I can say that the only real money savings I did this week was I was determined to not get take out as my husband had to go to the doctor on Sunday for various really worrying issues (turns out it was probably his blood pressure meds he was taking.  They gave him an EKG and things and found that was the most likely culprit for his symptoms.  He's on a new med now and is doing a lot better) and with that and my other medical bills staring me in the face, and a potential new one if I couldn't kick this thing, I was determined to save money where I could.  But, yeah, other than that, there wasn't a lot of anything going on around here in any department.  The son took antibiotics and slept a huge lot.  I got through school work for the day with the kids and I would crash for an hour or so before having to start dinner and that was the extent of my day.   The husband and the daughter got us through the week house work wise and I'm just starting to pick up some of the slack tonight and trying DESPERATELY not to overdo it, which is hard to do since I'm feeling way better than I was 24 hours ago.

So, let's get onto something that I did manage to get done so far this month, which was an actual shopping goals list.  And believe it or not, yes, I am still working on goals for 2020.  We got sick and it got waylaid, but I am working on it.

Now, before someone chimes in about Ramen, yeessss I know Ramen isn't exactly the most healthy of options when it comes to food.  BUT, when it comes to good old emergency rations, it is great to have around as Cup of Soups only require boiling water to reconstitute and they will fill you up.  And when it comes to rotating out food storage, at least eating Ramen won't make you wonder why you dared to choose to put it in your food storage (okay, I LIKE Ramen, so that helps.  I grew up on the stuff and it was a staple of my child hood diet.  Sad, but true).

I did feel pretty good about having food in the house as I guess our one ship we get a week this time of year with supplies for the grocery stores was late last week and the stores ran out of a bunch of stuff, including fresh chicken, produce and other stuff.  Since we had just gotten milk (thank goodness for that) and the few things we needed a couple of days before that we were able to ride out the late shipment without hurting because of it. 

So, onto the shopping list.  I am not including any associate links with this post, I'm just sharing :).

Amazon.com

Maruchan Instant Lunch Chicken Flavor, Pack of 12  (these were even CHEAPER when I ordered them.  They were like 3.25 for a pack of 12!  Beats local prices for these by a long shot!).

Jello Instant Pudding Mix, Chocolate Fudge (pack of 6) x 2.  I bought this for texture tolerance exercises with Alvah.  He reacts badly to a lot of products normally used, like shaving cream, so this seems like a good option and he has a terrible aversion to anything soft and squishy texture-wise when it comes to food, so this seemed like a good place to start.  We shall see.  And if I can get him to try chocolate pudding, all the better. 

Maruchan Flavored Ramen Soy Sauce, pack of 24  I got these to add vegetables and things to to make quick Ramen noodle bowls with when people are sick and things around here.  I haven't seen the Soy Sauce flavored Ramen in years, so I now have enough to last me for the next 20 years or so I think.

Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent Packs, 90 Loads  I have tried everything on the market, tried soap nuts (I was allergic to those believe it or not), magnetic laundry systems (spoiler:  It didn't work and made laundry stinky), laundry balls (did help to agitate the laundry more), made about 18 different recipes for home made laundry detergent and these are the ONLY thing I've found that the whole family will tolerate without breaking out and still get the laundry clean without any build up of stinky residue (which the liquid free and clear Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent does with our water).  I have to put the laundry through an additional rinse to make sure it is rinsed out completely or Alvah's skin will start to protest, but overall, these are the best option I've found. 

I got these decently cheap with a coupon, but since I used said coupon I don't know if it is still available.  Since those coupons don't last long (25% off) I'm assuming it's probably gone.

PG Tips Tea, 240 Ct.  I got off way cheaper for this than it is showing now, I got mine for about 10.00, but the 460 ct bag is now a lot cheaper if anyone likes this tea.  I've been sticking to one cup of coffee in the morning and then switching to tea during the day more and more, so I needed to replenish my tea stores.

McCormick Brown Gravy Mix, 21 Ounce  This stuff has been magic when it comes to getting my daughter to eat home made mashed potatoes, so to me it is worth keeping it in the house.

Non-Food Items:

Corelle Dinner Plates, 8 piece, Winter Frost White 

I was lucky when it came to the earthquake and dinner plates, really.  They were in the dishwasher when the earthquake hit.  Unfortunately, since then the plates have chipped on the edges more and more to the point that I was cutting myself when I washing them or pulling them out of the cupboard.  I talked to family members who used to work at the Corning plant in Charleroi, PA back in the day and they basically said when Corelle starts to chip it gets really unsafe and to just throw them away and get new.  So, that's what I did with a small tear in my eye. 

I didn't want to get a whole new dish service because I don't need cereal bowls, those are still in fine shape, or dessert type of plates, so I just bought these for now and will work on getting some smaller salad plates/lunch plates later when I can afford to replace those.  I ended up getting the plates for free due to Amazon shipping things awful, which was nice not having to put any money for these on my credit card.


Regular Stores:

• Toasted Sesame Oil

• Rockit Apples (6 lbs)  I got some of these on 5.00 Fridays last month and my husband absolutely fell in love with them and has been taking them in his lunch to eat with some cheese sticks and some crackers and things for a quick breakfast before he heads home from work.  Doing this stops him from going out to breakfast most mornings and is saving me a bunch of money, so that in itself would be totally worth it.  I am also working on keeping a small bowl of fruit in the center of the table in case the son wants to spin and chew on an apple (which has been randomly happening), so these are perfect for that as they are small so if he wastes one experimenting with food I'm not crying over a 3.00 per lb, on sale, honey crisp or something.  Since they work out to 1.66 lb when on the 5.00 Friday sale, it was worth getting to me.   I had my husband pick up a couple boxes of these on 5.00 Friday today, so we'll be set for a while.
• Stir Fry noodles  I got a cast iron wok and some wok oil for Christmas and want to try my hand at making something resembling Mongolian BBQ at home.  We have a Mongolian BBQ place in Anchorage that my husband and I used to love going to before we had kids, so I'm hoping to get something even remotely close to those wonderful flavors at home.
• Edamame 
• Open Nature Cashew Butter (the best peanut butter alternative I've found that isn't soy based and it isn't cross contaminated, so I'm sticking with this for the time being :)

So, there is my shopping goals as they stand for this month.  Since the mortgage went up 100.00 nearly a month and we have other bills that are going to be higher (like utilities) due to the time of year and things...I'm really not sure if I'll be getting anything other than the things I've gotten so far (like the stuff on Amazon and the apples), but we'll see how far the grocery budget will stretch.

How about you all?  Needing to get anything this month?