Frugal February!

 

 

I am very excited for Monday to come (sounds weird!)  All next month I am planning to only spend $50 for groceries.  Groceries include all foods, paper products & milk.  I’m not including diapers in it BUT I don’t think I will be needing any since I’m back into using cloth again (we just use the sposies when we go somewhere or for overnight).  I have been stocking up on meats & snacks plus my very picky husband’s frozen cheese pizzas… here are pics of my stockpile ready to go for the big month challenge:

and then our extra freezer in the basement… we also have the upstairs freezer which is loaded with all kinds of goodies.  I just baked a huge batch of french toast sticks that I normally would buy at Sam’s Club but found a great recipe for them online and it was so much cheaper!  They were easy to make and the kids LOVE them.  Big D keeps asking for them over and over again.  Anyways, here is the extra freezer (note the pizza pile!):

I did a freezer inventory using my new “home notebook” and this way I’ll be able to see everything we have and plan meals around it all.  It also has a place for a daily to do list, my diet tracker (lol) and menus plus a pantry inventory list (which I haven’t even begun yet). 

Sooo… please join me as I embark on this crazy adventure to only spend $50 next month to feed my family of 4 (plus 3 dogs!)  Subscribe to this blog to follow me :)

Something for Nothing?

 

If you don’t know, I decorate cakes.  I started doing this about 3 years ago and have baked, decorated & delivered over 100 cakes.  Most are for friends & family or just practice.  Since mom passed, I’ve taken a break from it but am starting up again this week.  I’m excited to get back into it.  I eventually want this to be my career.  We are in the early planning stages of that happening but in the meantime, I take the practice that I can get.  I get a lot of people coming to me looking for the “Ace of Cakes” type stuff.  Television shows like this have ruined it for many bakers.  People want the crazy, 3D, explosion type masterpieces that they create on these shows but they want to pay the Walmart prices.  The amount of time that I put into a cake is absurd.  You wouldn’t believe how long it takes to carve or mold a 3D figure and make it look decent.  There’s the ingredient cost then there’s the cost of all the tools, the extras (such as dowels, toothpicks, food colorings, cake boards, freezer paper/foil, ribbon, gumpaste, fondant, etc.) that nobody realizes.  So once these prices are taken off of the grand total, I end up making less than minimum wage for the amount of hours I work on a cake.  I’m done with doing that.  No more.  Not even for friends or family.  If you want an “Ace of Cakes” cake, check out their website!  They require a MINIMUM of $1,000 per cake order.  So before you go asking me for something crazy, please consider that.  Please consider the amount of time and energy and thought put into each cake.  I love creating but if I’m not getting compensated enough, I’d rather be spending the time with my family. 

Shopping Trip Saturday 1/16

 

My kids are spending the weekend at grandma’s house so my husband and I took advantage of the weekend to do some shopping and spend very little money :)  Our trip consisted of:

-returning a teddy bear to the hospital (my mom was given a bear when she had a surgery from the staff and we thought it could be given to a child again)

-Inman Jewelers - my husband got a beautiful new watch ($100 value) for free since we had won WCUB’s Holiday Decorations Contest. 

-St. Vincent De Paul – we donated a bunch of my mom’s clothes & ended up finding a new dresser for Dominic’s room for only $15!!!  It’s low enough that he’ll be able to reach everything on his own & we splurged on 2 new movies for him (Pocahontas & Peter Pan)

-Talk to the Paw – bought $20 worth of homemade dog treats for our mutts.. the cookies are the CUTEST things ever!  Check some of them out:

I highly recommend this store.  Besides this we got a pound of other treats (pizza wheels, fresh breath treats, bagels that can be microwaved, pretzels and other stuff) plus a huge bag of dried beef treats.  Great prices especially if you have that spoiled pooch!  Luckily we had a gift certificate so that made this stop – FREE!

-BP Gas Station – we filled up on gas (from being on “E”) at regular price $2.79/gal. but we got it for $1.92/gal. thanks to our Copps Fuelperks Rewards Card :)  Yay!!!

-Hobby Lobby – returned a posterboard unused for a refund

-WalMart – 2 boxes of animal crackers with a coupon for a total amount of $0.  The cashier just smiled… lol

-Office Max – wireless laser mouse for the laptop ($30), 3 boxes of envelopes & a hole puncher for $45 but it was all FREE since we had MaxPerks… we even have a few dollars left & we’ll be getting $12 more thanks to the envelopes we bought basically for FREE

-Luigi’s – lol… we needed lunch!  Even though this was a lunch stop, we had a coupon!!!  We saved $4 on our total bill from previously purchasing a $10 gift certificate for $6 on WCUB’s Shopping Show.

-Festival Foods – we had to pick up pizzas for Nick (Orv’s 5/$10), I also got a few of the things they had coupons from flyers and I took advantage of their 6/$10 on the Smart Ones deal… I had a coupon where you buy 3 and get a free Flatbread (value $3.19)… I also used a few other coupons to save us $7 on our complete order of $30.

So yes, that was it :)  Now to reorganize my son’s room tonight to surprise him when he returns on Monday from grandma’s. 

1/4 Shopping Trip

 

Final Cost = $2.95

Walgreens has a fantastic deal going on right now with Chips Ahoy.  Buy 2 at .99 each and get $2 Register Rewards.  The Neosporin was on sale for 2/$8.  I had 2 coupons that I printed off of the internet that were worth $3 off each so that took my total down to $2 and then the register printed out $1 coupon off of Neosporin and the clerk tried it and it worked so I got both for $1 but then it printed out $3 in RR as well so really, I made money on those.  As for the Hunt’s tomato sauce… they had those on sale for $0.36 each (with a coupon out of their ad) and I printed off a $1 coupon off of 3 from the internet so that brought it to $0.06 a can :)

I got all of my week’s shopping done tonight for under $20 so I’m happy with that.

When I returned I reread what I wrote before about my mom and it triggered something else in me.  Mom LOVED deals.  She was the one who would stock up on something if it were on sale.  At one time, she had 39 12 packs of soda stacked up… lol… she bought toasters for everyone’s Christmas one year because they were on sale for $5.  As we’ve started going through her belongings, we’re finding more and more surprises.

Mom was always telling me how proud of me she was.  She LOVED my cakes and was always so excited about them… she showed them to everyone she could.  I’m really going to pursue the cake decorating career because of her.  She took the classes with me in the beginning and got me started.  She would always come over as soon as I would finish a cake to see it and take pictures.  I miss her.

So Happy I don’t work with the public!

I do enough selling on Craigslist to get my fair share of deadbeats.  You would think “come on, how bad can it be REALLY?”  Really, it’s THAT bad.  In the last 2 weeks, I’ve had someone pick up half of their stuff and not return for the rest (or to pay me), I’ve had someone trying to find my street in SHEBOYGAN, I’ve had 3 people who never showed up when they said they would and two of them took a few more days than what they had originally said.  I just don’t get it.  Some of the stuff I was giving away was free as well and people STILL don’t show up for it.  What is wrong with you!?  I just don’t get it. 

I feel like I’m super irritable lately as well… most likely due to my mom passing.  It’s been hitting me hard in the last few days and I’m not really sure what to think.  One minute I’m fine, the next I can’t even see because I’m crying so hard.  I can’t believe how hard this is.  I always knew my mom wouldn’t live to be very old but at the same time, I didn’t think this was her time, not yet.  In my mind, I blame people for what happened to her.  I blame them for putting stress onto her and I blame them for her death.  I’m not getting into it online or publicly but if I ever see these people again, I will let them know how I feel about what they did to my mom in the years prior to her passing on.  It angers me so much.  She didn’t deserve anything that was done to her.  If only people really knew the truth but so many have been told lie after lie about what happened.  I hate being right, especially over this.

Thank God for my husband & kids.  It’s been almost 8 years for us and I can’t imagine being anywhere else.  We have hit rough patches but somehow we’re pulling through them (even at the hardest time in our lives).  My kids keep me going.  DJ catches me with a tear in my eye and says “It’s okay momma, we’ll see grandma again when we go to heaven” which only makes me cry more but yet makes me smile.