Budget for Shopping April/May

So I probably should have combined this post with the last post.  LOL  Oh well. 

Go check out our menu plan to see what we're eating this month.  

Our budget was $600.. We spent $580.  So...... We did save a bit of money, but not much.  

I was pleasantly surprised to find some "Friday the 13th sales".  But other sales, and coupons weren't the greatest. 

Our local little store had a buy one at full price, get a second one for $.13 sale.  So I went and grabbed donut holes, raisin bran, already cut philly chicken meat and Smithfield pork loins before we left town.  Spent $27.89.. almost half price. 

Fareway Foods, normally a store I avoid like the plague, and I quickly remembered why.   What we got on sale was pre frozen chicken breast, on sale 5 lb for 4.99 (normally 6.99), shredded cheese 8 oz for .99.  Boston Pork Butt Roast, we spent $5.80 on 3 pounds.  Sirloin Steak, the ad said it was $5.99 a pound, so we told them we wanted one pound, we got 1.8 pounds because we didn't check the label before we left the store.   Old Orchard Juice, 64 oz, was also .99 and we got the kids the treat of gummy snacks for .99 a box (normally $2.50).    This was the store that killed our money saving spree, as we ended up spending $75.22.  

Aldi's was $107.36

Sam's surprised me.  I haven't had a total at Sam's under $200 in quite awhile. The only thing we had on instant savings was some cereal.  But we still only spent $197.65

Walmart we couldn't find some of the specialty seasonings we were looking for and given the blizzard we were trying to beat home, we didn't stop at an ethnic food store in the city, so we ended up going on Amazon when we got home.  We spent $171.82.  

We're also trying out some grocery savings apps... After we figure out how they all work and that they do actually work, I'll share what we are using..  If you use any money saving apps, let me know!  

Have a great week! 
~Tabitha 

Meal Planning for April/May

This is not my week for anything I think... Let's try round 2 with this.  

I opened the blog to find a post on morning sickness I had forgotten to finish... So I'm still working on that. 

We realized last week that I had planned from a Saturday to a Wednesday last month.. so we had to go pick up a few things to get us through this week.  We're trying to keep our shopping days on Saturdays. 

Dennis has been helping me with the grocery lists and meal planning the last couple of months, which I absolutely love.  Not only is it finding us some yummy recipes, but it's getting us out of the rut of the same old stuff.  So we have a lot of new recipes again this month, but they all sound really yummy to us.  

Now, most of these recipes are from a site through his work, so I can't link to them this month.  If you want a recipes, let me know.  I'm definitely going to try sharing some of our favorites. 

So, the two we've tried (because we had almost all of the ingredients) BBQ Ranch Chicken Sandwiches and Garlic Stuffed Roast...  Both are actually really good (yes, I was a little surprised).  The roast actually called for a standing rib roast, but we had a deer roast in the freezer that needed ate, so used that instead.  

We have both been wanting to get back into smoothies, but have been struggling to find a way to be able to afford it... So we're going to try getting frozen fruit from Sam's, then we'll have juice or almond milk to finish them off.  Once the fruit is gone, so are the smoothies... 

We also have two birthday meals this month, Andrew and Hannah.  
Andrew got the choice between ice cream or premade cupcakes (because I just don't have the ingredients or time this week to get a  cake made for Saturday, luckily he loves ice cream)... Now we just have to make a special stop to get Dippin' Dots because it seems none of the stores we are stopping at have them.  Weird. Hannah is getting a cake or cupcakes.. Haven't decided yet lol.  

Breakfast meals:  Other than the normal eggs, bacon, yogurt cereal and the like...  
Strawberry Banana Smoothie
Breakfast Pizza 
Basil Tomato Frittata
Coconut Carrot Morning Glory Muffins
Cinnamon Rolls (depending on how the muffins go over anyway)

Saturday lunches we're doing one new a week 
Mediterranean Stir Fry 
Pulled Pork
Easy Beef and Bean Taco Casserole
Roasted Chicken Salad

Sunday dinners-rotate every other week
BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
Pizza

Wednesday lunches we're doing leftovers

Dinner Meals:
Oven BBQ Asian Chicken
Garlic Chicken
Five Spice Tilapia
Teriyaki Marinated Chicken
Garlic Stuffed Roast
Smoky Maple Mustard Salmon (using tilapia instead)
Dorito Taco Salad (I got this recipe from a friend on Facebook, and the calories are surprisingly really low plus it's yummy enough the kids ask for seconds)
Ritz Cracker Chicken
Crockpot Chicken Tacos (using the turkey I found in the freezer)
Sweet and Spicy Balsamic Chicken
Glazed Chicken
Crockpot Chicken Philly
Easy Parmesan Chicken
Cajun Chicken and Rice
Caprese Chicken 


Something new to us this month, we're are making our own bread.  I have a recipe from a YouTuber I watch a lot (Our Tribe of 10) that I'm going to try because it uses honey instead of sugar.  I am buying hamburger buns and hoagie rolls this time... but I will also be trying the hamburger buns again.   

I think that's all that's happening this week!  


Have a great week! 
~Tabitha

Thrift Store Shopping Deals

We went on our annual thrift shopping trip last week.  Thankfully we found A TON of hand me down clothes in the basement that fit the girls, so all we had to shop for Andrew.  

Now, I forgot to write down what we got at each store, but we didn't get much as you can see..  3-4 pairs of pants and shorts and 3 (I think-going off Andrew's memory here lol) shirts-along with a Miami reversible jersey for $3, something you don't see up here very much.  Also 2 dress shirts, a vest, a suit jacket and 2 pairs of dress pants. 

We went to Nu2U and Savers in Sioux Falls... and only spent $42.38

That's not too bad for all of that, especially considering the dress clothes would have been super expensive having to buy brand new.  

The only thing we didn't find is sandals for the summer.  So we'll keep an eye out for those, too. I was keeping an eye for the next size in dress shoes, but we didn't see anything at either store.

We're also keeping an eye out for a wagon for a good price. 

In other news, we took Amazon to buy a popcorn popper and a bread maker.   Things should get interesting around here. lol 

Have a great week! 

~Tabitha

New Meals for March and Budget for Shopping

So here's our new recipes for March, scroll on down for the budget on the shopping trip. Usually we just do a few meals a month that are new, but out of desperation of needing to cut out the extra things that more complicated recipes required, we are doing more new... But we've had the basic flavor of the recipe before, so it should be good. 

To keep the recipes, I bind the printed ones we like with my comb binder.  I'll be getting bigger spines soon, but Dennis just bought a small one for now. I do need to find my cardstock to create better covers... 

Another thing you might notice, you'll be redirected on the links through a website called My Fridge Food. Dennis found it somehow (probably through Tech Gumbo on YouTube). You go through, tell it what you have in your fridge, and it gives you recipes. If you are someone who doesn't make a meal plan, but having a hard time coming up with meals, check out this site.  


Sunflower Crunch Salad
Dorito Taco Salad
Pesto Parmesan Chicken with homemade pesto
Honey Garlic Crock Pot Chicken
Ritz Chicken
Sweet Italian Chicken
Skinny Sweet Chicken
Simply Mexican Chicken



These are all on our meal plan for March.  So head over there and read that if you haven't already.  

Let me know if a link doesn't work, and I'll put the recipe on here instead.  Honestly, the only one I'm skeptical about is the pesto parmesan, but hey, we like pesto so it's worth a shot.  




So I was going to end the blog here.. But since we did awesome and actually came in way under what I thought we would with grocery shopping... I thought I'd share that this month too.  Usually we don't get many sales, so what we spend on food is... a lot..  But God got us through and we were able to find sales... even if it seemed like we went to ALMOST every store in town.  

We did get the bad news that the bakery outlet was closing... That is sad, sad news.  She told me Walmart usually has bread for 60-80 cents a loaf...  So we'll check that, but I'm pretty sure we're headed for a bread maker and homemade bread. 

We went to HyVee this month.. One of the stores I had stopped because they raised their prices to serve the organic crowd... We ran into a tip on Youtube to use refrigerated pizza crust as cinnamon roll dough, so we figured we'd give it a shot.  While the taste wasn't too bad, the price was the same as buying the Pillsbury rolls at Sams.. So it wasn't a win in the cost.  We added cabbage to our salad mixes, although it didn't dawn on me until we got home that I have to store it in the fridge, so I'm currently rearranging things to get the other two heads in the fridge and it's supposed to warm up this week so my outside storage is going away.  We also decided to get the Chinese dinner for 4 at Hyvee (29.99) for supper Saturday night, it gave us a 20 cent discount off per gallon of gas and was something different other than pizza.  So that brought our total at HyVee to 111.21 (though taking off the 30.00 for supper, we're at $71.21-so that's the number we're going with for groceries). We also received .65 off per gallon of gas.

At the last trip to the bakery outlet, they had bread for $1 a loaf vs the normal $ .75.. considering the tight budget I would have gotten the bread somewhere else, but it was nice to give the outlet 
one last trip. $13.62 (I got jelly)

Sam's was one of our biggest places.  Though we did some price checking as we were going along and found some things cheaper than buying them in more convenient packing. We shopped on the instant savings ad and saved $19.50 Sam's total was $273.42

We stopped at a local pharmacy, Lewis Drug, for some things we would typically get at Walmart.. It ended up not being the best idea as it didn't save us any money over buying things at Walmart. But we did get a coupon off for 10 cents per gallon of gas at a local gas station-so that's a win. $40.26

Aldis saved us a stop with their prices, we usually get what we can there.  Their diapers were also $5 cheaper, so I was able to get enough of their diapers to equal the Walmart brand price to last us the month.. without going to Walmart.   I was super excited to find Chipolte Ranch dressing, which the taste should be extremely close the spicy ranch we got from Popeyes I loved on chicken strips.  Total was $142.02 

Our last store was Sunshine Foods, another local market.  We mostly only grabbed the sale items, but we did need some specialty vinegars for a recipe so we grabbed them there instead of HyVee... then learned they were cheaper by a few dollars each at HyVee.  You win some, you lose some.  $33.07

That brings our grand total to $573.60. For 6 of us for five weeks.  So $114.72 for every week for 3 meals plus snacks.  My figures had put us closer to $700... Which is a ton, but that was with cutting any non essential I could.  We did grab some extras at Aldi's we saw (such as the Chipolte Ranch dressing, and some snacks that were on sale for a treat).  

We are looking at ways to cut costs.. mostly looking into meatless meals of some sort at this point as we have many ideas for cheaper meals using meat.  Hopefully we'll be able to bring the price to a more sustainable number.  

Have a great week! 

~Tabitha 

March Meal Plan

Hello again!  

Sorry I haven't been posting much,  I'm running out of ideas for posts... and morning sickness is making my ambition go out the window.  We have been getting a lot of snow this month, winter has finally found us!! YAY! It's been a long time since I've seen a winter like this and though I'm ready to get out and walk, it's nice having the snow. 

I have tried vlogs... but. Well. Kids. It's also a little intimidating knowing that other vloggers are getting reported to CPS for having messy houses (just like... normal messy houses that comes from not cleaning constantly), and my house is lived in, it's not a show piece.  I want to do more vlogs, I want to learn how to edit them... But people are just plain mean over the internet. 

I have been sewing, I do have pictures on the camera... but the camera is in the car because I was trying to get pictures of the bald eagles on the drive to church last week. 

So onto the meal plan.  I made the meal plan.. then did the grocery list.. and the checkbook laughed... So hubby helped me redo the meal plan and grocery list... and the checkbook still laughed. SO Round 3.  The checkbook is still laughing, but quite honestly, we gotta eat...  So,  Lord willing, we'll make it.  God's got us. 

I will do a whole post of the new meals we have.. Dennis and I spent a few hours watching different videos on Amazon and YouTube yesterday to find "meals on the cheap".  Obviously their prices for the total meal are going to be different because those shows only make meals for one or two people... But the less ingredients, the cheaper it is.   And if it tastes awesome with the less ingredients, then why not?   

We also (reluctantly) added spaghetti back into the meal plan.  We haven't had pasta for dinner of any sort since Dennis started his diet in July.  So we compromised... We will be pairing it with salad, no garlic bread (whimper, we LOVE garlic bread-but the calories!!!), and less spaghetti as we will be doing salad with it.  Now, since Dennis eats salad everyday, I had to get a little creative with the salad... You know those Dole (or whatever brand..) premix salads they have now in the fresh foods sections?  We LOVE the sunflower crunch, so I went online and found that recipe and we'll be doing that with spaghetti.

Pizza on Sundays every other week for supper 
Honey Garlic Crock Pot Chicken for the other Sunday suppers
Mondays are spaghetti day with salad
Dorito Taco Salad 
Chili
fish 
Pesto Parmesan chicken
Ritz chicken
pork tenderloin
Sweet Italian Chicken
Skinny Sweet Chicken
Simple Mexican Chicken 
Parmesan Chicken


So that's our meal plan. About half it is repeated more than once, but a lot of the new ones that we aren't so sure about liking, we're trying once and probably continue but we want to try first before we commit.  

Since I'm feeling blech today, I'm going to sit here and start typing on the recipe blog..  

Have a good week! 

~Tabitha

February Meal Plan

Has it been another month already?  

I'm in the middle of making pajama pants for the older girls and I.  Shirts for me... Of course we have school and the usual housekeeping duties that never end.  


One of things I did this month was clean off part of my kitchen counter.  We bought a new water filtration system after receiving reports on what exactly was in our water... So we are filtering it through the RO system from Culligan and also an Alexapure. The water tastes so much better with this, although now we are noticing how much chlorine is in our straight faucet water. Smells like a swimming pool when we run water for baths and dishes. :(   In the process of cleaning off my counter I went through my massive stack of cookbooks.  I got rid of most of them, but I found one (well... three actually) book from my mom's old crockpot (...bought in the '70s or '80s old crockpot judging the olive green outside).  So I looked through it and found some yummy looking recipes, so we'll be slowly trying some of those.  

So... The meal plan for this month.  

Breakfasts are eggs, bacon and yogurt for Dennis and I.  Days he's home we alternate between cowboy hash, waffles and cinnamon rolls or biscuits and gravy. We're doing cinnamon rolls this month.  The kids get cereal or muffins and eggs if they want.  

Lunches on the weekends are chicken strips and fries or fish and fries.   For Sundays, since we don't get out of church until after noon, we take drinks and chips then stop and get hot sandwiches.  

We have one special meal this month.. We actually have two birthdays, but Grace decided to be daddy's birthday present 4 years ago and came the day before his birthday.. So we combine... Dennis picks the meal and we do whatever cake Grace wants, in the past we've done cake and ice cream, but in the interest of keeping the calories lower, we are sticking with cake with Grace's favorite characters. (Which reminds me... I need to check how much food dye I have for the icing..)  So.. Dennis of course picked surf and turf.  Steaks for the adults, brats for the kids (crazy kids don't like steak) and coconut shrimp for everybody-the kids went crazy over the coconut shrimp last month and last month Sam's had a good sized box for $12.   We'll do roasted vegetables and biscuits for an added treat.  

Other meals.. 
Chili
Shake n Bake
Fish
Pork Tenderloin
Pizza on Sunday evenings
Seafood chowder (one of the recipes I found in the crockery cookbook)
Garlic Knot Pizza Casserole
Pork Chops
Angry Chicken
Parmesan Chicken (I had printed off a recipe from a friend that was pizza chicken..that sounds right... my recipe disappeared.. but showing it to Dennis he says "sounds like Parmesan chicken with pepperoni"... so, we'll just call it Parmesan chicken) 

We have a few meals of leftovers because soups and the pizza casserole always give us leftovers.  The pork tenderloin usually does, too.  

The sales aren't so friendly this month so I'm dreading the bill. Each of those meals are repeated every other week, except for the Shake n Bake and the pizza which is once a week.  Also the seafood chowder is just once, I know we'll get leftovers.. but we don't want it done more than once when we are just trying it.


Have a great week! 

~Tabitha

Getting the Most Out Of Your Fabric

I can remember both of my grandmas and my great aunt having piles and piles of fabric. PILES AND PILES of it.  

They all were little girls when the depression hit and they were taught to not waste a thing. The generation that used flour sacks for dresses.  And patched fabric until there wasn't anything left to patch.  

So what can we take from them? What can we learn?  Use that fabric until it's nothing, then use the shreds for stuffing.  

If we can't sell clothes we have outgrown or just don't wear anymore, I try and figure out a way to repurpose for somebody else in the family.  Sometimes the clothes go to thrift shop or another family that can use.  But usually the clothes aren't fit for re-wear by somebody the same size. 

I've repurposed some of my husband's old pants into skirts for me. I still love them, though I've added buttons because the ties just don't stay tight.  Honestly that's the only project I can think of that I've made clothes out clothes lol.. Or that have actually turned out well.  I've made a few jumpers, but they haven't lasted long.  

When I sew, any scraps that are too little to do anything with go in a plastic bag hanging off my sewing table. Once that bag gets full I stuff a bean bag or I make a doll pillow.  If I get a strip of fabric that's at least an inch wide, it goes in a different bag for crocheting-fabric works great for rugs or baskets. 

Most of my torn up sheets are getting cut up for quilting.  If I have a whole sheet that's still nice that we won't use, I save it for the backing of a quilt.  Another way to use that up is to make a fitted sheet out of it.   I haven't tried that yet, but I know there's tutorials on Pinterest and YouTube if you are feeling adventurous.  

I've used flannel and fleece scraps to make nursing pads and feminine pads.   Yes, using new cotton is best (I've had to put new tops on mine as the old cotton has fallen off), but if what you have is scraps, use it up.  Find a purpose.  

I'm working on a quiet book for Hannah for church.  What a great use for scraps!  And this felt I have.  Plus it's helping me learn some basic sewing things-like zipper installing. lol  

If you don't want to quilt, save up your scraps and ask around.  I'm sure there's somebody close to you who quilts and would love fabric.  I've taken some bags of fabric to the ladies who make quilts for families who need blankets. While I'm sure it didn't make one whole quilt, there was no way I was going to get to that fabric anytime so it might as well have been used.  Hopefully it's keeping somebody warm.  

Have old blankets that are falling apart?  "Repair" them by encasing them in a sheet.  Or fold it in half and top it with denim-instant rug, play mat or picnic mat.  You name it.   

Have an old flannel sheet that has gotten holes and you don't want to patch it?  Kid pajamas!!! Seriously. I made two sets of pajamas for our girls from half a king size sheet that had seen it's last days as a sheet.  Or pajama pants for you.  Just trace a pair you already have, make sure you leave room for seam allowances and elastic at the waist.. otherwise they look funny (...not that I would know from personal experience.....)

I completely understand just wanting to get rid of stuff. I'm there. Believe me, I'm PAST there (just ask my hubby).. But I also know I need to be smart about this..  I know I want to make the kids quilts.  So instead of just getting rid of all this miscellaneous fabric, I'm cutting it into squares to cut smaller later (maybe).  I kind of have an idea of the patterns I want for the quilts for at least two kids, so that gives me an idea of which ones to sort by.  Cut squares store a lot easier than miscellaneous pieces.  

So before you purge your fabric, think about it.  Are you going to be quilting? Clean out your linen closet to make room for new?  You can make a toddler dress out of a pillow case or two depending on the size of your toddler.  Barbies or baby dolls need clothes-that's an awesome use of fabric!  

Yes, there are some things I think it is better to just get new fabric for (like the backing of a quilt).. But more often than not, using your scraps can work just as well, and save you a lot of money.  

My fabric-3 1/2 boxes of flannel.  Not counting the quilting material.  The bag in the front of the pile is my crochet fabric bag.  I need to get sewing.

Have a great week! 
~Tabitha