The Changes We've Made and What's to Come

I have been reflecting on the past year and all the changes we've made in the way we live. If I have to be honest, we made them out of financial necessity. But we've discovered that living with intention has brought our family together and made us realize our place on this earth. Some of these adventures worked really well, others-well-we are still learning. While our budget has been cut back drastically in our efforts to get out of debt, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. In fact, I feel all the richer (in spirit) because of it. We've done a lot this year. A lot.

In the Garden

We found resources to supply us with free manure for our garden. One of our neighbors has a horse farm and always has free manure. We used all 5 yards that we took away. We could use another 5 yards to top dress our perennial gardens.

We planted raised bed gardens this year and used cheap straw from the feed store to cover the aisles in between and cut down on weeding. If our crops grow like we hope, we may need to expand the garden next year. I didn't have room for potatoes and onions this year. We have 2 rain barrels made out of recycled plastic that we use for watering and two compost bins that our food scraps and yard waste go into. We also used the composted chicken manure for fertilizer. We are hoping to reduce our produce bill by growing much of our own food this year and preserving as much as possible.

We planted 36 Tomato plants

12 Broccoli

8 Eggplant

12 Peppers-green and red

6 Chili peppers

12 Romaine Lettuce

12 Spinach

12 Leaf lettuce

12 Corn

8 Cucumber

6 Zucchini

6 Summer squash

Pumpkins

Loofah gourds

Birdhouse Gourds

Peas (didn't do well)

Sunflowers

2 Apple Trees

1 Cherry Tree

Dill

Tarragon

Basil

Rosemary

Lemon Balm

Sage

Marigolds around plants for pest control

We went apple picking last fall and picked 65 pounds of apples that I made into pies and preserved applesauce. We will go back again this year until our own fruit trees start producing.

Around the Home
We no longer use paper napkins or paper towels and instead use cloth napkins and rags for cleaning. I purchased dish towels at Job Lot for $0.25 each and cut them in half and sewed an edge on them for really pretty napkins.

They work well, and launder easily.

We eliminated all chemical cleaners from our home. Not only is this healthier for us and for the environment, it has been a huge money saver.

We now make our own all purpose cleaner, laundry detergent, dish soap, bath soap, dishwasher soap, floor cleaner and window cleaner. The basic ingredients are very cheap and the kids really enjoy making the cleaners with me.

The Pantry

I learned how to stock pile my pantry by hitting deals, store sales and replenishing only those supplies that are low. I can now shop about once every three weeks. My last bill for 3 weeks of shopping was $169.00. I shop for produce weekly and have my milk delivered from a local dairy so that price is not included in my grocery bill.

We really got a good handle on using coupons combined with store sales and I can now save an average of $50-$60 in coupons alone when I shop. Looking for freebie coupons have allowed us to get many items for free. Shopping carefully has allowed us to save over $1200.00 since February. It's been great for our budget. I shop with only canvas tote bags never using the plastic bags any longer. I'm still trying to find a way to eliminate ziploc bags but am having difficulty with this.

We decided to switch to all organic, pastured meat. It is more expensive but we've been making more vegetarian meals and creating meals that can be used at multiple sittings like chili, lasagna and Shepherd's Pie that all help to stretch the dollar. This meat above was bought at Stop and Shop. The pile to the left is all the fat we cut off. This was a 7 pound roast when we started, after cutting out the fat-it was down to 5 pounds. Not much of a savings there. We've been more conscious of where our food comes from too after watching films on the milk industry, meat and chicken industry and especially the ill effects of genetically modified food/seed from the Monsanto company. We are trying to make better choices for our family.

Organizing

In order to save money we needed to create a household notebook to keep all of the everyday information we use. Some areas of this have worked well, like my garden section, plastic keeping envelopes that I keep stamps, church tithe envelopes, address labels etc in. We also have a section for recipes, pool care and homeschool. The other sections I created for coupons and grocery shopping didn't work out because I do this in my office where I can spread out the papers and coupons. I need to look at this book again but because it's in a 3 ring binder I can easily change out what works and what doesn't.

We bought 2 plastic shelving units to keep our stock piles and supplies all in one place. I make sure that it stays clean so I can see what I have and what I need.

All of our closets were organized to help us see our supplies. This is the closet in my office and has mostly craft and homeschool supplies.

We also bought 2 very nice bookshelves for all of our homeschooling books. Each child now has a shelf for all of their own books and we can easily find eveything. This was one of the best things we did to help us organize.

Homeschooling

We streamlined our homeschool day to only include one subject per day. It has helped tremendously with stress and staying organized.

We saved a ton of money this year by ordering the kids curriculum from Amazon. Some of the books were used but in great condition. We saved $483.65 by buying closeouts and used curriculum. The rest of this money was then placed in our homeschool budget.
Having a homeschool budget allowed us to take many field trips this year. In years past this was not possible for us. Careful planning has made for a very enriching year.

Home Cooking

We bought a food dehydrator and use it frequently. I have dried herbs from the garden, apples and fruit that were too ripe for the kids to eat but makes wonderful fruit snacks and we are going to try some Turkey jerky soon. It's been a money saver because these foods are now not getting thrown out. We also bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker and make ice cream once a week. Since we can control the ingredients that go into this, we know the kids are eating healthy.

I mostly bake my own bread with whole wheat flour. I still buy some bread but am hoping to cut that out as well. I've been buying organic flour and the smell of fresh bread in the home is just delightful. Unfortunately, the kids like to be taste testers so it never lasts for long.

I've been doing more canning/preserving and using things from my yard to cook. This year I made Wild Violet Jelly. All 6 jars are gone and I made extra to give away to some of our homeschool moms. It was was delicious.

We took our first adventure in raising chickens and building a coop after watching http://www.chickenindustry.com/ and seeing how our meat chickens are brought to us and how the eggs are massed produced. We order our meat chickens from another homeschooler instead of buying them at the store. We know that they are farm raised without the use of antibiotics and growth hormones and the price isn't much different than the store.

We have 4 laying hens right now and 11 more babies in the brooder that will hopefully start laying this fall. They grow so fast.

Yes, Patrick loves his chickens.

In return for all that chicken love, they give us very pretty, delicious eggs.

Things I'd Like to Change

• Learn to knit so I can create my own dishcloths and blankets
• Get Goats for milking and making cheese and soap
• Learn how to make soap-real soap
• Expand the garden so I can plant potatoes and onions
• Work every inch of our property to benefit our family
• Have a huge yard sale to clean and purge stuff I don't need
• Double my canning/preserving efforts
• Buy more fruit trees
  
• The changes we've made have not been hard. It takes research and patience to make things work and things don't change overnight. It's all been for the better for our family. I hope you decide to make some changes too.

What Can You Buy For $169.60?

What can you buy for $169.70? A whole boatload of groceries, that's what. Yesterday, I decided to do some price comparison between Trader Joe's, Aldi's and Stop and Shop and made out quite well. I have to say that I was very disoriented having never shopped in Trader Joe's or Aldi's so it took me quite a while to acclimate myself. I had not been shopping in almost 3 weeks other than the organic meat my husband bought at the farmers market. I was really low on a lot of items for my pantry but think I fared ok with making meals and using what we had on hand. We didn't go hungry and I made some really good meals this week.

This is my kitchen table chock full of stuff. Let's start with Stop and Shop. I hit some really good deals. Barilla pasta was $1.00 a box so I restocked on 10 of those and used 3/$1.00 off coupons. Kellogs cereal was also on sale, save $4.00 when you buy 4 boxes and I had 4/$1.00 off coupons and earned gas rewards points($0.30 a gallon of gas off) and a free gallon of milk. I had several coupons for free items. One of my coupons was buy any Ritz and get free Artisan wheat thins. I had coupons for the Ritz and the Artisans crackers too. I wasn't sure those 2 coupons were going to go through but they did. Some stores won't let you use coupons when the item is listed as free. I'm glad I tried. I'll be doing this more often.

I ended up having $53.75 in manufacturers coupons, $30.44 in store card savings and $4 off my order because of the double coupons. On my register receipt I had purchased 145 items. Not a bad excursion if I do say so.

Here is another angle of my table. My family has been looking into buying more organic stuff and I really wanted to price compare. Trader Joe's was really nice to shop in. I did buy some whole wheat hamburger buns for $1.89 that were delicious and reasonably priced. I was able to sample some food while there, most was really tasty but in reality the sizes of boxed items are too small and too expensive for me to purchase regularly. Their organic produce was very reasonably priced and I picked up quite a few things while there. My bill at Trader Joe's was $70.08 for not a lot of items but I will return for their produce. That's at least a start in buying organic. Their cheese selections were also quite good and competitively priced. But not being able to use coupons there really threw me off my game and I felt quite guilty about buying some items.

Here's another view looking down the other end of the table. One of my most expensive purchases today was the Castile Soap-geez it's expensive. I use this for making most of my cleaners now that I'm not buying any chemical stuff. It does however go along way when you are just using teaspoons of castile in the cleaners.

I also went to Aldi's and was again thrown off my game. I was quite annoyed that I had to fish out a quarter to unlock the carriages and then couldn't figure the whole chain connector thing out. I did get my quarter back when I returned the cart but it is a pain. You also need to bring your own shopping bags because they just pile everything in your cart warehouse style. Aldi's was dirt cheap for stocking up on snacks and canned goods. Canned corn was 40 cents a can, I bought a whole case as well as a case of black beans and diced tomatoes with chili's. Bagels and bread were a bargain at $0.99 each. Vanilla Wafers were only $1.29 compared to Stop and Shop's $3.69 for the same item. Cat litter was $3.69 for the very large scoopable kind. Most of Aldi's carries odd named brands of items so I didn't have any coupons there either. My total at Aldi's was $66.27 ($4 of that total was on new tote bags that I purchased-I needed a few more)

This is more stuff I was able to purchase and couldn't fit on my table for the picture. Aldi's had cheap tomato sauce. I'll use just about any jarred sauce when I don't have fresh tomatoes in season to make my own. Sauce is one of those items that can be doctored up and fixed to your liking so find the cheapest you can.
Even with us buying organic meat for $135.00 ( it will last about 2 months) and with my $169.60 that I spent yesterday we are still under the $100.00 a week budget.
My husband is insisting that we are over budget but we are having difficulty figuring out how to categorize items when I shop at places that are both grocery and department stores like Target or Walmart. Short of dissecting every receipt, I'm not sure how to tackle this. Right now everything is getting put in the grocery line items and we are frustrated.
I'd love to hear how others manage this.
Happy shopping!

More Gifts from the Pantry

In our efforts to save money and get our grocery shopping down to twice a month (excluding produce and milk), it's important to learn to make meals from your stockpile and pantry.

I mentioned in a previous post that we ordered some free range whole chicken from another homeschooler. I cooked two whole chickens for dinner one night last week. One of the chicken we ate and the other I broke down into several meals.

Both of the chicken carcasses went into a huge pot with carrots, onions and celery to make some delicious homemade chicken stock. If you've never tried making your own stock please give it a whirl. It's really not difficult and the taste is worth the effort. Have you noticed the price of chicken stock lately? It's very expensive here and I don't use bullion cubes at all because the sodium, chemicals and taste are just horrible.

This is two of the four quarts of homemade chicken stock I made. The chunks are just ice as I froze these to use with another meal.

The chicken on the second bird was cut off for homemade chicken soup. Even though the chicken is already cooked, I cube it and saute' it in a pan with mushrooms, garlic, onions, zuchinni and carrots. It really gives the soup another layer of flavor when you saute' the items first. I add the broth after the veggies are cooked and then the potatoes at the end just before it's finished cooking. I had some cooked noodles from another meal and added those to the individual soup bowls. The hot soup warms the noodles quickly and they don't get mushy in the pot of soup.

If your pantry is well stocked with dried beans, peas, and grains, you should be able to create meals without too much difficulty. Stretch your meals, use the leftovers and see what you can come up with. We recently had a ham dinner. I always buy the bone in ham because it adds so much more flavor to Pea Soup. I also make a fresh Pea Soup when the peas are in season. With dried peas, I soak them overnight to help get rid of a bit of the starchiness and to soften the peas for faster cooking time.
The rest of the ham can be cut off the bone and used in the soup. This ham bone was in the freezer for a few weeks and they keep perfectly fine. I add the whole hock right in-it gives delicious flavor.

I add some chunks of potatoes at the end of cooking and the ham cubes that I cut off the bone. If your soup is too thin, just add a bit of cream, cook a little longer and enjoy.

Tomorrow I do need to go shopping and restock some pantry items. I went through my coupons tonight and hopefully I will do well in saving some money.

Most of these meals can also be cooked in your crock pot on busy evenings when cooking a meal may seem impossible. I've also been meal planning for the week and choosing meals according to my grocery list or sale flyers. Creating meals such as lasagna or Shepherd's pie, that can stretch over several meals really helps to save money too.

Check out your pantry, see what you have, browse some recipes books and be a little creative when it comes to meal planning. In the process you just might save a few dollars.

The Budding Chef and Artist

Today was history day. Morgan learned all about President Thomas Jefferson and how his home was called Monticello which means, "Little Mountain." She drew this awesome picture.

The kids also had Art Class Homework from last Monday. They had to search the house and find 5 things that they thought were art.

Tae drew the bookshelves and his African drumming stick.

Morgan is going to be a budding photographer like her mom. She decided to take pictures of the things she thought were art and then draw the pictures. She found the pattern in my prayer shawl facinating.

And she thought this picture of the colored pencils was really cool. I do too.

She even printed the pictures and then cut them out.

And then pasted them into her sketch book. She labeled and drew the pictures next to the photographs. She also chose my fall patterned quilt that my sister-in-law made for me and the loved the patterning on the bottom of an egg carton. She also picked out a wood emblem from her dresser.

Tae had a special day out with his Nanny today. She's not really the kids Grandmother but is a very close friend of the family. We've known Nanny since Patrick was first born. Tae went out to lunch with Nanny for his Birthday treat and then he got to go to Barnes and Noble and pick out his own book with the gift card that Nanny gave him. Of all the books he could have chosen, he picked out a Williams and Sonoma Kids Cookbook. He was so proud bringing it home and has already picked out many recipes to cook. He must have tapped into my brain because while he was gone today I was flipping through my Williams and Sonoma cookbook.

Morgan has a 7:30 am soccer game tomorrow and I'll be out grocery shopping. I'll post how I do with my whittling of the grocery bill. I'm off to cut coupons!