January 2014 Frugals.........

rosa, the ChinookBook has coupons for goods and services, largely "green" in nature. So there will be coupons for whole-foods stores and local co-ops and the some of the food you can buy in them. And coupons for greener dry-cleaning services, hardware stores, energy- and material-efficient building trades, gift stores offering green or locally-made goods, bike shops, picture-framing shops, nurseries (both kinds), all kinds of restaurants and entertainment venues,... Ours even includes a pass good for a free trip on Metro Transit.

The book usually is $20-25 depending on when you buy it and the coupons are good for a year. There's a coupon in there for $5 off $40 at our co-op and similar coupons for other local co-ops, most of which I'll use over the course of the year. I save at least as much as we pay. And, getting it for free, the return is even higher!

Zach and I had a good planning session for the year, planning our spending and how much we will need to bring in from side work to fund our projects. We live mortgage free, but our house needs some maintenanceand were working on making it as functional as possible for 9 people. We planned out about a project per month, not including March, when "have a baby" is the main to-do list item. :)

Our dining room/entryway/bathroom needs to be painted this month. My dad offered to buy the paint if we will do the work. My friend, who's kids I babysit for free on Wednesday mornings, is going to take my younger kids for a Saturday, and my next door neighbour and some other friends are going to help me paint, since I can't get up on ladders right now. I will order pizza and make it fun. It should make a big difference for the cost of some pizza and pop.

Zach's next project is building loft beds for our big girls. That will greatly increase the floor space in their room. He has a really fun plan in place that will give them almost a treehouse feel to their lofts, which will be semi-enclosed with a window in each one and will be connected by a small bridge between the feet of them with a trap door, so they can lock their little sisters out, in the floor of the bridge. :) They are going to build themselves each a small bookshelf and another small shelf for their water bottles or other things they want to keep in their own space. Based in the cost of the play loft he built, he is estimating he can do it for about $200 for both bed frames. Charlotte will then take one of the daybeds we currently use for the big girls as her big girl bed so the crib is available when Veronica needs it. $200 is a pretty reasonable amount for two beds and it makes room in their room for the foosball table and a seating area. The other daybed will be the "couch" for the seating area until Veronica is old enough to need a big girl bed. We will need to get some inexpensive twin mattresses for the new beds also, which should be about $200 if I can't find one for free. Overall, though, it's going to make their room a very functional space for four girls of varying ages.

Those are the January projects. I am also making banana bread today from some overripe bananas and some carrot bread from some carrot pulp I froze when I made carrot juice last. I may also use up some cranberries for cranberry orange bread.

Jan. 5--Had to leave to get gas and milk. while I was out, I found some jammies for DS for $2 and a cute Hello Kitty coin purse for DD for .49. My in-laws brought dinner the past two nights and there are plenty of leftovers.
Jan. 6--It is -20 today, so we're staying in. We're wearing fleece jammies and snuggling under blankets. If it were just me, that'd be enough, but I did turn up the heat for the kids. Don't want them to be cold. I made SOS for lunch to use up the last of the old milk and some stale bread. Wanted DH to have a hot meal, too! He is going to pick up the infant ibuprofen I forgot yesterday on his way home from work to save gas. I wish today was a no-spend, but I did have to renew my license. I was able to do it online, though, to save gas. While I was at it, I bought more minutes for my phone. Used a code to score 30 free minutes. Dinner will be homemade mac n cheese.

Soooooo cold here. Holy cow. Turned down the heat to conserve propane and cranked up both the fireplace insert on the first floor and the wood stove on the lower level. Managing to keep the cold at bay, we have plenty of wood to burn. I think we're just going to sleep in front of the fireplace rather than try to keep the second floor heated too. Even as teenagers they still think it's cool to camp out in the living room. :)

Had to go run errands today, needed gas and some odds and ends at the grocery store. I was shooting for $100. food money allowance this week, spent $107. That's because I bought extra milk, hopefully it will all even out.

Going to the grocery store is horrible these days, I can't seem to get out of there spending less than $50.00 at a pop.

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It was so cold yesterday that the bananas Zach bought on his way home blackened on the 5 minute car ride from the store. Crazy!

I got most of my bread baking done and ended up with four loaves of carrot bread instead of the two I thought I would have. One of those was breakfast today.

Zach and I decided that we are going to take the kiddos to the children's museum on Sunday. It should be warm enough to go out by then and we have been stuck in the house a lot lately. We have a membership to the Children's Museum, so it's just a matter of paying a few dollars for parking. The play loft has really helped keep the cabin fever to a minimum. The kids have a way to get their energy out.

We all decided that breakfast for dinner sounded good tonight. I am going to make waffles and scrambled eggs. I saved the apple peels from last night's Pork Chops Normandy so I can make apple cinnamon pancake syrup. I will also make cherry sauce from some frozen cherries I have. Tomorrow we have Faith Formation, so I think we will have wild rice soup, that way people can eat at different times.

Stella - re: peeling apples. In the past year I've found that the peels almost always cook down to nothing, whether being cooked in a pan or in the oven, so I never peel them for any purpose anymore. And the peels are where all the nutrients are, in addition to saving time!

Frugal: 2 no-drive, no-spend days. We've been eating a great deal from the pantry and freezer in the past month, both before we traveled for the purpose of cleaning out the fridge prior to leaving town and, unexpectedly, after, due to the weather.

Aarrgghhhh.....I have just had a real look at what I have been spending. I don't know what's happened to me but I suspect that Not Tracking leads to OVerspending.....

So here I am stating my intention to get back to normal frugality. Right now. I plan to check in here regularly even if only to read about everyone else's frugal activities. Though this evening I am cooking some beef I got from a local farmer for (relatively) cheap and using veg that I already have. Today won't be a no spend because the dog had his annual checkup early this morning but that should be the only cash outflow....I am still sitting here in shock at my recent (six month) spending.....thank goodness you can always have a new start!

That's right, leslieann . . . today is always the first day of the rest of your life!

Glad to see you, and looking forward to seeing more of you around the frugals thread.

Here we are doing pretty well, I should really see where our spending is at as well but we switched to You Need a Budget and it just hasn't really clicked for me yet - wondering if it was worth buying. At any rate, we have been home from school for an additional two days but still managed to just eat here at home and not really spend anything. I might order a few items from Amazon today. It's surprisingly challenging to get to the $35 minimum for shipping compared to the former $25 minimum, so we're just keeping a list going for whenever we order a bag of dog food (which is shipped in a box, which makes me giggle - I thought they would shrink wrap it or something). The dog food is $10 cheaper per bag on Amazon and is delivered to the door.

Tonight I think we we will have a pork roast from the freezer, guess I should get that on if we're going to have it. Not feeling super today either, so maybe I'll get DH on that. :)

He might go out and buy some thank you cards at Target using some of his gift card money from Christmas. He got a lot of generous gifts from his families and is planning to finish up his thank yous today.

I have a $25 gift card for Walmart and will probably stop there on Thursday after I finish at the laundromat. It will be for groceries.

Because of the insane cold, no one is going anywhere here, except for my neighbor who works at city hall, and that includes me. I have had upper resp stuff for a month and have pretty much eaten down my pantry. The only things left are a couple of soup ingredient (canned) and the things I never should have bought in the first place.

Thanks, fidgie....

Pretty cold here too, and I do notice that I have NO DESIRE to go out to do much of anything. So that's not such a bad thing. Frugal, too.