dolla dolla bill ya'll

Remember when I had a budget challenge for the month of December? Andy and I only spent $50 on groceries in the month of December. We had a few surprise food donations from my mom and ate out of our pantry and freezer as much as possible. After accomplishing that challenge I tried to spend no more than $52 a week in groceries in 2010 but gave that up after a couple of months. Now we have $100/week in our grocery budget and I know we can spend less. I want to prove that it's possible to eat fresh and healthful foods without breaking the bank. I'm loving Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta- it's inexpensive and has a full serving of vegetables in every 4oz portion. Grapes are extra cheap in September and are super low in calories. My grocery splurge is Barbara's Peanut Butter Puffins cereal. I slice half of a large banana over 3/4 of a cup of cereal and pour a 1/2 cup of skim milk over. It's sweet, crunchy and filling for a total of 278 calories. I crave it.

How do you save money on groceries, or on anything?

letting go

I've been asked a few times recently how my budget challenge is going. Uhh. It's not. It never really got going in the first place.

It's so much easier to ask Andy to pick up a few things here since he works at Martins. There have been weeks where I haven't set foot in a grocery store. After we cancelled our Sunday paper in January, I didn't have coupon-ing to keep me inspired. I realized that the budget challenge just wasn't at the top of my priority list.

With the big move coming up I've been going through some things in effort to avoid bringing unwanted/unused items to our new home. I threw out high school papers, almost empty bottles of shampoo and lotion from my early college years, tons of old mascara, makeup encrusted bobby pins and SMAD 101 flash-cards. I found lots of brand new toothpaste, shampoo, cotton rounds, razors and shaving cream.

While I'm at it, I'm throwing away the budget challenge and hoping to find success in a new method of saving instead. I've decided to become the primary grocery shopper and shop for specific meals, particularly ones where leftovers turn into a new meal for the next day. I want to challenge myself in the kitchen. I haven't cooked consistently since last summer. One of the reasons I looked for a different nannying job was because I missed being home in time to make a meal.

Our moving goal is to be sleeping in our new house the night of April 6th. Until then, we're hoping our only groceries will be bread, milk and fruit. Maybe cheese. We do eat a lot of cheese.

It's midnight...

Meal planning

A meal/menu planner makes a great bridal shower gift and is SO useful.  If you're the kind of person that over-buys at the grocery store, planning exactly what you're going to make for the upcoming week makes sticking to a list much easier.  I'll admit I haven't used my meal planner in a while, but I'm ready to get back into it!  

My method:  I go through a stack of recipes and write down any ingredients that I don't already have.  One thing you have to be careful about is using more than recipe that uses the same at-home ingredient- like milk or eggs. Make sure you have enough before hitting the store.  Every now and then when I'm feeling extra organized I will re-write my list so it goes "produce, aisle products, meat, dairy" and on the side of each ingredient I might note which recipe I'm using it for.  This print-out meal planner/grocery list would work just as easily!

In the future I plan to have a specific day where I blog about my meal plans for the week.  This month has been very different than most because we've been eating out of our pantry and freezer more than we usually do.  I have about $25 left to spend on groceries for December.  The budget challenge is much harder than I thought because while we are not exactly running out of food, I'm a little sick of soup, tuna and spaghetti noodles.  It's worth it, though!  There is a lot of pride in saving money.

I just found this website and I'm excited to try out some of the recipes listed, especially the recipe for Pizza Hut Breadsticks!  You can find it using the search bar.  

a little bit of this and a little bit of that

Breaking news:  I received a part time job yesterday as the new studio manager for Open Air Photography. Katie Stoops, who owns the business, did our wedding photography back in May 2008.

Today was a good day.  I used $23 worth of ECB and coupons at CVS + free eyeliner with BOGO.  My favorite deal of the day: $9.99 contact solution with $9.99 in ECB.  They call that "getting it for free," but it really means you get $9.99 off your next purchase.  After being super successful with my home/beauty shopping, Whitney and I hit up the going-out-of-business sale at Blockbuster and then headed to the Green Valley Book Fair.  

Andy came home yesterday with $15 worth of groceries.  I freaked out a little because I thought we were on the same page with the December budget challenge, but according to him I never said we were spending $16 a week. Oh well.  I still want our goal to be $50 for the last four weeks of December, so we'll just have to spend less next week.

I gotta hand it to him though.  For only $15 he picked up bananas, the most delicious strawberries (which sadly were $4.99), and some extremely discounted meat:  2 packages of turkey meatballs, steak burgers and 2 steaks.  

Yum.

Ode to CVS

I just have to throw this out there:  I love CVS.

I love how you can return makeup.  I love that there are always a ton of BOGO items.  

I love love LOVE EasyCare bucks.

The other night I bought two different foundations by Revlon.  They were BOGO and I had a $2 manufacturer's coupon.  I also bought a bag of razors for 4.99 and received $4 in ECB.  Then I took an online quiz about the Medicare Part D plan and received a $3 coupon towards anything I want.  I aced the quiz btw.  *brushing off shoulders*

THEN I received a $4 off any purchase of $30 for my birthday.  So really, the next time I spent $30, I can get $11 off my purchase.  I think I'm going to search for some manufacturer's coupons before I go and try to get some great deals on TP, detergent and other household items.

The December budget challenge is going well.  So far we've bought a gallon of milk and a package of Saltine crackers, coming in to just over $4.  We had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch yesterday and Andy had a frozen pizza for dinner.  I ate fish sticks and veggies and couscous with the kids I nanny for.  Today's lunch was mac 'n cheese.  We haven't exactly been healthy eaters, but we're doing what we can with what we have.

Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two

Andy and I had an incredible time with my parents yesterday.  I received the rest of my gifts-- everything I wanted and more-- and we played a few games of progressive rummy before heading out to dinner.  We split the calamari for starters (they have the best calamari ever) and for my meal I had the rockfish with a mushroom risotto, asparagus spears and creamy parmesan potatoes.  You can't go to the Carlyle for dinner and not get dessert, so we had my favorite: the banana pudding.  The waiter brought it out with a candle and the words "Happy Birthday" written on the plate in chocolate.  Everything was perfect, as always. 

The Holiday Pops concert at the Kennedy Center was such a fun experience.  We picked up a little ornament for our tree at the gift shop and reminisced about when we both performed at the Kennedy Center when we were younger.  Andy played in "A Tuba Christmas" in middle school and I performed a scene from "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" with my fellow thespians in high school.  Good times!

In support of our December budget challenge, my mom insisted that I take home a bag full of apples and potatoes.  Andy will be buying milk tonight- our first purchase in the challenge! 

Now I shall take a nap next to Casey, who is already fast asleep and dreaming puppy dreams.

December budget challenge

I was inspired yesterday by my friend Julie's decision to budget only $2500 in 2010 for groceries, pet needs, baby needs and health and beauty needs. Check out her blog here.

I want to join Julie in her 2010 challenge, but I'm a little intimidated by the idea of jumping right in. I've decided that with 3 weeks left in December, I'm going to spend only $50 on groceries for the rest of the month. That gives me a little over $15 a week to work with. So far I've spent $115 on groceries this month and that shopping trip should provide us with another five days of meals. Plus, I'm going to be a mom for a week for the two kids I nanny, which means I can eat breakfast and dinner at their house if I want.

While $50 for three weeks sounds scary to me at first, I'm confident we can make it.
For the last week and a half of November we spent $0 on groceries, surviving on what I like to call "eating out of the kitchen." I contributed a post about this concept on my friend Amber's blog.

If I can do this challenge, then I should definitely be able to handle Julie's $2500 in 2010 challenge. That would give me $52 a week for groceries, health and beauty, and stuff for our pup. I won't be making any purchases on baby needs...as far as I know! :) Wish me luck on the December $50/3 week challenge!