Using Up Some Random Leftovers

This is a kind of random post, but I thought I’d share a couple ways I used up some leftovers. First of all we had a whole bunch of hot dogs leftover

Cameron eating our leftover hotdog-chili concoction.

from Gracia’s birthday party. And other than just eating hotdogs as they are, I decided to chop them up small and combine them with the leftover chili also from the party. With the hotdogs choped up so small, you hardly noticed them in the chili.

I also had some spinach. I like to buy big things of spinach at Sam’s Club. We eat it in salads and in sandwiches in place of lettuce, but when it starts to get a little wilty, it’s just not as good. So then I like to steam or saute it. My mom gave me the sauteing idea, she had some at my cousins house once. It’s super easy, just heat up some olive oil in a pan and saute the spinach until wilted. You can saute onions and garlic in it too if you want. When it’s done add salt, pepper and garlic powder (if you didn’t use fresh garlic). It’s really quick, healthy and yummy! And best of all, keeps you from throwing out the spinach! =)

A Grocery Challenge!

So, this past month has been hard (if you wanna know why click here)and I haven’t kept track of our purchases. And it was very interesting, because when I decided I had other things to worry about other than adding up all our expenses, I started to see myself not caring. I’d think, “it doesn’t matter if I spend a lot on groceries, after all I’m not going to add it all up this month.” What a reminder that it really does help to keep track of where our money goes!

So this month I’m starting all over again, but I’m going to try to a challenge. The lowest I’ve had our grocery bill has been about $250 a month. So I’m going to try to see how low I can get it this month. I really want it to be under $250, and hopefully a lot under! I’m going to keep track of all the food I buy and I’ll keep you posted. This is only for food items and does not count toiletry items or eating out, however I’ll keep track of those things too and maybe show you the results.

Here’s my strategies for keeping our grocery bill low:

• Buy mostly generic brand.
• Shop at Sam’s Club (using my price book to make sure what I’m buying there is actually cheaper than other stores).
• Buy sale items (checking out sales online before hand).
• Stocking up on good deals that won’t go bad before we can eat them.
• Going to multiple stores when there’s really good deals.
• Cooking with cheap ingredients (beans, potatoes, oatmeal, rice, in season produce etc…).
• Wasting as little food as possible. I’m even thinking of maybe keeping track of all wasted food. A lot of other blogs do that.
• Going grocery shopping every other week instead of every week (if I plan well enough hopefully I won’t even need to run to the store for milk or produce in between my regular trips).
• Cook with food I already have (pantry and freezer).
• Use any coupons I find on internet, get in the mail or see in the store (but only if it’s something I actually use).
• Cooking from scratch, rather than buying already made meals.
• Plan, using what I already have, sale items and coupons to help me.

So in conclusion I want to keep our food groceries well under $250. It’s my personal challenge for the month of June. Anyone else want to join me in a grocery budget challenge? How much do you plan on spending for you or your family? How do you plan on keeping under the budget?

Frugal Photo Friday: Fuzzy and Grocery Bags

Fuzzy playing in the grocery bags.

So you may be wondering why a picture of our cat is the frugal photo of the week…well mostly because I thought it was cute! =) When we got back from the grocery store a couple weeks ago and I was putting groceries up Fuzzy decide she wanted to get inside the bags, so I snapped a photo! But on the frugal side, I keep my plastic grocery bags and use them as trash bags. I never have to buy trash bags anymore! =)

Small Space Living: Looking on the Positive Side

I’ve been meaning to talk more about living in tight quarters, so I thought today I’d share some reasons why I actually like it. Not that I always like it, there are times I wish I had a bigger oven, a little more counter space or more room for Gracia to spill her toys out, without it being in our way. But there definitely are things I really like about living in a tiny place:

Our current home.

1. Less to clean! It takes probably 10-15 minutes to sweep, mop and vacuum my whole house.
2. It helps you keep clutter under control. When you don’t have a lot of space to put stuff, you definitly think twice before buying something and I’m always looking for stuff to get rid of.
3. Cheaper! First of all it’s usually cheaper to buy or rent a smaller place and on top of that you have smaller utility bills. The highest our electricity bill has ever been was $107, and that was last August when we were running our airconditioner a lot. When we’re not running the a.c. it’s around $35 (we heat with propane, so that doesn’t affect our electric bill).
4. This one sounds weird, but I really do like it: I always know where Gracia is. Where we used to live (in an airplane hangar…yeah I know, we’ve lived in strange places) it was bigger than our trailer, but still not big. I really liked how as long as I kept the bathroom and bedroom doors closed I always knew where she was. I never had to buy those gates to keep her out of hallways or anything. Now that she’s older it doesn’t matter quite as much, but it’s still nice always being able to see her…so she gets in less trouble. =)
5. It spurs creativity. We’ve had to do a lot of thinking about where to put stuff and the best way to make the most of our space. Thankfully my husband is a good troubleshooter and handyman! =)
6. It encourages us to go outside more.One of the reasons living in a travel trailer looked more desirable to us than an apartment is that
   

   Gracia outside on the swing she got for her birthday.

   we have a yard, and most small apartments only have a tiny balcony. Because of this, Gracia can play outside, we can grill out, I can hang clothes on the line, and we can have a cat (hubby’s allergic, so we have to keep her outside most of the time). And we were lucky enough to get a lot with two big trees! =)

If you haven’t checked out our place yet, click here for the grand tour!

FYI: The house in the background of the picture with Gracia swinging is not our house, it’s our neighbors. I really need to get a picture up of the outside of our place.

Recipe: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

The night before Gracia’s birthday party, we got worried there wouldn’t be enough cake with just her butterfly cake, so I whipped up some chocolate wacky cake and peanut butter icing. When I was kid chocolate cake with peanut butter icing was the most requested cake for our birthdays! It’s like a Reese peanut butter cup in cake form! =P

Instead of typing out the directions, I’m going to be lazy and just link to the sites that I got the recipes from, so here they are:

1. Wacky Cake – This cake is wacky because it doesn’t use any eggs, but does use just a little vinegar.
2. Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting

Butterfly Cake

It would have cost us at the very least $20 to buy an already made cake for Gracia’s birthday. But instead we made a butterfly cake, which we didn’t have to buy any fancy cake

Just need to decorate it now!

pan for or anything. The cake mix for the cupcakes, the icing and sprinkles were all free. My older brother sent them to me for my b-day, but I didn’t get around to making them, so I got to use them for Gracia’s birthday! The wings were a wacky cake recipe. And the jelly beans we used to decorate the cake with were leftover from Easter. Here’s the site we used to guide us.

1. I simply made a round cake and made some cupcakes. I actually made a cake that didn’t come out of the pan right, so I had to make another one. I buttered and floured the pan really good then let it cool quite a bit before taking it out of the pan. Then let it cool all the way before we cut it.
2. Once cool, cut the cake in half and place on whatever you’re going to be keeping it on (I used a big cookie sheet). Put the circle halves facing out for the wings, with cupcakes in the middle for the body of the butterfly.
3. Then ice the cake and cupcakes.
4. Then decorate! We used pipe cleaners for the antennas.

The finished cake!

Shared at Tammy’s Recipes for Kitchen Tip Tuesday.

The Semi-Frugal Birthday Party

My little Gracia turned 3 this weekend! I remember when she was a newborn, everyone told me that the time would go really fast…and boy were they right! Anyways…we tried to do our party without spending too much money, but also make it a worthwhile party. We could have done some things cheaper, like used real plates instead of paper or made my own tea, but that also would have taken more time. So we decided to meet in the middle, we did some things from scratch and some the faster way.

Here’s an estimate of what we spent on the party. Some of the things I didn’t know an exact amount, especially if it was something made from scratch using small amounts of lots of different ingredients, so I just did an estimated guess.

We fed 13 adults and 5 kids. And we only ate about half the food, so we have several meals covered this week!

Here’s the numbers:

• Swing (our gift to Gracia) $20
• Drinks (2 jugs of tea, juice pouches, 2-12 packs of soda) $13
• Bubble necklaces for the kids $2
• Plates, cups, silverware, napkins and tablecloths  $17
• Watermelon $4
• 3 bags of chips $5
• Cheese $7
• Ice $6
• 60 Hot dogs (Oscar Meyer, no artificial stuff, from Sam’s Club) $8
• Hot dog buns (also from Sam’s) $4
• Potato salad – the potatoes cost $6, so with all the other ingredients, I’ll just guess it cost about $9
• Cake – We had 2 cakes, the cupcakes in the butterfly cake, the icing and decorations were free, I’ll explain more in my cake post. The cake for the butterfly wings and the second cake and it’s icing were all homemade so let’s say I spent $3 on that.
• Chili – the meat was probably $5 worth and the beans just over $1, so we’ll say $8
• We had onions, ketchup, mustard and pickles, let’s just say we used $3 worth of those.

TOTAL ESTIMATE: $109

Here’s some ways we either just didn’t spend money or spent less than we could have:

• Our invitations were free, we just sent out a facebook invite.
• We didn’t do any decorations.
• I used a gift bag I already had for Gracia’s gift.
• We spent very little on the cakes. The cake mix, some of the icing and decorations were free (I’ll elaborate in my butterfly cake post). The rest was made from scratch really cheaply. If we had bought an already made b-day cake it would cost at least $20.
•  The potato salad and chili were made from scratch. Plus I used beans to stretch the meat in the chili.
• We did it at a park for free, plus it had a brand new playground which was free, but really fun entertainment for the kids.
• Most of the things I bought for the party were generic brand.
• I saved receipts in case we didn’t use anything and wanted to return it. Which was good, because one of the sets of cups we didn’t open and I’m going to return them for a savings of $1.50! =)

So all to say, no it was not the cheapest party on earth, but we did find ways to make it cheaper. And when you save in other areas you can afford to splurge a little on special occasions.

I have more to talk about the party. I’m planning a post on how we made our butterfly cake (no purchasing a special cake pan!). I may also share the Wacky Cake recipe (it uses vinegar, and this is after all national vinegar month) and the peanut butter icing recipe. And I might do a post on how we used up our leftovers from the party.

What ways do you like to save or splurge on birthday parties?

Frugal Photo Friday: A Salvaged Apple

It’s Friday! And here’s my second Frugal Photo Friday (sorry I skipped it last week). It’s not a very exciting picture, but I’m in a hurry, cuz I have lots to do to get ready for Gracia’s 3rd  birthday party (pictures next week!).

So here’s an apple that…well as you can see, was getting old and somehow got this big gash in it. But I didn’t waste it! I used it to make apple muffins. The sad part is, later I found some apple slices in the fridge that I could have used too, but I had already made the muffins. =(

More Free Stuff

  I’ve already shown you some free stuff, I’ve gotten before, but here’s another picture. Some of them are things I’ve gotten recently and some are old, but I misplaced and just recently found them.

Here’s what I got:

• 1 GoodNites underwear (just to be clear this is for Gracia…not me!).
• 1 coupon for a free Suave product.
• 1 small travel size deodorant (which by the way I have already used and I keep it in my travel toiletry bag).
• 1 small sample of perfume.
• 1 Shout color catcher dryer sheet.
• 1 Small sample of Tide detergent. I’m keeping this in case I ever have to do a load or two of laundry on a trip.
• 1 sample of teeth whitening strips.
• 1 coupon for a free bag of rice.
• 6 samples of different instant coffee flavors.

It’s so much fun getting these samples in the mail! I don’t do every sample I see. Some you have to sign up for a newsletter, do a long survey, or be a member of something. And I only do samples I think I’ll actually use. Like I don’t sign up for anti-wrinkle samples (at least not yet…maybe in 20 years).

Pryor Flyer

Gracia helping Daddy push the plan into the hangar.

If you’re curious we have a ministry blog called The Pryor Flyer. I do need to warn you though, that it hasn’t been up dated in a LONG time! It’s on my mental to do list!