Updates on our Homemade Life

It seems like ages since I've posted anything about how we're doing on our grocery budget in conjunction with going more homemade.  My original goal was to grocery shop once a month and get our budget down to $400 for the whole month.  The monthly shopping hasn't really worked out for us, mainly because we go through so much milk and eggs that I was still going to the store every other week no matter what.  Plus, I get tired out very easily and a full month worth of shopping at once is exhausting to me.  So we're back to the bi-weekly shopping and we're doing pretty good at keeping to the budget.

The past few months have been trial and error on homemade items.  Some are actually more expensive to make than to buy, while others have been great savers for us.  Some of the flops include homemade shells & cheese, taco seasoning and fabric softener.  My biggest money saver is the homemade laundry detergent.  It costs me approximately $0.35 for a gallon and it does a great job cleaning our clothes.  The recipe for it is here.  Other big savers are pizza dough, pancake mix, homemade granola & granola bars, instant oatmeal, English muffin bread, and pasta & pizza sauce.  I also extend our milk spending by buying 1% and when each gallon is half empty, filling the rest up with powdered milk.  We normally drink 1/2% here so no one ever notices a taste difference.  

I am constantly on the look out for new recipes and things to try in order to add to our homemade life.  I picked up this great book up on my Nook from our library called The Homemade Pantry.  It has some great recipes and has inspired me to attempt to do my own pickles and cheese.  We'll see how those work out as I tackle them in the future. 

Once a month grocery shopping....it can be done!

Whew!  I have spent the last two days doing enough grocery shopping to last us a month.  I spent most of last week reading suggestions on how to do this, coming up with meal plans, seeing what I have in stock here and making up shopping lists.  On Sunday, we picked up the newspaper so that I could also go through the ads and coupons.  I feel confident that the next time I do this, it won't be as time consuming and it will definitely be more efficient.  

This time around, I wasn't always sure which store had the best prices.  I took the advice I found in both blogs and in the book "America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money" by the Economides and started noting the price and size of certain items (like flour, sugar, cornstarch, etc) at each store.  I also had to go on a scavenger hunt to find the supplies I will need to make my own laundry detergent, fabric softener, household cleaners and hand soap.  This resulted in going to both Apple Valley Health Foods and Harvest Health Foods.  I won't need to pick up those supplies regularly in the future and now I know that Harvest Health Foods is the place to go.  I'll also be looking online for a good resource for essential oils since HHF did not have all of the scents that I wanted.

All in all, the shopping spanned over two days, at eight different stores and probably took me about seven hours including unloading and putting away.  Yesterday I hit Target, Meijer, the dollar store, Apple Valley Health Foods, Harvest Health Foods and Sam's Club.  This morning I finished my shopping out with a trip to Horrock's and Aldi's.  Because I am way too particular, I had to put everything away as soon as I came home from each trip.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of all of my great finds...but here is one from my final trip to Aldi's this morning:

 This was my largest trip and took the most time to put away.  Now it feels like every nook and cranny is stuffed to overflowing and I feel like I've accomplished something!

Here is our back freezer....I don't think I could fit much else in.

And some of our pantry cupboards

I tallied up my receipts and it came out to a total of $437.  It went over my budget of $400 but it's not bad for my first trip.  I also bought several items that I won't need to buy every month like all of the supplies for my laundry detergent, etc etc.  In addition, Aldi's had boneless turkey breasts for $7.99 and we always get one for Thanksgiving in addition to a 16-18 pound turkey so I just couldn't resist for that price!  

In further homemade adventures, I started my very first attempt at making yogurt this morning.  I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow! 
 

 

The things kids say....and a day in the homemade life of a domestic diva

Yep, that's what my BFF (and yes, I still call her that..or bestie...how old am I?) has started calling me.  She is convinced that I have gone over to the domestic dark side.  Don't think she won't use this domesticity to her advantage though.  She has issued a challenge that I just had to accept to create baby chicks out of deviled eggs like so....

It is highly coincidental (nudge nudge) that my nephew's birthday party is this coming weekend and said nephew just happens to adore deviled eggs.  Yep uh huh....

Enough of that...I will post pictures (if it turns out!) once I create the baby chicks.

Life has been busy here in the Chase home.  We had our full family together this weekend which always involves lots of cooking and dishes as well as laughs and good times.  I took all the kids to see Finding Nemo in 3D.  We all love that movie and most of us can quote it by heart("I will call him Squishy and he shall be mine.  He shall be my Squishy.")  It was neat seeing it on the big screen but it definitely was not worth the 3D ticket prices for 3D.  After that, we all watched Snow White and the Huntsman which is one of my new faves.  

In my homemade adventures I made my own taco seasoning, baked some delicious and ridiculously easy crusty bread (recipe here), and made my husband some peppermint mocha coffee creamer (he is addicted to the York creamer).  This week is also our first attempt at doing our grocery shopping only once a month in order to be better stewards of God's money.  It feels like I spent all morning shopping and I still have two more stops to make tomorrow.  On the other hand, it'll be great to not to have to go to the store two or three times a week.  I will still need to get milk but only once a week or so.  We tend to go through about three gallons here a week and it would be impossible to store it for an entire month.  I will share tomorrow about all my finds and how close I stayed to my budget.  

And on a completely unrelated note.....Aidan & I had a conversation about college today.  On our way to his PT session, we saw a city bus dropping off several students at one of the downtown campuses for GVSU.  Aidan asked me if it would make me happy to have him go to a local college.  Of course!!!!!  He then proceeded to ask how far away GVSU was because he wanted to make sure it wasn't too far of a drive for me to drop him off at class everyday!  LOL  I find it absolutely adorable that my pre-teen boy thinks I will be driving him to class when he's in college.  

My so called Homemade Life......

In the past week or so, I've read a few different blog posts about how these two families do amazing things with their grocery budgets.  One family, with six members, only spends $200 a month on groceries!  HA!  I had to read her "how to" blog twice to make sure I read it right.  We have a family of four + two (one weekend a month, a week at Christmas, February, Spring break and two weeks a month in the summer) and we spend way more than that.  Try $350-$400 more a month.  Seriously.  Now I must admit, part of that is my own fault.  I make a budget but it's pretty......fluid...if you know what I mean.  

 That being said, hubby & I have talked and agreed to try to cut our grocery budget.  One of the things our Pastor talked about this morning at church was stewardship of the gifts God gives us.  I am a far cry from the horrible spender I was in my early 20's, but I'm far from where I should be in my stewardship.  It's time to change that and I know it can be done.  "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13

Some of the tips I picked up in my recent blog surfing makes me want to slap my forehead in a big "DUH!" moment.  Things such as the "quick runs" to the store to pick up "one or two" items costs you far more than you planned.  So true.  One blogger literally only goes to the grocery store ONCE a month-amazing!  I actually went back and looked at what I spent solely at Meijer in August and it was over $800!  I went there at least 15 times in one month.  That also doesn't count my stops at Target or Aldi's. I technically have a meal plan that allows me to shop once every two weeks but I am going to try to stretch that.  

Another tip that is sooooo deceptively simple is grocery shopping with cash only.  I never really thought about it but I've always set a grocery budget but when I use my debit card, I don't mind going over because the money is in the account.  That most definitely adds up.  Some weeks I may budget $50 at Meijer but I spend $70 or $80.  I know most of the prices of our every day items so it shouldn't be hard to estimate how much cash to bring with.

A familiar theme in these brilliant budgeting blogs is....wait for it......homemade!  Theoretically I've always known that if you could make several of the items you stock in your pantry regularly, you would save money...but I never had the time or inclination to put it into practice.  Seriously though, if I buy hubby's favorite cinnamon roll oatmeal I will spend $3.00 for 10 small packets.  If I make it, I will spend $2.20 on a big container of quick oats and the rest of the items are already in my pantry.  Do you have any idea how many servings that will make?  I don't.....but I will!  I plan on making a premixed pancake/waffle mix, ranch dressing, taco seasoning, bread, hot dog & hamburger buns, oatmeal and a lot of treat items like fruit snacks (100% real fruit!) and muffins.  I'm even contemplating making my own laundry detergent and household cleaners.  

So over the next few weeks I plan on stocking up on pantry staples and making some basics.  I'm hoping to make my next grocery trip last me 3 weeks instead of 2 with no store stops in between.  I'll post my progress as it goes along.

On a completely unrelated note...I spent Saturday afternoon hitting craft stores with my baby girl.  She's as addicted to Michael's and Hobby Lobby as her mama. 

Here is what we made yesterday:

It's a Thankful Tree.  On the backs of the patterned paper, everyone can write down things that we are thankful for.  It's currently geared towards fall but this is not the only season to be thankful in so I think I will transition it to reflect each season as they come.