Today I am spending most of my day at home. Piddling around, and doing some cooking and a little cleaning.
I have cleaned the light fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen, have a beef roast in the stock pot simmering away to make vegetable beef soup with, have my sheets in the wash, another load in the dryer and am going to make a cheesecake and pizza hot dish for church tomorrow.
We still have about an inch of snow on the ground but it is melting pretty quickly in the sunshine. I am very thankful for the sunshine today. After living in Florida for 23 years, it's really hard to get use to weeks without sunshine.
This month's shopping was a little more than I wanted it to be for the budget. I went $34.00 over budget for groceries. But I did do a lot of stocking up. I stocked up on toilet paper, toothpaste, hamburger, pork, and chicken. I guess I am okay with going over by $34.00 but that is budgeting $100 a week and I really want it to be $75 a week. Even that sounds like a lot for 2 people to me, but I do prepare 3 meals a day 4 days a week 1 meal on Fri. and 2 on Sat. & Sun. and at $75 a week that would be $4 per meal for 2 people or $2 per meal each. I think I can get back to that. At the end of last year I was averaging $60 per week and that includes cat food, cleaning supplies and health & beauty. The price of things seems to be going up rapidly. Cat food has soared! There were bags of cat food last night for $17 and I am not talking the good stuff. Does anyone have any ideas how to cut back on that when you have about 8 cats?
I have kept a spread sheet on my grocery spending, rebate & survey earnings for last year, this year I added a page for other shopping. So far this year I have spent $469.32 and saved $337.60, this includes clothes, a mixer, a movie and some gifts.
I am already shopping for gifts that I will need throughout the year and for Christmas this year. With the way prices are rising I have decided that anything I can buy at the lowest price now is an investment. I don't mean that I should be buying things just because they are cheap but if I am going to buy gifts for my family it makes more sense to me to do it over the year at bargain prices than to be out in December buying things just to have a gift to give. Wise decisions usually aren't made at the last minute.
My dryer has stopped so I need to go fold and put away clothes. Have a great weekend!
Mae
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Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Long Weekend
This is a long weekend for me and I am ready for the break. I really don't know why, I had almost 2 full weeks off at Christmas, you'd think I would be well rested and ready to go.
Tonight I will do some grocery shopping at my favorite little store. They have boneless skinless chicken breast on sale for $1.79/pound. I plan on stocking up on that. Then tomorrow will be a trip into town to do some shopping at CVS. I am trying really hard to keep my grocery budget even lower this year. I plan on stocking up on meat during the winter and am working on planning the garden for the summer.
I hope to have more success with potatoes & corn this summer. We are actually thinking about planting a whole garden with nothing but corn. Maybe then the raccoons will leave some for us.
We also need to purchase more chickens. Our egg production has been greatly reduced, partly because we have lost some chickens to predators and some of our chickens are getting pretty old. We have friends from Africa that says we should eat them, but I worry about how tough they would be. And they have been kind of like pets.
I hope to get out the seed catalogs this weekend and place an order. One catalog has a $25.00 coupon on it and I don't want it to go to waste.
I hope you enjoy your weekend!
Mae
Tonight I will do some grocery shopping at my favorite little store. They have boneless skinless chicken breast on sale for $1.79/pound. I plan on stocking up on that. Then tomorrow will be a trip into town to do some shopping at CVS. I am trying really hard to keep my grocery budget even lower this year. I plan on stocking up on meat during the winter and am working on planning the garden for the summer.
I hope to have more success with potatoes & corn this summer. We are actually thinking about planting a whole garden with nothing but corn. Maybe then the raccoons will leave some for us.
We also need to purchase more chickens. Our egg production has been greatly reduced, partly because we have lost some chickens to predators and some of our chickens are getting pretty old. We have friends from Africa that says we should eat them, but I worry about how tough they would be. And they have been kind of like pets.
I hope to get out the seed catalogs this weekend and place an order. One catalog has a $25.00 coupon on it and I don't want it to go to waste.
I hope you enjoy your weekend!
Mae
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Saturday
The little grocery store down the road had a really good sale Saturday. Ground chuck was $1.37/pound. Pork steaks were $1.29/pound. Apple juice was $.98, bananas were $.39 and there were several other things that were a really good price.
I called and spoke the meat manager on Friday and she allowed me to order 21 pounds of hamburger and 35 pork steaks. I went to pick it up and with my coupons spent $99.79. This is what I got:
8 packages of hamburger
6 hamburger patties
40 meatballs
2 meat loaves
10 + meals of pork steaks
6 boxes of poptarts
2 boxes of cereal
5 bottles of apple juice
bananas
tomatoes
salad
broccoli
freezer bags
1 20 0z diet coke (free from my coke rewards)
Foot cream
The meatloaves & meatballs are in the freezer already to go. I can just pop them out, throw them in the crock pot and have dinner ready when I get home.
I think that was a fairly successful trip.
Mae
I called and spoke the meat manager on Friday and she allowed me to order 21 pounds of hamburger and 35 pork steaks. I went to pick it up and with my coupons spent $99.79. This is what I got:
8 packages of hamburger
6 hamburger patties
40 meatballs
2 meat loaves
10 + meals of pork steaks
6 boxes of poptarts
2 boxes of cereal
5 bottles of apple juice
bananas
tomatoes
salad
broccoli
freezer bags
1 20 0z diet coke (free from my coke rewards)
Foot cream
The meatloaves & meatballs are in the freezer already to go. I can just pop them out, throw them in the crock pot and have dinner ready when I get home.
I think that was a fairly successful trip.
Mae
Trusting God in the Small Things
Sometimes I think it's fairly easy to trust God when big things come into our lives. Someone we love dies, we turn to God. Family members go through tragedy, we turn to God. We lose a job, we turn to God. Those times in our lives when we know that the only person we can depend on is God, we turn to Him immediately. It's usually the small day to day things we deal with that we tend to leave Him out of.
We can spend hours praying for a family member who is sick and not pray for them at all when they are healthy. We pray for family members going through tragedies when in normal circumstances we forget to pray for them. It's just so easy to forget to lift up the every day, mundane things in prayer. I know I am guilty of leaving God out more than I would like to admit.
If we are trusting Him to get us through the big moments in life, why does it seem so hard to trust Him with the little things? Mostly for me, it's just because, I don't take the time to even think about it. We are just too busy. Or maybe we think He doesn't really care about the little things. I have heard people say "God just doesn't have time to worry about that with everything that is going on in the world." How wrong can we be?
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He can be all things to all people. He has time to hear my prayers over the little things as well as the big things.
I know in the past I have prayed before going grocery shopping and when I do it seems like I get the best deals. Sometimes I even get a really great parking space, even when I didn't ask for one. If God wants you to trust Him with your tithe, wouldn't he want your trust in the day to day finances? If He expects you to serve Him doesn't He want to equip you for that service?
This is in no way a New Year's resolution, but this year I don't want to start praying more for the little things in my life by praying:
1. Before any shopping
2. Before paying bills
3. Before making any decisions
4. Before Church services
5. Before having friends/family over
6. Before leaving the house
7. When I am planning my day
8. When I am tired
The bible says we are to pray without ceasing. God wants to hear from us constantly. I pray the He will constantly remind me that He wants to hear from me.
Trust Him,
Mae
We can spend hours praying for a family member who is sick and not pray for them at all when they are healthy. We pray for family members going through tragedies when in normal circumstances we forget to pray for them. It's just so easy to forget to lift up the every day, mundane things in prayer. I know I am guilty of leaving God out more than I would like to admit.
If we are trusting Him to get us through the big moments in life, why does it seem so hard to trust Him with the little things? Mostly for me, it's just because, I don't take the time to even think about it. We are just too busy. Or maybe we think He doesn't really care about the little things. I have heard people say "God just doesn't have time to worry about that with everything that is going on in the world." How wrong can we be?
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He can be all things to all people. He has time to hear my prayers over the little things as well as the big things.
I know in the past I have prayed before going grocery shopping and when I do it seems like I get the best deals. Sometimes I even get a really great parking space, even when I didn't ask for one. If God wants you to trust Him with your tithe, wouldn't he want your trust in the day to day finances? If He expects you to serve Him doesn't He want to equip you for that service?
This is in no way a New Year's resolution, but this year I don't want to start praying more for the little things in my life by praying:
1. Before any shopping
2. Before paying bills
3. Before making any decisions
4. Before Church services
5. Before having friends/family over
6. Before leaving the house
7. When I am planning my day
8. When I am tired
The bible says we are to pray without ceasing. God wants to hear from us constantly. I pray the He will constantly remind me that He wants to hear from me.
Trust Him,
Mae
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