Happy Weekend….

 Hope everyone is having a good weekend.  Ours has been pretty good.   Friday I got off work an hour early and went to get groceries.  I decided that I think the best way to save even more money is to only shop twice a month.  Less opportunities to impulse buy if I am not in the store.  I bought two weeks of groceries any spent a total of $153.50.  That was with me going to three stores, Aldi, Bread Thrift Store and Festival.  Of course as always a majority of our groceries come from Aldi.  I also buy little convenience food, I cook most everything from scratch, which also saves money.   So my budget each week for groceries for the 5 of us is $80.00, so I was under that by $6.50.  This is very good since I had been over each week before by $10 to $15.00 each week.  I am pretty happy with the results, lets see if the food will last for 2 weeks.    It does take a bit more planning, but I think it will be worth it.

Friday night was movie night.  We all had a good time and Erik actually got to join us.  We watch the “School of Rock”.  Now I must say I was surprised it was voted as one of the top family movies, but it was ok.   There was some language we could have done without.

SATURDAY

I was sort of feeling out of sorts most of Saturday.  We went to have our taxes done in the morning.  We always plan it so we get a nice size refund.   It was a bit less this year, so I will have to budget differently.   What we have been doing for the last few years and it works out very nicely for us, is we each claim single zero and have the most taxes taken out.    Then the refund goes into the savings and we budget it for the year.  I track it on a spread sheet to keep us on track.  We pay out car insurance in full for the year as we get a $500 discount by doing that.  We also budget between $300 – $400 for each month for emergencies, etc.  If we don’t need the money for that month we roll it over to the next.   At the end of this year we were right on track.  I also set aside the money for Christmas presents right away.  I will be looking this year at the amount we set aside last year.  I think it should make do again this year. 

On our way out of Sears, where we get our taxes done, we looked at their clearance appliances.  One thing to know about me, I hardly ever will pay full price for anything!!!   A month ago they had a wall oven, but it was self cleaning so the inside of it was so small.  You could not even fit a cookie sheet in it.  That would never ever work for us.  I love to cook and need my oven space.  This time they had another wall oven and it was not self cleaning and it was the same size!!!   To make sure I went home and got my pampered chef stone baking sheet to make sure it would fit!  It did!!   We were so happy so I am finally getting a new oven put in and at 50% of the cost.  The 50% off was nice as even with the installation and delivery I am paying less than the cost of the oven.  Our current oven is 47 years old and the door does not stay closed.  We have to wedge a piece of paper in the door to force it to stay shut.  It has a mind of its own on the temperature control as well.  My parents will be very happy since they have been concerned about the safety of our current oven.    Cooperwife is doing a great series on the Less Than Perfect Kitchen, which is what I have.  She has some great ideas how to make what you i’ve work.  I  gleaned a great idea from her.  Since I haven’t been able to get a double oven, like I wanted, big meals take alot of planning with oven space.  She mentioned using a Roaster Oven for the Turkey or ham to free up for oven.  What a great idea, why didn’t I ever think of that!!   So I am going to have my eye out for one on clearance or something. 

My Less Than Perfect Kitchen….

This is the oven, which it is very retro and cool looking.  But doesn’t really work and probably not the safest.  So that will be changed out.  I hope the new one works in this space.   That will be the extent of our remodeling this year I think. 

Next is my stove area, as you can see my cook top is also 47 years old.  You can’t see it in the pictures by it has holes burnt into it too.  This will hopefully get changed out next year at taxes time.  The Vent Hood is the one the guys put in for me, $16.00 on clearance at Sears!!   We are debating on which way to go with the cook top.  Should we just replace the cooktop or we thought of just taking the cabinet out of there and putting in a range which would give me a second oven.  Hmmmm….but I would lose a fair amount of cabinet space in a already very small kitchen.   What do you think???? 

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing things around the house.  I did some laundry and washed the dishes.  I also cooked up 8 pounds of chicken and froze that.   Hubby put the spice rub on the roasted chicken for tonight.  I also made supper, which was good!  Everyone in the family liked it!!  

Chicken Pasta w/ Baby Vegetables

I also cleaned out the freezer upstairs and update my freezer inventory.  After seeing my examples of freezer inventories, the one we use is working for us well!   In stead of listing Chicken Breasts -3.  I simple write:

Chicken Breast
Chicken Breast
Chicken Breast

When I use one of them, I simply cross off one of them so I also am sure of how much I have in the freezer.  I have an older example for you to see.    I can’t remember where this idea came from, but it works great!!

Freezer Inventory

Well I will blog later about today…I gotta get in the shower and get ready for church.