Very Very busy Saturday

I have already posted the pictures from the lot visit but that was just a small piece of the day.

Our first goal was to start packing and really start going through our things and decide what we are keeping, what we are giving away and what we are trashing. When Brian and I moved in we just packed everything up and brought it over so I am seeing a lot of his stuff for the first time. We got the third bedroom done except for books and we got half the closet done in the computer room and then it was time to go to the house. We did manage to get half a bag for good will. I also packed up all the spring clothes I could find and put them in a suit case. We did not get as much done as I hoped we would but we will continue next Saturday.

Then we went to the house and out to eat at El Cerro our favorite Mexican restaurant. Cheap, easy, good, filling. Always good.

After that we dropped Al and Dave off and I grabbed the grocery list and we went off to Lowe's. Brian had found a sale on our refrigerator and we were going to ask questions about it. There was a sale and the sale prices were amazing but the sales themselves ended much sooner then we thought.

This is the fridge we wanted:

Samsung 28cu ft French Door, Energy Star, Item #330637

 It is normally $2999. When we originally found it it was on sale for $2500 and that became our dream/in a perfect world choice. Brian started looking for sales. And Lowe's is having their sneak peak Black Friday sale going on so instead of $2999 plus taxes and fees, the refrigerator was $1890 including all taxes and fees. We saved easily $1000 on that one piece of equipment. This is all what he was expecting except the sale ended this Monday and Brian swore online it said it lasted to the 28th. Sears had the same price and Best Buy had the fridge for $50 more. So we got the fridge at Lowes because of their customer service in dealing with our rental refrigerator issues. I don't see how we could have passed it up since it ended up costing less then some of the other lower cost refrigerators we were looking at after you take taxes into consideration. We were planning on waiting a week but since the sale is over Monday didn't really have that option.

We also went looking to find our washer and dryer. Not necessarily to buy but to pick them out so Brian could watch the sales on those either. We found the ones we wanted and they had gone up in price and not on sale. However the sales lady showed us another set by the same manufacturer and actually the step up from the set we thought we wanted.

This is the washer:

Samsung 3.9 cu ft stack-able front load, energy star, platinum Item #: 346658

This is the dryer:

Samsung, 7.4 cu ft, stack-able, gas, platinum, Item #: 346654

Our house is plumbed for gas and Brian wanted platinum so that is why we are getting these. The washer is normally $1399 and the dryer is normally $1369 plus taxes and fees. With the sale and taxes BOTH of these were $1726. That is almost buy one get one and so we now have our washer and dryer. Again not sure how we could pass these two up since we got such a great price on them and we got a washer/dryer set that is better then what we had picked out for our dream/perfect world set.

We did chose to extend the warranty for 4 years as it was only about $90 per appliance and you would pay that for any service call and we know that Lowes stands by their warranties. We also had to add on a water line, something to connect the gas dryer to the wall, and the stacking kit but those only added up to about $75 if that. Our total was $3992.00 and we saved about $2400 when it is all said and done. Because we saved that much on these appliances it means that I can get my bedroom set a bit sooner then before.

Lowe's is also able to hold it without a delivery date which is great since we don't know when we will close and may not know until the week/day before. Also if the price goes down in 30 days they will price match. The Christmas sales are never as good as Black Friday so while we don't expect the price to go down even more if it were to happen it would be within Black Friday which is less then 30 days away.

After Lowes we went to the grocery store. I have been trying really hard to pick cheap recipes. We are watching a new cooking show called Money Saving Meals with Sandra Lee and I am trying to use her recipes. She makes one meal and it usually ends up costing around $20 for 4 people from that one meal and then uses the left overs to make another meal. I don't know if it is helping us. I am starting to think that unless we just eat ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we are not going to get our grocery bill any lower.

We then came home, put groceries away and went to game night. One of my friends from work has a game night on the second Saturday of each month and Brian and I were invited to go along. At the time we were supposed to leave we were exhausted and really feeling the need to pack more but I insisted on going as my friend was really looking forward to us being there. We ended up staying until 11pm. We started one game at 9pm and it was supposed to be a 30-45 minute game but since we played it wrong it took a lot longer. We both had fun, found a game that we are actually interested in buying and will try and make it again next week. My friend had to bail early but we found a cute couple who we played games with.

Then it was home for bed!

September's Grocery List

This is the first installment of September's grocery list. As I mentioned earlier that other then Costco we are going to go grocery shopping weekly so I am going to update my weekly trips here like I did when we went monthly.

Yesterday's trip was to Costco and Food Lion. September is going to be a more expensive month like a thought but in a different way. I thought it was Costco that was going to be more expensive but it is really going to be Food Lion that is going to cost more I think. Sure Costco did cost more then it normally did but I think most of what we got is going to actually last closer to 3 months rather then 2 so that even's itself out. I have already spent $88 at Food Lion and that is some pantry items and the ingredients I need to last us until September 10th. This is okay, just interesting to me. October will be a cheaper month so it will even out in the end.

What we got at Costco:

A case of Brian's Monsters (energy drink)
NutriGrain bars (48 pack)
Chicken breasts (a package of 6 units with 2 breasts per unit)
Ground turkey (a package of 4 1lb containers)
8 lbs of Chuck Roast (only needed 5 1/2 but that was as close as we could get)
Eggs (package of 18)
English muffins (package of 18)
Bread (2 loaves)
Pork chops (3lbs...this will last until November)
Leg of lamb (7lbs)
Beef flank (3lbs....this will last until November)
Pork tenderloin (this is a package of 2, this will last until November)
Chicken Sausage (3 sleeves of 8 sausages...this will last until November)
Butter (a package of 4 boxes of unsalted butter. First time buying butter from Costco so not sure how long it will last)

This all totaled $223. I don't think that is too bad given what we had bought and how long everything will last. I listed things I was sure would last until November but there are other things that could last until November as well depending on what we do for October. And red meat is more expensive then Chicken/Turkey and we haven't eaten red meat in a while.

What we got at Food Lion:

Egg noodles
Pretzel sticks
Wheat germ
Pasta sauce
Dill pickle chips
Cornmeal
Tuna
1 can whole peeled tomato
Pinto beans
Red kidney beans
Green chilis
Tomato paste
Yellow onions
Spinach
Garlic
Jalepeno pepper
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Lettuce
Crescent roll
Cream cheese
Cheese
Pizza dough
Crescent rolls
Feta
Goat cheese
Cheese Tortellini

This all totaled $88 dollars. Some of it will last longer then just the meal but not too much. Based on usual numbers this means we have about $99 dollars to get us through the rest of the month. It might be possible, it will be interesting to see what happens.

It is only day 6.....

of August and we have done HORRIBLY on the grocery budget. I blame it not having a printer and having to copy everything by hand.

I have so far forgotten eggs, butter, zucchini and half and half so I have had to go back and get those. Actually I got the eggs and butter this morning. I was purposely waiting on the zucchini so it doesn't go bad and didnt realize I didn't have half and half until I started cooking dinner and went to grab it.

I think what happened with the half and half is that what I did have went bad and I threw it out. Brian is currently running to the store and grabbing more.

Here is hoping these are the ONLY things I have forgotten for this month. Without going to Costco this is becoming our most expensive month and I swear we had a lot of this stuff already at home. Do not understand. :-\

August's Grocery List

Here is August's grocery list....it actually shouldn't be that bad...

August's Grocery List 2011

English Muffins

Sub Rolls

Crusty Bread

Dish Detergent

Tomato Paste

Molasses

Potatoes

Frozen Peas

Frozen Carrots

16 ounce bag of frozen hash browns

Garlic

Capers

Red Onion

4 Onion

3 red peppers

Tomatoes

Provolone

2 Cheddar cheese

Parmesan Cheese

6 ounces Gruyere

Manwich

Chili

1 16 ounce can of whole kernel corn

1 15 ounce can creamed corn

Tuna

Bacon

Heavy Cream

Half and Half

Butter

Sour cream

Eggs

Pasta Sauce

Steak Sauce

July's Grocery List

Brian and I are debating on whether we should include Costco in July's food budget or June's food budget. We technically BOUGHT it in June but all that food was for July.... But if it counts for June our total would be about $350 if it counts in July the total is $330. Brian has been budgeting $400 for meals so we are doing pretty well.

We do eat out each Saturday (once a week is a big change for us) and SOMETIMES on Sundays but both those times it is for lunch which of course keeps cost down. On average it is less then $30 for both of us tax and tip included (some days more, some less). I guess we could cut that out (we have enough left overs to feed us for both those days) but that is the one thing we do each week that is fun. We don't go to the movies, or shopping (last Saturday was the first in years for me and Brian outside of him getting work clothes) or anything like that. We want to save money but we don't want to be hermits when we don't have too.

Anyway, of course we couldn't/can't get everything at Costco so that did involve Food Lion. We had to split it up into two trips. One trip for the first week and the second trip for the last three weeks. We couldn't get a whole month right after going to Costco.

I accidentally threw out the first weeks receipt and the months grocery list so I will be sparing you with what we actually bought but I think we did well.

The first trio we only spent about $40 dollars (that $40 didn't even come out of our pocket, we had a $25 Visa gift card and I had $13 in cash from cab tips). The second trip we spent $112. We did get a few things extra like Ice cream and 2 pizza's (we got 4 things free if we bought two frozen pizza's that we could use when we have game night), a box of energy drinks for Brian (his version of coffee) but even with that our total is $152 which is about $30 dollars less then last months. And saving $30 is saving $30 and we didn't have any coupons this time!

Hopefully August turns out to be the same or better! I think part of why July was less then June is that we had more things left over from June to use in July that we didn't have to buy. I am thinking about getting the Sunday paper so I can get the coupons. I am not going to become a Extreme Couponer but I usually can use some of the coupons out of the paper which would take care of the cost of the Sunday paper and save us a little more as well. Plus I could get more organized. I do still end up buying things that we already have. Like Rosemary this trip. We now have three rosemary's because I keep looking, can't find it and put it on the list. I think one of our Christmas List items this year is a new spice rack to help organize them because we have more spices then we have room for.

Revamping our Habits: July's Menu

The month of June went well and as soon as June officially ends I will post about that in more detail. I have planned out July's menu. July is tough as we needed to go to Costco. We don't have to go to Costco every month it is more like 2 months and with this trip, hopefully more like every 3 months. We save in the long run a lot of money shopping at Costco but it is a lot of money up front.

So without further delay, the menu:

Friday, July 1^st: Chicken Paprikas and oven rice, use thighs

Saturday, July 2^nd: Out

Sunday, July 3^rd: Fend, RAH @ Carolines

Monday, July 4^th: Chicken Parmesan, use breasts

Tuesday, July 5^th: Mom's Penne Rigate, double Mom's tomato sauce recipe and freeze half

Wednesday, July 6^th: Fend

Thursday, July 7^th: Garlic Lemon Mahi Mahi

Friday, July 8^th: Curry Chicken Pot Pie, use breasts

Saturday, July 9^th: Out

Sunday, July 10^th: Fend, RAH @ Carolines

Monday, July 11^th: Oven Honey Chicken, use breasts

Tuesday, July 12^th: Mom's Chicken Sausage Tortellini, use breasts

Wednesday, July 13^th: Fend

Thursday, July 14^th: Mom's Mac and Cheese, buy real milk

Friday, July 15^th: Garlic Roast Chicken with Rosemary and lemon, use thighs

Saturday, July 16^th: Out

Sunday, July 17^th:Fend, RAH @ Carolines

Monday, July 18^th: Slow Cooker, upside down chicken pot pie, use thighs

Tuesday, July 19^th: Ravioli with creamy tomato sauce

Wednesday, July 20^th: Fend

Thursday, July 21^st: BMC's Curry Chicken, use breasts

Friday, July 22^nd: Chicken Bog, use breasts

Saturday, July 23^rd: Out

Sunday, July 24^th:Fend, RAH @ Carolines

Monday, July 25^th: Roasted Chicken with Balsamic Vinaigrette (use thighs)

Tuesday, July 26^th: BMC's Mahi Mahi recipe

Wednesday, July 27^th: Fend

Thursday, July 28^th: Mom's Tetrazzini

Friday, July 29^th: BMC Pizza

Saturday, July 30^th: Out

Sunday, July 31^st:Fend, RAH @ Carolines

We eat a lot of chicken....

Our grocery list:

Produce:

6 onions

Celery

Garlic

Lemon

Carrots

Mushrooms

Aisles:

Lemon Juice

Curry for curry chicken

White rice

Dijon Mustard

Spices:

Dried Basil

Rosemary

Paprika

Yeast

Canned:

4 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes

1 jar chicken gravy

Spaghetti Sauce

Baking:

Canola oil

Breadcrumbs

2 8 inch cake pans

Flour

Dairy:

Sour Cream

Butter

4 cups Mozzarella

Parmesan Cheese

2 cups cheddar cheese

2 ½ cups milk

Ricotta cheese

Whipping Cream

Frozen:

Puff Pastry

Tortellini

Spinach Ravioli

We spent about $178 at Costco already. We went in with 5 things on the menu and ended up with more but the "extra's" are things we could use and give us more variety. 

Costco list:

1 package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Each package has 6 pouches with 2 breasts per pouch. (planned)

1 package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Each package has 6 pouches with 5 thighs per pouch. (planned)

Tide-180 wash box (planned)

1 package of ground turkey. Each package has 4 2lb containers of ground turkey. (planned)

1 package of paper towels. Each package has 12 paper towels. (planned)

1 package of Mahi Mahi. It has 3 lbs of fish..we are hoping that it is an even number of fillets.

1 package of sausage. Each package has 3 sleeves of 8 sausages.

1 package of Nutri Grain Bars. Each package has 1 box of each: Blueberry, strawberry and apple

1 package of pasta. a total of 6 boxes, 2 boxes each of Penne, Shells, and Rotini

1 package of rolls. These rolls usually come in a pan and you have to make a whole pan to eat 2, these come in a bag where you can pull out as many as you want and put the rest back.

1 package of my breakfast sandwiches. This includes 12 sandwiches

1 package of Lipton tea. This includes 3 large boxes of tea. We use this for sweet tea.

It will be interesting on when we will need to go to Costco again and what we will need to buy again. I know we wont need Tide, tea or pasta for awhile. Depending on when we go to Costco we may not need paper towels. We will go back to Costco when we run out of meat and at that time refill what wont last another month. I will also update how much the grocery list will cost. This month I have about $13 cash to go towards it from cab rides and we found a $25 Visa gift card so that will help lower the "out of checking account" expense since we had to hit Costco this month.

Update on Meal Plan experiment

It hasn't been long enough to know whether we are saving any money but I am noticing a few new things.

1) I am a lot less stressed about dinner. It gets a little wobbly when we have friends come over all of a sudden and I have either planned a meal for 2 people (i.e. no leftovers) or a meal that our guests may not like. Brian and I tend to be a bit more..adventurous? Fancy? in our cooking and our friends not so much (which is totally fine). I can find out that a friend is coming over for dinner that day so a tweak and move around in the meals can be a bit tough in that sense.

However, that situation is a lot better then what we were facing. We were facing, at first, not knowing what we were going to do for dinner. We would start asking "what are we doing for dinner" at about 4 pm or so, start looking for what we could put together with what we had and all of a sudden it is 8pm and we have come up with nothing. We weren't being all that smart with how we decided what we were going to get at the grocery store. We started out in the beginning just writing a list of things as we ran out. That was fine except that lead to us having some of the ingredients for one meal but not everything. It also lead to us not having enough food with left overs or eating the same thing over and over again.

We finally got sick of that and so I tried to create weekly menu's. That worked..and it didn't work. Towards the beginning of that experiment I was picking recipes that we had been collecting but never tried. That was really yummy but got expensive depending on the recipe. I won't call that a failure as some of our favorite repeat recipes are from that time frame. I then figured out that the issue wasn't trying new recipes but that the recipes were of things where we had nothing already in the house to make them except for maybe spices. So we started trying to pick recipes by what we had in the house so that when we did go to the grocery store we were getting the small things rather then EVERYTHING for 5 recipes. We would still find a random recipe that included ingredients we didn't have and make it but it wasn't an every recipe or even once a week thing. Another struggle with this technique is that, at the time, Brian's and my schedules kept changing so recipes kept getting bumped. And at the very end I was making recipes that made too many leftovers. I say this worked because we did find some great recipes and figured out we were on the right path and it didn't work because we couldn't stick to it and our process needed tweaking some more.

Now we are trying this. So far so good. We are still having to tweak what meal gets eaten when but so far everything is evening itself out. I don't have to wonder what we are doing for dinner or if we even have enough ingredients to make a meal for that night with enough for left overs.

2) Because that stress is not there, I am enjoying cooking more. Because I enjoy cooking more, Brian is not doing much cooking. The dishes are being done a lot faster and easier. And we are so far, having just the right amount of left overs. It is no longer a chore which is very nice.

Hopefully this system makes sense monetarily wise as well. I am realizing that in terms of produce, we will need to do that every 2 weeks. The first shopping trip with include the meats, dry items, dairy and half the produce and then 2 weeks later I will get the rest of the produce for the month. My zucchini got wet and so two of them were so bad that I couldn't save them. Oh well, live and learn right? :)

First grocery trip under new Food Plan

I had a lot of toiletry/pantry items I needed to add to my list but I did have a fair amount of coupons. Don't worry...I am not going to go to "Extreme Couponing" extreme (I actually believe that you should pay for things you buy and that it is more wasteful to have a stock pile that extreme) but I could be a bit better about it.

This is what we ended up buying (I have pointed out which things I had coupons for):

Meat:
5 lbs beef brisket
2 packages Ball Park hot dogs-coupon
Produce:
6 large onions
Garlic
Limes
2 green peppers
1 Jalepeno pepper
4 zucchini
Frozen Peas
Carrots
Potatoes
Red Onions
Acorn Squash
Dairy:
Butter
Ricotta cheese-Sorrento (coupon)
Fresh Mozzarrella-Sorrento (coupon)
Sour cream
Half and Half
Provolone
Feta Cheese
Parm Cheese
1 package Breakstone cottage cheese-coupon
4 yogurts
Dried:
Lasagna noodles
Hamburger buns- Ballpark (coupon)
1 box Fiber One-coupon
Ritz crackers
1 box of Couscous
Baking:

Brown sugar

Duncan Hines Brownies-see coupon

Canned:

Tomato soup

Prego

Toiletries:

Neosporin-coupon

Bandaid brand-coupon

Energizer batteries-coupon

Venus Razor-coupon

Venus refills- coupon

2 Oral B toothbrushes-see coupon

Charmin toilet paper-coupon

2 Head and Shoulders-coupon

2 Pantene shampoo-coupon

Q-tips-coupon

Condiments:

Gulden's mustard-coupon

Juice:

2 V8 Splash- coupon

If you follow VERY closely you will notice I took out tomatoes and crusty bread. I also need to pick up a can of cream of chicken soup for one of my recipes. I thought I had enough but when I was putting the food away this morning I realized I didn't. We didn't get the crusty bread or tomatoes because Brian didn't think they would last long enough. So we will need to go back to the store for those 3 three things. We did get a lot of produce so I may be moving dishes around in case some of the produce doesn't look like it will last as long as expected. 

Our total was $178.83. I saved $31.91 in coupons and $11.97 with my Food Lion MVP card. I was very excited because some of the stuff I was going to buy with my coupons happened to be on sale with Food Lion! I know real couponers plan that out...but I don't have time for that so it was a nice surprise. So in total I saved $43.94!! And as I said before, a lot of what was on our list that wasn't produce/dairy/meet was pantry/toiletry items that we don't buy all the time so for the next few months we will not need to purchase those items. 

I can't wait until we start seeing results on whether this system is working or not...I believe it should.