Owl Be Home for Christmas

For all those who are waiting, the special gift from Lowe's was a singing Christmas owl.

"Owl be home for Christmas...whoo whoo..."

I know you're jealous. I would be.

It would seem a little boy with a winning smile has my heart.

I wouldn't have it any other way!

$11.00

The kids and I went to Lowe's today to do the free project that they offer. This month they can make a Christmas train and it's really cute! Anyway, we were walking through the store afterwards, and Kristian says he found a Christmas gift for me and can he buy it. I ask how much it costs, he doesn't know, so I sent him and his brother to find out.

They came back and told me it cost $11.

Can you come back with your dad and get it next week?

Nope. He really wants to do this himself. So I have him call his dad and tell him what the item is, the cost, and ask for his input. Dad says go ahead.

So I gave my seven year old $20 from the Christmas cash and let him buy a gift for me.

 All by himself.

And wrap it. All by himself.

 I have no idea what could be at Lowe's that I would want for Christmas, especially something that the clerk laughed at when he said it was a gift for his mom.

But this is so darn sweet I don't even care!

Party's Over

I had a pity party last week. It lasted...oh, all week.

Not my proudest moment.

I was mourning the loss of my free schedule. I was down with a cold. I was overwhelmed and so I shut down completely.

I enjoy doing things well, and when that wasn't happening last week, it was all over.

I promised Halloween pics. Didn't get done.
I had a giant pile of laundry. Didn't get done.
I had Bible study to do. Didn't get done.
Should I go on?
I think you get the picture.

Last week was our first week as interim youth directors at our church. This is a position that I do not in any way feel qualified for. Kris and I definitely felt called to do it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't scare us to death!

Anyway, my schedule just got a lot more hectic. And I'm not really a fan of hectic. I spent the whole week pouting about it. Don't worry though, God didn't let me stay there too long. In very gentle ways he steered me out of it. This week is a fresh start. I'm learning to manage my time differently. I will have significantly less free time, but it won't kill me. I'm going to have to lean on God for the strength to do it all, but that's what he's there for!

I am so excited to see what God is doing here! It's been quite a trip so far, and I think that means amazing things are ahead.

For now, let me catch you up on the last week.

Halloween costumes! We spent a total of $15 this year! That's thanks to my mom who made the magician and princess costumes for birthday presents earlier this year. She's got some amazing skills!

We were given half a bushel of grapes, and the back of my car is full of carrots from our garden. It didn't get taken care of last week, so I'm working on that this week. If anyone has any good uses for carrots...I could use some help with that.

I sent off another large payment to the student loan! We payed almost $1000 this month toward it! Yippee!!!

We also got a new dining room set! This was something I've been (not very) patiently waiting for. I love our table, it's been in my husband's family for generations, but it was not meeting our needs very well. We want to get it refinished, but needed something for the meantime. Oh, and it would be nice to have more than three chairs. I might really miss that lawn chair though.

Maybe not.

We shopped around and found a table we loved, but it was $1600. Not really a good idea right now. So, we got one off Craigslist for $150 that we thought would work for a while and we can wait until a better time. I'm actually pretty happy with this one!

So, the pity party's over and I'm ready to see how God is going to be working in us! Don't worry, I'll keep you updated!

Polly Want A...

In case you were wondering...I still love free food! These were all from my Dad and Mom. My dad is a trucker and sometimes when cases are damaged, they get to keep the stuff. They ended up with a bunch of crackers and were gracious enough to share with us! Of course, we then passed on the blessing as well. Our good friends Matt and Victoria were visiting from Boise, so we shared the crackers with them too! The kids have seen the crackers, but the cookies will remain hidden so we can bring them out at strategic times (or just sneak them, whichever).

It was just payday weekend and I took $20 out of my grocery cash again. I didn't even miss it last time. Maybe this is a good week to take out another $20 since our pantry and fridge are still full and I don't even need to do the grocery shopping yet. I had budgeted some money for food and fun while our friends were visiting, and there are loads of leftovers, so that gave me a head start on saving grocery money this time!

I'll be back on here later today to show you our budget Halloween costumes this year! Well, that is if I get a chance to finish them. Wish me luck!

Dear Santa,

This year I would really like my own computer. Or a tablet. Or anything along those lines that I don't have to share with three children and a husband. It makes it very difficult to blog about painting all last week at Kris' parents house,

digging out water pipes at Kris' parents,

a certain child who stole my razor and thought she should shave her mustache,

digging potatoes,

and more potatoes,

and more potatoes.

My family would appreciate it too. They're not very happy about me pestering them to hand over the keyboard.
I promise to be good for the rest of the year!
Love, Melissa

P.S. Maybe you could also bring some recipes for potatoes. As you can see, I have lots and I need to know what to do with them. Thanks.

A Fantastic Start!

I did the grocery shopping yesterday morning, minus $20 from my normal, and I'm happy to report I came home with $54 to spare!

Almost all the produce I bought was organic. One exception was the lettuce from Costco, it's such a good deal I just can't pass it up. I tried to buy mostly what is in season so I guess that helped.

Fred Meyer was having a good sale and I got an extra bag of whole wheat pastry flour for half price. I use that stuff a lot, so I'm considering going back for more. They also had decent prices on their organic tomatoes, grapes, and carrots. Oh, and the coconut milk creamer and whole milk yogurt that were already on my shopping list were on sale too! I love Fred Meyer.

At Winco I stocked up on raw nuts, raisins, nutmeg, and organic oats from the bulk bins. Of course I discovered pecans were cheaper at Costco, so I'll remember that next time. I get most of my dry goods from Winco, and this time I made sure we have chocolate chips and things like that for baking.

I ended the trip at Costco where I didn't have much left to get. Bacon (per Kris' request), string cheese, and yogurt. Let's see, oh and a bag of chips. I've been trying to pick up one each payday just for fun, and we make it last. Finished off with a box of organic granola bars. I think they're trying to get rid of them because the box used to be around $8 but now they're $3.79. The supply is dwindling, so I've been buying a few boxes every time I'm there.

I'm glad I have a little extra left over for milk and to refresh the produce supply in about a week.

The whole thing made me happy though! I really think this is going to work!

This Week

Well, my three year old has discovered computer games. Kinda cute, but sharing the computer, not so much.

This week:

 I made the yummiest apple pie (and most beautiful I might add) from the apples off our tree:

On apple pie night we made twice baked potatoes from our home-grown potatoes and my kids and I fought over the zucchini that Kris' aunt gave us from her garden. It's a little ridiculous at the dinner table to be counting out chunks of zucchini to make sure it's even. It was much more beneficial for me when my kids couldn't count.

I also made granola. It's so delicious there may need to be an intervention.

Speaking of intervention...

I maybe shouldn't have left my children unsupervised with a jar of prunes.

 Good times.

Also this week, need to take away the debit cards. Seriously. Kris and I totally know better. We didn't spend anything we didn't already have, but honestly could be using it much more wisely.

Friday we went to the *cough* way overpriced *cough* circus. It was fun (insert sarcastic tone). Ok, it was fine. Just not worth $30 to sit OUTSIDE for 2 hours. Honestly, who schedules an outdoor event like that in Idaho in October. And what kind of mom wouldn't realize it could possibly be outdoors and not have her children dress appropriately?! What?! It wasn't me!

Subject change.

I got my grocery cash on Friday, and still haven't had the chance to do my grocery shopping. But, the list is made and I'm ready to go first thing tomorrow morning.

With $20 less than normal!

It's a great week to try it. We're pretty stocked up with all this crazy free food that God keeps blessing us with. I don't understand it all, except that maybe God is honoring my committment to spend more wisely. He's so good to us!

I'll let you know how it goes!

Hello Old Friends!

I was so happy to come home the other day and find Kris putting in my washer and dryer! It's been a long time, and boy have I missed them!

These babies were our very first large cash purchase after we were coming out of a seriously difficult financial time. It had been about 18 months since we decided to trust God with our money needs instead of using our credit cards. We were in the middle of Financial Peace University and had learned about using cash to make purchases. I sent Kris and Josiah to the store with several $100 bills in their pockets, and they came back with these lovelies!

Fast forward a few short months and they were put in storage while we moved and found a house. Then when we bought this house it had a washer and dryer already hooked up, so we've been using those. They were a nice set, but nothing like these.

And now we get to sell the set that came with the house and pocket that money!

I will be spending much less time doing laundry now, which leaves more time to make my newest favorite recipe:

Bagels!

Yesterday my son was begging me to take him to the bagel bakery in town, but I really didn't want to spend the money. Finally I looked up a recipe and decided to make my own! They were so easy and fun to make. And so, so, so delicious!

I think if I make up a double batch every week the kids can use these for their breakfasts or even their sack lunches for school.

One delicious step closer to a smaller grocery budget! Hooray!

I like free food

It's been a strange week at our house. I can't seem to keep my days straight between kids staying home sick, no school on Thursday and Friday, and spending a day sick in bed myself. We've also got a big decision weighing over us this week. As well as a birthday to celebrate.

 Happy Birthday Sweetheart! :)

We have managed to do a little food preservation this week though. And for me, not a whole lot else.

Kris put loads of pears in the dehydrator. We were given a large bin of homegrown pears last weekend. Yum. Pears are in my top five favorite fruits. My family loves them dried, we have to hide them so the kids save some for us!

We filled the dehydrator twice and it's given us about 6 jars full. Yes, I realize that's only five jars. Like I said, we really love dried pears.

We also had loads of free peaches. Yet another fruit on my top five list. Possibly number one. I made them into peach butter and peach jalapeno jam (with jalapenos from our garden). So. Good.

 I was supposed to use some of these as gifts.

That may or may not happen.

Back to School

Today I did the back to school clothes shopping. A little late, I know. I just have a hard time buying jeans and sweatshirts when it's 100 degrees outside. Not that waiting until October 1st helped that much. It was something crazy like 90 degrees today. That wasn't a complaint, in case you were wondering.

Anyway, I figured the weather is bound to change sometime soon and my boys were in serious need of warmer clothes. I didn't do much searching ahead of time for the good deals. I did have a coupon for $10 off a purchase of $40 at Shopko that expired today. I always buy all the boys' jeans at Shopko because they replace them for free when they get holes in them, so I headed there. Well, not anymore! I brought some in today and they said they stopped doing it! I guess they lost a customer because I headed straight to Sears and bought the jeans there. They still do the replacement thing.

I got 6 pairs of jeans at Sears and then headed for Fred Meyer where I had another coupon. It was the rewards coupon that I got from the last quarter rewards. I like to save them up and use them in combination with their other coupons. It's awesome that they let you do that!

 I am not really into the whole coupon thing. I have some friends that are amazing at it and I really admire that. It's just not for me. I do use them sometimes though, and it's nice! Today I used my 25% off kids apparel combined with a 15% off clothing. They also had their clearance on an extra 60% off, so I got some good deals there too. Oh, and they had a coupon for socks.

All in all I felt like I got some good deals.

Here's what we got:

For Josiah we got 4 pairs of jeans, 3 long sleeve shirts, 2 hoodies, and a package of socks

Total: $106.56

For Kristian we got 2 pairs of jeans, 2 long sleeve shirts, and a hoodie

Total: $74.46

For Marley we got 4 shirts, 3 leggings, 2 skirts, 1 dress, and a pack of socks

Total: $41.52

With coupons and clearance I saved $84.29 at Fred Meyer and more at Sears I just haven't taken the time to figure that one out yet.

I think even when I don't take a lot of time, I can still find some great deals and stretch our dollars.

God is good!



Here we go!

I know all you readers (all 4 of you ha!) are dying to know what my new project is that I mentioned the other day! Ok maybe not. I like to pretend.

Well, I've been excited all week to share it! It's a project that has been in the works for a couple months now, and I have kind of already started.

First the backstory. Two years ago I started learning about food and it's health benefits as well as the issues with a lot of processed junk out there. I immediately jumped into feeding myself and my family differently. We learned pretty quickly that our current grocery budget could not handle the mass amounts of produce and organic products that I was purchasing. So we increased it from $300 a month to $500 a month. That's going fine actually, and I still use that amount.

A few months ago I was in the middle of tending my first vegetable garden and I was learning more about growing our own food. Along with that I started reading articles about the cost of food and how to feed your family on less by growing food, shopping farmer's markets, and learning food preservation techniques. I started wondering if I could bring my grocery budget down to half the amount while still eating healthy and natural foods. I'm pretty sure I could do it by feeding my family boxed dinners and such, but that's cheating.

I had to think about this one for a long time. That's a BIG difference. But hey, I love a good challenge!

I'm gonna do it!

Is it possible? I guess we'll find out. How long will it take to get there? I guess we'll find that out too. Why am I doing this if our current budget works fine? I don't know. Maybe I will send it to our student loan every month and help that along.

In the future I may give myself a date as a goal, but for right now I'm busy just figuring all this out.

So far in the last couple weeks we've made jam and applesauce. Both were from fruit from our tree and Kris' mom's tree. So the fruit was free and the only cost was the jars, which we are able to use over and over so that wouldn't come from the grocery budget anyway. I regularly buy applesauce and so that will save me quite a bit. The organic applesauce from Costco costs us like $6 a month. If I can put back enough to last all year that would be amazing. That probably won't happen this year, but it's a process right?

We also got to pick loads of peaches and plums from a friend's house. The plums are in the dehydrator. (Nobody tell my kids that prunes are for old people, they love them!) And we are planning to can peach butter and sliced peaches. Neither of those are things I buy already, but they're delicious so that has to count for something!

This year we grew tons of potatoes and squash so that will help with the winter months. Plus, our house has a great storage room in the basement that will work awesome for keeping them!

I could go on and on...

But I won't. Not yet. One step at a time and we'll see where it takes us!

Adding Up

Remember our money jar I showed you a while back? Well, it got full and we cashed it in. Any guesses as to how much it was?

How does $225 sound? Pretty stinking awesome to me!

We put the cash in the bottom and we're on our way to filling it up again. I think by the time June rolls around we ought to be able to have two days at Lagoon and two nights in a hotel for our entire family. As well as cover our meals and spending money.

This could get addicting.

I think I'll go look under the couch cushions...

Home Sweet Home!

We did it! We found our dream house and everything fell into place perfectly and so now here I blog from my beautiful new living room. And I have a lot to say. And show you!

I don't have good house pictures yet (that's a project for the next week) but I can give you a sneak peak!

View from the back patio. My favorite place to drink my coffee.

On our first morning in the house I sat up in bed and saw this:

Living room.

Upstairs hallway. Those are built-ins at the end of the hall.

I love this laundry room. This is only half of it. Around the corner is the sink and more cupboards and drawers, a bathroom, and a door to the backyard.

We're getting nice and settled, and it's been so great. So much space and places to put everything it is strange! The kids are settled in their new school and loving it. And I've been keeping busy doing this: 

Making banana chips. yum!

Picking potatoes from our garden and apples from our tree.

Kris and I canned plum jam with the plums from his mom's tree! I've always wanted to learn how to can, but it intimidates me. A lot. We finally got brave enough to try and it wasn't bad at all!

And here's our new family member, who likes to keep me extra busy:

Her name is Zoey and she is 16 weeks old. We promised Kristian for over a year now that we would get him a puppy of his own. It was finally time to make good on that promise. She's a lot of work but it's been fun watching Kristian and her be best of friends.

I've got a new project on this blog that I will be working on. I've been planning it for a couple months now, but was unable to really work on it. Well, it's time and I'm so excited! I'll tell you all about it this next week!

Renting

I got my first taste of rental house shopping yesterday. Yuck.

There was finally a house listed in Filer, in our price range, so I hurried to look. Yeah, not worth my time. She had it listed as a 3 bedroom. Well, in my opinion, you can't count a large laundry room that lacks a door, etc. as a bedroom. At least where I come from you can't. And especially not for $750.

That was just one of the things on the bad list for this particular house.

Back to square one.

I think we will just stay put for a while longer. We're saving a minimum of $1000 a month where we are right now, and we'd only be saving $400 a month if we rent. We're going to reorganize and such to make it work better and stay put.

I feel like a kid though. And an adult at the same time. What a weird place to be.

The house we love is still in the running, I think we will just have to wait a while longer.

I can do this.

I can do this.

I can do this...

The Waiting Game

So here I am, STILL living with my in-laws. They are so wonderful about it all, I'm just READY to have my own house again. We haven't had any luck with finding another place to live. We've been talking with the guy who is selling the house we love, but he keeps changing his mind on things and it doesn't look promising now. There are no other houses in the area that we really want to buy. And there are NO houses to rent in our budget either. And it's not because I'm being picky. I would live in a trailer house at this point if there was one available.

Home Sweet Home!

The positive thing to this is that our savings account keeps growing and growing!

Speaking of growing...(nice huh?) we planted our garden and it is AMAZING! A little big, but so far we are handling it ok. We have 4 150 ft. rows of potatoes. A 125 ft. row of various veggies (lettuce, onions, cucumber, tomato, jalapenos, peas, and green beans). 2 75 ft. rows of corn. And a 50 ft row of pumpkins, squash, and cantaloupe.

I am out there everyday weeding it! It's so fun to watch everything growing and thriving. This year I am going to learn how to can stuff. I want to be able to put back a bunch of food to last us through the winter. I will have to use the farmer's market to get enough, but by buying in season that should work fine.

I would like to cut my grocery budget in half, or close to half at least. Hopefully this will be a good way to do it.

I have to admit, I really enjoy when life is simple like this. When I simplify my life I am a better, more calm person. That's better for my kids and my husband (and my in-laws!). This school year I am going to cut back on what I volunteer for. I was way over-committed this last year and we all suffered for it.

We're learning and growing. We're saving money. We're keeping hope alive that we'll get a house soon. God is good!

So now what?

I hate making decisions.

I hate it even more when I make a decision and then need to change my plan.

I think that may be where we are right now. Only thing is, I'm not totally sure. We were so excited to be putting all our money toward our last debt, and watching the color sheet on the fridge fill up. And then the neighbor gave us a tour of his house. And we LOVE it. And it meets almost all of our criteria. And he wants to sell it this summer.

So now what do we do?!

If we send everything to our student loan, there will be no down payment to buy this house. We still are not sure if the house will be in our price range. It is possible though. So for the moment we're left putting everything into savings again until we can decide what we should do.

Now every time I open the fridge, I look longingly at the thousand dollar bills on the color sheet. Then I count in my head how many we could color if we sent the money in. And then I go to bed every night thinking about how beautiful that house is, and how nice it would be to have our own space again.

I guess I will just have to wait this one out.

From Frustration to Finally

We've been a little busy lately turning this

Into this

and then this

Sorry for the bad pictures. I really need to learn how to load pics from the camera onto the computer.

So, it's been a bit busy and I've neglected this thing a bit. Let me tell you, I've had a lot to say though.

For starters, I've been so frustrated with our finances. And our lack of a house. And my car.

a.k.a. the money pit. 

It's spent more time in the shop in the last week than it has with us. And $1400 later, it's running good again. So much for our savings plan.

That's where all the frustration has been. Our savings has done more shrinking than growing in the last month and I was not responding well to that. But you can't avoid things like cars getting fixed, dental work, and doctor visits.

Last weekend was my lowest. Kris has been gone all the time working, and I was sick of nothing to show for it. I decided to look for a house. Thankfully, I didn't get very far before I was reminded via Pastor Jerry to stay the course. Back to waiting I go. But this time with renewed hope.

And for good reason. Something awesome was about to happen! Kris got his biggest paycheck yet, and we made our first large payment to the student loan! Finally! This is really going to happen!

We made a picture of our debt so we could fill it in as we go and see what it really looks like. This will also allow the kids to participate and see how it works. Each of the bills represents $1000, totalling the amount of the debt.

I'm happy to say that 3 and a half of those are now filled in! Hooray!  :)