Living on Less week 3

My husband was out of town on business and with it just being myself and the kids for the week I went on a cooking strike.  I went to Dollar General and spent $10 on bread, dog food, and some snacks. The rest of the week we ate out or had sandwiches at home. Our eating out total came to $71. It would have been a lot less, but one night we splurged and went to Olive Garden.  So we went over our $75 grocery limit by $5. I also had to spend $40 on gas to get us to preschool, karate, and the airport to pick up dad.  We also had an emergency dr. visit which ended up costing $152 (of course when I got there we had a balance) and $13 for meds. Then everything finally got straightened out for us to be able to get our Kentucky state tags/drivers license which totaled at $159. Of course during my hubby's business trip he found a restaurant that didn't take his company credit card and had to use the bank card for his meal which was $24 (of course for this we will be reimbursed).  At the beginning of the month I put $400 in savings and after everything we ended up using the $400 for these things that popped up during the month.  While I am slightly disappointed that the $400 didn't get to stay in savings I am VERY happy that we were frugal enough that we had the extra money for these things and didn't have to dip into savings.

October Week 1 Wrap Up

Monday:

M worked on 2 sheets of math (Filling in numbers to 100 and less than/greater than), did a lab on snails, practiced writing his x's and w's,

P worked on writing the number 10 and counting to 10, practiced her French numbers, and practiced writing z's and picking out things that start with the y sound.

They both listened to the 1st chapter of The Wind Through the Willows, painted to classical music,played outside, and listened to a story about Confucius.

Tuesday:

Is our day off. The kids painted, played outside, we went to the library, post office, and cleaned the house.

Wednesday:

P went to preschool.

M worked through the 1st chapter of life of Fred apples, listened to more of the wind in the willows, learned about the mycenaeans, did some spelling, went over nouns, labeled the parts of a snail, And went over long vowel sounds.

Then we spent our afternoon at the county clerk office trying to get our car inspected.

Thursday:
P went to preschool.

M and I spent our morning going downtown to try and get my tags. We weren't able to get them (my husband had to be there and wasn't), but I think it was a learning experience for M.

Both kids spent the afternoon playing outside.

Friday:
We spent our morning at the park. P was out of preschool and we had a playdate with one of her friends. In the afternoon we read more of the wind in the willows and I started history with them. During this time my husband and grandparents called. The children dispersed in multiple directions (bedrooms/outside) and I guess I didn't try to hard to get them back together.

I read more of Wind In The Willows to M before bed and more of Winnie The Pooh to P. They are really enjoying these books. It's been a while since they begged me to keep reading and ask me to read it multiple times a day.

Living on Less Week 2

I have my menu planned out for the 1st week of October.  So far I had to make an emergency trip to the grocery store for milk and butter. That leaves about $220 for the rest of the month. Here is our menu for this week. I grocery shop on Friday's.

1st- Breakfast: cheese grits
       AM snack: yogurt
       Lunch: leftover turkey pot pie and fruit
       pm snack: cheese its
       Dinner: Spaghetti (no meat)
     
2nd-Breakfast: pancakes
       Am snack: animal crackers
       Lunch:PB&J & fruit
       Pm snack: cheese its
       Dinner: Baked pork chops and veggies

3rd-Breakfast: Bacon, eggs, grits
       Am snack: animal crackers
        Lunch: Leftovers
       PM Snack: cheese sticks
      Dinner: Sausage Pizza

4th-Breakfast:Pancakes and sausage
      Am snack: animal crackers *my kids will never want to see animal crackers again after this week!*
     Lunch: PB&J with cheese puffs
     PM Snack: jello
     Dinner: Chicken and rice with veggies

5th-Breakfast: cereal
       Am Snack: jello
      Lunch-Leftovers
      Pm Snack-Cheese balls
      Dinner-Roast with veggies

Living on Less Week 1

This is not directly homeschool related, but as a homeschool mom I am always looking for ways to save money since we are living on one income. This summer we didn't do a good job putting money in savings. We traveled and had fun, but now it's time to start putting money away again.  Last September my husband took a new job in a new state which increased his salary. After going back and reviewing our budget then and our budget now I decided we should be able to put around $1000 a month into savings if we REALLY try hard.  We did the Dave Ramsey plan for a few years to get ourselves out of debt so we are not new to a strict budget and living on less. We also have motivation to save this money and me and my hubby are taking a trip to Dallas in December and want to take the kids on a small trip for Christmas.

Now the question is can we as a family of 5 live on $1000 less than what we normally spend each month??? In the previous months we were spending $800-$900 on groceries and anther $100-$200 on eating out. Ummm....can we say CRAZY! This month there will be no eating out and I dropped our grocery budget to $300 for the ENTIRE month. That is only $75 a week for 2 adults, 3 kids (6,4,1), a dog, a cat, and a bunny!

Today is payday and grocery day so the living on less process begins today.  I am going to try different stores each week to see where I get the most for our money. Today I went to our Neighborhood Walmart. (For those of you unfamiliar with Neighborhood Walmart it's basically just the grocery part of Walmart as a stand alone store. I had never heard of one until we moved here to Kentucky.) My total was $73.35 and I purchased 32 items.

Generic capri suns $1.97 for 10
All purpose flour (Lily brand bc it is the only one I can find w/o barley which my son is highly allergic to) $2.78
Pedigree dog pouches (my spoiled Stella a faux frenchbo won't eat anything besides wet food) $6.68
Generic Canola Oil $2.88
Frozen chicken breasts 3 lbs $7.98
Generic canned peaches x2 $.98
Johnsonville Brats (sale) $3
Bag of yellow onions $1.96
Generic can of Lima Beans $.98
Snap peas (margaret holmes brand) $.98
Beef stew mix $.92 x2
Yoplait yogurt $.58x6
Generic Pear halves $1.68
Roast $8.23 3.14lbs
Pork Chops $4.93 3.18lbs
Spaghetti Sauce 1.88
Coffee Creamer (HELLO...Smores is the new fall flavor!) $1.91
Campbells Chicken and Stars (which was oddly the same price as generic) $1.25x2
Can of Succotash $.98
Bananas $.52 per pd x 3.45lbs
Generic cream cheese $1.78
Instant grits (was not happy they didn't have the big container of quick cook!) $2.38
generic spaghetti noodles $.88
24 pk of cokes (yeah...yeah....but I wouldn't make it through the day w/o it! $6.98

I went and picked up all of this without meal planning. I am so burnt out on meal planning. No one ever wants to help suggest meals, but they all want to complain  about the meals :/  Now I get to sit down and go over everything we have in the pantry (we had quite a bit before this trip) and come up with meals.

Week 1 Wrap Up

This has been a really good first week of school. M started 1st grade.

This is what Goose does during most of our morning lessons.  

The kids took a liking to my camera and declared themselves photographers. I think I had over 100 pictures that they took. P took this one and I just love it. Oh, that's our school room they are in.

M liked taking pictures of things rather than people.

He did take a few self portraits.

Our neighbors grandson came over one evening and played with the kids. (Social Interaction!! lol)

P started preschool on Wednesday.  I think her and I are a lot alike. Right now it's better if she gets to go the preschool a few days a week.  She is really loving it. She has brought home lots of art projects already!

Another of P getting ready to go off to school.

P in front of her class. She is in the turtle class.

A friend of mine started up a geography class for homeschoolers 2x a month and we had our 1st class this week. The kids learned what a globe was, what a compass is and does, and made a suncatcher globe.

They are supposed to be learning the continents, but M found a spider. Of course spiders are much more interesting to little boys than continents.

Listening to a book about the world.

Goose found the leaves pretty interesting while the big kids had class.

Day 1 School is Back in Session

Today is M's first day of 1st grade!

We did some math, reading, spelling, french, and science.

Then we went out to the garden and collected the ripe veggies.

Postcrossing

We really love postcrossing. We started postcrossing back in 2010, but after the newest edition, the move, and being busy we haven't sent out anything in a while. I wanted to get back into it and bought a 8 postcards at the beach 2 weeks ago and sent them out. Today we received 3 postcards. We ask the sender tell us about themselves, their city (including historical info), send recipes, ect. After we receive them we read them, find where they were sent from on our wall maps, and talk about how far they travelled.

From a preschool teacher in Luftkin Texas.

 

From Birgit in Monchengladbach Germany.

Vintage postcard from Renee in Norwalk Iowa.