Last February Grocery Shopping Trip

Today was the last grocery shopping trip for the month of February. It went pretty well. I employed two new strategies in sticking to my budget. One was making tally marks at the top of my shopping list so I knew how much I had left to spend. And second was putting a couple of the non-essential items in the back of my cart. Then when I checked out, I could see my total and decide if I really needed them. I ended up getting the asparagus and putting back the 4-pack of peppers. But that way I stayed within my budget! And thankfully I have a few dollars left to buy bread later this week.

Conclusion: it is possible to stay within our current budget. If I'm careful.

I decided to try again next month to really stick to the same budget, but it presents a few additional challenges: my family is coming to visit for Malachi's birthday and Eric will be home for a week of spring break. But the biggest one is going to be that I grocery shop on Thursdays... and March has 5. Hm... It's ok! I'm up for the challenge!

No More Nursery

Malachi has moved out of the nursery room at church and into the toddler room! We actually dropped him off in the nursery Sunday morning, but when we came back he was in the toddler room. Something about him walking all over and wanting to trample the other babies... He just turned 11 months and started taking some steps a couple weeks ago, but now he's walking all over. Eric has nicknamed him Little Walker - Texas Ranger.

I wanted to post a video, but as my computer has less than a gig of space left, working with video is seemingly impossible. Hopefully I can soon from Eric's computer!

February Grocery Budget update

So it's February 11th, and I've bought groceries twice (on the 3rd and the 10th). And... I've spent more than half of our budgeted money for the month! Yikes!

The first week I spent over 1/4 of the budget, but I was able to cut back this week and make up the difference. Until I realized we needed tp, kleenex, and laundry detergent - all of which are included in our grocery budget. Dang it!

But I am determined to make it this month. I'll keep you posted.

Snow Day!

Usually a snow day means no school, but today (Saturday) it just meant postponed lunch plans and canceled dinner plans. Eric thought it would be fun to bundle up Malachi and take him out in the snow, so after a great lunch of leftovers, we did.


I did most of the snowman's body construction while Eric and Malachi scouted for other body parts. It was interesting how we remembered it taking a lot longer to build a snowman when we were little, and they sure seemed more round back then too.


After we went in, Malachi got fruit cocktail for a snack while Eric and I had hot chocolate and thin mints. Yum, thin mints. And I can never just make simple hot chocolate from a packet and water, so out came the additional chocolate chips, milk, sugar, cocoa, and peppermints. So good!


Anyway, it has been a fun day. I like it when snow changes our plans like this!

The Grocery Budget

So I don't know about anyone else, but despite our efforts at budgeting, our groceries always seem to go over. When we came back to the US we tried to start with the budget we had two years ago. We quickly realized that wasn't gonna work. So we bumped it up. And made exceptions. And bumped it up. And now are trying to decide what to do. Do we bump it up again? Or do we just say no to the Kashi cereal - even though it's on sale and I have a coupon? Maybe I need to learn to make cheaper meals? Maybe... I don't know.

Steps we have taken:
* cooking mostly from scratch
* eating planned meals each week
* planning those meals based on what we already have on hand, what's on sale, and then what we want to eat
* buying more frozen vegetables instead of fresh
* buying meat (and other things) when it's on sale and freezing it to use later
* eating more ground turkey instead of beef and pork
* shopping at Aldi's and not caring about brands
* using coupons - but only for things we would buy anyways
* using cash (but that didn't work too well when we got to week three and the cash was gone but we still wanted to eat)

So after a huge month of going over in January, we decided that for February we're going to actually really truly stick to our budget. And maybe that will mean ramen for the last week of the month (although hopefully not!), but we're going to do it. And maybe March too. And then we'll reassess and make a decision on if we really need to increase the budget or if I just need to tighten my spending.

Do you have a grocery budget? What does your family do to stretch their grocery money?