Reading Group

I started a reading group with some of my friends. I've wanted to do this for a long time but of course never had any before now. I love to read and find that I often read more than one book at a time. I'm especially guilty of this if I have a book on cd in the car, because I listen to that one and read another at night in bed.

Anyway, I asked one of my friends, who is "funemployed", her word, to be the first hostess. She is a professor of literature so I thought she would be a great first hostess and help to keep us on track and think of questions we can discuss.

The group chose the novel "The Other Symbol" by Dan Brown. It's a new story by the author of "he Davinci Code" and has some of the same characters.

So far I really like this story and since I know I will be discussing it with my friends, I've been writing some notes on my thoughts as I've read. It's got my mind thinking for sure. It's one of those stories that start right into the meat of it and you are hooked right away.

Now here is my confession. I am only about 1/3rd of the way through the book and we are having our discussion next Friday! I have one week to finish it up. Yikes. Normally I read fast, especially when I like a story, but I keep falling asleep every time I am relaxing. I must be tired because it's not the book!

Here's hoping that I get finished before I meet up with everyone or I may learn the ending before I read it myself.

I'm going to have to step up my game or my book club is going to leave me behind!

$75 Budget w/o 10/26 - 11/1/09

Of all the items I purchased this week, I think my Halloween candy was the best. I used coupons and my CVS Extra Care Bucks, and spent $0 on nearly 30 bags of candy. I think we still have half of them leftover. I know I'm going to eat a lot of it too. Candy is so hard for me to resist!

I also took advantage of the Kroger Mega Sale this week and purchased just over 100 items. Most will go into storage or will be used over a long period of time. I think my kids were the most excited about the Keebler cookies.

Totals:

Kroger $12.70
Kroger $16.85
Kroger $8.94
Kroger $4.85
Kroger $14.86
Walgreen $2.16
Spouts $6.62
Tom Thumb $11.50
Boston Market $4.28
Gloria's $20.00

$102.76

Over my budget again. My husband's birthday lunch and pizza yesterday pushed me over the $75. I wonder if I'll be able to keep the expenses down when it gets closer to the holidays and I will be preparing large meals? I'm going to guess that it is going to be very hard. It seems when I have any special event, I can't meet my goal.

Good-Bye Hammy. We love you!

Our little winter white dwarf hamster died yesterday. I knew it was going to happen and saw it coming, but it's never fun to have a pet die and the kids were sad about it.

He had a tumor and it was getting really big over the last few months. He wasn't eating very well, so I figured he didn't have much time left. I'm happy to say that we fed him his very favorite food, a carrot, this week before he passed on, so atleast he got to enjoy a yummy treat.

Hammy was our very first pet, and we enjoyed playing with him. The kids especially liked it when he would run up their arms. His little feet tickled. We didn't enjoy cleaning out his cage, even though we had to! :-) He lived for two and a half years. We will miss you little Hammy!

Wonderful Husband!

This past week I celebrated another birthday. They keep coming though I have no desire to get any older. It's not the age so much as the decline in my body. Well, maybe it's the age a little bit too. However, this one was well worth having.

This year my husband bought me this beautiful piano!

I had hoped to take my parent's piano, since I am the only one in my family who plays, but that was never possible or feasible. It would be too costly to travel from their house to mine since we are nearly 2,000 miles apart. I should have taken it with me when I moved out, but then again, I've moved so many times since then, it may not have survived.

So, I've waited 16 years to have my very own piano and now I finally have one! The kids and I have played and played and played. They seem to be just as excited about it as I am.

$75 Budget w/o 10/19 - 10/25

I went well over my budget. I have nothing to say for myself. I cracked and I know it! :-)

Actually, myhusband didn't seem to mind since I came home with ice cream, his very favorite. And I also bought salmon, another family favorite.

Totals:

Sprouts $64.00
Kroger $17.00
Kroger $6.67
Target $8.00
Olive Garden - It was my birthday so maybe that doesn't count? - $28.00

$123.67

I will be getting back $15 in rebates for part of my Kroger and Target purchases. So, I'm going to subtract that amount.

Final - $108.67

Review: Food Storage Analyzer

Emergency Essentials has developed a new tool for analyzing food storage. Go here, and in around 5-10 minutes you will be able to see how far your current food storage can stretch!

The Food Storage Analyzer™ takes the guess work out of figuring out how long your family could survive on your current food storage! I entered the bulk items I have on hand and then tried to remember at least most of the items I have in my panty and regular grocery items I've stocked up on. The Food Storage Analyzer™ said I can feed my family for 84 days! I'm sure my recent powered milk purchase helped that number along.

I thought it was relatively easy to use and I probably spent no more than 7 minutes entering each family member and their ages, then all the items I could think of and got my results. The Food Storage Analyzer™ gave me nutritional information as well as telling me how many days my family could survive on the items I've purchased already. It also indicates the needed calories per family member based on age and sex. I now understand why my 14 year old son and my 43 year old husband eat the same amount of food. It's because they need the same amount of calories!

The Food Storage Analyzer™ would be very handy to help any family keep track of their food storage and would give you an idea of what items would be missing in your diet if you HAD to live on that food storage.

If you would like to try this Food Storage Analyzer™ tool and receive a free $10 gift card from Emergency Essentials®, follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Food Storage Analyzer™ and create a free account - Click here to go to the Analyzer.

2. Try out the Food Storage Analyzer™ - Click here for Analyzer instructions.

3. Write a review of the Analyzer and post it on your blog and

4. ****Important: Copy and paste the code in the box below the red button (under step 5) to the bottom of your review post - this will add the red button to the bottom of your post.

5. Send an email to blog@beprepared.com with a link to your blog post. Put 'Blog Post Giveaway' in the subject line of the email so that they can verify your post and the button. Also include your full name and mailing address.

Excellent Reader Question - $75 a week? HOW?

I had a fellow blogger, and friend of a friend (Thanks Marty!!) ask some excellent questions about my $75 weekly grocery and household items budget. Here are her questions and my answers:

Here's what I want to know, because I would LOVE to spend only $75.00 per week for our food/non-food!

1.) how many kids do you have and ages.

I have 3 kids living with me full time, ages 14, 12 and 7, all boys. They too eat ALL THE TIME! I also have 2 step children here some of the time, ages 16 and 14. You could probably think of it as feeding your kids' friends about 10 times a month.

2.) HOW do you manage to feed them on $75 per week? do you eat any meat? do you make everything from scratch? what are your portion sizes?

We eat meat for dinner every night in some fashion. I make mostly all meals from scratch but not always. Portions vary. The 7 year old and I eat very small portions. My husband and 14 year old have large portions. I'd say on average our dinner plates are filled 1/2 the main meal and 1/4 veggies. My husband always gets seconds and sometimes the kids do too depending on what I made that night. We rarely have left overs.

3.) do you ever eat out?

We eat out probably twice a month, up to 4 times a month. We buy with coupons or off the $1 menu, we never purchase soda. If you cut out the soda alone, you will save A LOT eating out.

4.) What do you eat for your typical weekly meals?

We have spaghetti, bbq pork, chicken in all various forms, casseroles, soups etc. We don't have steak very often. Probably not more than 5 or 6 times a year. Unless the steak is cut into pieces and added to a soup or casserole.My menu this week included: crockpot pork loin served over rice with broccoli, salmon, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, tacos, hamburger and bean soup with bread, chicken/taco soup, sausage and spring veggies over rice and spaghetti.

5.) do you only shop with coupns? how do you find the deals?

I do use coupons and try to stock up on the basics when I can combine coupons and sales. I still buy items without coupons though. And not everything has coupons, like meat, bread, milk... Sometimes they do but not every week or even every month.

I have quite a bit on hand of items I use a lot from stocking up when the sales were "hot". I also stock up on meat when it's on sale, though I don't have an extra freezer so I can only do so much there. And I do the same with fresh veggies and vacuum seal them, then freeze them as well.

It took me a few months to have enough stocked up in order for me to lower my grocery budget to $75. Coupons probably helped me lower my budget $30 or $40 at first and more and more over time.

I find the deals by reading blogs! I rarely come up with my own shopping lists anymore. There are enough other women out there who take the time to put it all together, so why reinvent the wheel?! I check 5 or 6 blogs, see what sales have coupon match-ups and pick and choose from there what I need that week and what I can stock up on.

The easiest place to start finding lots of grocery blogs is www.becentsable.net.

There are some who say coupons are only for "junk" and think you can't find healthy items on tight budgets. Others think in order to coupon and budget you have to give up the "yummy" stuff. Well, I'm here to say that neither is correct for me. We eat ice cream, cookies, candy and all of that. And we also have vegetables every night at dinner, fresh! We also eat fruit, healthy grains, fish, rice etc.

I can honestly say $75 is a challenge. Staying under $100 would have been easy for me, but I like the challenge which is why I'm giving $75 a try!