And The Journey Begins

I'm not a frugal person. I was not brought up that way. We were not rich by any means. But we always had money for the things we needed and wanted. There were many extras growing up in our house. But now we hit the year 2009 and I have my own children and the country is in a recession. We just bought a house and I've been layed off for months. My husband owns his own business and that is not the best place to be right now. So what is this mom to do? Learn. Learn how to be frugal. And I must admit, I get a kind of strange wierd high when I save money at the grocery store. How sick is that? LOL. Now I'm not one of those people that will go to five different stores just to save a buck. But I do on occasion shop at two different stores. If I need a lot of things that are not on sale at Meijer, I will go to Walmart for those things. But my usual shopping place is Meijer. It's just much easier. I get the ad every week and can match up my coupons. I do spend a good hour every Sunday cutting coupons. Then another half an hour going thru the ad and matching coupons. Then another possible half hour searching the internet for any other coupons I might need. So I can spend up to two hours a week on just that. But I spread it over the week and do my grocery shopping on Friday afternoon while Mini-hubby is at school.

Now I'm sure a lot of you already do these things. But I'm just starting out and I'm gonna blog all the wonderful things I learn on my way. I do have what I think is a great binder system for storing my coupons. We'll get into that later. One of the other things I'm doing to save money this winter is canning. We have pear trees, apple trees and a grape arbor in our yard. So I've given myself a crash course on canning. So far I've done some pears. But I plan on putting up applesauce and some jelly yet this year. Next year I'd like to broden my horizons into strawberry jelly.

The thing I've found the most challenging is making our meals last. I hate throwing away leftovers. But if your kids are like mine, they will not eat the same thing twice. So this is what I'm learing. Make the leftovers into something different. This is what meals have looked like this week.

Sun - steak
Mon - dinner out
Tues - stir fry with left over steak
Wed - beef burritos with left over steak
Thurs - chicken voila (on sale last week)
Fri - pancakes and bacon (great sale on bacon this week plus coupons)

So I've managed to get three meals out of one dinner entree.

Now you can see what I'm learing. Each week I will post what I spent and saved at the grocery store on a family of 4. I will also post my meal plans on Thursday for the following week (Fri - Thurs). And any interesting recipe that I have tried and enjoyed.

Maybe I'll help someone out with a new idea, or maybe I'll help someone out with something not to do! LOL who knows. But my main goal is to save money with out sacrificing flavor or amount. So we'll see how that goes!