February Budget update and other stuff

Tomorrow is the last day of the month and its time to see how thing are going with the budget. I did not save as much on groceries this month but thats a bit misleading since I actually stocked up on meat and other things that should make me come in under budget for March. I was still under budget but only by around $50. Last month was $100. I did do as promised and doubled lots of recipes and have not had to really cook this week at all. I just pull things out of the freezer and pop them in the oven. It was been awesome and this will definitely be something I continue. Who knows maybe I will get back into once a month cooking. Cook for three days and then have 27 amazing fast dinner nights.

The Redbox budget of $20 for the year. Its going along nicely. I took advantage of a great deal of rent one movie get 1000 points. It takes renting 10 movies to get that many points so I had to do that one. We rented 5 movies from Redbox and spent $2.98. I also have enough points to get two movies free in March, if there is something we want to see and cant get it at the library.

Fuel budget was set way to high which is nice since remember my animal feed budget was set to low. Two cars that 4 people drive was only $60.29 for the month. I took advantage of 4X fuel points at Kroger and saved $1 off per gallon of gas both times we had to refuel and we always take both cars at the same time to fill up. That saved us about $40 right there. I have since changed my fuel budget to $100 a month and even though will come in under we will use more in the summer as we go on adventures so it will balance out. The extra $50 goes into the animal feed budget to even it out.

Entertainment of $50 a week has been more than enough. We actually came in about $80 under budget for the month and I still have gift cards that I purchased in January we can use and it not eat into future monthly budgets. There are more things popping up in the events calendar on Facebook. I high recommend you check out your local area for free or discounted things to do.

I am over in the clothing budget. Mr Ladybug needed works pants and the boy needed better shoes for wet weather. We will see if I can get through March without buying any clothing. I will just have to stay our of stores that carry clothes and go nowhere near discount racks! I sure hope the $1032 a year I guess we spent on clothes isnt too under budget. I actually consider myself the clothes on the cheap queen! That would just be embarrassing.

Thats about all for the budget news. I will spend this evening planning our menu for March so today will be taking inventory for whats on hand and use that up in meals and seeing what can be doubled to make a week of easy meals at the end of March.

Now that the budget business is out of the way, on to more fun things. This weather is amazing and the sunshine is just want this Ladybug needs. Look at how happy I look in the above photo with Balder the Beagle photo bombing me. I was outside several times yesterday and even took a book out to read. Mr Ladybug and I checked on the bees and did a little maintenance and everything looks great. Prayers and well wishes will be great appreciated next week as temps drop again. A few years ago when we lost our bees we had near 60 degreee weather and then below freezing temps. I am pretty sure Mr Ladybug is not going to let me move the hive into the house.

These are the grains. Some say they look like cauliflower. I am not sure how I would describe them.

The jar is the whey and they bows is the strained kefir

This is my kefir yougurt.

I put the grains into a new jar of milk and in two days start the whole process again.

My kefir grains that my neighbor gave me are one of my favorite things to mess. They have tripled in size so I have some to give to my momma and my sister. I have a few friends who are interested too. So every other day I get the kefir grains out of the jar, then strain out the whey and then do something with the creamy kefir cream that is left. I usually do smoothies but I have added herbs and made a great spread for crackers. With the discared whey I use it in pancakes or anything that requires a liquid like milk or water in baking. I really want water kefir and I have been reading that you can attempt and sometimes succeed converting milk grains into water grains. Fingers crossed.

I need to dig through some old albums and find some of our first year dating photos. 

This weekend we went to the play on Friday night, watched the new Robin Hood movie on Saturday, made sourdough starter, kefir, boiled down maple sap, and made chevre with our goats milk share. We had plans to go see an art show but it was on another county and we were expecting some storms and decided to stay home so Mr Ladybug took me out for ice cream. He was making fun of me and said that we could only spend $20 this year on ice cream dates like our rexbox budget. With the $20 Dairy Queen gift card I bought for us I only see three of those dates on our future this year unless we try to share an ice cream. I will have to ask him if that would work. He also said that I had been the most quietest that I had been all day while eating my ice cream. What can I say?I am a chatterbox.

So this morning I was making the boy pancakes and I was really paying attention to my ingredients. The discarded sourdough starter I used in a new pancake recipe, the whey was from the goats milk cheese we made and the syrup is from the 5.5 pints we have harvested in the last 2.5 weeks from our trees. I have come to realize the more invested you are in your ingredients the more invested you are in not wanting to waste a single thing. We are already planning on tapping more trees at my moms next year which will involve us tapping the trees, using more buckets to collect and spending a few weekends in February, hoping its not too cold outside to boil it all down just so we can have a years worth of syrup that we have learned to love so much over only the 2.5 weeks we have been making it at home. I have been very frugal with my honey from my bees because I have not wanted to run out before the next harvest.

I hope everyone has something that brings them as much joy as our urban farm does us. I keep waiting for us to run out of new things to do but we manage to add more things to our "learn to do list" every month. Urban farming might not be your thing but there are so many things out there waiting for you to enjoy you just have to keep finding things to try and actually try them and not put them on Pinterest thinking you will someday. Someday is now!

Does anyone know what this is? My friend gave it to me. It opens up and you can put soap in it and swirl it around your sink filled with water to wash your dishes. That dish soap we love to squeeze out of the bottle hasnt been around forever and this is what people use to use. I actually make a dish soap bar and this is the perfect thing to use and hang up and keep my bar from getting soggy and wasting away fast.

The Things We Do For Love

I guess I am thinking about Valentines Day still a week later. I officially met Mr Ladybug when I was 16 years old and a junior in high school. I had actually went to elementary school with him and we had a few of the same acquaintances but I didnt talk to him until he met me at the door of my Algebra II class and told me that my best friend had told him that I liked him.  I was extremely quiet and shy and horrified.  Anyway when you love someone you will do just about anything sometimes and one of the first things I did was go to a Hank Williams Jr concert with him. If you are a Hank Jr fan you may want to skip the next few lines. It wasnt the concert that scared me to do death but it was the people we were sitting around. I have a love of cute flat shoes and the ones I was wearing was sticking to the floor because there was sooooo much beer and who knows what else on that floor. There were sooooo many drunk people. I was a bit sheltered and this was terrifying. The man behind us lost his false teeth. Like they flew out of his mouth and onto the floor and he picked them up and put them back in his mouth. This was 33 years ago people and I still remember every minute of his scary experience. But I went with the young man I loved and because he loved me a few weeks later he dressed up nicely and went to the Philharmonic with me and hes not really a classical music kind of guy. He still goes to orchestras with me. Luckily after almost 29 years of marriage and 33 years of dating we have broadened our likes to local theater, gardening jazz music, astronomy and dont have to go to concerts that require tetanus shots.  Sorry to anyone I offended.

Early in our marriage I learned all the ins and outs of football, all the rules of nascar, college basketball and Stephen King novels. Mr Ladybug learned to watch chick flicks, that crafting can take over a whole house and that you should not take your pregnant wife to see the movie Blade if she cries at movies or you will be the only person in the very crowded theater trying to console your pregnant wife when one of her favorite characters dies. Good times.

In the name of love we have sat through three children learning 5 different instruments. I now realize how much my mother and granny loved me while listening to my sister and I squeaking our way through violin and telling us how good we sounded. We sat through countless rain soaked and even snowy soccer games with two of our children. Dont even get me started on math word problems we tried to help with. We were very smart in having our first two children 5 years apart because once they got to middle school our oldest was almost out of school and she got to help with all that stuff we didnt understand or had forgotten.

I look back on all these memories with fondness and wouldnt change a single thing. The past week and I am pretty sure is hormonal and weather related I have really doubted myself. I had someone ask me if I was a single mom and I said no and she said do you work and I said no then I stopped myself and said well yes I do I am an Urban farmer. When she looked at me like I was crazy I explained that I had bees, chickens and a garden. I could tell she didnt think that was really a job. For a split second I let me mean girl surface and almost said  "so you mean to tell me that when you grew up yur goal was to sell cell phones at the Sprint Store?".  I can be really mean if I want to. I try to be nice most of the time. That whole encounter has had me thinking  not just about myself but about everyone out there doubting who they are.  I dont regret any of the things I mention above that I did out of love for someone else. So why should I doubt or feel bad about what I do now out of love for myself? I shouldnt and neither should you.

What have you been wanting to be but not being it? A poet? How about a baker or candlestick maker? Candle dipping is definitely on my list of things to do! Spring is just around the corner and its time for you to be you. To love you and inspire others with your enthusiasm. I seriously can not believe I spelled enthusiasm right the first time. Lets add awesome speller to my resume!

So what clicked to bring me out of this funk? The rain all this stinkin rain. Look at how happy I am in this picture.It was raining so hard and it was like 35 degrees outside.  I would also like to point out that white dot on my face where my dimple is must be a shiny rain drop because I looked thinking I had something weird on my face.

The water is past my ankles. I just new I was going so slip and fall in the mud at some point but I didnt.

At 7am this urban farmer was gather 3 more gallons of maple sap to boil down for syrup. We were hoping to end the our maple syrup harvest with a quart and we have 2 and still have sap flowing. Fingers crossed for a gallon total. To get that 2 quarts of syrup we have harvested over 2o gallons of sap. Isnt that insane? Especially since its only from out yard.

So hello there my name is Mrs Ladybug and I am an Urban Farmer, whats your superpower?

The basil looks so good. I think we need to make some mozzarella this weekend to have with some basil and tomatoes! 

The St Johns Wort is out of control. I am going to give it a good clipping today and make a tincture. I also need to figure out where to plant this thing once the weather warms up a bit. I cant wait to see the yellow flowers it produces. 

Look at the broccoli and cabbage. Only a few more weeks until its out in the garden. I saw that our local feed store has onion sets out. I am going to pick some up tomorrow. You can pop a few in a pot and start growing them indoors to enjoy while waiting to the others outside.

Why Even Bother

Future Maple Syrup

Nothing makes me want to punch someone in the face more than hearing those words. WHY EVEN BOTHER? I like to call it getting stuck in a WEB. When we decided to start bee keeping we went to a beekeeping meeting. We were super excited. Then we went there and even though no one was mean they sort of ignored us because they had all been friends for so long and only met once a month they wanted to spend that month catching up and not meeting new friends. We tried going for several months with the same results. We enjoyed the informational talks and the guest speakers but that was it. On the rare occasion that someone did talk to us they would ask how many years have we been beekeeping and how many hives. When we explained we were new and only had one hive and the mentioned we lived in the city we would get these blank stares and comments like "why even bother". It was like we werent real beekeepers. It was very discouraging but its their loss not ours. I would define a beekeeper as one who keeps bees. So matter is I have two bees or 2 million bees I am a beekeeper.

On our 1/8 of an acre near downtown of our city we have 4 maple trees. Last year we researched if we could tap those trees to make maple syrup and you can. Over the weekend we put in 4 taps and by Monday morning we had 2 gallons of maple water. I guess it may be called sap but we think of sap as thick and this is like water. I got an idea of using or crockpot to boil down the sap into syrup. I thought it was brilliant and as I was googling I see that a few other people did too. Then I saw someone answer to someone like me who doesnt own a maple tree forest or a large scale maple syrup factory. Their answer was for 2 gallons of sap you are only going to get a cup of syrup so "why even bother". There were a few other comments very similar and then when you got almost to the bottom you had someone who said they thought it was an awesome idea. They talked about how you could just turn it on and not have to worry about it scorching, boiling over and you wouldnt have to keep a constant eye on it. Thank you to that one supportive person and shame on you meanie pants people.

This isnt a great pic but we have to put a colander over the crockpot and then drape a thin flour sack towel over it so the steam can escape for fear of what the cat will do to it if its uncovered. That cat!

So last night Mr Ladybug and I  poured one of our gallons in and this morning it had reduced to about 1/4 gallon. We topped it off with the other gallon we had and then I went outside and got the other 2.5 gallons. We are expecting about 2 cups of syrup from all that and we will keep getting the sap water until mid  March and see what happens.  I only need like 12 quarts of pure maple syrup to keep the boy in pancakes for a year. I am an optimist.

So what I am trying to say here is if whats coming out of your mouth isnt encouraing, helpful and positive then WHY EVEN BOTHER opening your mouth!

So with our first gallon of goats milk we made Chevre which means goat in French. It tastes so good. I left some crumbly which may not be allowed in the chreve cheese making rule book I didnt bother to google it.  I plan in putting it on tacos and a pizza later this week. One I rolled in dried cherries which I actually thought was dried cranberries. Mr Ladybug was a little freaked out when I sent him the picture because he thought I had rolled it in raisins. We have a log to do something with and the other log is going with me to share with a friend who is teaching me to make fortune cookies tonight. How fun is that?

I am still moving forward with my goal of freezing two meals a week to have a no cook week at the end of the month. Yesterday I was making a chicken pasta alfredo bake and did not have enough cream of mushroom soup. Well thats embarrassing. So instead of giving up or running to the store which at that time I didnt have a car at home to drive anywhere and it was raining buckets outside and walking was not an option I decided to use the mushrooms I had in the fridge which were getting ready to start looking sketchy anyway and make my own. How did you like that run on sentence?  I have to throw those in there to make my grammar nazis followers cringe. Its like fingernails down a chalkboard for them. I will be freezing tacos fixings tonight and will have a total of 4 meals ready for the last week. Yay!

Goats milk, seed starting and few other things.

I found a supplier of fresh goats milk. I am so excited to try goat cheeses, goat soap and anything else I can think of. I have been going through my cheese making book all morning trying to figure out what to do with this gallon of goats milk. Its a good thing that I have 12 more gallons headed my way in the weeks to come.

Today is also the day you can start your cabbage and cauliflower seeds indoors with first planting of them outdoors March 15. Do not freak out if you arent ready to start yours indoors today. You have a few weeks to get started and not have to worry. Onion sets can be put in the ground on March 1 so you may want to start looking around for where you want to buy those too.

The budget is going along very well. I only spent $90 this week to feed our family of 4 adults. I bought frozen egg rolls and potstickers to go with some fried rice and that was a little pricey but cheaper than ordering takeout and I have enough to do without making them homemade this week. Its okay to pay for convenience. Well as long as its in the budget.

 Mr Ladybug doesnt think we can stick with our  $20 to Redbox Budget for the year.  I have already figured it out that if I stick with the weekly codes that make movies only .27 and collect the 100 points towards each rental and get a free movie with every 1500 points we could easily watch 75 movies for that $20. I am not even sure we can watch that many movies or if we would want to. I think we have watched 7 so far this year.

Remember the 10 pounds of chicken I got for .79 last week. I oven fried it added salad greens from the garden and made some egg noodles and fed the for of us for around $3.50 total.

Its going to be cold this weekend so I see us staying home mostly and enjoying the fire. We may head out to catch our favorite sax player in the pep band at their college and while there watch the basketball game.

Todays agenda is move some firewood to the back porch, get the kitchen ready to make cheese, separate and freeze the 10lb spiral ham I bought yesterday, make some sausage for Sunday's breakfast, make laundry soap, cook the rice early for todays dinner, make some bread, pick up some of the sticks in the yard and put them in the garage to dry to use in fire starting, feed all the outdoor animals, and the normal laundry and picking up around the house. I need a nap just reading all of that.

Indoor gardening

Mr Ladybug and I can not stand the thought of not having something growing all year long so as soon as our garden outside starts wrapping up for the season the grow light comes out and the seed mats comes on and we start planting inside. We are still new at this so it mainly consists of lettuce. micro greens and herbs. We did add the mushroom log at Christmas and it may be one of the ongoing things we keep. Here are a few pics of whats going on today on the Urban Farm.

The lettuce is going crazy! I have already done two small clippings. Its sort of at the point where you clip and the next day it looks the same. Good thing we love salads.

This is broccoli, a few radish shoots and some sort of clover I will add to the salad. I also have a nice patch cilantro hidden in the back and some new radish shoots that the cat walked through the other day.

The basil is looking awesome. I plan on growing so much basil this year.

This is marjoram. It was planted to same time as the basil. its very very slow growing. Not sure if thats normal or not.

We were not even sure what this was. Mr Ladybug planted a few new herbs in pots and they did nothing in the summer. He labeled them but they rain washed it names off. This was a little sprig that came up in the fall so we brought it indoors, It got bigger so I tasted it and didnt die so we kept it growing. After looking all over the internet I am pretty sure its St Johns Wort. I am very excited about this one.

 Mushroom logs dont come with good instructions and I have yet to find a good resource or videos so we are just learning as we go. I kept telling Mr Ladybug that I thought something was wrong with the mushrooms that they looked nothing like Lionhead mushrooms to which he informed me that I had bought oyster mushrooms. That explains a lot because they do look like oyster mushrooms. Maybe we can get another log and make our own videos that will be helpful to new mushroom growers.

None of this came from my garden but I grabbed a big pork roast the other day for .99/lb. My brother in law and uncle brought me some deer meat from a hunting trip and I ground them together to make meatloaf that cost a whopping $1.50 for the one dinner sized meatloaf. Throw in some mashed potatoes for .50 and a bag of steamed broccoli for $1 and thats feeding three people for $3. I had leftover meatloaf and potaotes so I added some peas and make Mr Ladybug a lunch to take to work that cost around 25 cents. Cant get a value meal for that price. 

Thats about all that going on here. This Friday it will be time to start your cabbage and broccoli seeds indoors. Thats pretty exciting stuff!

The accidental soup recipe, change and some great deals.

Good Friday morning friends! I hope everyone survived the brutal cold weather. Its suppose to be 60 degrees on Sunday so lets all dig out our summer clothes.

I could not get my head straight on Wednesday. I think my brain was frozen or something. I did not want to fix anything that I had written down on my menu for dinner and I wanted something fast and pretty easy. I thought potato soup sounded good so I cut up the potatoes and started boiling them. I didnt have a lot of milk or any ham or any cheddar cheese. So I thought I will put corn and shrimp in it. I had a half of bag of corn in the freezer and some opened frozen shrimp that I needed to use too. now for the seasoning. I should have looked up a recipe for chowder online but remember my brain was frozen. I had a half used pouch of fiesta dip powder. I decided to go for it. I like to live on the wild side. Anyway while to potatoes are boiling Mr Ladybug came home from work. I walked away from the stove to talk to him and a few minutes later I went back to my pot and the water was almost gone. So glad that it hadnt scorched, That saved me from having to drain the potatoes. I added just enough milk to cover the potatoes added the corn. shrimp, fiesta seasoning and a small hunk of monterey jack cheese because why not. It looked good and it smelled good. Mr Ladybug took a bite and said "yum spicy", the girl took a bite and said "yum corn chowder" and the boy gave me an empty bowl. I love stories with happy endings.

That 79 cents for 10 pounds! There were 10 leg quarters in the bag.

I decided to go grocery shopping at a different Kroger that I normally shop at. I got there at 6:30 am and it was wonderful. The only people who were there were tired looking employees. I also score some great deals in the meat department. I got enough meat for 10 dinners and paid $5.54. Another happy ending.

I got three packs of these and we will get 4 meals thats 75 cents per meal.

We will probably use this in tacos. We will eat anything on a taco. We could eat tacos every night.

As I am being so budget minded these days and making so many changes I thought what about change. Like the change you get back from a cashier. Since using more cash these days I am acquiring more change. We have always had a change jar and when it gets filled we roll the coins and take it to the bank. When we first got married we started a change jar and 5 years later when we bought our house we had $135. We bought our daughter a swing set with it. It lasted for all three kids and we held on to that swing set long after they stopped using it.  A very wise investment. This morning I counted to money in the jar and it was around $25. I had some change on my desk and in my purse from this year and probably average $2-3 a week in change. We will just have to wait and see what we end up with at the end of the year.

We keep the silver in one jar and the pennies in the other. 

Not sure if I shared this but I decided to put a limit on our Redbox rentals to $20 for the year. We spend maybe $30 a year at Redbox. We rarely go to the movies and do get movies from the library. We do not have cable but do have Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Once the weather gets warmer we hardly watch anything on tv because we are outside watching stars and birds and whatever else we can find. So far we have rented 5 dvds from Redbox and spent $3.38. I never rent unless I have a good code. They sometimes will have extra points on certain days and once you get like 1500 points you get a free rental. The discounts are usually through the week so we will rent one through the week and save our free movie codes for weekends. I know this isnt a huge savings but with really digging into what we spend where I am finding little savings that add up to big ones when totalled together.

I got a Saul Good Groupon deal the other day. It was $30 for $18 and I only buy groupon deals if I have a 20% code for them. Once the code was added it came out to $14.40 and I saw you can use Paypal to pay for your purchases and I had $2 in my paypal account from Coupon.com. I ended up getting it for $12.40. Thats more than 50% off. When you set your entertainment budget for $50 a week and dining out is in that you get pretty creative in your money saving skills.

This weekend Kroger has 4X Fuel points on gift cards. I will need a Petmart card in a few weeks and I needed two gift cards for gifts. I bought my $150 for the pet food and two $25 and I had a best customer coupon for 200 points on any Dairy Queen gift card. Mr Ladybug and I go to Dairy Queen maybe three times a year to get a dipped cone. So i bought a $20 card and I have some Dairy Queen coupons good for a year so I am thinking we can go a few more times and get more bang for our $20 bucks. With the 4X fuel points I scored over 1000 points which is $1 off per gallon of gas. Since we both cars up at the same time we will have at least a 20 gallon fill up which is $20. See how all these little saving can add up?

We are unsure of our weekend plans but one of things we have to do are make Kombucha with our scoby thats coming along nicely. We also have to buy a new toilet seat. I recently twisted my ankle and have to be careful how I step sometimes. I was getting out of the shower, had two dogs running around in circles in our tiny bathroom and was not sure of my footing. I slipped caught myself on the toilet lid and it popped off. I am sure I would be Youtube famous had it been caught on video. Luckily we still have a Lowes card from last months budget. I hope you have a great weekend. As you can see it wont take much to outdo The Ladybug family.