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.
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