Grocery Shrink

Here’s a quick video I filmed of straining the yogurt I made in my slow cooker. Since I made the yogurt during the day. I refrigerated it overnight. It still strained, but slower and a lot less whey came off then when I strained it warm. You can click here to get the slow cooker yogurt instructions.

I love it when you ask questions!  That  helps me write a post I know you can use :).   The answer is Yes!  I price watch on Amazon by filling my cart with what I’m interested in and just not buying it.  Amazon saves my cart if I’m logged in.  I can log in every day and if the price has changed there will be a big yellow box at the top of my shopping cart screen with all the price changes in it.  Sometimes the price goes up and sometimes down.

Waiting hasn’t always worked out great.  I once found green twin size duvets for $11, thought about it for a few minutes.  Price checked other discount stores online.  Found out it was the deal of the century and went back to buy and the price had increased to $35.  All my checking took maybe 30 minutes.  I bought plain white ones on sale a little later at a local store for $14, so all in all, it worked out okay. 

I do the swag buck thing too and earn a $50 gift card once a month or so.  When I’m ready to buy at Amazon, I click buy later on any item I’m not ready to pay for yet, and then check out.

The beauty of this watching game is often I decide I can live without the item after all.  That is the biggest money saver of all :).

I haven’t had a sewing post for awhile.  Dub and Brandon have new twin beds with drawers in the bottom.  I finally gave up on ever building the lovely storage beds from Anna White and put these in my shopping cart at Amazon.  And waited. And waited.  And then one day the price dropped down to $135 a bed with free shipping and I snagged them.  The price had gone as high as $239 each while I was watching them.  What a surprise!  I’m now very patient with buying items on Amazon and watch the price fluctuations and buy at the bottom. 

Darren put together the frames and I built all the drawers.  It was very satisfying.  I’ve decided I like to build when it’s all precut, presanded, prefinished and predrilled, lol.  Ana would be disappointed to hear that.

Now the boy’s have a tidy room, with floor space to play, but no curtains and no bed covers. 

I purchased a gray flat sheet and a white sheet from Wal-mart for $5 each and have cut them into wide strips that I am piecing together to make horizontal striped tap top curtains.  While I sew I am chanting, “Please don’t look like jail curtains….please don’t look like jail curtains….”

I also purchased some fun fabrics on sale at fabric.com to piece duvet covers.  I’ve come up with two different designs, patterned and random.  I’m leaning towards the patterned one–what do you think?

I used a virtual quilting method I figured out with power point–fun and less messy than sewing.  But nothing real to show for it when I’m done.

…anything is possible.  God’s will that is.  And I think that God wants us to be smart with our money–stretch it, be generous with it, but not waste it. 

I did run to Costco yesterday and bought 2 gallons of milk and a 5 dozen pack of eggs. I used the money that I made selling Mary Kay products.  By delivering them on the way, I collected cash for the trip.  One gallon is for the kids to drink and one gallon is in my slow cooker right now becoming yogurt. 

I have a bunch of lovely posts all written in my head–with no photos and no time.  They include how to make Spanish rice (for a dear reader who asked the difference between Spanish rice and just plain brown rice.) And my before and during pictures of my journey with Fit Yummy Mummy, plus more details about how it works so well, and hopefully answer your questions about whether it is worth the $$.

But for now, here’s a little inspiration for you and for me to come back and read when I’m feeling burnt out:

I have been completely overwhelmed since Grant was born, but this week, facing a budget and food crisis I took a deep breath, pushed back my sleeves and took action.  I ground brown rice to use instead of white flour (ran out) in our chicken puffs tonight.  You can’t taste the difference, but I know they are healthier.  I have yogurt forming in my slow cooker that will be ready to strain in 30 minutes and I cooked large batches of brown rice and quinoa and then divided them into serving size portions for my Fit Yummy Mummy diet.  I also stirred up a batch of 5 minute whole grain bread and baked it all up.  (The kids weren’t too impressed but are eating it since there is nothing else, lol.)  Part of the problem with the bread is we are out of white wheat berries and I’ve had to use red.  It shows me how coarse the bran is in red wheat compared to white wheat.  It cuts the gluten strands in my bread dough all to shreds and makes it quite coarse. 

Digression:  I’ve recommended CLNF.org in the past and still think they are a fine company, but recently I was introduced to Azure Standard.  Their delivery schedule is more convenient for me and I’m planning to order from them next.  They have many of the same products at similar prices.

Ok, I’ve decided I had no business blogging tonight.  This is a bunch of blah blah blah, but I was really tired of seeing the big black  I Messed Up on my screen every time I tried to work and wanted to put a new one up there :).

I teach the way I teach because it’s the right way to do things, and because I need to hear it too :P.  I messed up this week and now I’m out of grocery money and out of milk, bread, eggs, and hamburger. Produce will run out soon too. How does this happen?!!!  I know I gave some of my grocery money in the church basket when Darren preached out of town, and I might have used a few dollars at a garage sale.  (If you’ve been to my live seminar you know I warn you to never take money out of one envelope for another category.  It’s like the fish out of water story, “Something may happen and now I know what.”  )

Thankfully I have dry milk and egg powder to bake with. Plenty of wheat berries to grind or cook up.  I had previously purchased boneless skinless chicken breasts when they were on sale for $.99 a lb and will thaw and grind them to use like ground turkey in my recipes.  I will be making English mufins to have for breakfasts this week (my kids are addicted to whole grain toast for breakfast.) And I’m going to throw together a large batch of dough from the HealthyBread in 5 minutes a day cookbook. I started a new batch of clover sprouts tonight so that we would have some fresh food to eat.  They would be lovely on some pitas with tuna or chicken slices.

I’m a little overwhelmed at the thought of cooking this week, but I’ve done it before and I can do it again.  It’s not panic time, it’s think outside the box time and plan ahead and work a little harder time.  Tonight I served multi-grain blender waffles from Sue Gregg’s cookbook (google Sue Gregg blender waffles adn get a free recipe) with homemade syrup.  And tomorrow I will make pot roast from the freezer and use the leftovers for beef stew on Monday. 

I write this post because I want you to know that I mess up too.  (More than I publish for the world to see.)  But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give up and throw in the towel.  Since I’m in a special contest with Fit Yummy Mummy, I may go out with my sales job and sell enough to buy produce to allow me to stick to my program.  But if I don’t, it will still be okay.

Renee won our Frugal Activity contest with her 33 tallies!  Here’s her intervew:

Hooray!  I worked through the learning curve and my new ebook is now available.  I tried something new this time and embedded some how-to video files in it.  This ebook takes the Grocery Shrink method from the first ebook about food and shows you how to use the same principles to shrink your clothing budget, all without compromising your style. This book is vital this time of year as we switch from warm weather to cool weather clothes. Let me show you how to make that change as painless as possible.

It is 50 pages long and includes printable pages to help you plan clothing menus for every member of your family.  This ebook shows you how to eliminate waste, maximize your dollars, and keep it organized at the same time.  For a larger view of the contents click on the photo below:

Until September 22nd, this e-book is available for half price  $10  $5!

 Please note this is a ditigal file and nothing will come in the mail.  As soon as your payment is received download instructions will be emailed to you.  Sometimes these are sent to to the spam folder by accident.  If you have any trouble, please email me and I’ll fix it for you.

A mountain is climbed step by step.  The most beautiful cathedral was built stone by stone. 

Our daily actions–the consistent choices, bring us to where we are today.

So what’s your FAT?

Frugal

Activity

Tally

If you want to make a difference in your budget, and reach your goals, it’s the little things you do every day that make the biggest difference.  And often those little things are overlooked and underappreciated.

I’m going to start recognizing it for you!  So write down your FAT today and post it in your comment below.  Here’s an example:

Prepared a brown bag lunch

Used cloth diapers

Used a cloth napkin

Used a homemade cleaning product

Cooked dinner from scratch

Used my Slow Cooker

Combined errends to save gas

Reused a baggie

Used the clothesline

Total:  9

When we read what other frugal activities people are doing, we are inspired, motivated and peer pressured into stepping it up.  And one of you lovely ladies will be chosen Queen of frugal activities for the day. (And NO, that won’t EVER be called the FAT queen, lol.) The Queen will be recognized in a blog post and be chosen to give more words of wisdom to the rest of us–and will get a PRIZE, tba.  So you have until Friday, to write down a FAT from one day in the comments–any day you choose this week.   FACEBOOK coments now count.  I have a lovely plug-in that will grab your facebook comments and post them right here too, yay.

I can’t wait to read about what you do that makes a difference for your family.

I want to check in and let you know that lack of posting doesn’t mean lack of activity :).  I finished my ebook last weekend and the file size is 1.5 Gig!  I have a lot of embedded videos in there and I’m working on shrinking everything so it can be useable.  I’m not very techy, so this involves a lot of research and study and trial and error.  But I’m hoping to have it all finished soon.

I’ve started a brand new newsletter program also and could only mail out to half the group this week while the new host is getting used to our HUGE list.  Thanks, friends, for all your support–and making it huge.  Those of you who get the new newsletter, I’d love your feedback on the content and what you’d like to see there.  I’m still working out the bugs on the template, it should get better and better every week.