January's Progress and Exciting News

I'm a little late in posting our progress update for January. We've recently learned that we will be expecting a little bundle of joy in August. This week is the second trimester and I am finally finding a little bit of energy and a lot less nausea. We are so excited that our family is growing. Our mission to be debt free will take a slightly different course for a while but that's okay.

Some changes we made during January were we dropped our weekly grocery budget from $160 to $120. I was incredibly apprehensive about this choice but I was up for the challenge. It turned out really well my first shopping trip of the year was only $89 and that's without coupons!

We also implanted a "make due" week. Make due week is the last week of every month. We continue to set $120 aside for groceries however we only buy the bare essentials and force ourselves to "make due" with what is in our pantry. It forces us to be creative and it's kinda fun.

Other changes we made were to add three new envelopes to our system: Giftmas, Clothing and Family Fun. It's important to set money aside for different categories even if you don't plan on spending money on those items during that particular month. This way you'll be more prepared for the 2-3 birthday party months and it won't break your budget.

January was a fairly good month for us. We had a dipped into our savings during Christmas and so our first priority was to "repay" ourselves for the money spent. We had an unexpected expense when my husband's 15-year old car started acting up because of the severe cold temperatures but thankfully it was only a $100 fix. At the end of the month after bringing our savings account back where it needed to be we were be able to put an extra $171 towards our debt.

Great start to the year of change!

2015 Will Be The Year of Change

My husband and I began the Dave Ramsey Total Money Make Over on January 1, 2013. Though we have paid off $30,000 we still have about $50,000 remaining. We do not have any credit cards and the remaining debt we have is a vehicle loan and education loans.  We have become stagnant in our pursuit to be debt free. We have making our payments, spending only what we have earned but we haven't been making extra efforts like we first did when we initially started this journey.

I am proclaiming that 2015 will be the year of change. My husband and I have a true desire to be debt free. The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7.  I believe that it can happen within the next two years but I would like to see it happen sooner. This year we will be making some more significant changes to help us with our ultimate goal.

Here are some of the changes we will be making this year to be more in intentional with our spending:

Getting Rid of Cable
We have made a decision to get rid of our cable -- after the Superbowl of course. This would easily save us over $1200 a year.

Sticking to CASH only, No Debit card swiping
We got into a bad habit of swiping our debit cards in an effort to "track" our spending during the holidays. Once we started it this we got back into the habit of swiping for every little thing and those purchases added up fast.

Meal Planning, Once a Week Cooking, Using our Crockpot
We need to be better with meals. I may shop for the week and make a meal plan but that meal plan goes quickly out the window during an unexpected illness, school event, extracurricular activities etc. Then we find ourselves ordering take out or buying a rotisserie chicken with all the fixings. No budget friendly.
This year I plan on using my crockpot several times a week. I also plan on trying the once a week cooking or freezer cooking techniques.

Less is More
Trying to use what we have instead of buying more. Reducing our clutter so we are aware of the items we already have or even selling the items that are no longer needed.

Saying NO to ourselves
We actually haven't even said this to ourselves - ever. If we want to go out to dinner, we go. If there is no money left over in our grocery budget for the week we still buy that loaf of bread, jar of gravy etc. This year we have to stick to our budget and say No! That means if there is no money left in the clothing envelope then we will have to make due until the next month.

Looking forward to getting back to our "Gazelle" intense plan to get out of debt in 2015.

Menu Planning Monday

Monday- Quesadillas, Red Beans & Rice, Sliced Apples
Tuesday- Fried Chicken, Macaroni and Cheese, Carrot Sticks and Strawberries
Wednesday- Grilled Chicken Salad, Pears
Thursday- Ham Steaks, Mashed Potato, Corn and Applesauce
Friday- Buffalo Chicken Wraps w/ Chips
Saturday - Grilled Cheese and Soup
Sunday - Breakfast for Dinner

Easy Roll Ups

Photo Credit: Taste Of Home

Tasty, attractive, versatile and budget friendly! I love roll ups. Whenever my church has a potluck or if I'm having a lot of people over I always make roll ups. They are so presentable and easy to make. This is what I do! Use any tortilla wrap you like, spread with any flavor cream cheese and then fill with deli meats, cheeses, veggies etc. Roll tightly. Cover in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for two hours. Cut them in 1.5-2 inch sections and put them on your platter. You can put a toothpick through each one to make it look more decorative or secure it if you roll isn't holding tight enough. Here are some flavor combinations I have used but feel free to use your own and be creative!

Turkey Pesto
Spread cream cheese and pesto on plain wrap. Fill with baked turkey and romaine lettuce.

Southwestern
Mix 1/4 cup of your favorite salsa into a 8oz tub of soft cream cheese. You can add more if you need more flavor. Spread salsa cream cheese mixture on a sun dried tomato wrap. Sprinkle with Mexican cheese blend, chicken and cilantro.

Ham & Cheddar
Spread plain cream cheese on garlic and herb wrap. Layer baked ham and cheddar.

Roastbeef and Swiss
Spread cream cheese and horseradish on a plain wrap. Layer medium rare roast beef and swiss.

Very Veggie
Spread Spinach wrap with vegetable cream cheese. Fill with ice burg lettuce. thinly sliced carrots, red peppers and cucumbers.

Yum :-)

Stacey

Movie Night

We do movie nights in our house at least once a month. It's such an easy activity and the children really look forward to it. What I did was buy a three fold poster board and created our "Box Office". Each child comes to the box office to get their ticket, food and drinks. We always offer water, juice, candy and popcorn.

 

Daddy is the the ticket taker. He takes each childs ticket before they can enter the "theater" (our living room) and issues the rules before he starts the film. His rules are usually silly and make the kids laugh but if he say them, the girls will remind him he needs too.

 

 

 

 

We have done themes on movie nights too. Some of our favorites have been "drive-in" movie nights when we created cars out of cardboard boxes. We have also done a "The Lorax" themed movie night, "Spooky Buddies" and "Barbie: Princess Charm School". We use Redbox or Netflix. Lately Redbox has been emailing cents off codes so it has been costing us .50 to .75 per movie. Affordable and meaningful family entertainment.

 

Stacey 

Bridal Shower

 

My baby sister got married last year. My two sisters and I threw her an amazing Bridal Shower. It was set outside on a beautiful sunny day in the country. We are a very simple and budget minded family. We put together a salad lunch buffett. This included a myriad of dressings, grilled chicken, fresh cooked bacon bit, lettuce, hard boiled eggs, veggies, croutons, cheese etc. We also had rolls and fruit salad to accompany.

 

We should to decorate in yellow and white. As we grew up as children we all had "colors" that would signify what object or belonging was ours. Angela's had always been yellow. 

 

 

We used a combination of white flowers, lemon and dollar store finds to decorate. We also created tissue paper pom- poms to hang from the tent we had. We all coordinated our gift wrapping in yellow and white so that even the gift station looked like it was part of the decorations. 

 

My mother put together these delicious cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting. We served lemonade out of an old fashioned decanter into fancy classes with a lemon twist. It was a very simple but elegant occasion.

 



We played a variety of games including bride & groom trivia, bridal gift bingo and Guess Who. Guess Who was my favorite. We had printed several names of strong females in politics, movies, literature etc. Each woman who attended the party had a name attached to their back. The object of the game was to guesss who you were. This could be done using only yes or no questions. All winners to the games go to pick a hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works. Each prize was only $1.00. They were practical and pretty!

 

It was a lovely afternoon.

 

Stacey

Menu Planning Monday

Monday: Chicken Tacos, Spanish Rice, Corn
Tuesday: Slow Cooker Pork Chops, Mashed Potato, Corn
Wednesday: Quesadillas, Red Beans & Rice
Thursday: Shepard's Pie, Crescent Rolls and Fruit
Friday: Meatball Subs
Saturday: Dinner Out
Sunday: Spaghetti & Meatballs, Salad and Cottage Cheese

Chicken Taco recipe to follow soon!