Web Address Change

You guys might notice that I haven't posted to this page in quite a while.   I just haven't had the chance to get any posts up in the past several weeks, and I'm not sure when or if I will be posting regularly in the near future.

Since I'm not using it all that much lately, and being the frugal minded person that I am, I just couldn't see paying to renew my current domain name (www.savingmyselfsilly.com).

I'm still using the blogger platform for my blog, so I am going to be reverting back to my old blogspot address (saving-myself-silly.blogspot.com) starting now.

If you are signed up for my email updates, you should still receive them in your email as usual, and if you follow me on facebook or twitter, none of that should change either.

I am sure that I will be posting here and there, but not regularly and probably not frequently for at least the foreseeable future, but I did not want to just disable the page and lose three years worth of posts containing information that might be helpful to someone.

Everything on my page should still work the same, so if there is a post that you had bookmarked under the old domain, you may use the search feature on my page and re-bookmark it with the correct blogspot address.

Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope that you all have a fabulous summer!

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Garden Update

Growing up, my whole family grew awesome gardens.  I suppose the South Louisiana soil is perfect for such things.  Ever since I moved to Texas, I have been trying my hand at gardening, without a whole lot of success.   I will have good luck with one type of plant in particular during one season, and not be able to get it to grow a bit the next year.   This year hardly any of the seeds that I planted came up.  I am having better luck with some plants that I bought, however.

I still have my container garden in pots along my side fence (which I always plant in early spring and forget that the tree above them will grow its leaves back...so it's a little more shady than would be ideal.)

A month or so ago, I drove up into my driveway from somewhere one night and noticed the neighbors across the street were throwing away two wooden pallets.  I had seen several ideas for pallet gardens on pinterest, so I made my husband go grab them.

I laid them out in my backyard along my old garden plot.  He filled them up with soil before I was able to tell him that I wanted to line them with newspapers, however, so I am having some trouble with grass and ivy (someone had English Ivy growing on our back fence and we have been battling it for 7 years now!) growing up from underneath.

I grew the leeks and lettuces from bases of produce from our Bountiful Baskets.  The leeks are still doing ok, but I am currently battling roly polys.   They've killed a lettuce, a couple celery, and my bok choy.  I'm not happy.    I did some reading up on natural ways to keep insects away and garlic, onions, and hot peppers seemed to be the key.   I planted garlic all around throughout the pallet and today i mixed up a concoction and spread all around and watered it down good, so *crosses fingers*.


I did have one garden highlight this morning:

I've got a tomato peeking out!  And it looks like my basil seeds are finally sprouting (that was one plant that did WELL last year, so I'm excited about that).


Did you plant anything this year?

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May Menu Plan Update

I told you last week about how I was trying to plan out the menu for the entire month of May.

Here was the original plan, in no particular order (crossed out the one's we've eaten):

To Cook:
Red Beans and Rice x2 (plus freeze)
Spaghetti x2 (plus freeze)
Tilapia
Cheddar Chicken x2 (plus freeze)
Chicken & Broccoli x2 (plus freeze)
Shrimp Alfredo
Chicken Pot Pie (plus freeze)
Tacos x2 (plus freeze)
Hamburgers (plus freeze)
Pork steak  (I will likely cook in bulk and freeze)
Potato Soup (plus freeze)
Pancakes x4 (we have this about once a week)
Eggs x2 (we usually do this on busy nights, and hubby doesn't eat eggs, so he finishes off some leftovers)

To Pull From Freezer:
Taco Quiche
Pork Chops
Cabbage Soup
Ham Soup
Italian Sausage Soup
Roast
Beef StewCabbage Casserole
Potato Soup



So here's how last week went:

Monday--had the tacos according to plan (also mixed up and seasoned more of the 15lbs of ground beef I'd bought and made burger patties and meatballs to freeze)
Tuesday--Spaghetti
Wednesday--Spaghetti again (and froze 5 more meals of sauce)
Thursday-stew from the freezer
Friday--Daughter's school showed Wreck-It Ralph and sold pizza/cookies/drinks for $2 per person so we did that
Saturday--Noticed El Rio Grande had T-Bones on sale for $2.99 per pound.  After the movie we were right there by the store and hubby wanted to see how they looked.  They looked good so we purchased enough for three family meals, grilled some on saturday (and made potato salad, so probably won't be making potato soup) and froze the rest.
Sunday--AWANA awards night at church and picnic afterward--church provided hotdogs.

10 burgers (2 meals), 2 bags of meatballs, 4 taco, and 5 spaghetti.  Including the 3 meals we ate from this already, thats 16 meals made in 2 days.

I'd not been remembering those two nights of eating away from home last week, and we will probably do at least one meal out with family visiting for my daughter's birthday next week.

But, this week should be pretty normal, so here are the meals from the list I plan to make this week:

Monday:  Red beans and rice  (put them on in the crock pot early this morning)
Tuesday:  Leftovers  (and freeze)
Wednesday:  Thawing large amount of chicken breast--Cheddar chicken (and freeze some)
Thursday:  Chicken Broccoli (and freeze some)
Friday:  Pork Steaks
Saturday:  Tilapia
Sunday:  Pancakes

Wow.   I just realized that I'm only putting stuff in the freezer this week, and not taking anything out.  I guess that's good to do on a pretty normal week.  And I'll probably be pulling out meals in duplicates with extra people here next week, so we will have to just see how the menu goes then.

What's your plan for the week?

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May Menu

I'm trying something a little bit different this month.   I'm going to try to plan out the meals we will eat for the entire month based on things that we have on hand and things that are on sale.  This morning I made a big trip to get some meats on sale at one of the local hispanic stores.  I spent just over $43 on 25lbs of beef and pork, as well as some cheap veggies, tomato sauce, and a 5lb bag of rice.  I will use this, along with items in my freezer, and will fill in side dishes from the produce we get from our Bountiful Baskets.

Here's the basket we got this weekend:

I plan to cook some meals and pull some meals from the freezer.  If you've been following long, you know that I can't seem to cook just one meal worth of food at a time, so the nights I do cook, we'll be eating AND adding back to the freezer.  Then I will use what I have in the freezer, and the extra deals I've picked up to plan another set of meals for next month.  That's the plan at least!


Here's the plan (in no particular order):

To Cook:
Red Beans and Rice x2 (plus freeze)
Spaghetti x2 (plus freeze)
Tilapia
Cheddar Chicken x2 (plus freeze)
Chicken & Broccoli x2 (plus freeze)
Shrimp Alfredo
Chicken Pot Pie (plus freeze)
Tacos x2 (plus freeze)
Hamburgers (plus freeze)
Pork steak  (I will likely cook in bulk and freeze)
Potato Soup (plus freeze)
Pancakes x4 (we have this about once a week)
Eggs x2 (we usually do this on busy nights, and hubby doesn't eat eggs, so he finishes off some leftovers)

To Pull From Freezer:
Taco Quiche
Pork Chops
Cabbage Soup
Ham Soup
Italian Sausage Soup
Roast
Beef Stew
Cabbage Casserole
Potato Soup



This plan will use up about half the meals already in my freezer, and add another roughly 25 to the freezer over the course of the month.  I like to keep about a month's worth in there at all times, so that will be perfect (plus I'm finishing off a lot of my cool weather food in time for summer).

I haven't worked out the order yet, not even for this week, but I do intend to do tacos tonight.  I bought 15 lbs of ground beef today, and tortillas, plus I have plenty of lettuce and tomato from the basket.  I intend to split the beef into 5 lb chunks and make taco, spaghetti, burger/meatball mixture.

I'm going to be pretty busy in the kitchen over the next few weeks, but it will be worth it to get my freezers stocked back up!

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Last Minute Grocery Shopping: Saved 70%

Since I was feeling bad last week, I didn't make it out to any of the stores.  Today I realized that it had to be today, even though it was rainy and the temp was dropping rapidly.

First I went to Tom Thumb, aren't with a handful of store coupons (from the ad)/manufacturer coupons to stack.

Here's what I got at Tom Thumb:

Two Ken's @$0.99 each with store coupon--used 2 $1/1 =FREE
Two Danimals Crunchers @  $1.69 each--Used $1/2 printable= $1.19 each
Two Chex @  $0.99 each--Used $0.50/2 (doubled) = $0.49 each
Two Nature Valley @  $1.79 each--Used $0.50/2 (doubled) =  $1.29 each

Was a little bummed when I got to the store because only the Nature Valley Crunchy were included, and I prefer the sweet and salty variety, but I decided to give them a try anyway.

Total Shelf Price:  $25.32
Total Sale Price (After Store Coupon):  $10.92   (Already 57% savings)
Price Paid After Coupons:  $5.92  (77% Savings)

It also printed me a $5/$20 coupon good through the end of the month, so I'm hoping there's a good sale next week so I can make use of those extra savings!



Then it was off to Albertsons.  I grabbed a few Mega Items, and a few other things on my list, and then my coupons and I wandered around a bit, so I found a few things to buy that I had not intended to, but all good deals.

Here's what I grabbed:

There are two fuzzy impulse buys there in the foreground.   $9.99 slippers marked down to $2.49. I bought a size too big for each of my girls, and plan to keep them for stocking stuffers.  The little one was with me, but I told her she couldn't have them yet, and I'm betting she completely forgets before long.

I'm not going to itemize everything I bought in this trip, but I paid $30.57 in all, and my receipt says  I saved $64.92 so that means the shelf price of everything was $95.49, so I saved 68%.


All said today, I spent $36.49 on items that sale for $120.81, for an average of 70% saved at both stores.  That's right about where I like my savings rate to be when using coupons, and I was about to stock up on some snack items we've been without for quite some time around here.

Did you do any last minute shopping today?

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Fun Free App: Pocket Penguins

I like free apps  (ok, well I like free stuff in general...).  I download a lot of free apps just to see if I like them for my kids.   Most of them I delete immediately.  Some bore them after a few uses.

Yesterday, I found one that I think they will ask to use over and over.

This app is from the California Academy of Sciences, and it is a live camera feed with three different views of a penguin habitat.   

My little one and I just had the best time watching the penguins swim and play over breakfast.  :)

There are some drawbacks...at night...it's dark, so you can't see anything.  This morning it was plenty bright though.   

I haven't used it enough yet to learn when they are most active and when feeding times will be, but I can see my older one watching the clock with anticipation during the summer.

The link above goes to the Amazon appstore, and will download an Android version.   I'm not sure if there is an iphone/ipad version.   I tried searching the itunes store and found nothing, but it's very possibly user error.  ;)  If anyone finds it on there, feel free to leave a link in the comments. 

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