I’m a big Costco fan. I’m pretty sure that I save money going there. And frankly, who doesn’t love buying 200 rolls of toilet paper at a pop so you don’t have to think about it for a couple of months? I tend to hit Costco every 6-8 weeks and when I go, I stock up. This is where you have to take a long term vision of your grocery budget because if you’re stuck in a $75 per week place, you’d never go to Costco.

There are a few staples that I love to buy at Costco that I save a pretty penny on. For example, I nabbed 10lbs of sugar, 50lbs of flour, 6lbs of tortilla chips, 3 lbs of coffee, 4lbs of shredded cheese and 2.5lbs of peanuts, among other things. The tab for food stuffs? $191.51. We’ll see how that jives with our grocery budget over the next few weeks.

This week, our meal plan looks like this:

Thursday: grilled cheese, tomato soup and apples
Friday: pizza and pears
Saturday: sausage, mashed potatoes and oranges
Sunday: Ethiopian lentil stew, rice, green beans and cantaloupe
Monday: chicken and broccoli casserole, rice and cantaloupe
Tuesday: black bean and quinoa burritos with guacamole, oranges
Wednesday: leftovers

The tab at my grocery store? $47.05.

So, for those of you keeping score, I’ve spent $378.51 out of the $400 we have budgeted for groceries this month. Clearly, we’re going to spend a bit more than $400 since I plan to go to the grocery store one more time this month. But, I’ve set myself up beautifully to be under budget in February because I have the house completely stocked after my Costco trip. That’s where a little bit of long term vision is an asset.

You may also notice that we don’t eat a ton of meat. That’s true. We go meatless about half the time. Ever since I had massive tofu cravings during my third pregnancy (yes, I know that’s strange), I’ve had less of a taste for meat so I tend to cook and eat less of it.

Anyway, my savings tips this week?

If you have a club membership, exploit it for bulk savings. I save a ton of money buying things like artichokes and peanuts in bulk.

Use coupons. I subscribe to my Sunday paper for the coupons. When online coupons become more digitized and less piss-away-your-printer-ink-for-$.35-off-your-yogurt, I’ll make the switch. Anyway, for $54, I get the Sunday paper year round. I save an average of $3/week off my groceries by using coupons, occasionally much more. That’s about $160/year. Minus the cost of the paper, call it $100. Does it take a little effort? Yup. But I’m not the type to see $100 on the ground and walk by it because I’m too lazy to bend over.

You can check out websites like coupon mom that match the coupons in your Sunday paper with sales at your local grocery store to get the best savings. I get a lot of free toothpaste that way.

Happy eating!

Check out the before and after shot for my Sunday project: a dress up wardrobe for the girls!

I decided that we needed a new strategy for organizing dress up clothes since the toss-everything-in-the-box concept was a failure. I spotted this project on Pinterest and in my sleep-deprived mother-of-three-kids-four-and-under kind of way, I decided, “Hey, I could do that.”

So I took a list of wood cuts I needed over to The Home Depot and stared blankly at cuts of pine until a store employee came over to help me. I often find there are two ways to get good service at Home Depot. #1. Be female and attractive. #2. Bring a herd of small children with you. I left the kids at home this time around. The best part about Home Depot is that they’ll cut the wood for you if you ask them to. It’s less I have to do and I’m pretty lazy.

Here I am with my wood and my drill:

I pre-drilled some holes for my screws and got down to it. Beginner’s tip here: Be sure that you measure where your holes are going because it’s a pain in the ass when they don’t line up well. This project is ideal for beginners because building a box is extremely easy and you get good results quickly. I went from slabs of wood to a wardrobe in an hour and 45 minutes, including a time out to breast feed #3 and put her down for a nap. Brendan also assisted by printing out an arch for me to trace onto the side cuts so I could jigsaw two relatively even arches.

Here it is:

Of course, I live in a world of little girls and we’re pretty fond of our pink over here.

So, a few beginner tips for painting. Paint from the top to the bottom because as Michaelangelo said, “That shit doth drip.” And use two coats. I picked up a quart of Behr semi gloss paint and primer combo in Disney’s Princess Power pink (DC2C-40-3).

Of course, no giant pink wardrobe would be complete without letters. I have the artistic skills of a two-year-old but I printed out some giant letters from my computer; that’s copperplate font. I cut those out and traced them with a Crayola washable marker and then painted them in Disney Enchanted Coach Ride pink (DC2C-40-4), which I bought in a sample size. If you didn’t paint over the marker lines, they’ll wash right off.

Done!

Cost: About $45. You could go cheaper on the paint, but I wouldn’t.

What’s the pain in the ass factor here? It really depends on how much you like to paint. Building the box is easy so long as you have the most rudimentary understanding of how to use a drill and a saw (and trust me, you can gain that understanding in about two minutes). The painting is easy but it does take a bit of time. It was 55 degrees here today so I put the wardrobe on an old shower curtain and painted it on the front porch. To me, it’s pretty relaxing but I could see how someone else could find it a bit tedious. The block lettering is irksome, but for minor irritation, you get a beautiful result so I think it’s worth it.

Fun, easy and utilitarian!

Time for everyone’s favorite blog feature: what the Loys are having for dinner this week. Here it is:

Thursday: pizza and apples
Friday: sausage, spinach and egg casserole and oranges
Saturday: black bean veggie burgers and pears
Sunday: Thai chicken with rice and broccoli
Monday: creamy cheese ravioli spinach bake and carrot sticks
Tuesday: spaghetti and meatballs, oranges
Wednesday: leftovers

Our grocery tab this week? $44.95

So where am I getting my awesome recipes? I’ve been copying some good ones out of a cookbook called The Six O’Clock Scramble that I checked out of the Denver Public Library. Everything I’ve tried so far I’ve liked and the recipes have been easy enough for me to cook them with my six-month-old strapped to my chest and two hungry preschoolers underfoot.

My secrets to a low grocery bill this week? First, use what you’ve got. I made potatoes and kielbasa last week. The leftover kielbasa is going into my egg casserole. Tada! I also stumbled on a BOGO sale for chicken last week, so I’m using chicken I stuck in the freezer for our Thai chicken dinner on Sunday. I bought 8lbs of oranges last week. We’re still eating them and will be for awhile. A little planning goes a long way toward keeping your grocery bill down. I also write on my weekly plan any food I still have in the freezer that I need to use in upcoming meal plans. I also found organic bananas on sale for $.35/lb so the girls will be eating some variation of banana bread for breakfast after they finish their pumpkin bread.

So confession time. My grocery bill is artificially low for one reason. I have utilitarian pets. Long story short, I sold a bit of gold because prices are so nice and I bought myself a small chicken coop with the proceeds. We have a backyard flock of four little hens that produce about 15 eggs a week in the winter. Since the chickens are pets, I don’t count the cost of their feed toward the grocery budget, particularly because they eat so many kitchen scraps. It’s a pretty sweet deal. Those uneaten crusts left behind by the kids get fed to the chickens who squirt out eggs a couple times a week. Nice, eh?

Here’s the recipe for the black bean burgers:

1 can black beans
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2c minced red onion
1/2c bread crumbs
1/4tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 egg, lightly beaten
salt and pepper
1/4c cornmeal
3 tbsp oil

Mash beans with fork. Add all ingredients save for the cornmeal and oil. Stir. Make patties. Coat patties with cornmeal. Heat oil. Fry patties over medium heat for 3 minutes/side. Tada! Dinner.

This cookbook is designed for those of us with picky eaters so you may want to boost your spices if you like, I dunno, flavor. :) I like to top my veggie burgers with guacamole (avocado + lime + cilantro + salt = yum). Happy eating!

Three little kids, painful surgery and a longish recovery and the holidays pretty much decimated my workout schedule, which was admittedly anemic to begin with. But like so many other Americans, I used the New Year as an excuse to jump start my work out routine. I’m pretty desperate to start a running habit but I have a confession.

I suck at running.

It’s not just minor suckage. I hardcore suck at it. In my couch to 5k training program, the first week has workouts where you alternate 45 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking. After one workout, I waited 5 days for the soreness to fade. My shins, hips and legs *hurt*. And I found myself wondering if maybe I’d be better off at some other exercise, like lifting piles of dip into my mouth with a tortilla chip. But there’s the rub. Even though I was sore and hobbling around the house, I honestly couldn’t wait to get back out there and do it again.

And when I’m running for 45 seconds, I daydream about finishing longer races, about giving my family sweaty hugs at the end, about running in different seasons, in different weather, through different challenges that will inevitably arise in my life. Because I’m like that. When I’m at the bottom of a mountain, I inevitably look at the top of it and imagine the view. I don’t fantasize about the hours of training and sore shins that accompany that view and maybe that’s because I know that if I can just get my butt out the door, I’m halfway there.

In workouts as in life, 90% of it is just showing up. So, even though I’m tired, I haven’t slept through the night in seven months, I’d rather be sleeping and I suck at running, I’m gonna try showing up for awhile and see where the road takes me.

I’m pretty proud of my grocery budget and the fact that our family of 5 consistently eats for less than $400/month. A couple people have asked me how I do it, so I figured I’d start posting a few of my meal plans, tips and tricks. I typically shop at our local Kroger (though this particular store is heinous, but hey, it’s mine) but you can do this with any local market.

I spent $95 this week on food. Here’s what we’re eating for dinner:

Thursday: saag paneer with brown rice and strawberries
Friday: baked artichoke pasta and oranges
Saturday: spinach burritos and apples
Sunday: chicken and olives, whole wheat french bread, broccoflour and pears
Monday: potatoes and kielbasa and apples
Tuesday: taco chili and oranges
Wednesday: leftovers

For breakfast, I tend to eat cereal and berries, Brendan likes bagels and the girls typically eat some kind of vegetable bread (this week, it’s whole wheat pumpkin flax) and bananas.

For lunches, we eat leftovers and the girls tend to eat some variation on sandwiches, quesadillas or pasta. I pack Brendan’s lunch for work and brown bagging saves us a TON of money.

Tips this week:
1. Always check your receipt! I saved $12 because of store error. My artichoke hearts and broccoflour were free. Know your store’s policies. Mine gives you your produce for free if the price is wrong in the register. I find mistakes every week. I check my receipt while I let my older girls ride a penny horse near the customer service desk.
2. Buy things on sale! I nabbed 8lbs of naval oranges for $3.99. My organic pears were $.99/lb.
3. Make things yourself. Baby food is the biggest rip off in the history of the universe. I pureed a can of pears myself. $.99 makes an entire ice cube tray full and the baby eats about a cube at a sitting. Compare that to the two servings of Gerber food you pay $1 for and the math is easy.

Guest post by Becky Loy

Homemade laundry soap is wonderful if you’re frugal and/or if you have eczema. Compared to about $.14/load for something like All Free and Clear, you can make your own soap for less than $.01/load. And unlike many other so-called easy, frugal solutions, this one rates low for the pain-in-the-ass factor.

You need four things to make your own soap: a 5-gallon bucket, washing soda, borax and Fels Naptha soap. You can also use Zote soap or something equivalent.

Grate the Fels Naptha and put it in a saucepan.

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