Frugal In Florida

Before I went to bed last night, I tossed some boneless pork country ribs in the crockpot with a cup of water & a quartered onion. Put on low and let it cook overnight. This morning, turned it off, pulled out all the meat & onions & put on platter to cool. After it cooled, pulled off all the fat and onions and tossed. Emptied the juice from crock, added meat back to crock as I pulled it apart with fingers (ok, they say use a fork, but that just takes way too long!) ... added a bottle of bbq sauce, salt & pepper, a dash of liquid smoke, put cover on & will have kids turn back on low when they get home at 3pm. Peeled & chopped 6 taters. Boiled 4 eggs. Made a quick potato salad too. When I get home, will toss a can of baked beans in saucepan with a splash of liquid smoke & a few dehydrated onions ... toast up a few of the kaiser rolls I got on clearance that I tossed in freezer over weekend and we will have bbq pork sandwiches with potato salad & bbq be...

Since I spent over $470 this weekend on food (ok, maybe $430 was food, rest was other stuff), and my freezers are packed and the pantry is stuffed, I figured that maybe I should put myself on a challenge to a) save money; b) prevent waste and c) clean up & organize. So, I'm going to see if I can't survive on $20 a week for the next 4 weeks for groceries. This will include milk, produce and bread. Hmmm. Think I can do it? I think so. Of course, this would NOT include the kids school lunches, that cost $2.50 each, per day, 4 days a week, there went my budget! Figure this: milk is $4.49 a gallon. BUT if I go the extra 2 miles to BJ's, I can get it for $3.79. Don't quite know if it's worth the extra gas (given the price of gas nowdays) to go a little further just to save 70 cents or so. If cvs or walgreens was to put it on sale, then it wouldn't be such a big deal. Bread, $1.19 for the cheapest store brand I can find. Even the bread store hasn't really b...

We went to our friends for dinner on Friday night so no biggie there. Shopped at Costco on Saaturday and spent a ton of money. Had taken out the shepards pie from freezer on Thursday and we had that for dinner on Saturday & Sunday (it was a big tray!). Monday I made pizzas. I would normally make the crust too, but when at Walmart, saw the thin crust for $3.38 for 2. Picked up 2 packages and figured heck, I'll use one and see how it is. Not bad. Alot less hassle, and I figured it didn't really cost that much, $1.75 or so each for the crust. Still would keep the pizza under $3 I figured. One was just cheese & pepperoni. The other was cheese, parm cheese, pepperoni, chopped onion & brocolli. Because dd's b/f was here (didn't know he was coming!!), tossed in a frozen pizza I had in the freezer too. Keep telling the kids you can't invite when I'm in the MIDDLE of making dinner without asking!! 2 of the small dinner plates are chipped already!! I t...

Kind of a strange header, I know. Things are looking grim as far as the stock market goes. The past 2 days have had headlines in the local news and newspaper about the rising cost of food & gas, especially here in south Florida. Duh. Where have they been?? DH forwarded me an email from the President of his company. No 401K matches for 2008. No salary increases for 2008 (Directors & up, which he's in) and 15% decrease in VP's & up (which he's not). Geesh. His company is very heavy in the tourist industry so ... yeah, makes sense! :( I know we are 'struggling' at my company. Not as much as others, and not enough to make me concerned that we would close our doors. My co-worker & I have already cut back our days, we rotate 4 day weends. Every other Friday and Monday I'm off. Nice, but shows on the paycheck too. We've become more diligent about billing our clients for all out of pocket expenses that we incur. Used to be a 'wash' but n...

Time flies when you are having fun :) Went to the casino with g/f yesterday ... went in with $195, walked out with $125. Should have left hours before as I would have been much further ahead. For being a frugal minded person, I am shocked that I can play slots :( The neighborhood kitty showed up again over the weekend. Thank god, I can now stop worrying about it! :) Of course, last night, he chased another cat off the patio, down the road & haven't seen either one since. The other one is a male that's not fixed who started coming around Saturday night. The kids made the mistake of feeding him & now he strolls in the house if the slider is open :( Work is plugging along. Not any busier but not any slower either, so that's good. I certainly hope the economy picks up pretty soon though, all the news about recessions, subprime woes, etc. are not GOOD in my office. Being real estate lawyers is not exactly where you want to be right now, unless you specialize in f...

It's been awhile since I played with CVS shopping :) ... this morning, swung by there on my way to work as we are running low on shampoo and they had a sale going on. Bought 1 bottle of Garnier for $2.99. Used my $1 off coupon (have about 5 of these somehow), which lowered the price to $1.99. Final cost was $2.17 (since when do they charge tax on shampoo??) ... then the receipt printed out with my $2.00 rewards bux. Then I got a new lipstick (50% off) and an eyeshadow (75% off). Handed her my $2 coup and a $1.50 coupon. Needed to spend another 13 cents or something stupid, so picked up a hersheys bar ... paid 43 cents. Did not realize there was a hershey sale going on. Buy 4 for $2.00 and get $1 back. So, I have a reece whipped coupon of b1g1f, so will by 3 total for $1 and will get $1 back :) I kind of like this game!! Really need to pick up some toothpaste. Thought there was some sale, but have to look at the sale flyer a little closer. Been busy at work and haven't h...

I really do have the menu planned to the end of January but of course, a few open days and is always up for modification & changes! Sunday – salsbury steaks & egg noodles (plenty leftover for lunches) Monday – leftovers (basically, fend for yourself!) Tuesday – Chicken noodle stir fry – uses ramen noodles, frozen veggies, teriyaki sauce and peanuts or cashews Wednesday - perogies & fried cabbage (perogies were a great deal @ BJS) Thursday – tacos Friday – homemade mac & cheese with smoked sausage Saturday - chicken (not sure how or what type, most likely thighs as dh loves & we haven’t had in a while). Most likely will have friends over for dinner

I am not really big on vitamin and supplements. I think you should be getting all your nutrients through your diet, but apparently most people think that’s too difficult? The vitamins I do take are: Osteo Bi-flex Glucosamine chondrotrin msm with joint shield Life Fitness Calcium, Magnesium & Zinc I really don’t care about the name brands, just the 2 that I’ve been able to find. Both are expensive. Both were purchased with B1G1F deals. I take the Calcium mix because my BIL is a HS PE director and is always fighting colds once school is back in session. He started to take it and only had one cold last year. That’s pretty impressive. I have a friend who we call the pharmaceutical dude (that’s what his college major was in) and swears by anything with zinc when fighting an illness (swears by zicam, etc.) I’ve been taking it and even though I forget to take daily quite often (silly me, hate taking meds) for about 6 months and have only been sick once, which I think was mostly due t...

Publix has Peter Pan peanut butter on sale for $1.00 Coupon in Sunday paper for $1.00 off any Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Total cost $0.00 Need to stop and pick up (we do use peanut butter a lot, for cookies J) and walk out with nothing else in my hands!! I can do it! I know I can!!

A few weeks back, I had went to the main library down town to meet the kids & give them a ride home (must have been Christmas eve, as I left the office around noon) and while waiting for them to finish up, was browsing the movies. Then my dd told me that the branch by us is better (Galt Reading Room) as its a very small branch but 20% is movies. So I said ok, we will check it out later then. We went and I ended up getting the first 4 episodes of Deadwood for dh (he loved that show) and Wayne's World for ds and then Kill Bill for all (ok, not really a family movie but we've all wanted to see it). Dd got 4 movies to watch (house of wax & some other weird things). Not one of the movies gave us any problems. We had a 5 day period before turning them back in. They have a 'decent' selection of movies, but not the most recent releases (within last 6 months). We also belong to Blockbuster by mail program. This cost $14.99 plus tax to $15.89. I can have any 2 movies m...

Convinced dh to ride along with me to the produce store & then walmart as he will keep my time and cash management under control :) The produce store was mobbed. And the produce sucked. Really didn't see anything that made me jump up & down with joy. Tomatoes were still green. Peppers were iffy. I still spent $20 there on lettuce (2 for $1.50) and a green & 2 small peppers, bananas, cilantro, snow peas, kiwis, and dh wanted some ground chicken and navy beans for his white chicken chili he wants to make next time it gets cold out. Then we went to Walmart. Not my favorite store, but needed to do a little grocery shopping, and also we both have $25 gift cards so I wanted to look at new dishes. All of mine are mismatched, chipped, etc. :) You know how it is when you have kids! We went straight to the household section. They had this really nice display on the end shelf. Told dh, that's the set I want. Found 2 boxes, unopened. Put them in cart, looked at the rubberm...

I have the checking & savings account (mine) linked on line so I can view both when I log in ... which is really cool because I can transfer funds between the 2. Normally a good thing but found myself 'borrowing' from the savings account and then forgetting to pay it back immediately :) We all know how that is!! I moved $500 into the savings today and saw that I only have $529.21!! :( That is NOT good! Need to start feeding that bad boy to make him fat!! So, then I thought, what I really should do is take $20 out of each check I get & put it in ... that would give me at least $120 a month since I get 6 checks a month, sometimes more .... actually, no, now that I think about it, 2 big checks, 4 small checks, 1 to 3 bonus checks ... hmmm ... that really could add up. I am already saying that I HAVE to put $20 from each check, or minimum of $40 a week towards the credit card. $2500 balance and I don't even used the damn thing :( ... grrr. Did notice that they have...

Dh & I have had a membership at LA Fitness for about 7 years now. When we first got the membership, we used it 3, 4 sometimes 5 days a week each. Then dh had the motorcycle accident. Silly me didn't even think of putting the membership on hold until 6 months later and he still was not able to go to the gym, which meant I wasn't going either. Finally, we started going again. But nothing like we used to. Then I put it on hold for about a year. Late last summer, dh wanted to start going back to get a little more in shape before he started with the reconstructive surgery in November. So took it off hold & went back to the normal billing cycle. I SHOULD have put it on hold the last week of November, but forgot about it. Just did it today which means it won't start until January 31st. Putting the membership on hold still cost $10.60 (includes tax!?) a month, as opposed to the $67 a month for active membership. It's better than cancelling the membership in my opin...

Ended up running to the grocery store when I went to bank during my lunch hour. Aeromexico finally sent me a check for $500 to cover the lost luggage. Doesn’t exactly cover the cost of everything, but at least it’s a start. Publix has a coupon good through 1/11/8 for free grape tomatoe clamshell when you buy 2 dole salad bags. The dole bags were on sale this week 2 for $4. The tomatoes are $3.29 at my store. So even though I don’t buy the bags of salad often, I did this week, 2 times J The tomatoes really are yummy and heck, since a head of lettuce cost me $1.69 now, might as well buy a bag for a few cents more AND get the free tomatoes. The sale ends tonight though, but at least I got to utilize it a bit. Had to also pick up more milk. A gallon of 2% is $4.29. Geesh. I had picked up some last Friday at BJ’s for $3.79 I think it was. Remember standing there and just could NOT believe that was a good deal, but it was! L

Thank god I made it!! :) Everyone ended up leaving (except one couple who slept over) around 3am. Grrr. 3 bottles of champagne later (one from neighbor and 2 from me) we were pretty much wiped out. Spent the day on New Years laying around on couch watching tv (american pie - band, saving silverman (?? not sure if that was really the name of it?), video - kill bill (from library) and the 1st 2 episodes of Deadwood from library). Food was just left overs from the night before, what was left and lasagna from Sunday night. DH, such a sweetheart, got up & made scrambled eggs, fried ham & english muffins for everyone around 10am. Nice guy ... just what we needed! Dd colored her hair, the underside, purple. That was pretty bizarre. She assures me that it washes out in a few weeks. Better. :) Heck, she's 17 now (my baby!!!!) and I need to let her grow a little more. We will most likely take her to get her license this week or weekend. Not that she will be able to drive alone ...