Keeper of our Home

Apr. 15, 2008

Grocery Budgeting Part 4

What do you and your children drink during the day?

We aim to drink water during the day, except for a glass of juice with our breakfast. Hubby enjoys his cups of coffee, and I'll have a cup or two of tea. The children sometimes have a hot cup of milo( hot chocolate) in the evenings, especially with winter coming on now.

We only have fizzy drink ( soda) once per week. I buy one bottle to have on Sundays, and we don't all even have a glass as we're not that crazy on the taste.

Drinking water is not only good for you, it's good for the budget. I must try and get back to drinking my 8 glasses per day. I've been a little slack of late!

Cost for the week: $4 approx for coffee, tea, milo and lemonade. I haven't included the juice as that's past of our breakfast budget.

By cutting back on lemonade and sugary drinks you can see the savings in your weekly grocery bill. Multiply your savings by 52 weeks, and you might get quite a surprise!

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Apr. 14, 2008

Grocery Budgeting Part 3

Dinners: we have set menu nights:

Monday- Pasta night
Tuesday- Soup
Wednesday- homemade pizza night (and salad)
Thursday- Potato, meat and veggie night
Friday- Rice dish
Saturday- Soup
Sunday- egg night

We will have meat about 3xs per week which helps to keep costs lower, and is better for your health. According to the NZ Heart Foundation we should only eat red meat 2-3 x per week at the most.

We have homemade yoghurt for desserts 5 nights per week and in the weekends we make our own desserts and have ice cream with them usually.

I try to keep our dinner (and dessert) meals to $5-7 per time depending on the meat costs, but over the course of the week the cheaper meals will balance out the more expensive ones.

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Apr. 13, 2008

Grocery Budgeting Part 2

Yesterday we talked about breakfast and how to have a good, healthy but frugal breakfast.

Today we'll talk about lunch. We have very simple lunches and always the same, except for Sundays when we often have guests for lunch. So from Monday through to Saturday we eat our yummy homemade wholemeal bread. This costs us about $1 per loaf to make. We usually need 1 1/2 loaves per day and make extra if we need fresh bread to go with our dinner when we have soup. We enjoy eating fresh salad toppings on our bread each day: lettuce, cucumber, grated carrot, tomatoes, sprouts - whatever we have on hand, or growing in the garden. For the remainder of our sandwiches we have a selection of spreads- peanut butter, homey, jam, vegemite and cheese.

We would spend about $5 per week on bread coverings ( spreads) and $10-11 for the bread. Salad toppings vary as we have spent nothing of late due to our summer garden, but $2-3 would cover the week as I tend to buy what's in season so in the winter time we eat a lot of grated carrot for example.We would spend $7 on cheese as well for the week for sandwiches.

We drink water with our lunch each day.

On Sundays we often have soup, sandwiches, pizza (homemade), cake, pickets, scones-whatever we have baked.

Overall I think our lunches for the week would cost about $25.

So breakfast and lunch together come to about $37 per week.

Tomorrow we'll talk about dinners.

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Apr. 12, 2008

Rising food costs and keeping to one's budget Part1

Over the next few posts I aim to cover some ways we cope with the rising food costs and our budget.

I'll start with breakfast. The children and I all eat oatmeal for breakfast 6 days of the week. On Sundays the older children eat cold cereal and milk as a treat. I still like my hot bowl of oatmeal, so I have it on Sundays too, as well as my 4 yr old and baby daughter.

So from Mon- Sat we eat hot oatmeal. My daughter soaks 2 cups of oatmeal with 6-7 cups of water the night before and then just cooks it up in the morning. We add a little milk and brown sugar- yum! This costs us 5-7c per serving! ( depending on the price of the oatmeal)

We drink a glass of juice every morning also, and my hubby eats fruit for breakfast, which I buy from the orchard at the moment. We have stewed fruit on Sunday mornings with our breakfast. I have stewed up enough for a year and it's all in our freezer ready to use.I bought the fruit from the orchard for 40c per kg.

Cost for the week:

Oatmeal $2.60
Cold cereal 70c
Stewed fruit ( Sundays only) 20c
Brown sugar $1
Milk $2.50
Juice $4.50
Fruit for hubby each day 70c

Total: 12.20 approx divided by 7 days= $1.75 per breakfast.

$1.75 divided by 8 people= 21-22c per person for breakfast each day.

Now, if we didn't drink juice our breakfasts would be quite a lot cheaper, but we like our juice!

If we ate cold cereal and milk every morning I think our costs would be quite a lot higher. If we ate weetbix every morning we would need 1 1/2 large boxes @ about $7-8 and then 10 litres of milk $25. So just for cereal and milk it would cost us $32-33 alone. We would be closer to the $40 mark for our week's worth of breakfasts, so $5 per person per week as opposed to $1.50 per person per week.

By not eating cold cereal every day we save $20 per week which is quite a big saving.This amounts to $1,000 per year! This is one area that you could save some $$$ if you're trying to cut back and cope with the rising food costs. What would you do with that extra $1,000!!

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Apr. 11, 2008

Frugal Exercise.

Each day I try and walk for 1 hour. Usually I walk with baby girl in the push chair for 30 mins around 9am, and then again just before dinner time, about 4pm. She loves looking at the world going by and chatting away to me as I walk and push. It's great exercise, time well spent with my daughter and very frugal- no gym membership costs . A new pair of shoes is all you need to buy every now and then. I won't tell you how long I use my shoes for!!!

Well, I'm off to do some more frugal exercise. I plan to squeeze 30 mins of gardening in before lunch time while dd spends some time playing games with the younger two children. I've done 4yr old's school work for today, and all the marking is up to date.

Off for a date with my push hoe!

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Apr. 11, 2008

Busy Friday

I don't have much time to blog today, as I have a busy Friday planned!

I think we'll have my easy rice dish for dinner tonight. I picked a large zucchini from the garden yesterday, so I'll chop this up and fry lightly. Next I'll scramble 5-6 eggs, adding a little curry, cumin,tarragon, s and p. I'll add this to the zucchini and serve over brown rice- yum! This is so yummy- everyone enjoys this easy to prepare dinner.

Cost:

zucchini- free from garden
rice ( brown) 30c- my dh got a good special for 40c per kg for me!!!
eggs 23c each!! $1.15
spices 10c

Total: $1.55!

now why would you want to go to MacDonalds when you can eat like this at home?!

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Apr. 10, 2008

What did I do today?

I just spoke with a friend and she asked about my day. I struggled to remember what I had actually done, so now to retrace my steps!!

Got up, showered, dressed and made our bed
Breakfast
Hung a load of washing, set another load going
Morning walk with baby girl 30 mins
Morning tea- cut up a large plate of fruit for everyone to enjoy
Hung second large load of washing outside to dry
Spent an hour with my 4yr old on his 'school work'
Checked on the other children and marked school work completed so far
Made stew for dinner
Gardening 45 mins
Lunch prep
Lunch and clean up
Baby girl down for a nap
Marked more school work
Tidied up living areas
Quiet time
Rest
Folded all the laundry! Put it all away
Walked for 30 mins with baby girl in push chair
Picked veggies from garden and watered it
Dinner prep
Dinner and clean up
Little ones to bed
Made yoghurt and bread ready for tomorrow
Loaded washing machine
School planning for next week written up

A busy day really in the end!!

How was your day?

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Apr. 8, 2008

Stewing Tomatoes.

Well, I have been picking the last of our tomatoes from our summer garden.They are now cooking in a large pot on the stove. I hope to have about 9-10 tins/cans worth ( 400gr per tin) to freeze. This will make 70 tins that I have stewed and frozen. This is a saving of 65c per tin at the supermarket. Total savings $45.50!!!

Over the next week I'll keep picking the last green tomatoes that will hopefully ripen up a little, and stew them up. It should make another 10 tins or so. So 80 tins x 65c = $52.00!

Wow- I'm pleased with thew amount of tomatoes our vines produced. We have also been eating them fresh each day for lunch and in salads.

We have been saving about $5 on vegetables per week for the past 4 months, due to having our summer garden. A kind friend from church also has been giving us cucumbers each week also. I'm seeing how long I can last without buying any vegetables. We have also frozen beans, zucchini, beetroot and silver beet which we can start eating also.

So, roughly speaking we have saved about $80 on our food bill the past 4 months, and that doesn't include what we have stored up in the freezer still to use.

Do you garden and save on your grocery bill?

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Mar. 26, 2008

Easy Dinner.

Tonight's dinner is quick, cheap and very frugal!

I put rice on to cook in the rice cooker 750gr of brown rice. I then sliced up some pork that I had in the freezer ( given to us), added a whole sliced zucchini and fried these together. I added a tin of tomatoes and some salt, brought it all to the boil adding a little extra water...smells good. We'll have some silver beet with this fresh from the garden.

COST breakdown:

rice 60c
pork 300gr- free
zucchini- free from our garden!
tin tomatoes 65c
silver beet- free from our garden

Total: $1.25! to feed 8!

With the continual rising costs of food this is a winner!

What are you having for dinner?

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Mar. 24, 2008

Tuesday

Well after a busy Easter weekend it's Tuesday.

My hubby had to lead three services, one on Good Friday and two on Sunday. Also we had our annual Easter conference weekend, so hubby was busy with that also. The older girls worked on Saturday and Easter Monday and spent Sunday afternoon at the youth camp.

I had a quiet weekend at home, apart from church services with the younger four children. I stewed up some more tomatoes for the freezer, a bucket full! I defrosted and tidied the large freezer yesterday, and made room to freeze some of the wholemeal flour that I had bought.With world wide wheat storages I decided to stock up on flour. Countdown stocks HOMEBRAND- an Aussie brand and their 5kg bags of plain flour are $4.89 and 1.5 kg of wholemeal are $1.69. This is about the cheapest that I can find right now. Pak and Save have plain flour 5kg for $6.70!!! I have enough plain flour for the next 9 months and enough wholemeal for the next 7-8 months.We bake all our own bread, about 10 loaves per week and do all our own home baking, pizza bases and pancakes, so we use a lot of flour!

Pak and Save had a good special on rolled oats a few weeks back $2.59 for 1.5kg. I stocked up and bought 50 bags! I got lots of looks and comments! We eat oatmeal every morning, but hubby and the older children have cold cereal on Sundays as a treat. I love porridge, so I eat it every morning. We make ours with water, soaking it the night before and add a little milk and sugar before serving. It's a good hearty breakfast and easy on the budget @ 7c per serving!

Yesterday for dinner we had chicken ( slowly cooked in the crock pot all day) with brown rice, beans and tomatoes from our garden.Last night I cooked up the chicken bones all night in the crock pot on low and had a yummy chicken broth awaiting me this morning. I split the broth into two containers and used one for the soup I made today. I made up 12 litres of yummy chicken soup this morning. Hmmm the whole house smelled god today! We'll have soup for dinner tonight with fresh bread and then I'll have enough for five more meals which will go into the freezer for later use. We like to eat soup twice per week as our dinner meal. I like to make yummy homemade broths and use our garden veggies. The whole pot cost me about $2.50 to make- good for you and kind to the budget!

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Mar. 20, 2008

It's Been Awhile.

It's been a few months since I last blogged!!

We had a lovely family Christmas dinner and Christmas day spent together. We had plenty of good food and fun! It actually rained on Christmas day, so we spent it inside.

We had a lovely family holiday for a week in January, and spent lots of time in the water- it was very hot! Again we enjoyed lots of good food, family games and walks and overall had a very relaxing and refreshing time away. My parents were able to join us for a few days which was lovely also.

Our school year has been going for 7 weeks now and we have kept very busy these past few weeks. Sadly we lost another baby to miscarriage in February. I was about 10 weeks along again, and the baby died. Tests show that there's nothing abnormal. So again it was a sad time for us as a family. I have recovered well, but still feel sad at times. The Lord is good. He has carried us through once again and given us peace.

I have felt rather like a squirrel of late- harvesting and preserving from our summer garden. I have beans, zucchini, rhubarb, silver beet, and lots of stewed tomatoes in our freezer. I have also bought about 40kg of pears( seconds from an orchard) and the girls and I have peeled and cooked them up for the freezer. We like to have canned fruit on Sunday mornings with our breakfast and now I won't have to buy any for a year! My freezer is FULL! It will be a great help to our grocery bill this year I'm sure. I am going to make a real effort to use from the freezer as much as possible before buying. Apart from a few onions I haven't bought any veggies for the past 10 weeks or so, due to our garden! We also enjoyed a great harvest of grapes from two vines, so that helped our fruit bill a great deal.

It's back to the orchard for apples again for me. I have been buying 'seconds' for 50 c per kg- both apples and pears. It's great just paying $4-5 per week on fruit!!

I have written up a detailed budget for the year as we want to pay quite a lot off on our mortgage again, so all these little savings are adding up which is a real encouargement!

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Dec. 9, 2007

Busy days

We'll I'm still busy cleaning and gardening!

Last week I finally finished cleaning all the windows in and out. They look good! I also spent some time last week and wrote up a cleaning plan for next year doing two hours per week, an hour each on Mondays and Thursdays. I divided up all the extra cleaning jobs over 48 weeks, having 4 weeks off. I have planned to clean the living area windows every two months as they get quite dirty, the rest of the windows less often. I hope the plan works out well.

Today I cleaned all the kitchen cupboards in and out and finished off a small garden plot.

We are in our final week of school and then will have our 6 week summer break!

I don't think I'll do much extra in the way of cleaning tomorrow as I have some shopping to do and I like to bath baby girl in the mornings.

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Nov. 25, 2007

Another Week

Sorry I haven't blogged for a week!

I've been busy cleaning and cleaning!

What have I cleaned:

Upstairs shower room walls and ceiling and windows
Upstairs bathroom and toilet windows
Boys' bedroom windows
Spot cleaning in boys' room
Girls' bedroom windows
Baby girl's bedroom windows
Dd 17 bedroom windows
Stairway walls, rails etc
Hosed down the outside of the house
Cleaned music room windows in and out
Cleaned study windows in and out
Cleaned garage windows in and out
Cleaned downstairs toilet windows

Tomorrow I hope to clean a few more windows. I'll just keep doing a little each day until I'm done. I want to clean the kitchen too.

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Nov. 19, 2007

Shopping Day

Today has been another very busy day.

I started the day by washing the boys' sheets, mattress covers and duvet covers. I also aired their duvet inners and blankets. This afternoon I remade their beds with everything smelling so fresh and clean from hanging out in the sunshine.

Ds got his plaster off today. He was pleased to have his arm back again! He still has to take it easy, so no lawn mowing for another couple of weeks yet-oh, dear!

I had to do my two weekly grocery shop again this morning. On the way I picked up my milk, fruit and veggies for the week. I managed to stay $30 under budget again, so I stocked up on flour ( 15kg), sugar (5kg), jam, pasta, toothpaste and dishwasher powder. By the time I got home, unpacked all the groceries it was nearly lunch time.

I sat down and checked all the school work that had been done and then we ate lunch. After lunch I made two chocolate slices to be baked later that afternoon.

Baby girl had a good nap and then it was afternoon chore time. More school marking, washing to fold, beds to remake and then an hour in the garden before dinner. Dd16 helped me in the garden which was great, we got a lot more done that way. We then made scones and heated the soup and ate our dinner.

After dinner and family devotions I popped out in the veggie garden for a little while with dd17 and we push hoed and watered. All tidy again! Tomorrow I plan to do a little more gardening around the back and it should be mostly tidy again.

Little ones in bed and after dinner chores complete and it's been another busy day.

Off for a walk with hubby now before it gets dark outside!

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Nov. 18, 2007

A New Week

Just a quick blog toady as I have little time.

It's been a beautifully sunny day today. I did six loads of laundry and got it all dry: nappies, sheets, lights, darks, towels and delicates.

We had a busy and productive school morning. I finished marking all the school lessons this afternoon.

Baby girl and I have been on two walks in the sunshine!

The girls are finishing off the vacuuming and then the chores are done for today except for after dinner clean-up.

Well, off to the kitchen I go to finish dinner!

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Nov. 17, 2007

Special Sunday

It was indeed a special and joyous day today! Our dd 14 professed her faith today along with three other young ladies from our congregation. It was a beautiful service. Our dd read out her testimony- it was moving and very beautiful testifying to the work of Jesus Christ in her life. My hubby continued to preach on The Gospel Armour and it was a very challenging sermon.

Some of dd14's friends came from Auckland where we used to live and attended the service. They came for lunch after the service and spent the afternoon with us which was lovely. We had yummy vegetable soup, salad sandwiches made on freshly homemade bread, scones and chocolate cake!

Praise the Lord!

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Nov. 16, 2007

Joyous Day

Tomorrow will be a joyous day for us as our daughter ( 14 year old) will be professing her faith in church. She will be sharing a brief testimony with the congregation also. Our other two daughters did this when we lived in Australia two years ago.It will be a special, joyous day for us all!

Today was a typical Saturday with soup making and washing to do in the morning. Hubby took some of the children shopping this afternoon while baby girl and I had a nap. There was plenty of washing to fold and put away this afternoon before the dinner needed heating.

I took baby girl for a walk before lunch today and again just before dinner. Dd17 wanted some fresh air after dinner, so I went again with baby girl also. So three walks today for me!!

I gave the bench in the pantry a good clean today before lunch and cleaned both bread makers really well also. The bread makers sit on the bench along with my crock pot.They seem to be in use a lot of the time hence not cleaning there enough! We had to make extra bread today as we had a loaf with our soup for dinner tonight.

Well, I need to hang some washing up in the garage and then it's relax time for me!

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Nov. 15, 2007

Teaching 4 year old to write

Today has been a busy day. Both the older two girls worked all day at the local supermarket. They fit their school work into 4 days and work in the evenings also.

I had a fun school time with 4 year old ds this morning. I started teaching him to write his name. We just focused on the letter J today. He did well with his counting and making sets of blocks for each number.Baby girl did her school work too in her high chair. She played nicely with her blocks.

The other two dc worked well on their school work also and I finished marking it all this afternoon. Baby girl had a lovely long bath this morning as I couldn't take her out for a walk because it was raining.

After a yummy lunch of toast. Baby girl went down for her afternoon nap. She slept for 3 hours- what a good girl! Dd14 and ds 10 continued doing their school work and music theory this afternoon. After her sleep baby girl ate her snack in her high chair while I made up a big pot of sweet and sour pork for tonight's dinner to be served with rice.It was so nice having the pork cooked and shredded already ( from the freezer). We then went for a walk with ds 10 in the fresh air!

Some of the nappies had dried in the garage and I could quickly fold a pile when I got home. Now I need to head off to the kitchen again and finish off the dinner.Then it's family fun night with a movie and popcorn!

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Nov. 14, 2007

Dental Checks

I took the boys this morning for their dental checks. Ds4 hadn't had a check up as yet, so this was the first time. His teeth were just perfect! Ds10 last had his teeth checked in Australia, so two years ago and his teeth were perfect too!

I've had a few extra appointments this week, so all in all it's been a busy week so far.

We still managed to get most of the school work finished for today. Anything not completed we'll tidy up tomorrow. I managed to fit in two walks today with baby girl ( 30 mins each time).It's lovely getting out in the fresh air and sunshine.

We'll I'd best finish off my afternoon routine and head back into the kitchen to finish off dinner. The rice is cooked and staying warm. I need to cook up some carrots and a curried tuna sauce to go over the rice-yum!

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Nov. 10, 2007

Sunny Sunday

It's been a beautiful sunny Sunday here today.

We were blessed this morning with dh's preaching on Eph 6- The Gospel Armour. We just focused on the first three parts- the belt of truth, breastplate of righteous and the boots of the gospel of peace ( well that's how dh put it!).

After church we had two families over for lunch ( another 8 people). We had tomato and vegetable soup with homemade salad sandwiches, scones, fruit bread and two yummy cakes! We were all very full!

Dh and I managed a walk before he had to prepare for the evening service. We had a quick dinner of leftover soup,scrambled eggs and toast before evening church.

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I love being a stay at home mum with our six beautiful children from the Lord. Each day we strive to live faithfully for Him in thankfulness for His gift of full and free salvation.