Oct. 4, 2008 - Fire Safety and grocery budget
Today was fire safety day. Mainly because when I went onto base there was EVERY fire truck available to probably our entire county...well almost. I called Les and had him bring the rest of the crew as I was having an outing with our 7 year old doing some shopping. So he brought the rest of the children.
It was great. They had about a dozen trucks there with two huge ladder trucks opened up, many trucks that they could sit in. They also gave the children a goody bag with a ruler, a coloring book...which I've been looking for since last year. A hat, and a picture with them spraying a hose at a house with wooden flaps that look like fire and that flip back. Then they had a mobile unit where you sit down and point out any fire dangers/hazards in their kitchen (and model fireplace). Alexis was the best at it. She has a sharp eye. Then they took us the back of the unit which was modeled as a bedroom with a window that has a ladder. They also had a door that was warm and they talked to the children about how to check the door prior to going out if there was a fire and how to block the door. The best thing of all was that they had a "smoke" maker that let out smoke and they showed us how to cover the door and lay low getting out through the window if possible or at least to yell out the window if they were stuck in their room. I love the hand's on learning. Children truly learn best that way. We go over fire safety but they will likely remember it better since it was hands-on.
We are revamping our budget this month. We're going to be more specific in our spending cuts. We would like to move in a few years and that will only be possible if a few things happen first. One area that I can cut is our grocery bill. I combine paper goods (diapers, paper towels, dish soap, shampoo) into groceries. For our family of 7 we allot $500 for groceries (and paper goods). But this month we don't really have that for groceries so we decided to trim it back to $400 therefore I'm trying to figure out how to make cuts. I want the children to drink organic milk. We don't do a lot of milk anyway but we do buy at least 2 gallons a week for cereal and cooking...I need to get back to dry milk for cooking. I don't use it very often nor do I bake much so it wasn't getting used and I stopped using it. Now I need to get back into making at least small quantities and it will save money as organic milk is $6 a gallon. That's $48 a month on milk. So I have to work around that. Fine as long as I plan for it. I sat down and planned out our menu. I *would* still have $352 left for the month but I was extra challenged this week if I wanted to keep the next three weeks at $100 for groceries so I had to cut this weeks' spending to $40. When I went to the store I guessed pretty good and rang out at $43 for the week. Les had already spent $18 for a two month supply of toilet paper from Sams' and then some for 1 1/2 gallons of milk. SO about $52 this week for groceries. Not bad for a family of 7! If I could continue with that I would only spend $208 a month on groceries per month! That would be great! But it's not quite realistic since I had no paper products to buy this week and very little meat (3# of ground frozen chicken). It makes me think about how I could cut back though and as long as I have a few things here at home I could probably keep our bill down to $30-50 every OTHER week to buy milk and fruit/veggies. Thankfully (as I am trying to save $ here) I rarely do cheese or nuts but they are an occasional treat and are used in moderation Meat is stretched too. We were able to get some Black walnuts courtesy of the storm a few weeks ago which dropped a large amount into our yard...they must be mixed with English walnuts and we still have to find a way to crack them! They're especially hard which is why Walnut wood is so highly valued.
We often do snacks 1x a day. I will have to figure out something but often we do a fruit or a simple snach like a few wheat crackers. Desserts will have to be something easy or something already in our cabinet...which would be homemade.
Here's my menu this week:
Oct 4
B-whole grain cheerios with 1/2 c milk (got a case on sale otherwise I hardly ever buy cold cereal).
L-Hot dog on bread, 1/2 c corn, 1/2 c broccoli
D-Roast, Potatoes, carrots
Oct 5
B-Pancakes
L-At church
D-Minestrone soup (loaded w/veggies), french bread premade ($1)
Oct 6
B-Oatmeal, applesauce
L-Potato and Leek soup, rolls
D-Nicoise salad and crackers
Oct 7
B-Pannukaku (Finnish pancake)
L-leftovers
D-Crepes au Broccoli et Jambon (broccoli in non-sweet crepes) with Mornay sauce
Oct 8
B-Eggs, toast
L-Shepherd's Pie (made with ground turkey and frozen veggies)
D-Sautéed chicken, steamed veggies
Oct 9
B-Oatmeal, applesauce
L-PB&honey sandwich, carrot sticks
D-Chicken coconut soup with some starchy side (veggie or salad)
Oct 10
B-Groats
L-at church
D-Leftovers
I put up $6 in an envelope for homeschool gym next week. We can't miss that, Lord willing.
Comments
Oct. 5, 2008 - It's me
Posted by Anonymous
Hi Pam. That sounds great. I have been trying to figure out ways to cut back as well. Thankfully us only have eaten out 3 times the last several weeks have helped :) I usually spend around $80 but includes snack stuff (which we could really do without but Don wants LOL), diapers, wipes, paper towels, toilet paper, etc. Instead of buying all the hamburger I would have needed this week (too expensive) we bought ground turkey which at Aldi's is only like 79 cents a pound! Now you have me wanting to post on my blog about our budget :)
God bless,
off to finish getting ready for church
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi Sarah, Thanks for the comment. that is a good price for Turkey. I know that I could get our grocery bill down more than I have but we generally do a lot of fresh fruits and veggies so that makes it a bit hard, kwim? I cut out juice from our menu this week as I had it on there as a treat. Mainly it was on there for our vit C source yet we don't usually do juice anyway because it's mainly just natural sugar anyway so it was easy to cut. We do vitamins and have vit C in other foods thankfully. If I get meat which I usually stock up on that takes up a lot of $$$. Ground meat is the cheapest. Lentils are even cheaper and we like them so we do those a lot too.
Edited by stillearning on Oct. 5, 2008 at 8:33 AM
