Wow, I have a LOAD of things to share this week! It's so satisfying to get a lot done.

​1. Groceries: I did a Walmart grocery pickup order this week. We spent $39.32. You can see my grocery haul below:

We only spent 46% of our grocery budget this month. I'm really excited about that! For those of you who don't know, I did increase the budget this year from $20.00 per week to $30.00 per week, which is about $130.00 per month. I plan on starting Baby on solids at six months, so yes- her food will start costing us in just a few short weeks. 

We also got some free food this week! We met with our financial adviser and she brought a half dozen bagels with cream cheese from Tim Hortons. There was also some snack items left in Hubs' office from a group that came over several months ago. They no longer wanted the snacks, so I checked the expiration date on everything and only one thing was expired. Most of the snacks were s'more components that won't expire until fall of 2018. So all of that stuff went into our pantry! I will have to use a couple bags of marshmallows and some graham crackers by March, though. Hoping to make some rice crispies and/or graham cracker crust desserts for a few potlucks.
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​2. Cooking: I used our $2.00 bread machine to make bread several times this week. I also made stevia-sweetened chocolate chips for Trim Healthy Mama items. I used this silicone potholder as a mold for the chips, which were just an unsweetened chocolate bar, melted and mixed with some Truvia. The chips were still quite expensive at $2.00 per cup, but not nearly as expensive as commercially made stevia-sweetened chocolate chips. They tasted okay, for being sweetened with stevia. Next week I'm going to use the rest of the chocolate bar to make xylitol-sweetened chips.

Another thing I did was refill our foaming soap dispenser. This is a super easy and cheap way to get hand soap. Basically you put 2TB of regular soap (I've even used dish soap) in the container with water and possibly a little bit of oil. Then you swirl everything together and it's all ready to go. I added a drop of blue food coloring to mine to make it more visually appealing.
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5. Found a free "Mommy and Me" workout on Youtube that I can do with Baby girl. I also found an educational video her to watch while I gave her a nebulizer treatment (something she doesn't really like). I'm not a huge fan of screen time for littles, but it helped distract her and take the medicine better.

6. Sent out thank-you postcards instead of notes. I may do a blog post about this later in the week. Did you know it costs almost $1.00 to mail out a generic Walmart thank you note? You can save $0.25 or more per note by sending a postcard. Plus the postcard can double as a baby announcement/Christmas card/etc.

7. Garden: Ordered garden seeds. Instead of buying all of my seeds for $2.00-$4.00 per pack from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds, I was able to find almost half of my list at a cheaper company located here in Michigan: MIgardener. The MIgardener seeds were just $1.00 per pack. I saved over $5.00 on seeds that way.

8. Picked up cans on a walk. We got a whole grocery bag full, plus some, in less than a mile! Michiganders, if you get a really nice day this time of year, take advantage of the weather and collect cans. Since nobody picks them up this time of year, they've really piled up. You can get several weeks' worth of cans in a single one-mile walk if you pick the right road. ;) 

9. Cloth diapers: I made a Youtube video about cloth diapers, finally. After diapering for a few months, and buying stuff, and stuff, and more stuff, I've come to some interesting conclusions about cloth diapers. The video below is just about different products, but I hope to do a cloth diaper budgeting video sometime soon. I'm not quite happy with my video editing process yet, but hopefully I can get out one or two videos per week from here on out.

So, I think that is about it for the week! 

Til next time,
​-Bethany

Hey everyone! I won't be listing many frugal accomplishments this week because we spent the majority of it in Cancun with my sister. So I thought I'd share a few highlights and pictures.

It was Baby's first plane ride! Well, her first FOUR plane rides, to be exact. We had a short 40-minute ride first, a layover in Chicago, and then another 3.5 hour ride down to Cancun. Baby Girl did great on all of the rides. Of course she had a few minutes of fussiness here and there, but she spend most of the flights sleeping or playing on our laps. I think four months is a great age to travel with a baby. We didn't have to worry about food because she's still nursing, plus she's not old enough to throw a real fit or need toys to be entertained. Plus she's not even mobile, so.... win.

There was good news and bad news in Mexico. The bad news was that it never got hot enough to go swimming. Boo! The good news is that I never took the tags off of Baby Girl's cute little $14.00 swimsuit. So I'm returning it. Our primary souvenir from our Mexico was a nebulizer... which is a long story in itself. But hey, at least it was a practical purchase! I think I'm going to find a Cancun sticker somewhere and put it on the machine. Leaving for Cancun right on the tail of a horrible cold was not ideal. We ended up taking Baby to the doctor (which was only half the cost of a well-baby visit... yay!) and I had a nasty cold sore the whole week with a touch of breathing difficulty. Fun right? 

We intentionally picked a very easy all-inclusive resort vacation this year instead of a backpacking trip or road trip. We had a lot of fun going to the coffee shop for warm beverages, walking along the beach, sitting by the pool eating french fries and watching shows in the evening. My favorite show was a circus show. The Mexican show was also good, but their "American" show had some raunchy parts. It only had one English song! We figured out at the end that it was more of a South/Central "American" show than a North American show.

One of the highlights for me was having two real date nights with my Hubs! My sister came along with us and was able to babysit for a few nights. Hubs made a reservation at the resort's fanciest restaurant, which featured a six-course meal. I tried so many new things! 

In another life, I would've loved to be a chef. At two of the restaurants I got to try things I've only read about in books. Things like poached quail eggs, foie gras, crab croquettes and truffle mayonnaise. I had to explain to Hubs that truffles are a type of mushroom and not chocolate. LOL!

As much as I loved trying new oddities though, I don't think I could live on the stuff. Too many weird flavors! I still love a good hamburger, fries and ice cream for dessert. One thing I found interesting about the "fancy" food was that it included stuff most of us would throw out. For example, some ingredients on the menu were things like purslane (a common weed in our area), huitlacoche (fungus that grows on sweet corn), pumpkin blossoms and pea shoots. As a frugal home cook, it was interesting for me to see these "free" ingredients mixed right in with the expensive ones. One person's trash is another one's treasure.

Another "first" for me was getting a professional manicure. It cost somewhere between $40.00 and $50.00 (price was in pesos), which is why I've never had one done before. I upgraded to gel polish so it would last longer. It's been four days since I had it done, and no chips so far. Gel polish is a bit more expensive (it has to be cured with UV or LED light, not just air-dried), plus there are some health concerns with its frequent and long-term use. However, I haven't painted my fingernails in years because the polish chips when I wash dishes (which is every day). Not only that, but with a baby now I don't have an hour to let multiple coats of polish dry. With an LED lamp, a coat of gel polish will dry in 30 seconds. Right now there's not room in our personal care budget for a $40.00 nail polish setup, but if I save a dollar or two every week there might be room by the end of the year.

While I'm very happy with the polish job, the nail tech didn't do a perfect job with the filing or cuticle clipping. I don't think a nail polish job is worth $40.00 or $50.00, so I probably won't be getting another professional manicure done for a very long time. 

On our last day of vacation, we visited some Mayan ruins at Tulum. While these were nowhere near as old as the ruins we saw in Guatemala (Tikal), they were still pretty cool. Most of us were feeling better by Friday, the weather had finally warmed up and it was a great day.

So that is all I have to share for the week! As always, it's great to be back home and working on projects again. I look forward to giving a good frugal accomplishments report next week.

​-Bethany

1. Groceries: I didn't get around to grocery shopping this week. I had a trip planned for Sunday, but Hubs and I both came down with bad colds over the weekend (I'm pretty sure we got it from Baby Girl. 😔). So, we stayed home on shopping day. Hubs made a "sick run" to the nearest not-cheap grocery store for milk, orange juice and eggs. Total spent on groceries this week was $8.28. 

2. Cooking: I made two batches of THM-friendly meatloaf for the freezer. Little by little I'm trying to clean out our freezers. I also made two pasta meals. 

3. Date night: We used a $25.00 gift card at Olive Garden for date night. I signed up for their email list in order to get a free dessert, but the coupon didn't come to my inbox until an hour after we'd left. 😔 Minus the gift card, our cost was still $25.00. We thought about splitting an entree, but it's a good thing we didn't. Both of us ended up devouring our meals, plus a couple refills of salad and bread sticks. Lastly, we split a dessert (which could have been free... grrr).

​4. Shopping: I got a free onesie from Kohls using some Kohls cash I had. When we were at the store I looked at the footie pajamas, but I just couldn't justify spending $5.00 (AFTER the free cash) or more on one piece of clothing for a growing baby. This year alone I've already spent almost $45.00 on new leg warmers for her, plus a swim suit and sun hat for her to wear on vacation. Yes, that was before I decided to do a $75/person/yr. clothing budget. So.... I need to save some of the clothing budget for the rest of the year. That being said... she still got a completely free, and quite adorable long-sleeved onesie!

I also went to Bath and Body works for their semi-annual sale. I got two bottles of very nice hand soap for $1.88 each (75% off) and a container of whipped body shimmer cream lotion stuff for $9.25 (50% off). At first I thought $9.00 was still expensive, but after a quick search I realized that it's on the cheaper end of the spectrum for similar lotions. Thanks to THAT luxury purchase, I'll probably be about $10.00 OVER our personal care budget for the month. Oh well.

5. Clipped a ton of coupons from the newspaper.

6. Cleaned out Baby's clothing drawer. I removed all of the outgrown clothes and put them in my clothing storage system (aka plastic storage bins). Then I looked in her next size up (I still have a small stash of gifted/hand-me-down clothing) to find clothes for her in a better size. And what do you know! I found the coveted footie pajamas! I also found some shirts, pants and onesies. That's what I'm talking about. I also figured out a better way to organize the outgrown clothes. Unfortunately we don't have a whole ton of storage space, so I have to store multiple sizes in each storage tub. Instead of throwing all of the clothes in topsy-turvey, or putting them in plastic bags where they're hard to access, I made a stack for each size and then rolled up the whole stack. Next time I reach for those sizes, all I have to do is thumb through the stack for what I'm looking for.

7. Hubs made me a cloth diaper shelf!!! I've been oogling these on Pinterest for months. We made it the perfect size for Baby's diapers, plus there are a few extra cubicles for additional inserts, wipes, leg warmers and other cloth diapering stuff. This was definitely the highlight of my week. Now I don't have to store my diaper stuff in a cardboard box all over the floor. I love you, Hubs!!!

As a bonus, the wood we used was left over from cabinets that he made me last year. So it was completely free to us!

I think that's about all for the week. 

Til next time,
​Bethany

Personal Care Spending: $332.00

We spent an average of $28.00 per month on: Essential oils, vitamins, Q-tips, dental floss, toothpaste, toilet paper, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner, saline drops, baby wipes and other personal care items. Since I was pregnant last year, I spent $125.00 or more on one-time purchases like a pregnancy pillow, reusable menstrual and nursing pads, and other nursing items. In addition, I spent at least $15.00 per month on prenatal vitamins; something I am no longer taking.

Even though I'm not buying prenatal vitamins anymore, I'll need to budget for a few baby items every month. Thanks to cloth diapering and breastfeeding our monthly baby spending is pretty low, but I still use some disposable wipes and a disposable diaper here and there, as well as things like the saline drops. With some couponing and sales-watching, I think I can bring this budget category down to about $15.00 per month. 


Household Supplies Spending: $420.00

In 2017 we spent about $35.00 per month on miscellaneous things like: paper plates/cups/napkins/forks, thread, kitchen timer, batteries, ant bait, trash bags, grill utensils, electrical cords, freezer bags, light bulbs, photo frames and cleaning supplies. Included in that monthly spending were $100.00 worth of one-time purchases: curtains, kitchen floor mats, an essential oil diffuser and a squatty potty.

Again, I won't be buying pregnancy items (squatty potty, anyone?) this year, but I will be buying more baby stuff. Hoping to bring spending in this category down to $25.00 per month.

Other Categories:

We spent about $400.00 on clothing this year (an average of $33.33/mo.) . Most of that was buying two new wardrobes for me (maternity and nursing/postpartum) as well as cloth diapers for Baby ($100.00+). I was shocked to see this number at the end of the year, but that's what happens when you buy things new instead of at thrift stores. I didn't like ANY of the maternity tops I bought used, so I ended up spending $20.00 here, $20.00 there. Same thing for nursing tops. I did try making my own nursing tanks, which worked, but just weren't as convenient or comfortable as a good nursing T-shirt. The good news is that I will have plenty of nursing and maternity clothes for the next pregnancy. The cloth diapers should help us save money in other areas, plus they too will be around for the next baby. I would like to see this number drop to $75.00 per person ($225.00 total) in 2018.

We spent more money at restaurants this year as we did on groceries. About 25% of that spending happened on vacation (at least four weeks in 2017). I would like to reduce this category; travel eating and date night in particular. My plan is to get better at keeping snacks around for road trips, plus using discount gift cards or Groupon deals for date night. Generally we spend about $25.00-$35.00 per week on date night. I'm going to challenge myself this year to spend $20.00 or less by using coupons, gift cards, and whatever other means I can find.

Most of our other expenses increased this year as well. Our cost-sharing program for healthcare went up $140.00 per month (total is now $500.00/mo.), as we added another family member and the price increased as well. We bought a new-to-us car, two new pieces of furniture and paid for a 2018 vacation. Our overall spending increased by at least a third, if not more. We didn't expect that Baby Girl would cost as much as another adult, but there were a lot of one-time expenses that we didn't realize would happen.  Even though I know we will be buying more stuff than in our pre-baby years, I hope it won't be as outrageous this year as in 2017.

What are your spending/saving goals for 2018?

Til next time,
Bethany

​So, part of the craziness of the holidays has slowed down... a little. On Saturday one of my brothers-in-law got married, and Hubs was a groomsman. It was a long day, but at the end Baby Girl and I got to Kroger for one of their "5X Saturday" deals.

With another big event behind us, I'm hopeful that I'll get a little more done in this upcoming week. In the meantime, here are a few things I did last week.

1. Grocery shopping: I spent $11.09 on groceries this week, at Kroger. You can watch my grocery haul below:

2. Cooking: my cooking game has been way below par. I feel like we are still cleaning up holiday leftovers. However, I did try some new THM-friendly muffin-in-a-mug recipes. I found one I liked and made several single-serve "mixes" (dry ingredients in a snack baggie) to keep in the cupboard for when hunger strikes. I also tried a bread-in-a-mug recipe that I liked for sandwiches. We don't have a microwave, so I cooked the mug recipes in an Instant Pot on Manual for 2 minutes. It worked great.

3. I converted my "wedding and funeral dress" to be nursing-friendly by taking out some seams and adding snaps/hooks-and-eyes. As much as I like this dress, I will probably buy a new one after Baby is done breastfeeding.

4. Continued cloth diapering. I'm working on a few Youtube diaper videos. Cloth diapers create a lot more laundry, so instead of saving $1.00 per week by air drying, I'm saving more like $3.00 or more. As I've mentioned before, air drying indoors during the winter also helps us sleep at night by increasing the humidity in our bedroom.

5. Went thrift store shopping! I bought some cloth diaper-friendly shirts for Baby (to go with leg warmers and/or homemade Maxaloones (big butt pants, especially designed for fluffy bottoms). These were $0.99 each, as we went shopping on the Salvation Army's "$0.99 for all clothing sale". I noticed, however, that some of the shirts I bought would have cost $0.99 at full price, which is good to know for the future. I also bought a book about how to avoid speeding tickets, two puzzles and a burlap coffee bean sack to make into wall art.​

​Note on clothing: Normally I would never pay a dollar for a little kid's shirt. However, I didn't realize how challenging it would be to dress our baby girl with the cloth diapers, plus she has just grown so fast. When she was born, I had a good supply of clothes in the 0-6 month size, with a few pieces that were 6-9 months. These clothes were all free or given as gifts, and I thought they would be plenty to last until garage sale season. At almost four months old, she is now in the 6-9 month size; 9-12 months if she's in a cloth diaper. Oh, the challenges of having a chubby baby.

6. Avoided buying (some) stuff I didn't need. I have $5.00 worth of Kohl's cash that needs to be spent by the end of January. I also have a Kohl's gift cart with $14.00 on it. I thought I'd order some cute footie sleepers for baby girl, since I can't seem to find those at any of the thrift stores. Unfortunately there was still a $9.00 shipping fee and I couldn't have a single sleeper shipped to my house for less than $20.00. Even with multiple coupon codes and the Kohl's cash, my total was still $14.00. I thought it was a waste to spend the rest of my gift card on just one outfit. Instead, I think we will go to a brick-and-mortar Kohls store on our next date night. That way I can sift through the clearance items and avoid the shipping charge. Who knows, I may be able to get three items with my money instead of just one.

I also passed up some coupon deals that were very cheap but ultimately useless to me.

7. I chose "no-rush" shipping on an Amazon Prime order, and they gave me $5.00 to spend in the Luxury Beauty category. Of course, $5.00 doesn't buy a whole lot of luxury beauty, but I found a set of eye masks for less than $5.00. The key to "free" offers is to make sure that they're actually free. If the free stuff causes you to spend more money than you would have otherwise, it's not really free. 

We finally did our household finances (piled up for MONTHS now... terrible, I know!) this week. I'll be posting some of our 2017 spending later this week along with my spending/saving goals for the next year.

Til next time,
-Bethany

Failure #1: Specialty Farmers Market

After hearing about how wonderful evening markets are, I signed up for one in June. You can read all about it (and watch a Youtube video!) here. To make a long story short, it was a complete bust and I actually lost money. That was the nail in the coffin of my farmers market career- mostly because I lost money but also because I was getting too pregnant to be hauling crates and setting up tents by myself. This year I have Baby Girl to tend to, so I'll not be doing any markets. Instead, I'll be focusing on our roadside produce stand.


Failure #2: Butchering Roosters

This wasn't exactly a failure- it's just something I've decided not to do anymore on a regular basis. I dread the task, plus some of our roosters last year hardly had any meat on them.

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Profit & Loss

Income: 
Book Royalties- $3.32

Expenses:
Shelled corn- $10.00
Layer mash- $22.00
Beekeeping book- $15.63
Total expenses: $47.63 

Net profit: $(44.31)
Year-to-date net profit: $280.20

So, I declare this year's hobby farm a success! Of course, the ONLY reason I ended the year profitable was because I sold the goats. That's okay with me. I'll be harvesting the $280.20 from 2017 and start 2018 at $0.00.


Goals for 2018

1. Income: I hope to earn a small profit or at least break even in 2018. I'll probably be spending $500.00 or more in January on bees. Thankfully my massive strawberry patch was paid off last year, so most of the money I earn from that will be pure profit. I expect this income to pay for the bees and possibly another strawberry patch. 

2. Chicken sustainability: I want the chickens to pay for their own keep. In 2017 it was difficult to estimate chicken feed costs because the shelled corn was being split between chickens and goats. According to my records, I spent  $312.00 on feed and earned $188.00 in egg money. That means I only sold enough eggs to pay for 60% of their feed (though some of that feed did go to the goats).

This year it will be easier to see if the chickens are truly paying for themselves. Right now they are eating about $20.00 of feed per month ($240.00 per year if they continue at that rate). At this point in mid-winter they are not even laying enough eggs for us, but I expect production to pick up in February. Then I will sell the extra eggs. I think I will raise egg prices this year to $2.50 or $3.00 a dozen. Last year I noticed that my prices were fairly low compared to other local hobby farmers. In addition to raising egg prices, I'll try to cut feed costs by supplementing the chickens with fodder during the colder months.   

3. Farmers market book: I don't know if this is a hobby farm goal or an author's goal, but I want to rewrite my farmers market book for a wider audience. Right now I'm only making about $3.00 per month on it. With updated content, a new cover and better marketing, I think I could triple or quadruple that number. Having $10.00 or $20.00 per month to add to hobby farm income would be wonderful.


Goals for January

This month I hope to (finally) finish building my chicken fodder system. The sooner I start saving money with this system, the better. I also want to finish reading my beekeeping book and find out where I should purchase supplies and bees. Lastly, I need to purchase seeds for the garden.

Til next time,
Bethany​