Back in the Groove

I am feeling much better now, and even took time to write 2 rough draft articles yesterday.  I watched the sunrise this morning also.

Although I woke up to a cold wood burning stove, I am getting the temperature slowly back up.  I am getting laundry on the racks and outside on the line.  The sun is shining very bright today, and makes the day more pleasant.  The cats must be enjoying the sun too.  They are bee-bopping from window to window watching everything this morning.  The dogs are fighting over the sun spots that are shining into the living room.

My husband surprised me for Valentine's Day, by cleaning the bathroom the night before.  He not only cleaned it, but removed everything that was on the floor to mop it (trash can, basket etc).  That was a real treat, considering I had not felt up to cleaning it while I was sick.

One of my daughter's also surprised me with a handmade card. She slipped it into my bathroom before she left for school, and it was a wonderful way to start the morning.

Thanks to my mother, sending me a text, I was able to take a few gorgeous pictures of a recent sunset.  I cannot wait to have a better camera, but this one is pretty good.

I love the colors in this sunset.  If I had not gone out right after my mother texted me, I would have missed it.  Shortly after I took the photos, the colors disappeared for the night.

Happy Valentine's Day!

(Borrowed from karenwhimsy.com)

Valentine's Day Preparations

If you have been following my blog, you will know that I will not be buying manufactured Valentine's Day cards.  We make ours homemade each year, and this year, one child has been asked to make a box for her cards.  Visit by S.C.R.A.P. blog to see photos her her personally created Valentine's Day box.

Valentine's Day School Parties

The Top Five Budget Friendly Valentine's Day Class Party Treats
(Click on link to read)

Serving Up Soup ~ Cutting the Spending Down Even More

We cut our food costs down this winter.  We still include meats and fish in our diet, but have now replaced more than half of our consumption, with dry beans.  We did this by making soup more often.

Many people typically serve another food item with soup, and feel soup is not filling for a meal by itself.  However, by replacing the meat with extra beans, such as kidney, pinto, black and other beans, we made many filling soups.

The trick is to buy the beans dry, bake them up in large batches, and freeze them.  When you cook, you can simply take out what you want without using canned beans (which typically have more sodium). 

We also started making our soups/stews without buying broth.  We either make it ourselves, or flavor our soups with onions and fresh mushrooms.   However, for this to be cost effective, we also froze many garden vegetables, and dried home grown herbs.  If I see organic/free range chicken broth marked in clearance, I may sometimes purchase it and cook with it right away also.

Homemade Granola

I have always wanted to get started at making my family a healthy, homemade granola.  What prevented me, was the cost of healthier foods.  Finally, I made it.  We love it.  The only problem now is I am out of honey.  I made this batch with organic cranberries, flax seed, and lots of healthy ingredients.  It took a while to collect the ingredients when they were on sale, but it was worth it.  We only buy raw honey from local people now.  The nice part about making this, is you can pretty much mix it up with what you like.  I was out of walnuts, and had a small bag of pecans in my freezer.  It worked nicely in our granola.

Baking the granola was all I could muster up.  We are slowly recovering from sickness around here, and the antibiotics are not doing so well with my stomach.    

More sickness

I'll be back to post in a few days or so.  Just got a text that my son is throwing up, and they are waiting for him to feel a bit better before driving him back home.  That's just about everyone sick right now.

. . . next post to share how we are keeping the grocery budget lower than last year.