All You Grocery Challenge Week in Review

Sunday - Day 14

Today was one of those lazy Sundays where no one really wanted to do much, including me. LOL. At least we only spent $1.25 today. When hubby went to get a paper, he took the little princess with him, and they ended up getting 5 of those 25 cent granola bars (my daughter calls them 'bars'. lol).

For breakfast we had cereal and the little man had oatmeal. We also had yummy strawberries. For lunch we had grilled cheese sandwiches and canned pineapple chunks. Dinner was breaded pork chops, corn and scalloped potatoes. I also made a chocolate cake which was supposed to be for my mom's birthday Tuesday, but somehow I got persuaded to get out frozen strawberries and whipped topping, and we ate some of it. Oh well. I guess I will just have to make another one tomorrow night when I get home.


A Week in Review

This is our second week of participating in the All You Grocery Challenge and we are still doing pretty well. I had been hoping to only spend $50 this week on groceries, but my local store had some really good deals this week and I ended up spending a little over $50 in one day (but that was 3 different stores). I also needed to get some more meat and a few other things later in the week and ended up spending a little over $10 on that trip.

So, I didn't make my goal budget, but I was still well under the All You budget. Here's a chart and graph showing my week 2 spending:

As you can see we spent $74.13 out of the budgeted $125.00, and had $50.87 that we could have spent if we wanted to. My goal for this next week is again $50. I need to buy some chicken this week, so I am hoping to still be able to stay under this amount. It may be difficult because I will be going back to work this week and hubby will be preparing the meals during the weekdays. We shall see.

All You Grocery Challenge

Thursday - Day 11

It's been a pretty uneventful week on the food front this week. We had cereal for breakfast on Thursday with cut up bananas. For lunch, the husband and kids polished off the last of the deli meat that was left over from Saturday. I ate while I was out shopping (see below). We had these on homemade bread with lettuce and strawberries for dessert. For dinner, we had chicken and biscuits (has veggies in it) with strawberry shortcake for dessert. I made up several pizza crust doughs tonight. I baked two of them, one will be used on Friday for dinner and the other was wrapped and put in the freezer. I also put some dough in the freezer after the first rising.

Spending: Today I spent a little bit of money. I took my friend Yan with me shopping for clothes for my new job. I actually did really good and spent only a little over $200, and I ended up getting a few things on clearance for the kids. We were going to go to Friendly's in the mall but after waiting 15 minutes for a waitress to even come ask us what we wanted to drink, we left. We were pretty thirsty by that point, so we grabbed drinks at Aunti Anne's for $3.33 for both, which I paid for. We ended up going to Salasaritas for lunch. Yan had never had Mexican food and I had never eaten there before because it's only been there a few months. We ended up getting a chicken quesadilla to share and two soft tacos. We didn't get any drinks because we still had our drinks from Auntie Anne's. They gave use a discount because we had never been there and we ended up paying $6.30 for lunch for two. Yan gave me $3 towards lunch, reducing my cost to $3.30. It was very good and Yan really liked it.

I almost forgot. I stopped at Tops on the way home to get a couple things I had forgotten the other day when we were there. I ended up buying 2 ham steaks at $2 each, severeal pounds of boneless pork chops for $1.99 a pound, and 8oz of mozarella cheese. My total spent at Tops was $11.92.

Total Spent Today: $18.25
Amount Saved at Tops: $10.39

Friday - Day 12
For breakfast we decided to have eggs and toast and then some blueberries and strawberries in yogurt. Lunch was leftover italian pasta from a couple nights ago with fruit cocktail. For dinner I made a homemade pizza with sausage (from Aldi's), pepperoni, peppers and onions. It was very yummy, as always! We had green salad with dressing with it and chocolate pudding for dessert.

Spending: no money spent today.



Saturday - Day 13
We still have a lot of cereal (bought cheap) so we had that for breakfast with strawberries and blueberries. For lunch we had grilled cheese sandwiches with green beans from our garden and a can of peaches. I was trying to get a lot done, because I start work on Monday, so I wanted something quick and easy. I decided to make pancakes with chocolate chips (these were the ones bought on clearance a week or so ago), eggs and toast. For dessert we had jello with fruit cocktail in it.

Spending: no money spent today

All You Grocery Challenge Update

Monday - Day 8

Breakfast was cereal. We have a lot of it and it needs to get eaten up. Adults had Frosted Mini Wheats and the kids ate Life. Lunch was ham and turkey sandwiches on homemade bread with strawberries.

It was hard to come up with something for dinner since we hadn't been to the store yet, and we are out of chicken and almost out of ground meat. I ended up making Italian Chili with cornbread and fruit cocktail for dessert. We hadn't had this in a while and it was very tasty.

Tuesday - Day 9

Today we had eggs and toast for breakfast because our daughter asked for it. It was very good though. For lunch we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on homemade bread and bananas. We ended up eating Italian Chili leftovers for dinner before heading out to the store. When we got home, we all ended up having a yogurt.

During the day I ended up making a double batch of Strawnana bread, and only did up 2 trays worth, so I will be doing up more on Wednesday so that I can freeze them. I also had 3 more bananas that were pretty far gone, so I peeled them and put them in the freezer, for future use.

Wednesday - Day 10

Today for breakfast we had oatmeal with cut-up strawberries. For lunch we had grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup and oyster crackers. Dinner was homemade mac n cheese and hot dogs. Also today was a baking day. I made up the rest of the muffins and then froze them. More on that in a future post. I also made up pizza dough. I froze one after the first rising, and froze the other two after I had baked the crust for about 20 minutes. I was a baking fool! LOL.

All You Grocery Challenge Week in Review

Sunday - Day 7

So, it's Sunday and the end of week 1 of the All You Grocery Challenge. Today we had a late breakfast of pancakes, eggs and toast, and milk. For lunch we had turkey sandwiches, made with the turkey and rolls that were given to us, a slice of watermelon each and chocolate milk. For dinner I plan on making Chicken and Biscuits (the kind I make has mixed vegetables in it), fruit for dessert (choice of strawberries, blueberries, or grapes) and juice (100% fruit juice) for our drinks.


A Week in Review

Well, we made it through the first week under budget. We would have spent a lot less but life got in the way. With the water being turned off on Wednesday, we ended up spending $20 on a sheet pizza. Then on Friday, my husband and I celebrated our anniversary. We ended up going to Olive Garden and spending $38.02. If you subtracted just those two things, we would have spent almost $60 less. Isn't it crazy how much you can spend just eating out?

Here is what my spending log I use looks like. I used all those wonderful skills I learned in my Advanced Spreadsheets class. You can click on it to take you to a larger picture of it.

I track each day's spending on food for each week. I also have a drop-down menu to use for my category - they are sorted by food, eating out and snacks/coffee. I then added each category up and did a nice pie chart to help me see where I am spending my food money.

I did a screen shot so that you can see how much I spent this week. Here is Week 1's Totals and chart. You can also click on the this picture in order to get a bigger picture.

As you can see in the above chart, I spent $67.90 on eating out (pizza and anniversary), $4.23 on snacks and coffee, and $20.38 on groceries. We still have $32.49 out of our allotted $125 budget for the week. The pie chart shows all $125 of our food budget, blue is eating out, red is snacks and coffee, green is groceries and purple is what we have leftover.

So, we did pretty good, all things considered. Next week will only be better. My local grocery store does have a few good deals so we will be stopping there sometime during the week.

All You Grocery Challenge Daily Roundup

Saturday- Day 6

Breakfast:
Dry cereal. Still have a lot of it, so we need to eat it up. We still do not have oatmeal because Aldi's is out of it for a while. I asked and was told it was discontinued for a while. So, I think tomorrow we will just have regular oatmeal (quick oats) with some strawberries or blueberries in it and maybe a splash of sugar if the berries are tart.


Lunch:
Went to a wedding at 1 o'clock. Afterwards was an informal reception where they had deli meats, fruits and salads. It was very yummy. The little kids ate lots of fruits, though they hardly touched their sandwiches.


Dinner:
We were munching all afternoon, so we didn't have an actual dinner. We just snacked on fruit and other leftovers from the party.



Aldi's Trip

After the reception, we stopped by Aldi's since it was on our way home. My intention was to get some more oatmeal for the little kids, but they ended up still not having any. I ended up getting quite a bit of stuff:

• 2 one pound containers of strawberries $1.45 each
• a pint of blueberries $1.49
• 2 pounds of grapes $2.99
• 4 large bananas @ $.39 a pound = $.71
• 2 boxes of popcorn 6ct for $1.49 each
• a gallon of skim milk $1.75
• 2 tubs of Tastes like Butter $.99 each
• 1 pound of sliced ham $3.49
• box of garbage bags $2.49+$.20 tax (not included in food total)

So I spent $20.98 minus the bags ($2.69), for a total of $18.09 added to our grocery budget for the week.

All You Grocery Challenge Daily Roundup

Friday - Day 5

Breakfast:
Cinnamon toast on homemade bread with apple slices.


Lunch:
Canned spaghetti and meatballs with canned pears. We need to run to the store this weekend and grab some more fresh fruit. We only have bananas left and they are starting to get to the point where they would make a good bread.

Dinner:

My husband and I are going out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We will probably end up at Olive Garden since I have a $4 coupon off 2 dinners. We will also drink water (we usually do) to keep the price down. We should be able to get out of there for less than $30. I will update this later with the actual cost. The kids are probably going to have mac n cheese, hot dogs made in the toaster oven, and canned pears. Grandma is coming over to watch them and I want something easy for her to make.

Update: I was wrong. It was more than $30. LOL. We did have a really good time eating out together, alone! It is always so weird to go anywhere together without the kids. Most of the time when I go somewhere, I have at least one of them with me. So, we ended up spending $38.02 which isn't too bad considering hubby got 2 beers. So I will be adding this amount to my weekly grocery budget.

All You Grocery Challenge Daily Roundup

Thursday - Day 4

Breakfast:
Cereal again. We have a lot of cereal that I got CHEAP! So, we ate that. We still haven't gotten to the store yet to pick up oatmeal at Aldi's. I am hoping to get there sometime this weekend. We had blueberries with our breakfast.


Lunch:

Ham and cheese sandwiches on homemade bread with a banana.

Dinner:

Tonight was leftover night, since we had a bunch of food in the fridge. I hate when leftovers go bad. No reason not to get them eaten up. So, the little kids and hubby ate leftover mac n cheese with broccoli, my older son and I had leftover pizza. We had jello with fruit cocktail in it for dessert.

All You Grocery Challenge Daily Roundup

Wednesday - Day 3

Breakfast:
Cereal. The kids had Life and I had Mini Wheats. We each had half of a banana also.



Lunch:
Leftover homemade macaroni and cheese with broccoli. Boy, this tasted delicious, even the second day. We had a can of fruit cocktail with it.

Dinner:
Unfortunately, we didn't have water for most of the afternoon / evening so it was hard to make something for dinner. I just gave in and decided to get a sheet pizza. It was less than $20 with half pepperoni, and it gave us enough for dinner plus enough for lunch on Thursday and Friday. So, even though we spent some money it is definitely a better take-out item because it goes farther. No cookies for dessert because they were all gone. Cookies in my house don't last too long. Thank goodness I froze half the cookie dough for another time. LOL.

All You Grocery Challenge Daily Roundup - Day 2

Tuesday - Day 2

So, we are done with the second day of the grocery challenge. I did pretty darn good, though I can't say my husband did. He's going to be the death of me, I swear. LOL. He took my older son with him to go work on our land and tend to the garden, and on the way home they grabbed food at Taco Bell. He spent $9.88. He also spent $2.29 on a gallon of milk. I did send him over to get the milk though. So, I will now be adding this to this week's totals.

Breakfast/Lunch:
We all got up late this morning, so we had a brunch. I made more blueberry pancakes today. Although, I tried to make them from scratch and they tasted funny. Darn Betty Crocker recipe. Yuck! I will not be making that recipe again! We also had eggs and toast.

Dinner:

Since my husband and son were gone, I knew I had to make something that wouldn't require too much time in the kitchen. With two kids under the age of 3, you don't know what they will get into when your back is turned. I had had something else planned for dinner, but we will just have that another time. I had frozen homemade mac n cheese with broccoli a few weeks ago, and I threw that in the oven for dinner. It seemed to take forever. I guess I forgot that it usually takes more than an hour to cook when it is frozen. But it was tasty and the kids ate it quickly. We then had some fruit cocktail and for dessert, a chocolate chip cookie.

I used up the Nestle swirl chocolate chips that I got on clearance last week for $1.49 a package. These turned out yummy! I baked up about 30 of them, and the rest were scooped out, flash froze, put in freezer bags and placed in freezer for future use.

Along with the cookies and the pancakes, I also made bread today. 6 loaves to be exact. I made up one set of loaves while the little man was napping. I decided that I wanted to get some extra loaves in the freezer, so as soon as my bowl was free, I started making up another 3 loaves. I am thinking that I need to invest in another large mixing bowl and 3 more bread pans. That way I could 6 loaves at a time. Wouldn't that be sweet?

All You Grocery Challenge Daily Roundup

Monday - Day 1
So, it would have been a no-spend day, but hubby grabbed coffee and 4 granola bars on the way to his uncle's house. Ggggrrrr. There goes $2.40 I wasn't planning on spending. Other than that we did really well today.

Breakfast:
We had cinnamon toast on homemade (yummy) bread and apple slices. The kids gobbled this up. They like the cinnamon toast and I like the fact that there is no high fructose corn syrup or preservatives in it. And the apple slices went perfect with it!

Lunch:
Ham and cheese sandwiches on homemade bread along with a banana. It was very tasty and pretty good for us.

Dinner:
I made pancakes with blueberries with an omelet. The omelet had cheese and a little bit of bacon bits, along with some pepper, of course. The kids devoured it all. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it. Our dinners are usually pretty hectic around here. LOL.

All You Grocery Challenge Begins Today

Today is the first day of the All You Grocery Challenge. Since we are a family of 5, we are allowed up to $125 a week for groceries. Of course, we will not be spending that much. I couldn't spend that if I tried! Nor can we afford to spend that much right now. My goal is to spend less than $50 a week and use more of the food in our stockpile and freezer. Friday is our anniversary, so we will be going out to eat I am sure, but with keeping our grocery budget less than $50, we won't be even close to the $125 max. We were thinking either a local restaurant or going to Olive Garden (because I have a coupon lol - and they have yummy food of course).

I will be posting my meal plan later today, since it is such an integral part of staying within our budget. I have it done on my fridge, I just need to post it. This afternoon I would like to get some more loaves of bread made up and would like to make up some homemade hot pockets to put in the fridge for lunches later this week. Tonight will be a simple dinner of either pancakes or waffles and eggs. I will make extra to put in the fridge and to freeze for breakfast later in the week.

So far, I only have a few groceries on my shopping list this week so far:

• ground beef. Wegmans has it on sale for $1.99 a pound when you buy 6 pounds. I will use less than 3 pounds to make hamburgers on the grill. The rest will be cooked in 3/4 of a pound portions, cooled and then frozen for meals later. This makes meals a lot quicker and easier to prepare. ($12)
• 3 gallons of milk - just guessing on that - $1.99 a gallon ($6)
• 3 boxes of oatmeal from Aldi's @ about $1.50 a box ($$4.50)
• dried garlic flakes $3
  

For those who would like to use it, here is the html code to the badge I used:
<a href="http://allyougrocerychallenge.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="allyoucurved" src="http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww235/couponqueenofcorning/allyoucorners.png"/></a>

Directions on how to add to your sidebar in blogger:
Click on Layout. Click on AddGadget where you would like the badge. A box will pop up. Click on the + sign next to Html/Javascript. Add a title if you would like. Highlight the code above, right click, Copy. Right click in box and click Paste. You can then add totals underneath that if you would like. Or anything else - you can even click on the RichText to change the color of the text. Click Save and you are all set.

All You Grocery Challenge

Looking for a way to challenge yourself to spend less money on groceries? All You magazine is running a Grocery Challenge that begins July 13 and runs for 4 weeks. The challenge is to only spend $25 per person a week. This would be $125 for a family of five. The nice part is you can use food from your stockpile or your garden, or even food that you barter for. As long as you aren't spending money on it, it doesn't count. All You will pick 10 finalists and the winner receives a $1000 grocery card and a year's supply of Knorr's side dishes, plus a chance to appear in All You magazine.

I have entered the challenge and am hoping to slash our spending for the next month dramatically. I have $200 for the month budgeted for food, but would like to actually spend less if possible. We shall see. So, for the month of July, I will be documenting here how much we spend on groceries, eating out, and even my husband's occasional coffee at the convenience store. Unlike the All You challenge, I will be including household and bath products in my overall grocery budget. The only thing I will not include is diapers. I have 3 packs left, but Rite Aid will be having some rebates this month that I would like to take advantage of when they have the packs on sale for less than $10. Even though I have quite a few Pull-Ups, I have a coupon for $5 off that expires this weekend so I will make sure to take advantage of that also. Thank goodness my little girl decided she wanted to start using the potty. This is saving us so much, since she only wears them at night now!

If you have any suggestions on how I can cut my food budget further, or would like to share how you are cutting your expenses, leave me a comment. And don't forget to go sign up for the Grocery Challenge.