Let the games begin

Family Fare $4.58.

That's 76 cents a piece. Even if you don't have any coupons they are buy 5, on sale for 3 for 5, get the 6th free or $1.38 a piece which isn't a bad price for a quart of yogurt.
I usually buy one quart of organic yogurt a week. That one yogurt costs only a few cents less than what these six cost all together. The Activia is for the kids school lunches as a treat, have you ever read the ingredients on that stuff?? (The things I buy when I have coupons;-)

I have read that Dannon uses milk produced with out growth hormones so I don't think it's too much of a compromise.

I may have to buy more before the week is up....

Thanks to Saving Addiction for the tip!

In which I don't quit my day job to star in movies!

So here is what we are working with food wise. We would be pretty hunger if we couldn't buy food for more than a week. I must restock meat supply stat!

The buckets by the random food shelves contain oats and popcorn. They have a few spaghetti squash sitting on top of them. I also found 2 more bags of flour-yippee!

Also I miss spoke the sugars in the buckets are sucanat and demerara.

Ghee is purified butter if anyone was wondering.

Please tell me my voice doesn't always sound like that!!! I sound like a squirrel.

The Menu

So here is the menu for October. I briefly scanned the food in the freezer down stairs and there are a few thing we need to use up before we get another part of a cow, steaks!

I try to write our a menu monthly. It really doesn't take to long and saves me a lot of staring into the fridge around dinner time wonder what to make.

You should be able to click on it to make it larger. Please do notice the liver and onions:-) The hubby doesn't believe that it is fit for human consumption. The rest of us gladly gobble it down with a little ketchup.

The top has list of a few things I will need to buy. And the bottom is some ideas for food for the freezer.

Now I'm off to make the master grocery shopping list.

It's that time again!

Grocery Challenge time again!!! It's been a while so I thought I'd give it another whirl.

Last year I totally flopped. But its better to try and fail than never to have tried.

So this year the budget will be $500. What?!?! you say. You say $500 should be easy!!

You forgot I am kind of a food snob. I shun HFCS, MSG, BHT and other food like substances that have their own initials. We also have 7 pie holes, as the hubby so affectionately calls them, to fill. Only six of the pie holes have teeth so I'll run the numbers as a family to six even though I should be counted as two with the way I eat these days.

500 divided by 31 days = $16.13 per day

$16.13 divided by 6 pie holes = $2.68 per pie hole per day

$2.68 divided by 3 meals a day = .896 cents per meal

Eighty-nine cents a meal and that's not including snacks so I think that is a lofty goal.

Over May, June, and July the average day cost us close to $25 a day. That is A LOT of money. But really it's only $4.16 per person per day.

The fun begins on Friday, Oct. 1.

Sweet Thang

So two of the kids came home from Wednesday School with these sugar bombs. Belch!

Each one contains 52 grams of sugar!!!! And 300 calories!!!

So as part of "health" class we had to find out how much of a food you would need to eat to equal that much sugar. Here's what we came up with. You could eat 86 of these animal cookies.
Or 8 of the these coconut milk ice cream sandwiches, which by the way is the whole box!!!
How about 5.2 packages of these fruit snack things.
Or if those don't suit your fancy you can eat 9 of these suckers!!! NINE people!!!

You could also just go get a a heaping 1/4 of a cup of sugar and eat that too!!! Or there is the 16 ounce of coke you could suck down too to equal the same amount of sugar.

Yuck!! Gag!!! Vomit!!!!

And we wonder why everyone is so fat and diabetes is running rampant!!!

It amazes me how much food like product they come home with from school. I'm so glad they are only there once a week!

Here's the ingredients just in case you were wondering.

Sugar, Corn Syrup, Beef Gelatin, Artificial flavor, Artificial Color (yellow 5, yellow 6, red 40 and blue 1)

What you been up to?

This is what I've been up to.

Two days of peeling, peeling and peeling of pears. Don't get me wrong I had a few breaks. To cook food, feed baby, help with school and stuff said pears in jars and boil.

(Yes that's a box of wine, because we're classy like that!)

But at last they are done. 97 jars of pears. Price per jar- 89 cents.

4 Bushels of pears- seconds $48

4.5 gallons of apple juice $13

97 lids at an average of 15 cents a piece.

Now off to destickify the kitchen. (There I go making my own words again.)

Say CHEESE!

My latest run to Meijer.

12 frozen OJ
8 Ziploc storage bags
5 bags of Broccoli
1 RedHot Sauce
1 Chocolate bar
and
40 CHUNKS OF CHEESE!!! Total spent $31.59. I also have $10 in catalina's. So like spending $21.59. According to my receipt I saved $130.01?!!?!! Who would spend $160 on that??

The OJ's were a splurge, 75 cents a piece. Frozen veggies 50 cents, cheese is 17 cents after catalina's.

And if you don't eat cheese like this little lady you can just play with it.

Yes it is slightly excessive so I won't tell you about the 60 other cheeses I bought the other day;-)

Sweet Baby Legs

So she made me do it. Okay not really but she brought them up and I just had to have some.

1. First get some crazy cute clearanced socks.

2. Then watch a youtube video or two on how to make babylegs.

3. Spend five minutes on the sewing machine.

4. Stick them on the cutest baby you know and simply gush about how cute they are.

Before:

After: Okay you can have them match but I made two pairs and simply could not choose which ones she needed to model first.

Need a little justification?

Help keep baby's legs warm:-)

Give baby's sweet knees protection from the hard floor.

They will fit over pants and socks to keep little legs from peaking out when baby is outside.

Sorry that's all I got but they are just so sweet you really shouldn't need any more reasons.

Here they are in action!

The School Routine

Well we start school again in just a few short hours. This year will be much liked the last. We still only have 3 students, Lettie still has a few years before she joins the school time fun, hallelujah!!

What I hope will be different this year is how we manage our time. Before they never set their alarms and we started whenever. This is great about homeschooling especially after you just had a baby. I didn't mind just as long as we got done with school by noon. Well if mister sleepy head slept till nine and still had to eat breakfast and frog around I was barking orders like crazy to get done with school with everyone by noon.

Then by the time noon came the house is trashed and everyone is scared of mom. Okay not really scared but we could stand a little break from one another.

So here is our morning plan of action.

7:30 everyone up, dressed, clean laundry put away and bedrooms cleaned. We are starting a competitions between the boys room and the girls room. The boys won yesterday so we shall see how today goes.

8:00 breakfast

8:30 chore time

Master bath and living room -Lula
Dining room and back bath -Racky
Kitchen -Mom
TV room and basement bath -Puddin'

9:00-12:00 School with a few minute break in there.

When showing Puddin' how to clean the bathroom yesterday he says, "you're making us do all your work aren't ya mom?" Kids! I tell ya!!! I proceed to tell him I still do all of the laundry, cook, take care of the baby, clean the kitchen, and the floors, yard work...."but we still have to do your work. Right mom?" Whatever, cotton pickin' kid! :-)

Well hopefully my brilliant schedule makes for smooth sailing. Happy schooling to you all!!!

****Sparklers*****

The hubby tends to think that I worry to much about the kids safety. I don't think it's just a me thing, I think it's a momma thing. So this is how we try to keep sparklers safe.

First you need sparklers, a glass jar for the used but yet still hot sparklers and one candle. The candle will not keep the kids safe but it will save your fingers from burning up as you try to relight the flaming hot lighter:-) Also they should wear shoes so when the grass starts on fire like it did this spring when we did them, they don't burn their sweet little feet.

Thanks daddy for hording some sparklers so we can enjoy them all year.

P.S. the neighbor kids aren't allowed to do them because the are too dangerous so I'm not the biggest worrier out there:-)

Happy Birthday To My Sweet Little Man

Puddin' turned six today at 12:30ish a.m. to be exact. How can he be that old already. All 9 pounds and 10 oz. of him. He was 23 1/2 inches long even though his birth records say 22 3/4. (What's up with that????) I remember asking the midwife to call it an even two foot but she wouldn't;-) As we joke he unfolded when he came out.

Well he still is as tall as can be and cute as ever.

Happy Birthday Baby!!! We love ya!!!!

Yes she is one of five.

No we probably will never be able to send her to an ivy league school on our dime.



She'll learn things like ballet class and Saturday trips to the mall are optional in life.



She won't have her own room until the older girls move out.



Mostly likely she'll wear a lot of hand me downs.



She may never go to Disney land.

But she knows love! 6 people here simply adore her. 6 people here can't remember life with out her and wouldn't want to.



Have we taken away from the rest of the kids? Nah!! This sweet baby girl can hardly have a moment to herself. Love abounds.