Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

This makes me so pleased. DH's camera is the one that won't take photos anymore and mine had gone missing, but it showed up today, rather mysteriously. I'm pretty sure it fell through a crack in the space/time continuum, because it was not there last night. Or this morning. Or maybe one of the kids snuck it back after finding it in their rooms or something and isn't saying. But I have it.

It is not as good as the other one, but I hate not being able to take pictures. There have been so many times in the past couple of days when there has been something I've wanted to snap and couldn't. I am still researching new cameras, as I do feel we need to get a good, high quality one soon, but I no longer feel so rushed to do so.

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I almost blew it today on a credit card payment. I had accidentally charged something on one of the paid off cards and then forgot about it until the last minute. And I do mean last minute. As in it was 4:40 and I had to get home to a meal I had started making but left my daughter in charge of. Fortunately she was just finishing putting everything on the table as I walked in the door. I was able to eat in 20 minutes and had enough time to drive over to the one drive-thru branch of BoA that stays open until 6, so I got it paid. If I hadn't paid it today there would have been interest. No more cutting it that close for me!

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I also picked up a prescription because I was on that side of town, $3.35.

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I got gas today. The pump shut off at $50. I don't know why, I pre-paid with my AMEX card and I've never had it shut off before the tank was full except on really hot days and even then it was a gallon shy not this much. It was only 12 gallons and I have an 18 gallon tank and it was empty. It should not have clicked off at 3/4 of a tank, but I was in a hurry so I didn't try to do a second purchase or go in and see what was up. But I figure DH will be home when it runs out again and he can take it and get it all the way full.

Gas was $4.29 a gallon. Ouch. It's cheaper at Costco, $4.17, but not worth the time driving there and the time spent in the line. It works out to be cheaper to pay the 12 cents more a gallon. I actually save money that way, which tells you gas prices are ridiculously high.

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Tomorrow is payday. I will be running around a fair bit to pay things and to do a small amount of grocery shopping. Produce mostly, but I also want to look for some BPA free storage containers. I'd like to replace all of my cheap plastic with either BPA free plastic containers or glass containers.

One of the hints I saw on doing this for cheaper was to buy things in glass containers that you could reuse, but most of what I buy either doesn't come in a container (fresh fruits and vegetables) or doesn't come in glass at all, only plastic or tin. Peanut butter and jelly come in glass, but they are small, so while I might be able to fit a serving or so of some food in one, I wouldn't be able to fit planned over leftovers for the next days meal into something like that. I also do get a glass bottle of mango nectar that my son can have but it has a narrow mouth so it would be hard to store anything in it, except maybe popcorn or rice (which comes in a cardboard box anyway, not plastic). Maybe small uncooked macaroni noodles or shells.

I did see some quart-sized and pint-sized Ball canning jars at Goodwill when I was there that I could use. I would have to buy lids and rings to use those for storage, plastic wrap on top defeats the purpose of using sustainable products, but that is certainly cheaper than Pyrex with lids, which is what I was looking for in that aisle of Goodwill. I found lots of Pyrex, but not any with lids. Something to think on as my reusable plastic wears out and we switch over to products that are better for the planet.

Well, I clearly made too much spaghetti on Monday because there is still a good batch of noodles and sauce sitting in the fridge. Normally the kids eat it after school for snacks but this time it just appears to be sitting there. So I got to thinking about it. My first thought was freeze the sauce and don't worry about the pasta, everything says pasta doesn't freeze well. But that thought doesn't go over well with me, because I am trying to use up all my food, not just throw it out because I don't know what to do with it.

Then I thought, wait a minute. Lasagna freezes great and it's pasta. And I see prepared frozen spaghetti and mac and cheese all the time when I go down the frozen food aisle at the grocery store. Maybe plain pasta by itself doesn't freeze well, but what about some kind of casserole. And then I remembered something I used to make back in our low income days after a huge pot of spaghetti was getting boring. Leftover Spaghetti Pie!

I don't think I ever really had a recipe for this, I kind of just threw it together. I'd grease a pie plate or a square glass baking dish with butter (because everything tastes better with butter) and I'd dump the leftover spaghetti in. I'd take a butter knife and kind of cut up the pasta into more manageable chunks. Then I'd mix in about a pound of cooked ground meat.

I used to be in the habit of making up five pounds of hamburger at a time and keeping some in the freezer in one pound bags for busy days, so I'd just grab one, give it a quick thaw in the microwave, and dump it in with the spaghetti. I'd then dump in the leftover spaghetti sauce (unless I'd mixed the sauce and pasta when we ate it). Usually about 2 cups worth (or if you don't have sauce made up 1 16 ounce jar's worth). I'd mix it around until it was all evenly distrubted and then I'd mix in some hard cheese like parmesan or romano, sometimes both. Maybe 1/2 a cup or so in total. Then I'd cover the top with mozzarella and then sprikle some extra sharp cheddar cheese on top of that.

I'd bake it in the oven for about 30 minutes on 350 degrees and out would come a beautiful, browned, bubbly casserole. So that's what I'm going to do with my leftovers. Only without cooking it. I will cover it with aluminum foil instead and put it in the freezer, take it out one night next week to thaw and bake it for dinner the next night.

I have to consider the sourdough starter a complete failure. Oh, I know that it could have succeeded quite well, it was getting frothy and bubbly and I was going to make sourdough bread today, but when I pulled back the towel I found a Miller moth drowning in it. I do not know how this happened as there were no gaps between the bowl and the towel for it get through, but there it was. Clearly I couldn't use it. I don't know if I have the patience to start it over again at the moment.

We are having quite a persistent problem with these little moths getting in the house right now. Short of never going outside again, I'm not sure what I can do about it. Actually I'm not even sure that would work as it's possible they are just hatching out since there have been so many over the last six weeks or so. All of the screens are tightly in the windows so they have to be coming in the doors with us.

I will probably attempt it again at some point, but right now I am feeling very "sit there like a lumpish" and this despite having actually made hamburger and hot dog buns with yeast today. And cleaning the sink. And doing laundry. I wish I knew why I felt so lumpish. My cold seems to be gone, but I just feel really tired. And I slept well last night, though maybe one night of good sleep after several nights of nowhere near enough doesn't count for much.

I am in the middle of reading An Unending Meal, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but the author's prose is putting me off a bit. It's subtitle is Cooking with Economy and Grace, but I'm not finding much in the way of economy. Well, she is keen on using it up and making do with all parts of each food, so I guess that part is economical, but it is not economical food. She goes for the expensive range of things. And I shouldn't mind that so much as I am all for the grass fed, free range, organic foods, but...I don't know. It's not what I think of when I hear the word economy. This could be a me thing.

But the cooking with grace part...I guess it's coming off more as being full of airs and graces than it is being graceful. More purple prose than anything else. Maybe I am just more accustomed to a more down homey style and straightforwardness in my cook books. I will continue on through it, but I really wish that this is one book I had not purchased but had gotten at the library. I had really high hopes for it and the reviews just raved about her writing style, but all it really does is rub me the wrong way. Not to say that the recipes don't look excellent, they do, it's just that so much of the book is in the delivery and I guess I just prefer UPS or FED EX to the hand delivered courier.

I had planned for dinner tonight to be meatball subs, but the kids were hungrier than I expected last night and ended up eating all but 2 of the meatballs. Which normally wouldn't be that big a deal, it takes exactly 7 minutes to make them, cooking time included since I make them in the microwave. I could easily have made up another batch of meatballs, but the buns I had been planning to use up had little mold spots on them this morning. They were perfectly fine when I looked at them last night, but not this morning. Well, I do have bread rising, but my afternoon is too full to make buns this afternoon. I will make them tonight after supper.

I am a little miffed at myself for not getting the buns used up in time. These ones happened to be store bought, and they were made in the bakery, not on the shelf. I did that to avoid as much of the junky stuff as I could, but that also meant few preservatives and I didn't even think to store the buns in the fridge like I do with my homemade ones. *sighs* When I throw out a bun or two that I make myself it is not nearly so expensive. I mean, I don't like wasting food, period, but if I have to, ten cents worth is much better than $1.50 worth (there were five buns left out of a twelve bun package), you know?

I looked at my menu plan to figure out what day would be best to swap with. Normally I would just do the next day's meal, but tomorrow's meal is much more labor intensive because there isn't a ton on the adgenda tomorrow and I can easily accomplish a more elaborate meal then. Tonight DS has tae kwon do so I need a meal that is faster to get on the table, which was why I had planned for leftovers. The easiest meal to swap out with will be Saturday's, which I planned to do beef tacos on. I can make a pizza on Saturday instead and make the tacos tonight. Technically I could make pizza tonight as I have dough in the freezer, but we just had it the other night and I really am not in the mood to have it again this soon. So tacos it is.

I found two super easy recipes the other day for fast lunches that I might do on the weekend with leftover chicken. Variations on a theme, really. One is a bacon, chicken and cheese quesadilla, and the other is a wrap with chicken, bacon, cheese, baby spinach and tortilla. DD said she would be interested in the wrap to take for lunches to school, so she might have that on Friday. I buy these mixed salad greens that I really like that have baby spinach in them. I am not a huge fan of baby spinach so I usually pick it out and have the kids eat it anyway. I mean I'll eat it if it's served to me in a restaurant or if there is a chance it will go to waste if I don't, but it's just kind of...eh to me. The kids love it. So it works pretty well most of the time.

My daughter mentioned last night while we were sitting at the dinner table how happy she was that we were eating real meals again and how much better the food is. We got a lot of takeout when we were sick, but we've gone many days now without getting any. Part of the takeout problem was that I just did not feel good enough to be cooking, but part of it was I had no meal plan and I basically could not even think one out. It's one thing to robotically follow something that was already planned out when you are ill and another to come up with it in the first place. It's like all common sense dribbles out your ear when you're sick with a head cold.

I think I should probably come up with some simple fixings to keep on hand for easy meals on days like that and have myself a list of them made up so I can just open a document and go, "Hey, I have that. That's easy. I can do that," instead of going what's the healthiest option I can get delivered through my car window? Or worse yet, the one that involves the least amount of driving.

I know my focus on eating cleaner, healthier, more humanely raised food gets very blurry when I am sick. I wonder if it's true of vegetarians or other people that eat a certain way as well. Most of the time you are good and you eat according to your ideals or whatever, but do you just say the heck with it and go for the cans of Chicken Noodle soup and toasted cheese sandwiches from your childhood when you just feel rotten? I need to get better at this, but part of it is still new to me.

Not too much else in the financial arena. I will make a small credit card payment today of $87.50. I accidentally charged something on the wrong card and need to get the balance back to zero.

1. Colored my hair with an old box of hair dye that has been kicking around for 2 years. It was bought back when it was $5.99 a box. It looks great by the way, though it is not the color it said on the box. I colored dark reddish brown hair with some grey something called Brazilian Bronze. No. Copper maybe, but definitely not bronze. So I've got a bit more red in my hair than usual, but it works.

2. I stuck to my meal plan and made spaghetti and meat balls with from scratch sauce, even though I wanted to get take out burgers from Boomers. I have enough sauce left for both the leftover noodles, meatball subs tomorrow and to make a lasagna later. And I immediately froze what will go for the lasagna as soon as it cooled. In the past I've left it in the fridge too long and ended up throwing it out. That was a while ago, but I am guarding against it in my effort not to waste good, organic, wholesome food.

3. Picked up two cook books from the library that I really wanted to buy. I did not see them at Goodwill when I went there on the weekend. They are The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook and The Cook's Illustrated Complete Book of Poultry. One is a doorstop. The other is pretty hefty, too. Neither book has photos so I'm glad I did not buy them. I like photos with my recipes. To me the word illustrated means they should have photos. There are a few drawings, but they are a drop in the bucket. I am still going to read them as they came highly recommended, or at least the first one did, at a blog I have started reading in the last week.

4. I started reading a new (to me) blog at

www.thefrugalgirl.com. I'm working my way through the backlog of posts (she has almost four years worth) and I really like it. She has similar values to mine and is homeschooling her kids. I don't homeschool anymore, but I did for several years and I still have the mindset, so I am really enjoying her and she is so cheerful and upbeat, which is nice. I was actually looking for frugal recipes with meat and she was one of the choices and then I was like, hey, what else has she got, and then I was totally sucked in. She has good ideas and reading her stuff is really encouraging me to stick to my meal plan.

5. Took a walk. Free exercise.

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In other news, we have a nesting pair of what I think are chickadees living in the bird house on our back porch. I moved our recycle bins to the other side of the porch so as not to disturb them. They built a nest all last week. It was fun to watch them being so industrious. I think they are either Boreal or Mountain chickadees. It's more likely they are Boreal as I don't know if the Mountain ones stray this close to sea level, though there are still a lot of foothills around us.

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On Saturday evening I found Navi dead. She was the white hen. I don't know what was wrong with her. There was no sign of trauma, she was just on her back, feet up in the air and stiff as a board. She hadn't laid in a week and we think she might have been backed up with the eggs still inside her. I hope not because that is a horrible way for a hen to die, but it does happen.

If one of them had to go though, she was the bully in the henhouse and it was better it was her than any of the others. The flock is much more harmonius now. We buried her and gave her a little funeral. The chickens and ducks are very much pets, albeit working pets.

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My diet and exercise are going well and I am losing weight again. I'm sure sticking to my meal planning helps with that a lot. I am generally feeling better, but my face has broken out like a teenager at the worst part of puberty. I think it's just the fact that I haven't slept well in a few nights. I know it's not sugar or high fructose corn syrup because I haven't had any in ages. I do not think it is fair for people to have wrinkles and zits. Like karmically unfair. I'm going to bed early tonight.

Yeah, I know, me. I like Costco for a lot of reasons, but lately I don't even want to go there. The parking lot is always crammed, not just with Washingtonians, but also with Canadians coming across the border to get deals on food. And gas. For a long time Costco has been the cheapest gas station around, but the wait over the last year has gotten to be so ridiculous you can spend a half an hour in line waiting for gas and that's not even during peak time. In fact it takes less time to drive to the Costco in the next county and get gas then it does to go to the one in my hometown. Of course there's the return trip so it's not worth it, but that shouldn't be the case. It shouldn't be this bad. We aren't California.

I think it would help if they had county or state resident only hours of operation. It would be nice if there were an hour in the morning or an hour in the evening where if you were from out of state or country, you weren't allowed to buy then. Even if it was only one day a week.

Not even the handicapped parking spaces are vacant there. In the past year and a half that I've had my permit, I've parked in a handicapped slot there exactly twice. And after navigating the innards of this Costco and then waiting in the checkout line for 20 minutes or longer, my body is so messed up I need to have parked close.

We're not buying our meat there anymore since switching to grassfed beef and chicken, I can buy toilet paper and cashews somewhere else, but there are certain items I can't get anywhere else locally. 50 pound bags of flour, the organic tomato sauce, tomatoes, paste, and sauce. They have changed so many brands to their store brand, which is sometimes good but sometimes really, really not. They have stopped carrying the peanut butter my son can eat.

I don't know. We more than made back our money on our membership this year, and the thing renewed in January so I'm not in a rush to make up my mind, but the lengths at which I go to avoid going there (I usually send DH with a list) make me think maybe it's time to let it go. I think if before it expires I go and buy a year's worth of butter and freeze it and tomato products and store them, I could be perfectly happy without the membership at this point. With our new bed we could completely fill the underneath with tomato products and not have them sitting out in the way. Maybe that is the way to go.

I'll really have to watch my pattern of use for the rest of the year and if I'm avoiding it more than I'm going then there's not much point in keeping it any longer.

Okay so breakfasts are pretty much the same around here for the kiddos. Usually pancakes and eggs for the boy and peanut butter toast or leftover something or other for the girl. She doesn't like to eat too much first thing in the morning.

Lunches for the kids during the school week are turkey and roast beef sandwiches for the boy and either ham or turkey wraps of some sort for the girl. They have their choice of taking yogurt and fruit (kiwis and pineapple chunks for either or an apple for the girl). DS usually gets hot lunch on Tuesdays (chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and some sort of fruit), which reminds me that I need to write a check for $18 for the rest of the year. I want the account bottomed out. I don't like to run it with a balance over the summer, even if I know he will just use it next September.

I am going to make myself a low carb meatloaf tomorrow for my lunches this week. I am only eating high carbs once a day right now at dinner time. It's just eggs, parmesan and romano cheese, ground beef, green onions and garlic. I'll probably post the actual recipe and amounts with photos tomorrow. The camera is fritzing still, so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and I haven't made it to buy a new one yet. I will have a salad of mixed greens with the meatloaf.

I will probably do up a batch of taco meat, too. I often eat leftover taco meat on lettuce with cheese for breakfast when I am too tired to make myself eggs or sausage. I may also make and fry up some lamb sausage patties after lunch for breakfasts, too. I usually eat cucumber slices with my breakfast if it is not taco meat on lettuce.

So dinners:

Monday--Homemade pizza with prosciutto, hamburger (this will be the leftover hamburger patty I made yesterday crumbled up), onions, red peppers (at least on my portion), mozzarella cheese and a bit of cheddar, and pepperoni. Salad. Milk.

Tuesday--Spaghetti with meatballs. I am going to make my fancy from scratch sauce and make extra meatballs for the next day. Leftover broccoli and cauliflower will be the veggies unless I eat them for lunch, then they will be fresh instead. Milk.

Wednesday--Meatball sandwiches. I have some homemade hamburger buns to use up. I will save out some of the spaghetti sauce and use the leftover meatballs for this. Green beans. Milk.

Thursday--oven baked chicken, from scratch mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli and cauliflower. Canteloupe. Milk. (I will save some of the boiled potatoes before I mash them for tomorrow).

Friday--Bacon cheeseburgers with fried potatoes using the saved boiled potatoes. Green beans. Milk.

Saturday--Beef Tacos, sweet potatoes and whatever leftover cut fruit we have left and if none I will open up something else or we will do bananas.

Sunday--Beef pot roast, from scratch mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans. Milk.

There. I feel much better having a plan for the week.

I have had some serious food cravings this week. Yesterday it was a bacon cheeseburger, and today it was seafood. A good seafood dinner of lobster tails in a restaurant will set you back anywhere from $25.99 to $35.99 per person and that's assuming you're getting the regular 4 ounce one and not one of the fancier, larger ones, or a whole lobster at market price. Fortunately my favorite grocery store had an awesome seafood sale this week and they were selling 4 ounce lobster tails for $4.99. This is pretty much unheard of. I bought three of them. They were raw.

I have only made lobster tails a couple times in my life and that has been years and years ago and involved using the broiler. I wasn't really in the mood to heat the house up that high on such a hot day and the cookbook I used in the past was in storage, so I looked up how to cook them on the internet and I was very happy with how they turned out. It was also a surprisingly fast meal to get on the table, about 20 minutes from start to finish and that was without any help from the kids.

I started setting the oven to 450 and then I got out my lobster tails. They looked like this:



I took a good pair of poutry scissors and cut down the middle of the back of each tail.



You then have to open the cut and work the meat away from the shell and bringing it up on top of it, like how they serve it in restuarants. Remove the waste tube and throw it away and rinse the meat well. Put each tail in the middle of a piece of aluminum foil and dot the meat with butter. You can also season it now, but I like my lobster to taste like lobster and not meat seasoning so I didn't. I wrapped it loosely in the foil and then put each one in a metal cake pan.

I then started the water to boil for my broccoli and cauliflower and when the oven beeped I slipped the lobster tails inside and set the timer for 10 minutes. I quickly cut up my broccoli and cauliflower and rinsed it, then I took three leftover baked potatoes out of the fridge from a big batch I'd cooked earlier in the week and put them in the microwave to warm up (although 3 potatoes would have only taken 10 minutes of baking in the microwave and 5 minutes of steam time if they had been uncooked. When the water boiled I threw in the veggies and set them for 7 minutes.



I pulled out the lobster when it dinged and left it in the foil to stay warm, while I turned to my beautiful fresh pineapple and turned it into this:



I pulled the potatoes out of the microwave, split them and put butter on them.



Then the veggies were done so I drained them, and then put everything on the table. We unwrapped the lobster tails and they looked like this:



Although this meal might be pricier than most, I still came in at under $25 for the three of us (including milk), a savings of at least $50 if we'd eaten this food in the restaurant, more than that if we'd had drinks and not water. And that's with all the items I made being organic and the lobster being wild caught. Not bad if I do say so myself and everything tasted wonderful.

I will return to making meals that are much more frugal for the rest of the week, but sometimes it's nice to treat yourself, without going to the expense of a restaurant meal and this was my Mother's Day gift to myself!

...or at least it is if you can cook. And cheaper, too. I was majorly craving fast food today, but I absolutely had no inclination to leave the house or yard and even less inclination to spend money. So what to do when you absolutely must have that most evil of burgers (the one with bacon)? Why make it yourself. If you're lucky you'll end up with something that looks like this:



And maybe even tastes like it. I tell you that grass fed organic hamburger cooked in the fat from the bacon from the free range pigs, sprinkled with onion salt and meat seasoning on a homemade bun with organic sheep's cheddar cannot be beat. Not even by the best burger joint in town.

Of course you must have fries with that, right? So I took three leftover organic baked potatoes, peeled them and cut them up, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and fried them in e.v. olive oil (not organic, even I can't justify that price!).

And again, if you're lucky they'll turn out looking a bit like this:



And then add some of these:



and a couple of these:



in the blender with some all natural french vanilla ice cream to make one of these:



Total cost? About $15. Amount I would have spent getting the same amounts and types of food of lesser quality for the three of us? About $30 (milkshakes are expensive!). And there's one leftover burger patty for someone's lunch tomorrow or to crumble up as a pizza topping.

I decided to make sourdough starter tonight. I haven't made sourdough bread (or starter) in several years, mostly because I didn't want to tie up my biggest glass bowl at the time. Starter has to be made in a glass, ceramic, or crock container and can only be mixed with a wooden or plastic spoon as it reacts badly with metal and you can easily kill it. Now I have a gigantic glass bowl (that came as part of a set one Christmas) and it is a pain in the butt, quite frankly. It's heavy and takes up way too much space in the fridge, but it is just perfect for setting on the counter for ages and holding starter.

I love making bread (and not having to buy expensive additive free store loaves!) but I haven't done it much of late and I really want to get back into it again. As I am getting low on yeast and want to save it for when I make rolls and buns, starter is a good way to go. It only takes 2 1/4 teaspoons and then you never need to use yeast again unless you kill your starter off. It's the ultimate in frugality if you bake every day. I end up spending somewhere around 50 cents a loaf and I love that when similar bread would cost me $4. And there is nothing like the smell of fresh sourdough bread permeating the house.

If anyone else is interested in making a sourdough starter, there are some great directions on this page:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/SourdoughStarter.htm. It's pretty much foolproof if you follow the directions exactly. I am really looking forward to my first loaf, even if it won't be for several days.

Today was such a beautiful day that I finally got around to planting my lettuce. I am now the proud owner of two long window boxes full of romaine and red leaf lettuces. The starts have been sitting around in their little boxes for two weeks now and it almost seemed like they were very happy to stretch their feet (er, roots) in their new habitat.

I also commandeered one of my mother's large pots and planted an heirloom brandywine tomato plant that I bought at the organic food store today. I don't know if the chickens will bother a tomato plant or not, but I really didn't feel like tempting them by putting it into the ground. The older hens are trained not to go up on the front deck though they pretty much have free range of the rest of the property and the half grown chicks and the not so little ducks can't fly well enough to get out of their very large fenced area so they won't be going up there either.

I may end up transplanting the tomato plant again when it gets bigger. They don't tend to pick on plants that are bigger than themselves. I'd like to do some cucumbers, green beans, broccoli and kohlrabi this season, too, but I am not sure I have the stamina to weed that much ground. I haven't gardened in about 3 years and I still can't sit on my knees since the surgery. I could do cucumbers in a pot, I suppose and maybe some bush beans that way, too. Maybe I can talk DS into clearing some ground for me for some extra cash. He's willing to do extra work for a dollar an hour. LOL He's a real bargain.

I found these today:

http://www.bagthehabit.com/shop_bags and I thought that was one of the niftiest and most frugal ideas I've seen in a long time. I mean, I've been using reusable grocery bags for years, but I never even thought about reusable produce bags. We buy a lot of produce and I end up bringing a lot of plastic into the house that way.

I mean, I avoid it where I can. You'll never see me put bananas or onions in a plastic bag. Garlic goes bagless. If I'm only buying one fruit, like a canteloupe, I don't put it in a bag. But other things will get damaged if not protected, like lettuce, and some things are too difficult to manage. It's one thing if you have two onions to not bag them. Twelve potatoes on the other hand can be an issue and will irritate the heck out of the checkers, I'm sure!

So with part of my June allowance I am going to send for some of these and try them out. I've found several different companies that make them, I just liked these ones because they came in pretty colors and not just white.

I'm looking to get a new camera soon, within the next month or so, as DH's good free one that he got from work several years ago has inexplicably stopped working. The button you push to take pictures will no longer fully depress. I will take it into the camera store to see if there is anything that can be done. My own camera is so old that it can only do very short vid clips and the clarity of the photos, while state of the art at the time, are not nearly as crisp as even the cheapest digital cameras today.

So I was curious as to what the folks here on the blogs use? I just want to be able to take nice, clear photos and one minute vid clips. I don't need fancy lenses though I want the ability to zoom in or zoom out. Point and shoot is about where my abilities lie, so something simpler is better than something complicated. I don't want to spend a ton of money on it either, but I don't want to cheap out and not get a decent one either.

Right now I am pretty much confined to having DS take photos with his DSI and filching his memory card. That's okay for some things, but the aren't quite as clear as I'd like them to be.

I do like the idea of the slim cameras that you can fit in your pocket, but I've had no experience with whether those are a good camera or not. Thoughts?

I did a bit of food rescue tonight. In our effort to eat more organic produce (or just more produce), I sometimes find that I have overbought a bit (or even a lot). Tonight I went through the two produce drawers in the fridge to make sure everything was still edible. The strawberries were starting to look a tad past their prime so I pulled off the stems, cut them up, and put a little organic cane sugar on them. The sugar will act as a preservative and keep them edible for a couple more days. There is less than a cup, though, so I will encourage someone to eat them tomorrow.

I also found half a bunch of celery that was wilted. I cleaned and cut up the remaining stalks, putting the center most ones aside for the chickens. I find those ones flavorless (except the leaves which are great in stock). The other ones I put into a container with water. That will rehydrate them and they will be crispy and crunchy in less than an hour.

I performed the same trick with some limp carrots, peeling and cutting them up into finger length sections, and putting them into water. By morning they will be crisp again.

I had some rather sad looking oranges that have been in the frigde for...well, I don't remember the last time I bought oranges, but I know it was in the winter. I cut them in half. The wooden looking ones I set aside to give to the chickens and the ones that still looked like they were juicy I put on my citrus press and squeezed the juice out, so there is a quart of fresh squeezed orange juice now sitting in my fridge. We will taste it tomorrow and if it isn't quite sweet enough to be drinkable I will freeze it in ice cube trays to add to smoothies. I don't think I'll be buying a case of oranges from Costco again any time soon.

There was a canteloupe half that had gotten put into the drawer, which I figure DH did because no one else would. We (the rest of us) all know that cut melons don't go in the drawer because they can seep juice all over everything else. It was just beyond saving, not moldy but getting that tight look that changes the texture, so it will go to the chickens.

Sadly I found 2 cucumbers and a jalapeno pepper that could not be salvaged in any way, not even to give to the chickens.

On the bright side I didn't throw out any lettuce or meat. I've been staying on top of that much better. I'd like to get my food waste down to about 2%. I think it's at around 5% now.

I found a source of food dyes derived from natural sources, as well as colored sugars also colored from natural sources, things like beet powder and pomegranate. This means that I can once again make colored frosting for birthday cakes and decorate Christmas cookies with sugar sprinkles. This may seem like not much of a big deal for some of you, but we've had nothing but homemade chocolate cocoa frosting or homemade vanilla frosting on our homemade cakes for the last 4 years due to allergies to chemical tar-based food dyes, which is what things are normally colored with in the food industry.

I love the idea of having sprinkles and blue or yellow frosting and not having to worry about my child breaking out into hives. And I can make colored play clay again, which my kids (now 12 and 15) still love to play with. I could also, if I so chose, color a pitcher of homemade lemonade pink because there are some days when you just want pink lemonade. I can make green mashed potatoes on St. Patrick's Day!

It's just nice, when you are confined to making almost everything from scratch to have fun decorating opportunities again. The set was a bit pricy, for three primary color dyes and six colored sugars it was $54 plus shipping, but like all food dyes a little goes a long way and it should last for years. And sometimes it is worthwhile to spend a little bit more for a product that will enhance your life even if just in small ways.

The brand is called India Tree for anyone who might want to try it. I'll do another post about it once I've received it and used it, but I found very, very positive reviews for it.

So DH was going through his check stubs and realized one was missing for a date back in February. And his numbers were not adding up to where they should have been. So I checked with the CU and it turns out a paycheck was never deposited for that date. It was back in February and it was one of the two day paychecks. I was really sick then. That's the only reason I can think of that I didn't notice. Anyway, he's thinking the time sheet might have gotten lost in the shuffle of start up after a month long shut-down.

So he talked to his boss and his boss is going to figure out what happened there and how to submit for the lost time. The long and short of it is that eventually we'll get about $1000 net when they issue the missing paycheck that we weren't expecting. That would be enough to make the deposit on the grass fed beef and have a little left over for the freezer fund.

My check from American Opinion Consumer Panel came today. It was $20.05. It will go into emergency fund.

DH cleaned out his wallet as he flies out today and so I had $10.32 to put into the coin jar.

No money was spent today, but I gave DD $5 to pay for her field trip tomorrow.

Today was a very boring day.

After having made cheeseburgers with bacon for lunch and beef potroast for dinner, trying three of the items we bought from the farm, I am very happy with our purchase of the grass fed, organic beef. The hamburger is so lean (5% fat) it doesn't make enough fat to fry the meat in, though. We ended up just frying it in the bacon fat for our bacon cheeseburgers, which was delcious though it took away from the 5%. The bacon was lean too, but being bacon still had some fat, but I was surprised at the much smaller amount of drippings.

The chuck roast was very moist and tender after cooking in the crockpot on low for 8 hours. It was incredibly flavorful. I am glad they warned us to not have such a free hand with seasoning because half of what I normally put on was all that was needed. In fact DH forgot to put seasoning on the bacon cheeseburgers that he made (they were out when I made mine, so he made his and the kids' when they got back) and he said it didn't even need the seasoning. I thought that might be from the flavor imparted from the bacon, though.

They also told us to take smaller portions than we were used to eating because grass fed, organic beef has more protein in it per ounce and it fills you up faster. So far I have found that to be true. I ended up giving the last few bites to my son because I wanted to have room for my fresh organic strawberries and my organic mixed greens. So even though it may be more expensive to buy it, the fact that you don't have to eat as much of it to get full, might help lower the overall cost a bit.

I am really looking forward to trying the steaks and the sausages over the next couple of days.

I want to get some meat from the other farm in Bow to try. This one was black angus but the other is chiangus a cross between angus and chianina. I know I like angus, and I know chianina is supposed to be wonderful but I've never had it. If they don't sell any steaks to try, I guess I will go with the first place.

So we are back from our trip to Skagit River Ranch. We bought $255 worth of beef, a pack of their bacon, a pack of their mild Italian sausage, and a dozen eggs (since our chickens still aren't laying enough to keep up with five people).

We got to see quite a lot of the animals as we drove in, there was a lot of acreage. It's almost funny to see chickens out in a pasture, it's not the idea of Americana farmer that I have in my head, though it should be.

We were greeted by a rooster, three hens and a dog who looked like he was mostly border collie who'd been rolling around in something as he had leaves and dirt on him. He smelled okay so not something else you might find on a farm! He was very friendly and had a tail that could thump you hard with his happiness.

We went into the little farm store they had that is open only on Saturdays and we got to pick out our meat. Since it was our first time there, the girl running the shop went to get her father, the farmer, and he talked to us all about his farming practices and how he'd started farming the healthy way after he'd had serious health problems.

It was interesting and I learned a lot about sustainable farming, pasture rotation, composting, etc. He is very passionate about it and isn't that what you want in your food producer? Someone who cares about the health of the land and the animals and their vitality?

I can't wait to try the beef tomorrow. We will be making cheeseburgers for lunch and having a pot roast for dinner.

Good a reason as any to blog, isn't it? I have to be up in the morning to let the chickens out at 8, but then I can go back to sleep if I can for a couple more hours. It will be a full day. There is one open house we want to hit up on the hill. It is a rather spacious house at $262,000. No hardwood floors so I imagine it's all the carpeting that makes it so they can't ask for ridiculous pricing. We will hit that house early as we can. The open house starts at ten so we will be there near the start.

After that we will head to Sedro Woolley to Skagit River Ranch. They have a farm store that is open only on Saturdays from 10 to 6. They are a farm that sells grass fed animals. They also sell specific cuts of meat in their farm store and I would like to get some ribeye, t-bone, chuck roasts and hamburger and try them out before making a decision about buying a half a steer later this year. Mom wants to go in on it with us and buy the other half of the steer. Buying a whole cow together would bring the price down a little.

We'll see how it tastes. I am considering this farm and another one that is in Bow. The one in Bow costs less, but it's Chiangus as opposed to just ordinary Black Angus. I know I like Black Angus, but I don't know what difference Chiangus makes in taste, flavor or leanness. I am hoping to visit the other ranch on another day to see if I can buy samples as well.

Then when we get back DH has to set up the computer. The cobbled together mess DS has been using finally stopped working. They were financing 18 months same as cash, so we got an inexpensive desktop only, since our monitor is in perfect condition. DH finally took the back up laptop in to be fixed before the warranty runs out. Hopefully they won't have to wipe it because there are no backup discs for reinstalling windows. I have $200 in the laptop fund, so that money will go towards paying for the new desktop. I was hoping we'd get ahead of the curve on things that were going to go wrong and I'd save up enough before we got to this point, but the thing gave up too soon.

The kids have to have one fuctioning computer between them to write on for their writing assignments and no one wants to give either one of them one of our laptops. They are too hard on things.

It is time for DD to visit the eye doctor and if needed she can get new lenses. Not frames of course, those are every 18 months. She has been complaining about headaches and she thinks her prescription might have changed.

I forsee a very expensive spring/early summer. And sometime before fall I'll need to buy a chest freezer if I am going to get that much meat.

I added $8.67 to the coin jar tonight and $1.57 yesterday.

DH managed to break his tooth because he wouldn't stop eating hard candies. He doesn't suck on them, he chews them which you are really not supposed to do for the sake of your teeth and it's not like he hasn't been warned to knock it off. For years. Not only did he chip the tooth he broke the crown off. So now $1500 worth of work has to be done to fix it and I am very irritated because I was supposed to be next in line to get my teeth fixed and now I have to wait. I have some cracks in two of my six-year molars, just general wear and tear, but they have to be fixed before the cracks get down to the gumline or we'll be talking root canal, etc. And they hurt when I chew anything tougher than chicken, fish, or hamburger. I am trying not to be resentful about this, but I am afraid it is not working. Especially since it means post-poning paying off the last credit card. Which frustrates me even more. Our dental insurance sucks.

In our quest to eat more locally grown, sustainable, and organic foods and still try to not break the grocery budget, I stopped by a local farmstand today. I got all of this:



for $6.09. Pretty food, huh? Except for the kiwis, everything was from my state, most of it from my county or the next county over. I can't even tell you how beautifully the green onions and celery smell. Quite often I shop with my nose, even with foods that most people won't normally think to smell. It's obvious to sniff pineapple and canteloupe, but did you know that you can tell how celery will taste by the smell? If it smells bitter it will taste bitter. If it smells sweet and fragrant and sort of like parsley, then it will taste exactly as it should.

I haven't made the menu plan for the week yet, but I will do that tonight. Yes, I know it's Wednesday. Today we are having leftovers, but I do need to make one up for the rest of the week. Now that I've got a bit more produce on hand, I know what I am working with.

I added my ING interest of $2.31 to the emergency fund. This brings the EF to $1,036.03. I do dislike seeing that number so low, but I know using it to pay off debt is the right thing to do. And we will build it back up again.

I can't believe it is May already. This year is just whizzing by. Yesterday was very busy. I had an appointment in the morning, $90. DD had a dentist appointment, which will be billed to insurance and be fully covered because it is the first of the year.

We paid the property taxes yesterday for the half year on the old house, $524.75. DH took the two new toilets out to the old house. His father will help him install them on Wednesday. While out there he dropped off the water bill and saved a stamp, $144.

The money from ING showed up yesterday but we didn't have time to go over and make a payment at BoA. I am hoping we will today, but if not then that will get paid tomorrow.

We finally took the kids to The Hunger Games movie last night. We went to the 6:30 showing so we could get out and be home at a decent hour since it was a school night. I would have preferred to go to the 4:00 one, but DS doesn't even get out of school until 3:45. I was really well pleased with the movie. I felt it stayed true to the book on almost everything and only missed one tiny little scene not being included, the district 11 sending the bread scene. It should have been there as it was such a pivotal moment, but oh, well. You can't have everything in a screen adaptation, but this was pretty close.

Still it cost us $40 for the four of us to go. This is why we seldom see movies in the theater. $9.50 per student and $10.50 per adult. Even matinee prices would not have been that good. It's not like they are half price anymore. They are just a buck or two off per ticket to go at a less convenient time. I think it was worth it this time, but I miss the days of $5 movies. Heck, I miss the days of $1 movies.

So today was a major day for Open Houses for my city. They were doing a thing of some sort. Anyway, we looked at a lot of houses, and it served to reassure me that there are a lot of houses out there that would be right for us, which means when we are really ready there will still be a lot of houses that are right for us. Although almost perfect house is still almost perfect. It was really nice to see it, I really liked it, it had some problems, mostly fixing the paint would fix, but it was nice. But there were a lot of people looking at it and I did not feel bad about that or territorial or anything, so I think I am well over my irrational urges to buy right now.

We did see an absolutely gorgeous house about 3 blocks from my mom's house, too. It was truly exquisite decorating. It was like walking into a piece of art. But a comfortable, liveable piece of art. The fixtures and the floors and the wall paper and the way the walls were painted, it just was such a feast for the eyes, but not in a way you'd ever get tired of. The landscaping was incredible. You could just really tell that the people who owned it adored their home and had put a lot of effort into making it so beautiful.

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What was really funny was I ran into a man that I have not seen since high school (although we were friendly in middle school we had no classes together in high school so it felt more like not having seen him since middle school). He was friends with the realtor showing one of the houses and was waiting for him to finish up. It was so strange, because I almost never run into people like that. DH always does, but almost everyone I knew back then took off for Seattle or Oregon or California. But it was nice once we figured out how we knew each other. 24 years changes you a lot.

The had free Subway sandwiches at the last place we looked at, so I split half a six inch sub with my son and DH had one, so that took care of a late lunch. We were starving by then. I really liked the realtor who was friends with the guy I knew from school. He wasn't pushy but he was interested in helping us when we were ready. He was younger, maybe 30, but he felt honest and I got a good vibe off of him. We might decide to use him.

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The bathroom remodel is almost done. They've put in the vanity cabinet (but not the sink) and the toilet is in. The final coat of paint is on. The sink still needs to go into the vanity. The mirror needs to be put on the wall. The glass door needs to be installed on the tub/shower, the showerhead needs to be put up, and the shelving needs to be put up. We may actually have our bathroom back by mid-week. I hope so. I am tired of not having one. Of course we may have to wait for all the caulking and stuff to finish drying so it may be the weekend before we can use it, but I will just be so glad to not have the workmen in the house.

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The chicks and ducks are now allowed to go outside after they made a great escape yesterday. They tore the mesh netting free so they could get to the layer mash on the other side of the coop and then came outside after they had eaten it all, so Mom decided today to just let them go out now. They are loving it and the weather is nice so they are happy. They are big enough. They are mostly all flopped together in a heap under one of the blueberry bushes but they adventure out a couple at a time. Totally adorable.

So far today I have paid $700 to BoA VISA, $600 to AMEX, and $265.86 to Costco. We bought two new high pressure, low flow toilets for the old house, plus selected organic groceries there (and some raw sheep's cheese imported from France that they were sampling, so good, and we usually get some kind of expensive cheese when we go there). The toilets were $79.99 each plus sales tax of 8.9%. They are one piece models where the tank is part of the toilet unit, so very easy to install. We also bought gas while we were there, filling the tank for $59.56.

I figured out the budget for this week and next week's pay, and then figured out that since the car payment isn't due until 5/19 and we get paid on 5/18, I could actually skip making a car payment out of next week's check and make it on the 18th in person instead. I could then take the $800 (payment + additional principal that I always make) and put it on the BoA VISA instead. It's cutting it close, but I do still have enough money in the EF to cover the car payment if needed.

That should still have us on track to have the VISA paid off by the end of May or at the very latest the middle of June. I wasn't expecting to have to buy a new bed for DS this month, but sometimes things happen. Maybe we won't have to use the full $1000 I've set aside to have the whole house professionally cleaned. We are going to email about setting up an estimate. Then we can make an appointment to have it done. Then the only thing left to do will be to change out the toilets, get an estimate on fixing the window, and then scheduling an appointment to actually fix the window.

And then we will have to make a decision on replacing all of the interior doors and frames, or letting the house go As IS/Where IS without fixing those things. I don't think we are going to paint. I might get an estimate to see if it is worth it, but...I don't really want to put that much more money into it. I just want it clean, on the market, and not have to worry about it anymore. At least the roof is sound. We are twelve years into a thirty year roof warranty come July, and it was an excellent roof we put on.

The lawn will have to be mowed this weekend though. And probably at least every weekend from this point on, at least in the front where it shows from the road.. *sighs* It won't be too bad. We'll need the gas mower this first time, but after that I can use the push mower. And I can save the back yard for DH when he's home and he can use the gas mower for that.

I have some other bills to pay and set money aside for but I'll probably do that tomorrow. I did make a deposit to the Safety Net of $122.30.

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I forgot to post this before I left, so we took the kids clothing and bathing suit shopping after school, a planned expense, and got spring wardrobes for them (shorts and t-shirts for DS, Capri pants and t-shirts for dear daughter. They each got a bathing suit and I got one, too, though I am annoyed about it. The one I really wanted and liked the colors in various shades of green and blue of the most showed way, way, way too much cleavage even for me, and I'm pretty comfortable with that sort of thing, but dang, I would have had to pin this to feel comfortable in public. It fit so well, too, otherwise. It was an older ladies swimsuit, too. Why do they think we want to show off that much over age 40? It's like the toddler booty shorts. I mean, why? It'd be one thing if I was buying a bikini, but this was a swimdress style suit.

The one I ended up buying was various shades of pink (one of them hot pink, which I do like, but most pastels, which I don't) and brown. I am not really a pink person, but due to things that often tend to be out of my control, I have far too much pink in my wardrobe already. Usually because I just want to be clothed and the only thing left in the styles I like and my size by the time I get to shopping is the pink ones.

But it fits perfectly and supports perfectly. The skirt is a little too long for my preference, but hopefully it won't get in my way when I do the crawl stroke. I used to have one that was so long my hands would tangle in it when I swam laps. This one isn't billowy though at all. So I bought it. One nice surprise is I was able to buy it a size smaller than my other swimsuit. (I like to have two because I swim almost every day mid-spring through mid-fall, and the older one invariably falls apart from all the chlorine mid-season.

I mean, if I wanted to spend over $100 for a suit, I would order one online and get the colors I really wanted, but I don't, and a $33 suit with proper support and coverage, even if it isn't the greatest colors, is fine with me. And DH likes it regardless and says it looks good. It's just my dislike of pink, not reality. Sometimes we have to make compromises in life. This isn't a big one.

We also picked up some school supplies to replace what was worn out or used up, and some OTC medications to replace the stock used up when ill. The last thing I want to do when I am sick is go shopping for medications, so I really like to have enough on hand to treat 3 of us if we go down at the same time (DH is seldom sick).

We went to two stores and spent $73 at one (after $8 off from our loyalty card and were given a $5 gift card because we qualified for having spent over $50). At the other, where we did the bulk of our shopping we spent $265.56 (almost the exact amount we spent at Costco, interesting).

I was so tired by the time we were done, I decided to get takeout pizza instead of making some. *sighs* Willpower, thy name is not LuckyRobin. So that was $27.18. And after a quick run to the store tonight for milk and crackers I am not going to spend any money (except to write out bills) for the rest of the weekend. I hope.

Why do near perfect houses keep coming on the market in the neighborhoods we want to buy in? It's like if they all sell before we are ready, what is going to be left when we are ready? It makes me just a little bit crazy. This one is four blocks from my mother's house, right school district, right price range and appropriately priced, a gorgeous Craftsman (my favorite style) 4 bed 2 bath with hardwood floors and a yard the size of a postage stamp so barely any maintenance at all, but a great back deck. It has two bedrooms on the main floor and two upstairs, so accessibility is good, too. *sighs*

And I have to drive by it four times a day five days a week so it's going to be right there in my brain all the time. It's the shortest route to the schools so I'm not going to not drive by it and waste gas going a different way. But it is taunting me. The only really good thing about it is that it is for sale by owner so chances are it will linger on the market. A lot of folks do not want to deal with someone not using a realtor because of all the extra hassle involved. Me, I don't care.

We have $1,526.94 left to pay off to get our debt to income ratio at 45%, which is where they want it to be to qualify for a 2.9% mortgage at our credit union. Our credit scores are already in the right range. Tomorrow I will make the car payment, another VISA payment, and the AMEX payment. Then on Monday when the money arrives from ING, I will make an additional VISA payment. So we will be below that 45% range by Monday, though it may not trickle through to the credit bureaux until mid May. Not that it matters with no down payment money, but it is one more step in the right direction.

So...question. Does it make sense at all to do a 3% down loan if I am going to make double payments (not just double principal payments, but doubling the first payment with all the extra going to principal) until we've paid off 20% of the loan or is that just asking for trouble? We will have that much money available once the credit card is paid off in a month or two. Or should I stomp on my desire to get out of here and buy a house "right now" and get that 20% saved up. It will take us about a year, less if we sell our house.

How do we ever get past our wants prompting us to think they are needs? I know I could save 3% down in just a few months, but that is probably a stupid thing to do. And it's not like I've even seen the inside of this house. Gah. If we just stay here another year we will be so much further ahead. We'll be out of debt except for the car and the under $18K mortgage (which will go away when we sell the house). We'll be another year gone on the car and I'll have been making extra, extra principal payments on it, too. We'll have an EF of better quality and we'll have the downpayment saved. Life will be less stressful. Okay, I think I've talked myself out of trying to do anything rash or stupid. Trying. But not wanting.

I can do this. I don't need to throw my hard work away on impatient desire. *deep breaths*

Okay, and for the DEC, money spent today was $374.91 for a new twin mattress, box springs, and Hollywood frame for DS. We borrowed Mom's truck and brought it home ourselves and plan to put the old mattress on the curb with a free sign, so no delivery or disposal fees tacked on.

Speaking of wants, but not of wants that make me irrational, while we were at the furniture store waiting for the paperwork, etc., I sat in a lovely recliner in front of a giant screen TV. 70 inches of HDTV beauty. It was playing a scene of ocean waves crashing into a gorgeous tropical beach. I wanted to go there. It was like taking a mini-vacation in my head. I am happy with the big screen TV we have, but that thing is going on my future wants list way down the road, or something like it. We don't go to movies more than once a year usually, but we like to rent them and that thing would be great for the big sci-fi blockbusters.

It was surprisingly not horrifically expensive. Under $3000. I remember when you had to pay that for a 30 inch cathode ray TV with nowhere near this kind of quality. We never did, but I remember when. And there would be an installation fee, because that thing has to be mounted to the wall studs and we'd want it done right. It's on the dreams list, but it's not even in the top ten. And it's a much easier want to squelch than the house thing.

And is it just me or has anyone else noticed that the new article columnist seems to be very into brand names and very anti-generics? It's getting to be a theme.

Last night one of the workmen who is remodelling the bathroom asked about the Crown Victoria, which has basically been setting there the past four months with a beyond dead battery and needing about $600 worth of brake work. He is interested in buying it. Blue book if it were in perfect working order is $2000. His price range is $1500. I said $1000 would be fair considering the work it needs done on it.

He is going to talk to his wife about it and bring a battery with him the next time he comes and we can make sure it is just the battery and not the starter.

It is such a good family car and I would be very happy to see it go to someone who needs a nice, solid family car, which is what they need. She has been such an excellent car over the years. She's a '92 that we bought in Jan of '98 and have maintained well. He was very surprised to know it was 21 years old since there is hardly anything wrong with the paint, just two tiny dings and you have to know where they are to notice them. It still looks shiny and nice and only has around 134,000 miles on it.

We've pretty much been a one family car anyway since we needed brake work done, and it'll make Mom happy to see it gone. Even in the years when we've owned more than one car, we didn't use it often enough to make it really worth having two. Now, if DD starts driving regularly we might buy a second inexpensive car, mostly because I don't want her driving our expensive van without supervision. But she hasn't even got her permit yet (lack of time and interest, really), so I don't see that happening before we move out. Once our credit card is paid off I am going to start setting some money aside for a new used car, but not too much as most money will go towards saving for a down payment and some to building up the emergency fund.

If his wife does give the okay to buy the car for the $1000, we will take that money and put it on the credit card.

Speaking of the credit card, I got up the courage to transfer most of the EF today and we will be putting it on the credit card, leaving us with just a $1500 EF. That is my compromise. $1000 just didn't feel like enough to me. I'd be happier with $2000 but that interest rate is ridiculous on the card. Now I just have to wait the 3 business days for it to show up in my account.

I cashed out at American Consumer Opinion Panel for $20.05. I do kind of roll my eyes a little, because you can't cash out until you have $10, and it takes 10 days for whatever you do to even hit the account and then when you cash out it takes 1-2 weeks for them to process it, so they really make you wait for it, but then it does come through eventually and they do pay really well and have some very interesting surveys and product tests, so I guess it is all worth it even if I do roll my eyes. I just always figure payment will be a month later. They are better than many I have tried and I have been signed up with them for six years, so they are definitely tried and true.

I spent $3.38 at Youngstock's today. It is an outdoor produce and flower stand. Then I spent $72.50 at Haggen. DH is home, but we kept to the list pretty darn well. We are just a little over the amount for the week by about $5. Not bad for almost everything we bought being organic.