Glad That's Over!

Today begins a fresh new week --- and I must say, I'm seriously glad last week is over! The week itself started of horribly. The Princess got the worst migraine she's ever had on Monday, which was incidentally, her first day back to to school after going to Disney World. Terrible timing, and the headache was worse than the timing. That resulted in new meds, missed work for me, and a flurry of makeup work because the end of the grading period was Friday.

On that same day, I received the bad news that I owe a ton of money in federal taxes. The loss of a couple of credits made that possible. Joy. Along the same line, filing the FAFSA, I realized that the Princess is not going to qualify for as much aid as I had hoped. Sigh.

To add to the woes, I met a friend out for dinner Tuesday night, which SO would not have happened if she wasn't a way out of town friend, and my bill was much higher than expected (yes, I read the menu wrong, totally my fault), and the food was not good (which was really surprising because I've enjoyed this particular restaurant many times in the past). I just despise paying more than expected for food that is just "meh".

And then we have Friday, due to an impending weather event (tornadoes and severe thunderstorms), the morning was busy, busy, busy and tense, tense, tense. I left work when the schools released the students. The whole day was tension filleld, but fortunately, it was basically a non-event in our area. (Other areas were sadly not so fortunate).

So now we are at Monday. A new week, and its just got to be better than last week! I'm counting on it!!!!

Too Far Frugal?

Sometimes you just have to wonder. So, today, I was cleaning up the kitchen and went to throw something in the garbage. I opened the can, and at the very top saw a cardboard box stuffed in. Sigh. Our curbside recycling takes cardboard. This isn't the first time I've seen cardboard and recyclables in the trash. Usually by the time I see them, they have icky stuff all over them so "rescue" isn't possible.

So I took the cardboard out and walked into the Princess's room and said "Let's have another little chat about recycling." She kind of rolled her eyes. I explained why recycling was important, save the earth, save the trees, leave a better place for your own children.....blah, blah, blah.

And then I veered off....and started talking about how recycling had reduced our household trash by 1 back per week -- which in an average week is about 50%. And then I started talking about how each trash bag costs almost .15 cents each if I get them on sale and don't have a coupon (yes I've tried cheaper ones, but they don't seem to hold up). And that .15 per week savings translated to $7.80 per YEAR!

And that's when I lost her...... I was sitting there babbling about saving the $7.80 cents per year and it took me 10 minutes to stop going on and on. I know the little things add up, but really, yammering on for 10 minutes about $7.80? Yikes. I've lost my mind.

Buckle Up, It's Going To Be A Bumpy Night

This has been the weirdest winter. Overall, the temperatures have been super mild. While that has been fabulous for my gas bill this winter, it doesn't bode well for the power bill come summer. With this mild winter comes out of the ordinary severe weather.

Quite honestly, after April 27th's devastating tornadoes last spring, and then another round of tornadoes in January, I'm not as excited about Spring as I normally am! And here we are, on March 2, looking at another possible round of very severe weather today.

It isn't even 6 in the morning yet, and I'm sitting on my screened porch typing this, and it is 70 degrees outside. A cold front is supposed to push through interacting with this heat and is expected to fire up possible super cell storms. The original thought was that they wouldn't start up until 6 or so this evening, but even that idea has been scrapped somewhat as they think if the cloud cover burns off this morning, they could fire up as early as midday.

We've had some potential for bad weather in recent weeks that hasn't really materialized, so I wonder if people are getting complacent again. All I have to do though is look at You Tube and find video of the April 27 tornadoes and there is no way I will be complacent ever again.

If you're in the Southeast, watch the weather today! Know your place of safety. Don't get caught unaware. I pray this will be nothing like what we've seen in the past year, but don't assume that will be the case. We can't prevent the loss of property like we saw on April 27, but we CAN try and prevent the loss of life! Stay safe today, my friends!

Freezer Cooking With A Fail

Freezer Cooking for me is the sanity saver that gets me through the work week. I can have a good portion of dinner already prepared when I get home from work. It means that I'm only getting out (and cleaning) certain dishes once instead of every time I fix a meal. This month I branched out a little and added some easy lunches to the repertoire for those days I don't have leftovers to eat for lunch. I also expanded my attempts to sneak extra veggies into meals by not only adding my normal zuchini and onions to the meat, but I did up some "Italian Meat" and added pureed tomatoes to the mix.

One of the lunches I tried out was basically a complete and utter "fail":

My attempt at homemade "Hot Pockets" did NOT go well, and they kind of exploded everywhere. Not being one to waste food, I still froze them up, and will eat them for lunch in the weeks to come, but obviously they didn't work out as well as I'd hoped and I will definitely need to tweak this one if I try it again.

In the end though I had lots of stuff to put in the freezer to help in the coming month:

4 Meals Ground Seasoned Ground Beef
4 Meals Italian Ground Beef
4 Meals Mexican Seasoned Ground Beef
8 Hot Pockets
5 Veggie Burritos
A Massive Amount of Chopped Veggies for that night's veggie tray (which I'm still eating the leftovers)
8 (not pictured) Peanut Butter, Honey and Banana "Uncrustable" Sandwiches -- these were a late afternoon brainstorm and turned out great!

Have you done any freezer cooking lately?

Taxes Done and FAFSA Filed

My taxes are completed. And now that they are, I'm completely sick to my stomach. It seems this year was a busy year for me. The raise I got in July, combined with income from the side gig, plus a loss of the Earned Income Credit AND the Child Tax Credit (since the Princess is now 17) means that for the first time EVER I owe money to the Federal Government. $755 to be exact. I will be getting a $142 refund from the state, but that barely dents the money owed to Uncle Sam. Add that to the debt I'm trying to get out of, and I'm just about SICK to my stomach! Okay I am actually sick to my stomach!

After the taxes were completed, we started work on the FAFSA. It appears that the Princess will qualify for a small Pell Grant, and a Stafford Loan. However, I'm confused on the amount the summary listed because my understanding was that for a first year student you could only qualify for a smaller amount. I am scheduling a meeting with the school college counselor to try and figure this stuff out.

In the meantime though, time to seriously readjust my thinking and my budgeting bottom line. I've got to make some deeper cuts.

Thrift Store Shopping

I have always enjoyed garage sale and thrift store shopping. To me, its always been a fun and frugal way to indulge my latent shopping tendencies. We now have 3 thrift stores in very close proximity. The oldest one, I'm not too fond of. I've never found anything there that I wanted and the store always seems dirty and quite frankly overpriced for second hand merchandise.

The second, and my former favorite, you really have to DIG to find the good stuff because it is arranged by gender and then by color. So you might find exactly what you're looking for, but then its 3 sizes too small. It doesn't bode well for a quick let me stop here and see what they've got. You have to really block out some time to find anything worth having.

The third, and newest one, is my current favorite. You walk in and the store is very clean. There are wide spaces between the racks, enough for two shopping carts to pass each other. And its arranged by gender and then by size! You don't have to spend tons of time going through stuff that simply will not ever fit! And they seem to be picky about what goes on their racks, because everything seems to be in like new condition.

I made a quick stop on Saturday at Store 2 and Store 3. Store 2 was a complete bust. I walked out empty handed. Store 3, I found some great deals --- 3 tank tops, (2 for work outs, one suitable for actually wearing under a casual jacket for work), a cabinet organizer, a lanyard (for display of the Princess's newest Disney Pins), and a little ceramic plaque that says "If your dog is fat, you're not getting enough excercise" (perfect for my newfound fitness motivation). All told, I spent $11.50 --- not bad at all!!!!

Getting Ready for Another Round of Freezer Cooking

I paid a visit to my local Aldi over the weekend to get stuff for another round of freezer cooking plus a few basics and the makings of a veggie tray for my sister's birthday dinner. With grocery prices continuing to rise every week, even though I am shopping sales and using coupons, I'm thinking I may need to tweak my grocery budget. But, here is what I got:

7+ lbs Ground Chuck
2 Refrigerated Pizza Dough
2 Dog Treats
Bread
Tangerines
Celery
Bell Pepper
Cucumber
Carrots
Bananas
1 Alfredo Sauce
2 Shells & Cheese
Egg Noodles
2 Stuffed Shells
2 Frozen Ravioli

Spent: $48.53