Fru Febbing Along ...

More than halfway there! We're enjoying free fun and doing fine on our grocery budget. We braved a wet Saturday last weekend to visit some bugs and animals on free museum day. Had it not been Frugal February, we might have skipped it as too rainy, but when you have to take your fun when you can, what's a little rain?

Class Valentines were taken care of with a $2.49 bag of 62 Smarties and some home-made printed cards.

At home, we enjoyed a gift of steaks (thanks, Mom!) in a borrowed pan (thanks, Kristen!).

And home-made chocolate cake (recipes for cake and frosting on the box of Hershey's cocoa) for dessert. Did you know you can make a heart-shaped cake with a square pan and a round pan?

We're at $249.18 for groceries - as expected, expenses are loaded in the end of the month since we're out of everything we started with. Except chicken. We have lots and lots of chicken.

We combined our few sad, dry lemons with a big bag of juicy ones we were given (thanks June!) and have enough juice to make lemonade for the rest of the month, which the kids will have with breakfast in place of purchased orange juice. And now, it truly feels like February.

Had to invoke the 'don't be stupid' rule to replace a borrowed item that became ruined. No waiting on that one.

I polled everyone to see what it is they are wanting to buy come March 1. The teen needs boots. Oh, yes, she does. The ones she is wearing have so many holes they look more like sandals. The tween wants to see the Lego movie. The 4 year old was certain, he needs water balloons, now. Hubby wants this gourmet chocolate bar he likes and I have only enough makeup to wear it every third day or so, or when I am worried I will frighten small children without it, so it's on my March list for sure.With these as our wants, we are doing OK.

Growing up Frugal February - The Sixth Year

One week in to Frugal February #6!  All is well. We talked about raising our grocery budget this year, realizing we set the budget when we had two children instead of three, and the two we had had much smaller stomachs and pickier appetites than they do now. In the end, we decided to leave it at $400 and see how far it takes us. If I call you crying on February 20, you can NOT give me food! As we get more experienced in Frugal February, it is much easier to stretch a dollar and I think we can still get it done on $400. So ... here are the rules for FF #VI, for our family of 5.

*$400 for groceries, taken out in cash at the beginning of the month.
*Regularly recurring bills get paid (mortgage, utilities, etc).
*One full tank of gas.
*Business/commute expenses are OK.
*Gifts are accepted with gratitude but must be unsolicited.
*If you're doing to miss a deadline, don't do anything stupid in the name of sticking with the rules (like fail to sign up for preschool or book your summer vacation.)
*Little amounts on random gift cards can be used, but no cheating by loading up a card just to 'discover' it in February.
*Social budget for the teen of $20, taken from her own allowance.

A hurdle for us this year: no lemons. The extended freezing temps here in Northern California took their toll on our beloved lemon tree and we have maybe a handful that survived the frost, compared with 32 pounds two years ago. We won't be making gallons of lemonade for Valentines' parties this year or trading lemon cake for eggs. Maybe we should take up singing and dancing as barter material? On second thought, we'd surely starve.

Week 1 brought exactly $30.50 in grocery expenses, mostly fresh fruit, milk and bread. We've been eating a lot of random things that were in the freezer - ravioli and fish sticks, though also normal meals like spicy chicken with quinoa and tacos.  The tacos were made with 1/3 the normal seasoning because we're now totally out of chili powder but no one seemed to mind, and it made it easier to throw some spaghetti sauce on it the next night and put it over noodles with parmesan, pretending it was now Italian. I realize my family's flexibility has a lot to do with why Frugal February works for us and feel good about teaching my kids that sometimes 'just enough' is enough.


Home Made Taco Seasoning (recipe makes about 1 commercial package)

1 T chili powder
1-1/2 t cumin
1/2 t salt
1/2 t paprika
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t onion powder
1/4 t dried oregano (or about 3/4 t fresh. Ours looks awful right now.)
1/8 t cayenne pepper

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It's March Somewhere

Time to catch up on nothing! A few hours remain in February and while I am watching the clock, I am mostly reflecting on how not-a-big-deal this Fru Feb was. As predicted, the last week of the month gave our budget a workout - $159.49 added to our total for a grand total of $317.51. That even included one night of take in because we were doing so well. We enjoyed a lot of lemonade, home baked bread and home made peanut butter. A lot of meatless meals. A lot of time at home around each other.  Being thankful for being in good health with working major appliances. I can't complain.

See you next year.

Valentines and Lemonade

Halfway done and still pleasantly boring! I am thinking that the dullness of this month is not so much a failure to get into the routine, but that making accommodations for Frugal February is becoming second nature now so it doesn't feel like so much work. We made almost 3 gallons of homemade lemonade for a class Valentine's party, and the boys dressed up for a wedding wearing ties sewn by me. (Truth be told, I probably would have made them anyway, because in order to get them to wear the ties, I had to offer their choice of fabric print (they both chose a Lego minifigures fabric I had bought from Spoonflower). A bovine-loving friend received a handsewn cow stuffed animal with a necklace we had left over from party favors we gave in September. I have been cutting coupons and watching sales and was showing off my "saved 40%" receipt from groceries last week. Plus we're used to eating whatever we find. Last night's dinner was chicken-bean wraps with a side of toast.

Still, we are making more exceptions than usual. We solved the issue of the 12-year-old's constant requests for money for social events, movies, lunches with friends by giving her a budget of $20 for the month. That allows her to say yes sometimes (admittedly, not very much!) but requires some thoughtful choosing of events. We were low on gas because the hubby needed to travel for work and in the past, I probably would have calculated our gas mileage and miles driven and put exactly that much gas back in the car. But we just estimated, probably generously, because though this month has been boring, running out of gas on the side of the road is not the kind of excitement I am looking for.

Groceries total to date: $158.02 (including the tween's $20 budget) but we're out of pretty much everything we had on hand so here come the bigger bills. That included $2.50 for a giant bag of Dum Dum pops to give as class Valentines (a frugal find in the regular candy aisle, *not* in the aisle with the much higher-priced Valentine's candy!) and $5 for cookies brought to a party.

The Perfect Lemonade Recipe (makes about 6 cups):

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup lemon juice

 3.5 cups water

Put 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a pot and heat until the sugar is dissolved - you'll know because the water will be clear. Add 1 cup lemon juice, then dilute with 3.5 cups water or to taste.

Day 9

Almost one third over already? That gets a woo hoo! from me. This Frugal Feb has yet to be smooth and reflective, I feel like we haven't found our frugal mojo. This week has been one of complaining, making exceptions, feeling put out and inflexible, and even forgetting entirely that it's our no-spend month. I guess some years are like this.

Grocery-wise, we are doing well. I picked up an entire quarter-pound of bulk cumin powder at the Davis Food Co-op for just over $3. We've bought milk, bread, bulk water, fresh veggies and some various things we'd run out of, for a grand total of only $42.18. I made a great vegetable soup last night mostly with stuff we had on hand, including the last of the turkey stock I made from our Thanksgiving turkey and a frozen cube of our garden basil, and thought I'd post some of my recipes this year, since "but what do you eat?" is one of the recurring questions people ask. This soup is one of our favorites, there's nothing magically frugal about this particular recipe, but soup in general is fairly inexpensive and a good healthful belly-filler, plus this one is really tasty. This recipe makes about 8 servings.

Veggie Soup (serves about 8)

1 onion
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 T olive oil
6 cups broth, stock, water, or a combination
15 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes
1 or 2 cans chick peas, drained
1 cup tiny pasta
2 cups cubed butternut squash
Spices/seasonings you like (I used fresh-frozen basil)
several handfuls fresh spinach
salt and pepper to taste

Dice onion, carrot and celery and saute in olive oil until soft. Add broth, tomatoes, chick peas, pasta and squash. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered for about 15 minutes - longer is OK but watch that the pasta doesn't get mushy. Add spinach and cook 5 minutes more. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a grating of fresh parmesan and some fresh bread.

So, now on to the complaining and the exceptions and all that. We are going to a social event next weekend, and I didn't manage to make sure all 5 of us would be properly outfitted for the occasion before February hit. If I had my frugal mojo on, I could beg, borrow and perhaps sew clothing made from the curtains ala Maria Von Trapp. But that ain't gonna happen. So we've had to do some shopping. Hubby forgot about no-spend month and invited a friend out for a beer. Both our big kids have been invited to birthday parties of people we haven't known long enough to explain our odd social experiment while we hand them homemade cookies. Trying to take my own advice and focus on the successes.

The good: The girl had a bunch of friends over for "late start Wednesday" breakfast and we had plenty of home made scones and lemonade for all. We ran out of eggs and our dear neighbor traded us 2 eggs for 5 lemons. I used CVS bucks for the first time in forever instead of letting them expire, thereby getting a loaf of bread for .99. Bread, from CVS? Why not. Happy Frugal February.

The Fifth Frugal February

Happy Frugal February! We began our FF #5 with the same "rules" as last year:

*$400 for groceries, taken out in cash at the beginning of the month
*Regularly recurring bills get paid (mortgage, utilities, etc).
*One full tank of gas.
*Business/commute expenses are OK.
*Gifts are accepted with gratitude but must be unsolicited.
*If you're doing to miss a deadline, don't do anything stupid in the name of sticking with the rules (like fail to sign up for preschool or book your summer vacation.)
*Little amounts on random gift cards can be used, but no cheating by loading up a card just to 'discover' it in February. CVS bucks are fair game too.

We began the month with some Frugal Fail, or at least exceptions: I had not realized when I told my daughter she could go to the school play "next weekend" that Friday was February 1. So ... filing this under the Don't Do Anything Stupid rule (like break a promise to your quick-to-weep 12 year old over 5 bucks), we allowed her to spend her own $5 on the play. We are also off to the bi-monthly Friends of the Library book sale today, scraping up $1 from the change in the car and using our Friends postcard in order to get a grocery bag full of used books.

This year should be easier in some ways: hubby and I are both on healthy eating plans with virtually no sugar or alcohol, and one of us has given up coffee. (The other of us is quite happily caffeinated while she writes this blog entry.) Then again, it's the irony of this modern life that healthful foods are often more expensive.  Keeping it simple and from scratch, however, is not, and that's the plan. We have not shopped yet, though it's only Day 3. I am out of cumin, which has brought cooking in my kitchen to a near halt - no hummus, no taco seasoning, no tamale pie, no chili, no spicy chicken with honey on rice. Co-Op bulk aisle, here I come.

Wishing everyone enough this month!

See you next year!

I figured I had better wind up Frugal February before it becomes the end of March! Did we make it? Pretty much. I think we went over by about $5 on the last day, but we were good and sick of Fru Feb by then and wanted to be sure we started March with a nice meal, not with the slim Frugal February pickins' left in the pantry.

It was a wonderful month as always. We carry fond memories of the food our friends shared with us and that we shared back - home made hummus, banana bread, lemon cookies, bagels, lots and lots of lemons. We spent lots of time together as a family and felt the full measure of gratitude for little things, like the friend who invites your kid to a movie, or to the bounce house. 

Best discovery of the month: Home made peanut butter. I gave it short shrift the day I blogged about it. Forgive me, peanut butter, you get better and better after you sit a little while and now we are not going back to store-bought, ever. We're on our third 1-pound batch. Am I the only person who can't talk about eating peanut butter without saying "Aawwron Buwwrr!" ? OK. Just checking.

Culinary triumph of the month: I cut up a whole chicken. Might not seem like such a big thing I know, but if you know me, you know this is A BIG THING. I might be the only person you know who ordinarily cooks an entire chicken dinner without ever touching the chicken with bare hands. Now I have whacked, cracked and chopped an entire raw chicken all to heck.

See?

I won't be doing it again any time soon.

Frugal fail: Home made shampoo. Not such a good idea. I am awfully glad to get back to my Bumble & Bumble.

Lots of lessons learned, many good memories, and the glee of a nearly-blank credit card bill ... see you next year!