MAN, what a week! I'm honestly glad February is now over as it was just a Heck of month when it came to things being hectic and the kids being sick and stuff. We had another week of a snow day on Monday (due to icy road conditions) and then the kids fighting their stomach (the daughter unit) and their allergies/sinuses (the son). I'm also upset, worried and depressed that Alvah is starting to act out aggressively again. We've seen a decline in his behaviors the last couple of weeks and he's starting up the episodes of hitting himself in the face and lashing out at others when he's upset. I know part of it is that his sinuses are bugging him and he's gotten some bloody noses from the dry air (which he HATES and I mean HATES bloody noses) and that hasn't helped. But, dang, I was hoping we were past this, I really was. We have a psychology appointment on Tuesday, so we'll see what his doctor has to say, but I'm worried we're going to have to start experimenting with other medications again.
This week also has seen me experimenting with different gummy vitamins to TRY and once again get some nutrients into Alvah (not really cheap, but absolutely necessary). He's showing interest in fruit snacks again and has blown through his Annie's fruit snacks and his sister's treat fruit snacks, so I'm kind of hopeful as this is the chance to start pushing those gummy vitamins at him. I hope I can find some that taste good and close enough to fruit snacks that he'll eat them. So far he'll suck on some and then spit them out after a bit, so progress is slow, but there! I know a lot of his behavior issues stem from his diet (or lack thereof), so I keep hoping that something will work and I can start getting nutrients into him as it can only help him.
And then the husband came down with the crud on Thursday, so he's been out of it the last few days as well. I am so, so tired right now after everything. Glad the week is over tomorrow and we can start again next week, hopefully for the better.
Believe it or not, though, there were good things that happened this week, so let's get to those!
1. We signed on the home equity loan yesterday. This will give us a much needed cushion to get home maintenance done and get a four wheel drive truck (which, we've found, is necessary after this winter with how bad my husband's two wheel drive truck has done in the winter weather). The plan is to get stuff done, pay off the loan and then do another project and repeat (since it's a line of credit we can do that). I'm really happy we got the loan as it'll take a weight off of my shoulders trying to figure out how get cash flow up to pay for higher ticket items and gives us a cushion in case of something big breaking. Thank the Good Lord.
The brightest point to my week had to be when we signed on the loan because it turned out that the bank was running a special on new home equity loans in a VERY small window of time and if you fell into that time frame there were no annual fees or closing costs on the loan. And, it turned out, we just happened to fall into that time frame! So, the money I put aside for closing costs on the loan can now be used for something else that we need to have done. My husband and I talked about it and he's still got four teeth left to get done (which darn I was hoping we were completely done with them) and he's only got one molar left that the dentist wants to get done as it's worrying him as it's starting to disintegrate pretty bad. And the closing costs that I had put aside will actually cover the cost to get the tooth done with a little bit left over, so I told my husband to make that appointment (not having to put more onto Care Credit delights me to no end, let me tell you). The other three teeth aren't an emergency to get done, so we can just cash those out one at a time (hopefully since my husband's teeth are kind of unpredictable in that way, but HOPEFULLY we can do it that way). But, yay for being able to cash out something instead of having to put it onto credit :).
2. I did my grocery budget numbers for February and well...that was depressing. I spent more than I wanted to, mainly because January was so tight so I had to replenish stores, so I'm hoping to get back on track this month. I went shopping this week and picked up as much as I could that I would need for my menu plan for this month (I'm going to post up that plan here later and then I'm going to give weekly updates on how I'm doing sticking to it...that'll be fun seeing how quickly we go off the rails, so stay tuned for that *laugh*). I figured out my grocery budget for the month and figured it at 300.00. Normally I aim for 200.00 to 250.00 (50.00 I use as a cushion in case I need to go over for non essential items), but I upped it to prepare for sales that are coming up for the month and things (which I'll get into more in my shopping goals post).
Anyway back to shopping this week. I put some of my one shopping trip in the photo above there (I apologize for the blurry half of the photo, I'm not sure what was going on with my camera that day...it's very old and cranky by this point in time, so I'm just dealing with glitches as they come). I would have put the entire shopping trip in the photo, but I was not hauling soda and other junk food items for the son up onto the table to take a picture (I was being lazy, what can I say).
The biggest "woohoo" types of items I got this week was that strawberries were on sale for 4.88 for a 2 lb package at Carrs this week, so I got one for my daughter for snacks and to make strawberry shortcake with. The strawberries ended up being so good I went back yesterday and got two more packages to clean and freeze to use in desserts later in the year (I'm not planning on making strawberry jam this year as I still have plenty from the last few years of canning). It is hard to find strawberries up here without tons of bad spots and you end up throwing away 1/4 at least of your strawberries due to having to cut out bad spots and things and these strawberries were in such good shape I basically just had to cut off the stems and hull them with one or two small bad spots to cut out. I was THRILLED as that was definitely a good value for my money!
I bought Country Crock margarine at the store as well as spreadable butter (had a personalized price on the spreadable butter to make it decently cheap) to try out around the house. We just plain didn't see the holiday sales on butter over Christmas at all really, which was depressing, so I wasn't able to stock up on butter and the regular price on butter is about 4.00 at least, so padding out the butter with margarine or cheaper alternatives (like the spreadable butter for toast and things) has become kind of necessary until a sale on butter pops up.
I had a personalized price on pasta for .79 per box. Not as cheap as I would have liked to pay, but we are running kind of low on angel hair pasta (all we have is thin spaghetti instead) and I panic a bit as I'm not sure if Alvah will eat the thin spaghetti or rebel and get mad that we don't have angel hair, which would lead him to not eat, so I bought angel hair pasta to make sure we had it for him just in case.
I decided that making more elaborate salads (by elaborate I mean buying like feta cheese and making sure we have a couple different flavors of croutons and things around here) was a good idea to help pad out dinners around here (and help fill people up with veggies more instead of carb heavy items like potatoes and bread), so I wanted to see what I could get for different flavors of salad dressing at the store the next little bit. This week I had a personalized price on Litehouse salad dressings for a decent amount so I got one of those to help "mix things up" when it came to salad dressing flavors. I also took advantage of a sale on Wishbone dressings this week (1.49 each with a coupon limit of 4) and got some different flavors of dressings as well. I think the family will be happy with the variety and I like it because it's not the same salad over and over again. The increase in salads as a main course for dinner as well as side dishes is why you see all the lettuce I bought above as well (I found that the bags of three that Carrs sells actually lasts quite a long time in the fridge, so I got enough for several weeks :).
Yesterday I went back to the store to get the strawberries and also to get some paper towels and toilet paper (which were on sale for 5.00 Fridays and I had coupons on both the Bounty paper towels and the Charmin bath tissues making them 4.00 per value pack), so all totaled between the two shopping trips I'm standing at about 176.00 for the month so far. I'm HOPING to hit around 250.00 for the month, but we'll see how Alvah goes with his appetite and things (as he's the most expensive one to shop for). And by the way spending 176.00 in a week on groceries after you've been working really hard to only spend at max 50.00 per week? It gives you heart palpitations to do it, seriously *laugh*.
Oh and the organic celery? Was on sale for actually less than the regular celery by like nearly a dollar. I was surprised, but got it because hey, it's cheaper.
3. I got Alvah signed up for Special Olympics swimming again this year, so he started that with dad today (I'm hoping dad didn't overdue it too much with his cold, though). This has been a great program so far and Alvah has actually picked up quite a bit, so I'm hoping he continues to improve this year.
4. I used up left overs, even bits and pieces, which avoided food waste.
5. When my printer said that my black ink cartridge was empty, I took it out and shook it and then put it back in, which got me about 20 more pages of print outs out of the ink cartridge before it finally did die. Which that was enough to get the paperwork printed out for Special Olympics, so I was happy.
6. I found that the cats were wasting quite a bit of wet food every day and our cat Prince was out and out getting fat (he eats his portion and then will eat our other cat's portion who doesn't eat much). I cut down their wet food to about one heaping teaspoon each per day and using it as more of a treat instead of the main meal. I've found this has been great in a lot of ways. For one, the cats are actually eating their food portions this way and I'm not throwing as much wet food away. Also, this has doubled the lifespan of the wet food for the cats around here (luckily I have lids for their cat food containers since we bought some for Ginger when she was sick, so I can store the extra in the fridge) so I'm only having to pick up wet food about once every two months (I just buy a variety flat of cat food for the sake of simplicity). I also switched to light weight cat litter (I found that Carrs store generic brand of light weight cat litter is actually really good and clumps great compared to other brands), which has reduced, once again, our waste pounds at the dump, so yay for spending less money at the dump :).
7. I worked on monthly shopping goals and monthly goals this week. I know that sounds redundant as I post them on the blog, but I really do find that doing this helps to not only to help keep the budget tight, but also helps me to keep on task and get stuff done around the house. I recommend everyone try doing this and keep the list of goals on your fridge (or shopping goals in a list in your purse or whatever you carry to the store each time) as it does help to have things written down and be able to check things off as you go.
8. I took advantage of lifetime oil changes on our car this week, which has been a great investment over the years, especially since we got the car paid off years ago, as it makes one less expense to worry about. While there I took advantage of the time to draft out the menu plan for the month (and half of next month while I was at it) while drinking the complimentary coffee the dealership offered.
9. I took a long survey through a PR company that contacted me and in return for doing the survey I got a 5.00 Amazon electronic giftcard. I used this to help pay for my husband's Zegerid that I ordered on subscribe and save to get it cheaper.
10. I tried to mend my pair of jeans again this week. I failed, again. But, I'm going to continue to try. The fabric is just worn out along the zipper of the pants, so iron on patches didn't work as they just came undone very quickly and sewing a patch on didn't work as the fabric tore right after the patch on the pants. I'm determined to figure this challenge out, though, as I'm stubborn and I'm not going to let that pair of jeans beat me *laugh*.
And there you go folks. Some of my adventures this week. How did you do?
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