This week in saving money!

In our quest to live a more frugal and sustainable lifestyle, I have undertaken a lot more "home making" tasks than I am used to.  I have begun baking some of our bread, hanging clothes to dry, using cloth napkins, etc.  Over the last few weeks I made some great home made bread (not in the bread machine!), bought some clothes drying racks and made some baby food.  The clothes drying is going to be the hardest for me to get used to.  Our laundry "area" is in our kitchen, its basically a pantry closet.  So to hand the clothes to dry, I am leaving them on the racks in the middle of my kitchen!  Our kitchen is a good size so they are not really in my way but it does seem kind of odd to see them hanging there!

Every time I walk past the drying clothes I just remind myself that every time I don't run the dryer I am saving $$$!!

So I am not new to making baby food, I made my own with Little N.  I am a bit more educated now than I was then, so I am learning new things, like avocado is a great first food for babies, who would've thought!?  So a few weeks ago I made some peas, and then last week green beans, both from frozen veggies I already had in my freezer.  After feeding the peas and green beans, we realized that you are supposed to start with yellow veggies first, oopps!!  Oh well, I think he will survive!  So this week we are starting through the "yellow" veg.  Over the weekend I had bought some frozen yellow squash, frozen sweet potato, and frozen carrots.  I bought all frozen because its not in season and quite pricey to buy fresh right now.  After getting home I thought that maybe the yellow squash was not what he should have, I thought it was butternut squash.  So I checked online and yup, butternut squash is better to start with.  I learned that with yellow squash babies have a hard time digesting the skin until about 8 months, and it also doesn't have as many nutrients as butternut squash.  So back to the store I went today to buy a fresh butternut squash, because I couldn't find frozen.  To my surprise the butternut squash was only $.94 a pound, so the one that I got only cost me $2.10!  I had looked at the jarred baby food to price compare and I saw that for 2 containers of Gerber baby food it was $1.10, so $.55 per serving, that's kinda pricey!  After coming home and cooking my butternut squash, I divided it up into containers (normally I would use ice cube trays but of course I don't' have any!).  I got 15 servings out of that one butternut squash, I wish I had taken pictures of this process but of course I didn't think about it!  Anyway so doing the math, at $2.10 for the squash it ended up being $.15 per serving!!  WOW!!  Look at what a little extra effort bought me, an extra $6.15!  It only took about an hour total to make too!  When I do the frozen veg, I just toss it in the food processor after cooking for about 5 minutes on the stove and then puree!  As Big E would say "easy peasy"!   I also learned that you don't' need a fancy baby food maker, just use a blender or food processor, or you can even just mash it up with a fork!  Making your own baby food is not that hard and saves so much money!!

Here are a few websites that I have found some wonderful easy baby food making recipes!!
www.wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com
www.homemade-baby-food-recipes.com

Also over the weekend we did a little organizing project in the boys room!!  Stay tuned for the results of that whole process!!  I am quite pleased with how it turned out!

What I learned in 2011...

What I learned in 2011.... its a lot of work growing a person!!  As I was reflecting last night over the last year I realized that all of 2011 was spent growing a person and learning that person!  WOW that was a busy year!  I am so thankful for my little Baby Z he is so special and so fun!  Since he is number 3 I think he is more aware of his surroundings than the other two.  Its so fun to watch him watch his brothers, he gets so excited to see them going crazy!  Big E has been so interactive with him lately, it just melts my heart!  Although I do get a little nervous when I am in another room and the baby starts crying out, then you wonder what happened!  Asking Big E doesn't always help, because he seems to want to try and hide what he did.

I have been trying to figure out what my goals are for 2012, so far I have come up with very little!  Not sure if that's a good thing or not.  For 2012 my main goal is to learn how to be more frugal!  Since adding another boy to your family I just keep adding up the bills in my head (not so much for now, but down the road!).  I grew up with two brothers and I just remember how much food my mom would say she would have to buy in a week!  Its amazing parents didn't go broke!!  5 gallons of milk!!!  3 gallons of ice cream!!!  5 boxes of cereal!!  OH BOY!!!  Frugality needs happen in this house!!

So beginning tomorrow I will be doing the frugally sustainable challenge.  I am really hoping to gain some better knowledge of what that truly means to others and then to apply that to my family.

To be frugally sustainable, to me means, not wasting, being able to produce as much on your own as possible, and reusing things that we may normally just toss.   For the past few years we have "tried" to have a garden, not very successfully, I might add!!  So one goal for this year to get it under control and take some more risks in what we plant.  I would love to learn to can our produce and have food stored up for the winter.

For now those are my goals, I am hoping to add some more to this list in the next few weeks.  Hopefully by the end of the month I will have a good goal set for the coming year.

Living Frugally in 2012

Recently I have been burdened with the feeling of being wasteful.  Last year my husband and I decided to try and "live like our grandparents" meaning, not to be wasteful in our living.  We changed to cloth napkins, cloth diapers, reusable sandwich bags, and tupperware containers instead of plastic bags.  I feel like that went really well this year.  So why not take it a step further in 2012!?

If you have followed my blog you have seen some projects that I have been working, like the cloth wipes and making our own laundry soap.  Those are just some of the ways we are making changes in our daily life.  Today I stumbled upon a blog called Frugally Sustainable.  She is issuing a 23 day challenge to live frugally.  I took the pledge, and you can as well.  I will link to her blog where you can sign up along side over 500 others from around the world!!  This is so exciting for me because this is close to my heart to not just live frugally for the sake of saving money but also to be responsible in taking care of our world that God has blessed us with!

For this year my goal is to make as many cleaning products as I can to save some money and not have the toxins brought into my house.  I also plan to reuse as much as I can and not be wasteful.