About Us

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The purpose of our blog is to share our journey through life with family and friends while we leave our mark on this world. Our 20's have been very kind to us and as we enter the 30's we are hoping to continue to enjoy our time in this thing we call life. I should have called this blog "Traveling through Life".

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Gardens, Coupons, and Homeade Stuff

So where do I start to bring you up speed on the past 8 weeks. I can't believe it's been that long since I've blogged but I haven't been wanting to be on the computer or telephone since Spring weather has been flirting with us. We've been trying to work outdoors when it's not RAINING! Matt has prepped our garden soil and the vegetable sprout trays have taken over the inside of my house! I can't wait to put them in the ground very soon. Our garden is much larger this year and full of our "homeade" compost. Our thumbs seem to get a little greener each year so we'll see if we are good at this. Planting seeds is way cheaper than buying veggies at the grocery or even buying veggie plants somewhere else. We are also looking into a rain barrel to conserve water.

So speaking of cheaper....that's brings me to the next thing I have been burying my nose in. Couponing! Everyone likes to save money, right? I have always used just a couple coupons here and there when I had them but I caught some episodes of the show on TLC and those people are nuts! It did teach me a couple things although most of the coupon items I will never buy. I will not become that crazy coupon chick in the store but I have proposed a little challenge to myself to see how much I can save. I have heard of a lot of people who gave up eating meat to save money but since we gave up meat and are trying to eat healthier we are spending a ton of money on groceries. So I am trying to spend $200 on groceries for the month of May. So that is essentially $50 a week for us. This past Sunday was my first attempt to shop for the week so I researched the sales flyer to make my menu and found my coupons and I only spent $36!!! That bought us food for the entire week and it is all healthy. So far so good.

The next thing that I am kind of getting obsessed with is making my own anything at home. There is so much "junk" in a lot of things today that I started researching ways to make things myself for stuff that I use a lot. So far I have made my own deodorant, jam, peanut butter, almond butter, and granola. Matt made hummus which I think the recipe needs tweaked before I am a fan... it's pretty hard to top my red pepper store bought stuff. I was going to make my own lip balm but I found the organic stuff at Whole Foods to be a pretty good deal. I was also going to make my own soap but one of our Chemists at work makes her own so I have trusted her formula and will buy from her for now. I have found a lot more that I want try but I don't want to over-indulge, like last night when I was baking at 9:30, which is partly because I had today off as a Holiday and because Matt was getting me hyped up about starting my own side business. The first day I took my granola in to work I had people offering to buy it.....I had no response for them because I hadn't even thought about selling it. So we shall see.......

Last month I had the vacation itch so luckily we made a trip to Florida. A big thanks to John, Kel and kids for taking us to the beach. We really needed the sand in our toes and a dip in the ocean......oh and the sand that was still in my bathing suit when we got home :) I love going to visit those little kiddos, we are both always very sad to leave them.

So you all know that spring usually equals some kind of project for us. We are finally building our pergola in the back yard for some much needed shade. Matt has worked up the plan and we started buying supplies. This will probably be completed at the end of May only if the rain stays away. We are going to build the pergola first and then probably fancy-up the patio.

1 comment:

Kelly said...

$36 is impressive for the week. Let me know if the food lasted, and what your meals were. We need to reign in our grocery budget BIG time!