My New Favorite Store.... Aldi

I was turned onto Aldi by one of my friends, Sarah who writes Frugal Five. We were talking about grocery shopping and she told me about this new store that moved into the area about 45 minutes from where we live. I hadn't and when I heard how much she saved, I knew I HAD to go.

This last trip was wonderful and I want to tell you about! I was able to buy two large family packs of chicken, two racks of ribs, one large pork tenderloin, cereal, two bags of baked veggie chips, a box of crackers, a package of peppers, two packages of mushrooms, a package of tomatoes, a pack of strawberries, a bag of pears, two yogurts, and 8 baby food pouches (there may have been a few more items but I can't remember them) all for under $95.00!


With the items in my pantry, this should keep us feed with breakfast, lunch and dinner for two weeks. We may need to do a very small trip for milk, eggs, some more fresh fruit (Little Bean loves his fresh fruit) and formula. But the big ticket items are purchased and if they aren't prepped, they will be tomorrow.


If you've never been to Aldi there are some things you should know. Aldi is a very unique shopping experience because you have to use a quarter to get your cart, bring your own bags and then bag your own items. Even though it's a tiny bit of extra work for me, I'll do it for the savings anytime and honestly, its not really that much work. Besides, how many times have you been in a grocery store and the cashier throws/tosses your apples/bananas/peaches/tomatoes into that little side basket or sets something heavy on top of them. Maybe it's the control freak in me, but I'd rather bag it myself instead of let someone else mishandle my food.


 Another thing to know about Aldi before shopping there is they do NOT accept coupons. This was a huge shock for me, I love my coupons and enjoy being able to see the amount saved on the bottom of a receipt. Even though I love my coupons, I will not deny how much I save going to Aldi. Besides, I can still use my coupons on things like formula, diapers, etc.


I am so grateful that I have been able to find a store where I can get items in larger quantities cheaper. If you haven't been able to check Aldi out and you have one near you, I highly recommend it. If you don't have an Aldi near you, check to see if you have a discount supermarket near you. It takes a little getting used to, but I can't say enough good things about how much I've saved.

Freezing Them Apples

 We went apple picking two weekends ago and came home with a TON of apples. We had so much fun and we got a lot of bang for our buck. For $20 we got a great family experience and a bushel of apples. The boys started eating them before I could weigh them to try and compare the orchard price to the store price, but I think I paid less per pound than the store.

After not having time for the last few weeks, tonight I was able to freeze some of them. As some of you know, when you freeze apples they turn a brown color. So, I figured I'd do a Pinterest (which I love) search to find out what method to use to freeze them so they don't turn brown.

Well, as you can imagine pages and pages of pins came up. So, I read a few and found that the two most common methods were soaking the apples in cold water with either lemon juice or salt. All the pages I read claimed each way was the best way. Being me I decided to try both.

While getting the apples peeled Little Bean helped by biting into as many of the apples as possible. At one point he was double fisting two apples; taking a bite out of one and then the other. He managed to get his teeth into at least 10 of the apples. Most of them were only a bite, so, they still made it into the bags. but this little apple was a bit to devoured to cut up into slices.

Lemon Juice Method:

I filled the bowl with cold water and added 4 squirts of lemon juice. Then I cut up and added the apples. The posts I read said to rinse the apples, but didn't say if the apples should towel dried to remove some of the excess water. Since I didn't know which would be better, to pat them dry or put them in wet, I did both.

Salt Method:

I put enough salt to lightly cover the bottom of the bowl and then added cold water. I swirled the water with my hand to get the salt fully dissolved. Then I added the apples and completely submerged them. Now just like with the lemon juice method, none of the posts I found talked about drying the apples. So, again, I did two bags; 1-pat dried and 1- wet.

I know I seem pre-occupied with towel drying the apples but I've seen apples frozen before and they tend to give off a lot of liquid. I'm hoping that it's not a problem but wanted to try both to see which way works better.


I labeled each of the bags with the date and which soaking they were and if they were dried or not. Then I popped them into the freezer. I'll give updates on how they are faring in the freezer and then if the soaking affects the taste once I cook with them.

Wax Fire Starters out of all

Here in New England we need to get ready for winter. For everyone that means something a little different. To us it means: putting the garden up, getting the wood stacked, putting away all the gardening ornaments and items that are out, winterizing the house with storm window and plastic on the windows to help keep the cold out, completing any repairs that need to be done. We also check the flash lights to make sure they are working, buy batteries for all the flash lights, check the shovels, start the snow blower to make sure it's working properly and this year make fire starters.

Last year we used newspaper as a fire start, but this year we want to use wax egg cartons. For a number of reasons, one being it is better for our wood stove/chimney because it wax eggs will leave less residue. I've been saving up my egg cartons all summer and the carton collection may have gotten a little out of hand.



Making fire starter can be a great activity to do with your kids, but will require adult assistance and supervision. All the items you need are regular household items that you can re-purpose. I decided to make up a batch, I had just enough lint to make 24 or 2 egg cartons worth.

1 metal can ( I use a coffee can)
Egg cartons
Dryer lint
Newspaper (Tmall pieces that I use as a "wick". This isn't needed but it's my preference.)
Wax (I use paraffin, but you can use old crayons or candles. I just didn't have any lying around this time to use)





If you're using the newspaper for wicks you'll want to rip up little pieces (shown left) and place them in the middle of the lint (shown right). Peanut is only 11 months old and he helped get the paper ready.







Now you're ready start:

Step 1:

Place lint and newspaper in all the egg cups. You want to do this first so it's ready as soon as the wax is melted.

Step 2:

Put your metal can inside a pot to melt the wax. DO NOT melt the wax in another pot that you want to keep. Melting the wax will leave a residue that ruins the pot. The pot should be big enough that the can will not touch the sides of the pot.

Step 3:

Pour or spoon the wax into each cup. Make sure the egg cartons are set on something, like a piece of cardboard because there is the chance that the wax will leak through. I put the egg cartons on top of an old pizza box that I had left over.

Step 4:

Let the wax cool and harden. Once cool and hardened you can either set the cartons aside to rip one off as needed or rip them all off at once and put them in a storage container.

8 Easy Frugal Ideas

Hubby and I have come to the realization money being tight is about to get tighter. Little Bean is about to start a structured daycare at the end of October. Up until now, he's been going to a wonderful at home daycare three days a week. Hubby has been taking him the other two days because he works an alternative schedule. So, it will add $90/week more to our budget, or a total of $360 per month. That is more than our car payment!

Little Bean will be headed there five days a week, it's the cheapest option. To have him for a set number of days is $55/day and unfortunately, we need him to go at least 4 days a week, which would equal out to $220 per week.

So, we're going to start living as frugally as possible and we have one month to get our butts in gear. In addition to getting a solid budget done, we'll also be looking for ways to cut back and save money.

The below ideas are things that won't make a huge difference, but little things add up. Make sure to do both big ticket items and little ticket items.

8 Easy Frugal Ideas

1. Pack a lunch
      Think about it, every time you eat lunch it's about $8.00. $8.00 x 5 days per week = $40.00. $40.00 x 4 weeks per month = $160.00. For me, $160.00 is my student loan payment.

2. Meal Plan
      When meal planning you need to plan your breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. If you don't, you'll find yourself frustrated with the "lack" of stuff in the house for you to eat. You'll need to look at each recipe to make sure you either have all the ingredients or that they are on your grocery list. It will take a little longer in the store, but you won't be spending those extra few dollars on things you want every time you run in to pick up the ingredients for that nights dinner.

3. Don't eat out
       When you eat out you spend the same amount of money on one meal as you could on 3-4 homemade meals, not including left overs. So, meal plan!

4. Dryer Sheets- to use or not to use....
       Dryer sheets are to keep your clothes from getting stat-icky in the dryer. During the summer months here in New England, I don't use them. Our summer is mild and wet enough that they aren't needed. However, in the winter they are definitely needed because everything gets incredibly dry. But you don't need to use the whole sheet. When I buy a box, I cut the sheets into thirds. It's not as time consuming as it sounds, you're not cutting each sheet individually. Just grab a chunk of them and cut them up all at once, and they don't have to be perfectly the same size. Wing it and get it done quickly, don't spend more then 5 minutes cutting them up... I mean seriously, it's not that big a deal. Then stuff them all back in the box you pulled them out of, they aren't like a playpen or pop-up tent, they will fit easily back in the package they came from.

5. Washing Laundry
     When you do a load of laundry DON'T forget it! If you forget it for too long, you have to re-wash it because it gets a funky smell. When you have to re-wash a whole load, you are using the water, soap and electricity to re-wash those clothes.

6. Clothes Line
      If you live in a climate where you can hang your clothes out to dry, do it! The dryer uses a lot of power to heat up, so, if you can dry a bunch of clothes without it, go for it!

7. Compost and Recycle
     Compost-  Some will tell you to do it because it's good for the planet. Well, it's also good for your wallet. If you compost you won't have to buy fertilizer, just spread some compost down.
      Recycle- Also recycle, think about all the jars, bottles, plastic jugs, cardboard boxes, card board tubes, etc we get rid of. If we take all of that out of our trash bag, for free! We have less bags of trash, and if you pay per bag (like my parents) that can be a savings of $10 per bag to bring it to the dump and that's not even counting the cost of the trash bags themselves.

8. Turn off lights
      I know, it's so simple it sounds stupid. Yet you wouldn't believe the number of times I've passed the basement doorway to see the lights are on. There are 10 light bulbs on that one switch! That can add to the electric bill quickly.

These aren't ideas that will put tons of money into your pocket, but they are ways to help you trim your budget. Everyone has to start somewhere, so, start with the little things you can quickly and easily take control of.

Taking on too much

After my last few posts I started feeling incredibly overwhelmed between work and personal life. I started to pull away and fell behind in work and life. I started to let the house work fall behind and was struggling at work. I took stock of myself and what I was doing and realized, I was completely overextending myself. 

I decided it was time  to get everything in order piece by piece. I started with work because work pays my bills. I kept doing the bare minimum house work to keep the dishes done, meals made and laundry done. I have been able to bring myself within a week of getting completely ahead at work. 

Now that I'm within a week of my goal, I'm setting goals for my personal life. There are projects that I have been procrastinating on and putting things off. We've been in the house a year and most of our awesome basement is still packed with boxes. The back room that up until recently I was using as an office has extra items piled in it. 

I found that was one of the reasons I was not concentrating. I was mentally distracted by all the clutter and that the room was very dark. I moved to a brighter room, which I completely cleaned out of almost everything and did a thorough clean. Since, I have been productive at work and able to catch up. 

As this is the last week I will be working extra at work, I won't be attempting to accomplish much with the way of housework, except the bare minimum I'm already doing. Friday will be my last day of working overtime. So, Saturday will be my first day of kicking butt and cleaning out, organizing and getting my house in order. 

I am going to do one room at a time and will clean and organize it over a 1-3 day period, depending on the size. The last project will be the basement, because it's so big and is not an area of the house that is used a lot. My goal is to have the house and all of the outdoor projects we need to finish before winter done by October 21 because that is when we are having Peanut's first birthday party. 

I'm not sure which room I'm going to start with, but I'll post an update once I do. 

Garden Fail

So, with doing this blog I need to be completely honest because life isn't always sunshine, roses and success.

In the spring we were all about doing a garden, we had the garden plotted out with what we were planting and plans to expand it.  We were going to try to preserve our harvest to eat during the winter. Well....... as you can see below, the garden didn't happen.

Between our son, my husband's alternative work schedule and me having to work a lot of overtime, the garden didn't come through. I did do a few tomato plants in buckets on our back deck. Sadly even the tomatoes did poorly and were devoured by slugs. So, overall, this year I feel like a garden failure.

But we have decided to make sure that our plans are ready to go for next year. We'll be preparing the gardens within the next month for next year. They have gotten overgrown this year from disuse. We'll rota-til it, spread some compost/fertilizer and cover it.  We're also going to prepare to expand it for next year.

I'll keep you updated about our progress of getting it ready. 

Ugh- another Reboot

Well, so my last foray into the blogging world went airy. I stopped writing because at the end of the day I was usually too exhausted or I was doing things, like dishes, laundry or putting in extra hours at work.

It seemed I just didn't have an extra minute, and when I did I usually spent it doing things like taking a shower. I never believed people when they said that having an infant was a full time gig and would take all your time. I (mistakenly) thought, hey infants sleep a lot, I'll have plenty of time to get things done. Well, that's the biggest load of crap ever, infants, even when sleeping, monopolize every second of every day.

Now, for those that easily get their hackles raised when kids are discussed; I love my son more than anything in the world. I wouldn't trade a single minute with him for anything else. I just didn't realize (like many first time parents) how much life will really change once you finally get your amazing bundle of joy.

We also fell off the budget wagon again, so, we're trying to get back on it. To start off, we're taking a long look at our spending and itemizing our purchases. My husband and I each have a credit card that we use, we do not use our debit cards and rarely use or have cash on us. So, it's pretty easy. We're going to be tracking them the old fashioned way, with a spreadsheet. It's a little more time consuming, but won't cost us anything but our time.

I'll be posting screen shots of these to show how I'm tracking everything. I'm also going to be trying different ways to make supplement income. We'll see how I do, so far I haven't been super successful.

Making the Most of your Benefits

I am lucky enough that I am able to work for a large national company. Something that I've learned (some of it the hard way) that I want to take a few minutes to discuss.

Read through what your benefits are relating to your 401K, many employers amount match up to a certain percent. If they match up to a certain percent, if you can afford it, make sure you have that percentage put into your 401k. If you don't you're losing free money! You wouldn't leave a $20 bill at the the cash register when you're done at the grocery store, why leave it in your employers pocket. 

There are a number of employers that offer other perks, make sure to leverage them to benefit you. Do you have kids, check to see if your employer offers a benefit for child care, mine gives a weekly subsidy. Is it a lot, no, but it takes only a few minutes to set up and puts a little extra money in your pocket. 

Another benefit that may be available relates to your health. Some employers or your insurance company will pay for your gym membership or give you some type of compensation for completing a certain number of work outs during a year. 

Some companies have benefits that could surprise you, one my company offers that my husband and I were considering at one time, is $10,000 towards your costs for adopting a child. We tried for 6 years to have our son, and we were seriously talking about adoption. Now that our little guy is here, that conversation has been tabled, at least for now. 

These benefits that your employer has and offers is part of your compensation for doing your job. Just like the health insurance they provide, it is something they offer to compensate you. So, make sure you use and take advantage of them.

You should be able to find these on your employers website or in your employee hand book. Make sure to take the time to look through what is offered. You might be surprised at what is available to you. 

Taking Advantage of Your Local Sales

When trying to save money and live frugally, a great way to cut down your grocery bill is shopping the sales. If you're able to match up even a few coupons you can rack up significant savings. This week Shaw's,  one of my local stores, was having a sale, buy 10 items and get them all for .79 each. The great thing about this sale is you can mix and match, so I got 4 cans of soup, a package of butter, a can of stewed tomatoes, 2 bags of frozen ravioli and 2 bags of frozen gnocchi.

By buying all 10 items I got them for .79 each. However, to make the sale better I did the following:

Soup- $1/4

Ravioli- $1/2

Gnocchi- $1/2

So, all 10 items cost me $4.90 or .49 each

Shaw's also had coupons in the paper recently for their brand, Value Corner. There were coupons for pasta, well, I found the pasta was .69 this week, and the coupon was for .50/1. So I got 2 packs of pasta for .19 each. 

They also had a sale on Kellogg's cereal, buy 4 for $10, that sale in itself isn't all that great. But, you can make it pretty good. Whenever I see Kellogg's on sale I always check Kellogg's.com for coupons. I found that they had a .40/1 Raisin Bran coupon and a .50/1 Rice Krispies. Well, my husband likes Rice Krispies and I like Raisin Bran, so that was perfect, I printed off 2 of each. So I got 4 boxes of cereal for $6.40, but Shaw's made the deal even better. They were giving away a gallon of milk with every purchase of 4 Kellogg's cereals. So I got 4 boxes of cereal and a gallon of milk for $6.40 or $1.28 each. Now these were full sized family boxes, not the small ones, so this was a pretty decent deal. 

I know a lot of people think, I just don't have time for all of that. Well, 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon saved me $43.83, which is $87.66/hour. I don't know anyone that makes that amount per hour. To show you that I really did save that much, and that I saved more then I spent, I've put the receipt summary below. 

3 - Things I do to Find more Time in My Day

I'm a working mom, I clock forty+ hours a week and take care of my munchkin. My husband is very helpful, but he also works long hours. In order to do all the things I want to do and get done, I've had to get creative with my time. Working from home has been very beneficial to this, it allows me to do a few things on my lunch break, like the dishes, change the laundry, fold clothes, and other little cleaning things that add to the time I have later in the day. I make a daily list of everything I want to get done, usually it's a list of 10-20 things, which only 2-4 get done.

As any mom or dad of an infant knows, you jump when they cry. So, my to do list seems to keep getting longer and longer but as long as my house is sort of clean and my son is fed, bathed and happy, it doesn't matter. Now, some of the creative things I've done to find the time:

I purchased a baby carrier. The one I got was a MO+M carrier you can find it here on Amazon. I really like this pack. It is easy to use and allows me to work around the house while my little guy is able to have mommy time. He has even fallen asleep while I'm working around the house. I do struggle with trying to pick items up off the floor, but that is also due to having extra weight on my front.

I've also started trying to monetize my crocheting. I make little gum cleaners for babies. They are made with soft cotton and slip on your finger to clean your babies mouth. To do this, I need both hands, so, one place I've found time to do this is while traveling in the car. When my husband drives, I can crochet my finger covers. I've listed them on Etsy, you can find them here, hopefully they'll have some success.

If I don't have a set plan, I can be very loosey goosey and not get anything done. So, to combat this, I make lists, and once the list is done, I create a game plan. In my mind, I try to figure out the fastest way to get everything done. So, if my list has laundry, dishes, clean off the kitchen counters, sweep, hand wash the bottles, and make dinner. I start with laundry because it's a quick hit and the washing machine can be running while I get everything else done. Then I do the dishes, I want to be able to have them off the counter so I can clean it. Also, just like with the laundry, the dishwasher can run while I'm working on the next project. I usually jump next to hand washing the bottles, that helps with my cleaning off the kitchen counters, because it's hard to clean them off when the dirty bottles are some of the things sitting on them. Then I clean the counters, I want to make sure that they are clean and wiped down before I make dinner on them. Then I get dinner going, once it's whipped up and cooking, I do another quick clean of the counters. Then boom, sweep the floor and I'm done. I always sweep the floor last because even when you try to be careful, some food crumbs or stuff from the counters will fall on the floor.

Working to be self-sustaining

Today, I'm going to be talking a little more about our gardening plans and some of our goals with the garden. For us, part of saving money and becoming frugal, is becoming more self-sufficient. We want to not only have fresh veggies and fruits during the summer, but be able to preserve them for the winter as well. To this end, we are putting our large yard to use for us and planting as much as possible. Our big project this year is to expand the raised garden by 12 square feet. I know it sounds like a lot, but in order to make this feasible, we need the space.

Today, even though there is still quite a bit of snow, we set out our plans for this year.

Last year we planted 2 apple trees, we'll probably plant 1-2 more this year because we want to start being able to dry, can and freeze the apples. We're going to be trying to preserve as much as we can for use throughout the year. We'll be documenting everything as we do it, from the beginning.

We tried gardening last year, but with the pregnancy and my husband working extra hours, we weren't able to harvest and preserve a lot. This year I'm working from home, I won't be pregnant and my husband won't be working crazy hours, which will allow us time to make our gardens work for us. In addition to expanding our raised garden, we'll be re-arranging the flower garden to insert some herbs and veggies. I'll be adding tomatoes and peppers to the flower garden to maximize our growing space and potential.

We'll be planting a lot of herbs this year, we want to dry them for use throughout the year. Not only are herbs and spices expensive, but by growing them we can know where they came from, how they were handled and make our own spice blends.

We're using the same thought process for everything we'll be growing. We want to try to get a large yield of everything to get us through the as much of the winter as we can. The less we have to buy the less money we have to spend on food.

We're also going to be planting a large wildflower garden in a corner of the yard because we want to entice honey bees to come pollinate our gardens.

If we have any money left over, we'll be redoing our compost bin. Unfortunately, the one we inherited when we bought the house is not working out well. It's not large enough and it's not animal proof. We've had a few uninvited guests that helped themselves to it by ripping through the cloth sides. We'll be making one out of wood and chicken wire. We want to design it to have a small swinging door at the bottom to easily remove the lower layer of compost.

We're funding most of our projects by using the rewards points from our credit cards. We have credit cards that accumulate points that can be redeemed for gift cards and other items. So, we get gift cards to the hardware/gardening store, for us it's usually home depot, and voila! we have money to fund our garden projects. The points take a while to accumulate because we aren't (usually) high spenders. So, I've been planning this for a while. That's a key to being frugal, plan, wait and feel the rush of we did that.

Not planning is detrimental to being frugal, if you just wing your spending you'll never have enough and your budget will never balance. Well, I hope you enjoyed the photos of some of the wildlife near us, see you tomorrow.

Budgeting

I am not proud to say that my husband and I are living at the edge of our budget. We decided to take a mortgage that was a little higher than we were comfortable because we found our dream home. When we purchased the house we knew we were going to need to purchase an SUV because of where it was located. During our process of making the decision to take the mortgage and purchase an SUV, we were not planning on having a child. We had tried for six years to get pregnant and were feeling like it wasn't going to happen for us. As fate would have it, we found out three days after signing the paperwork that we were expecting our first child.

As you can imagine, after trying for so long we were absolutely ecstatic! But now, we're working diligently to pay off our student loans, mortgage and the car payment, all while having the expenses of a newborn.

This is why I've started writing this blog. I want to chronicle our journey to getting out of debt. We're going to be setting financial goals and trying to meet them. We don't like feeling like we are living paycheck to paycheck and not able to save anything.

My first order of business was to complete a financial review. I went through our credit card statements for the last three months to find out where we are spending our money and where we can cut out spending. Then I completed a budget. This may sound daunting but just take it piece by piece.

We thankfully only have three credit cards and never use our debit card for purchases. So, I started with one credit card and went thru three months of charges. I separated each store or purchase type and added up each one for that month. I listed some categories I used below:

Example Categories:  

Walmart
Dinner out
Grocery
Gas Station
Car Maintenance
Pharmacy

You'll need to tailor the categories to fit your personal purchasing patterns. I did this for all three of our cards and then totaled all the categories up to find out between all three cards what we spent. When listing out all the charges, don't skip one 'just because it'll never happen again' be honest wit your budget and yourself. If there is an expense that you won't be making again put it in a generic category. For us, the generic one was the part we bought for the dishwasher, we won't be buying it again but it was important. So, I put it under household maintenance.

This will give you a base line of what you're spending and where. This is really important to see where you can "trim the fat" or how much you need to budget for essentials. Out of all the times I've tried to budget, I've found this is the most important step. Without knowing what is being spent and where it's going you'll never be able to stick to your budget.

There are tons of sites that you can get free budget work sheets or even some that you can buy. I've tried some of the free ones, but I've never had any luck with them. So, for me the fastest and best way is to just put it all in an excel spread sheet.

Once you've done this you're halfway there! Don't give up and don't stop. Now go through your fixed monthly expenses, fuel, gas (for your car), mortgage, rent, etc. Once you've got all of these written down and added up you need to list out any and all expenses you have that are yearly, bi-yearly or quarterly, such as dog licensing fees, insurance, water bill, sewer bill, etc.

For those expenses you'll want to separate them to calculate how much you'll have to save each month to make sure you have them when they're due.

Next I calculated our monthly income. Once I have all the numbers, I subtracted all the monthly expenses, including the amount needed to be set aside for the other expenses, and found the amount we have left over at the end of every month. This is the amount we have to put in the savings account or to make an extra payment on one of our loans.

I hope this helps you, not only get motivated but maybe help you to get over that hump to get yourself financially motivated.

Getting the Garden Ready

Even though it is a winter wonderland outside, we've already started thinking about our garden for next summer.

Last year we had just moved into the house and had tried to keep up with the garden. Unfortunately, it was more work then we could handle with me being pregnant and him working 70-80 hours a week. We made a pretty good attempt but weren't able to keep up with it with everything we had going on.

This year we've drawn out a plan for the garden and have the stuff to start some seeds. We'll be starting them in March, we don't want to start them too early, but also don't want to start them too late. We're hoping to have a larger garden with a big yield this year, so, we'll have enough left over to can and freeze.

I'll be trying different recipes with the fresh produce and to see how well they hold up to canning/freezing. I'll be posting the good, bad and (hopefully not) disgusting here. As we get things going, I'll also post about our progress on starting our seeds and how we'll be setting the garden up.

Delicious Apple Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

Today into Monday we're going to be getting a doozy of a storm. Some areas of our state will be getting 12+ inches. I've done my storm prep by getting all the flashlights around, laundry is completely done, dishes are done and I've filled up jugs of water.

Yesterday, while I was cooking up the Sweet Potato Skin Chicken Fajitas, I also cooked up tonight's dinner. I made up an Apple Stuffed Pork Tenderloin. It would have been easy to warm up dinner sized servings on the wood stove if we had lost power.

It is simply delicious and this recipe uses only a few items that I usually have on hand.

Ingredients:
Pork Tenderloin - I used a 2 lbs, but it can be any size
1/4 Apple- chopped
1/4 Onioin- chopped
1 Slice of Bread- chopped into cubes
3 tsp of Apple Butter - I used some scrumptious apple butter my sister-in-law made, but you can use any type of apple spread. I've even used apple sauce with cinnamon before.

Chop up the apple, onion and bread. Cook them in a frying pan with 1 tsp of apple butter until the apples are soft. Remove them from the heat and let them cool.

Cut open your pork tenderloin

Once the apple mixture is cool, place it in the pork and fold the pork back up

Use the rest of the apple butter as a glaze on the outside of the pork

Cook at 425 degrees for 30-45 minutes - this will be longer if you use more than 2 lbs. Take it out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes. Then enjoy!

Prepaing for the storm

Since we're getting a very significant storm today into tomorrow, I'm going to share some tips on being prepared for a winter storm.

Where we live is a rural area and the possibility of a power outage is very real. By doing at least the items on this list, I'm prepared to go a few days without power.

Storm Prep List:

1. Fill all water bottles/buckets. If we lose power the pump to draw water will not work. Having jugs and bottles of water to drink is a must.  
   
   
   
   
   
2. Bring wood in for our wood stove. We always have wood in but if the power goes out we'll need to run constant heat in the wood stove. The more you have piled up, the fewer trips you'll have to make to the woodpile. 
   
3. Water plants/fill humidifiers. When running the wood stove it dries everything out. Having the humidifiers full and plants watered cuts down on the amount of water you have to use. I run my humidifier on high until the power goes out and then any water left in the tank I use for the water pot on the wood stove.
4. All laundry done. Having it all done means you don't have to do it by hand unless you're out of power for a long time.
5. Run dishwasher / wash all bottles. Same as with the laundry- with everything clean you won't have to wash them immediately. 
6. Get all flashlights out- place 1 next to your bed and the rest in a central spot. I chose my kitchen table. Having a flashlight next to your bed is very helpful, if you lose power in the middle of the night, the flashlight near you're bed will help you find your way around.
7. Check on spare batteries- have enough? Being without power for a couple days make sure you have spares, the last thing you want is to have the batteries die in the middle of the night and have no spares.
8. Check pantry- make sure stocked with necessities. Having items that you can eat without cooking and items that can be cooked on the wood stove ready to go. 
9. Charge all electronics- tablets and phones. When the power goes out this will be your only means of communication. Don't use the battery life up all at once. 
10. Animals Ready- fill guinea pig water bottle / fill dog water dish / put shovel next to back door to shovel path for dog to go outside. 

These are the top ten things that I do to prepare for a storm, they aren't the complete list and I know some of them are specific to people with wood stoves. I hope this has been helpful.

Healthy Chicken, Broccoli, and Quinoa

I've joined a weight loss challenge for the month of February. So, I've started working out and making healthy and hearty dishes. I had nothing on the menu for dinner and was searching a new app I've downloaded and found this recipe. It's from Mealtime, and so far I love it. It's had some great ideas for quick, easy and healthy dishes. It was a last minute dish that I just happened to have all the ingredients for.

It's called Chicken, Broccoli and Quinoa. It was delicious and my husband absolutely loved it. 

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken

1 medium head of broccoli

1/2 medium onion diced

4 cloves garlic

1 cup quinoa

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup cheese

Chop up the onion, garlic, broccoli and chicken. Set the broccoli to the side.

Cook the onions and chicken until chicken is just done and onions are translucent
Add the garlic- cook until fragrant
Add chicken broth and quinoa- bring it to a boil, reduce heat and then cover

Cook for 10 min- then add the broccoli
Cook until broccoli is done and all juice is gone
Sprinkle with the cheese and cook until the cheese is melted



Then enjoy

Snow Day

Today I got to have a snow day with my little guy. My husband's employer decided to make him work extra hours with less than a days notice. This caused major child care problems for us, which forced me to take the day off. Normally, our daycare could have taken him for another day, but today we were getting a major winter storm. So, my husband needed to take our only SUV to get there and back safely and the hill we live on requires an SUV.

I know, you're thinking, well isn't it your fault for not having 2 SUV's. We definitely share in responsibility, but at this point we can't afford a second one. Prior to this year we had both of our vehicles paid off, and were trying to save to purchase a vehicle in full. Well, when we found our dream house, that went out the window. We had to purchase the SUV or my husband would have to call out of work a lot. We do live in New England and snow is inevitable.

During my day of child wrangling I was writing up a couple of blogs to post and realized I didn't like my blog name. So, I've decided to have a blog name that embodies what what I'm doing/writing in my blog. I've changed it to Frugal in NH and will be working this week to get my posts moved over.

Thank you for stopping by and letting me vent a little! I hope you enjoy my blog and the photos taken of today's storm.