Putting the Plan Into Action

Now that I've had some time to internalise everything that has happened last week, I'm ready to start putting our Action Plan into place. Hubby and I have talked and talked about what we can do to keep things on an even keel around here until I find somthing else to bring in an income. The way I figure it, we will have a reduced income until February 28th, and then after that, who knows? There is so much that is unknown and to tell you the truth, I'm a little bit scared. But now is the time to really prioritise what is important to us and what is just 'nice to have'. Even when we had gobs and gobs of debt, I wasn't as willing to let go of things as I am now. Knowing that there is *some* money in the bank to see us through is certainly helping me to sleep at night.

Here's a list of actions I'll be taking to reduce our expenditures:

• go to the bank and temporarily stop RRSP, RESP and House downpayment contributions.
• calling cellphone provider and reducing plans to something more affordable.
• make a freezer and cupboard inventory; we need to eat what we have to reduce grocery costs.
• inventory items that can be sold to list on Kijijii and other sites.
• list items on Kijijii; have already started with two.

As for looking for other work, I have an appointment on Wednesday to get some help from an employment counsellor. Also, I had an unexpected tip on a possible job lead kind of within my field, but not quite. However, I will be in contact with them to see if they are interested in hiring me. Fingers crossed.

I'll be going over my invoicing tomorrow to see how much money that I am owed from various companies, as well as making sure that I pay any outstanding invoices from my business. I'd like to get as close to a clean slate as I can, before we start feeling the pinch of living on one income.

Shopping and Dinner

I went shopping yesterday.

I had read all the flyers and made a careful list. I need to stretch every dollar I possibly can right now. I wish the budget wasn't so darn tight but it is what it is.

I got Palmolive Dish soap, 1.1L for $1.73 at Canadian Tire yesterday. I bought 4 of them. I love stocking up on things when I find a great deal. I also picked up some Christmas wrap that was on sale, and a few stocking stuffers there. Who would have thought that CT would have good prices on seasonal candy?

Next stop, No Frills. They are having another one of their $1, $2, $3 sales and some of the deals were hard to pass up. While there, I realized that lean ground beef was on sale as well, so I bought two of the family sized packs. I used one for dinner, and split the other one up for the freezer.

When I got home after picking up the kidlets, I put stuff away, and packed up two reusable grocery bags of foodstuffs for DD1's house. She has recently gone back to work full-time after mat leave, and they are struggling once again. Her BF is having trouble finding and staying employed, so they have opted for him to stay home and look after grandcub while DD1 works to provide for their little family. They have exhausted all of their resources, and are grateful for any help in the next month while they are adjusting to the new schedule.

I wish I could have run to the bank, and taken out money for them to survive, but I can't. I want to fix the problem for them, but I can't do that either. But I realized that having stocked up on all the sales I can, I am able to help them with pantry items that I have. Baby wipes, t.p., soups, jam and bread from the freezer, peanut butter, sugar, cereal, rice mixes, all gleaned from our cupboards. It made me feel better and they were very grateful for the help.

Anyway, for dinner I made homemade burgers, with all the fixings. Mine ended up being a mushroom bacon cheeseburger. With fries, pickles and olives on the side. :) For dinner we had 3 adults, 2 tweenagers (DD2's fave girl cousin of the same age is here for the weekend), 1 toddler, and a 10 month old. All fed and happy on under  $20 worth of groceries bought on sale over time.
I. Love. That.

I am still making (knitting) gifts for my family to reduce costs. This is likely going to be our most frugal holidays ever. But it will be ok. Everyone knows that we are struggling financially, and are not so worried about stuff. We watched "The Grinch That Stole Christmas" after dinner, and it led to a discussion about 'Christmas not coming from a store'. That it was about being together with the ones you love, and who love you. The tweens seemed to 'get' it, and that's all I can hope for.

Happy Friday

" Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." - Will Rogers

There has been lots going on in my head, and with me in general.

I cleaned out the freezers and took some time to do some stocking up on items that we will use for the next few months. Here are my purchases over the last couple of days:

1x Sirloin Tip Roast, $ 11.66
1x Package Ground Beef, $11.06
8x 1 lb Unsalted Butter, $23.04
2x McCain Frozen Cream Pies, $2.58
1x 10 lb bag potatoes, $1.88
3x 1L Oasis 100% juice, $2.97
3x Pillsbury Apple Turnovers, $6.00
8x Dr. Oetker Frozen Pizzas, $24.00
4x Knorr Rice/Pasta Mixes, 4.00
1 each chicken & beef bullion cubes, $3.00
3x Glad Cling Wrap, $3.00
3x Oatmeal Crisp Triple Berry Cereal, $9.00
2x Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, $3.74
2 lb bag Macintosh Apples, $2.00
3x 90-100 count bagged frozen cooked shrimp, $9.00


There was a lot more, but I don't want to bore you with the details. However, I'm not done with the shopping just yet.

Tomorrow and Sunday, Shopper's Drug Mart is having a 'Spend Your Points Event' , where you get additional dollar amounts in free purchase if you redeem your points over 50,000.
I've combined their sales items from the flyer, along with redeeming 50,000 of my accumulated points. If I've done my math correctly, I will get $100.99 (before taxes) of products for $14.12.
I like to think of it as my version of Extreme Couponing, without the actual coupons, lol!

Products purchased will be:
4 x 2kg bags of sugar @ $1.99 each
4 x Life Brand 2-roll paper towels @ $0.49 each
4 x 24 roll Royale Toilet Tissue @ $5.99 each
2 x Oral B Children's Toothpaste @ $1.88 each
2 x Herbal Essences hair care @ 2/$5.00 each
4 x Vim Cream Cleanser @ $0.99 each
1 x Aleve Tablets @ 9.99
1 x 4 pk Tic Tacs @ $3.49
1 x 320 count Pampers Baby Wipes @ $9.99
2 x Sunsilk shampoo (with free 355 ml conditioner) @ 3.99 each
2 x Balea 2-in-1 Kids Shampoo/Bodywash @ 3.99 each
1 x Trident gum, 4 pack $2.99
2 x Pringles Chips @ 1.99 each

This will give me a head start on some of the stocking stuffers that I typically buy for Christmas, along with a few things to stock up on.

I'm hoping that this weeks shopping excursions will help to lower our costs overall for grocery spending and planned holiday spending.

Have you been shopping this week?

Strawberry Freezer Jam

I was totally inspired by Kristen over at The Frugal Girl with her post on homemade freezer jam.

The last couple of years, as I have been learning to make things from scratch, I have made a few things that were a bit out of the standard for me. Two years ago, I made Blueberry Freezer Jam. It was good, but it wasn't quite as wonderful as I thought it would be. This year I decided to try Strawberry Freezer Jam.

After school today, I headed to the thriving metropolis of Lambeth. Well, just to the west of Lambeth, to Millar Berry Farms to get the kidlets to help me pick some strawberries. I was saddened to learn that the Pick-Your-Own fruit isn't ready yet, but they did have plenty of ripe delicious berries for sale.

I bought two, 3L baskets of 'imperfect' fruit for $3.00 each, and a six pack of pints for $23.00. We also bought fresh asparagus that was cut less than an hour before we showed up, and some rhubarb stalks.

Stopping at the TSC store on the way back to London (the east side of Lambeth), I bought a case of 12, 500mL canning jars, perfect for jam. I also picked up some liquid pectin. Total: $20.00.

I ended up with 9-500mL jars and 4-8 oz. jars of strawberry freezer jam. I also quartered some berries and bagged them for the freezer, and had some leftovers to slice to add to some vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I figure the total cost of making the jams/bags came to about $53.36.
If I were to purchase the same amounts of commercial jam, bags of frozen berries, and sliced berries, it would have set me back about $62.83.

I still have 3 jars left to fill with something though. I wonder when the raspberries will be ready?

Batch Freezer Cooking - Ground Beef

As part of my frugal lifestyle-in-training, I find the idea of batch freezer cooking to be one of the best tips that I've come across. The idea itself is not unique, but it certainly is a timesaver.

What does batch freezer cooking entail? Well, for me, it may be a bit different than for others. Some people will spend an entire day preparing everything for 4 or more different casserole dishes, cooking them, letting them cool, wrapping them in aluminum foil, and putting them in the freezer. For me though, I try to do things a bit simpler.

Many of the dishes that I prepare for my family and that they like start with some of the same main meat ingredient. Ground beef. Plain old hamburger. I take a lot of ground beef, say 5 to 10 pounds of the stuff, and brown it. I make sure its very crumbly by breaking it up oftern while browning it over a medium-low heat on the stovetop. I'll add diced onion and garlic, and some of our favourite spices, particularly chili powder. Not enough to make your eyes water, but just enough so that you can smell it cooking in the beef juices.

When it's finished browning, I drain the fat away using a large collander. If your family is on a fat-reduced meal plan like mine is, then you could pat the ground beef with paper towels to extract more of the remaining fat. I will take out a portion of the cooked ground beef for whatever dish I am making that night, then let the collander of ground beef sit for awhile, until it has cooled enough to handle. After cooling, the ground beef gets spread on a clean cookie sheet in a reasonably thin layer. The cookie sheet goes directly into the freezer above our fridge for half an hour or so. This rapid cooling/partial freezing helps the ground beef retain its crumbly texture.

Using a measuring cup, I measure out portions into reusable plastic containers. Some get 1 cup, some get 2, depending on how many containers I have available to me at the time. The sealed containers then get stacked and put into the apartment sized deep freezer that we have. They are ready for use at any time. You should probably not let them stay in the freezer for more than 12 months, but my ground beef containers never stay in the freezer for more than a month. Did I mention we eat alot of ground beef?

When I'm days that I'm feeling too lazy to do any real cooking, or if I know I'm going to be compressed for time, I can pull out a container from the freezer. Our standby meals using this mixture are: tacos, chili, spaghetti, shepard's pie, and another dish I make that has no name, but is comprised of the ground beef mix, a can of diced tomatoes, mixed with cooked elbow macaroni and topped with shredded cheese. Yum!

I haven't yet ventured into other batch freezer cooking ideas, but if they all suit us as well as this one does, I'm sure going to like pre-planning our meals a whole lot more. The benefits of doing this one thing save us money by not having to order out, or eat out as much, saving money by purchasing larger quantities of ground beef when it is on sale, as well as being able to provide a home cooked for my family when time is limited.

Do you use any batch freezer methods that are simple, yet extremely helpful? Please share your ideas.