Glazed Pork Chops

This is a Superrrrrr easy and delish way to do up pork chops. It is a recipe from my "Cooking For The Rushed" cook book by Sandi Richard.

Glazed Pork chops

8 pork chops medium thickness, boneless and trimmed (approx 700 g)

Preheat oven to broil. Place pork chops on a broiler pan. Broil just until white in color. Remove the chops from the oven and flip them cooked side down. Turn oven down to 350 F on bake.


These amounts are per chop:

1/2 tsp prepared mustard
1 tsp. brown sugar
1/8 tsp each of cinnamon and basil

Spread each pork chop thinly with the following in this order:1/2 tsp prepared mustard, 1 tsp.brown sugar, 1/8 tsp each of cinnamon and basil.

Return the chops to oven at the lower temperature and bake.

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I usually just quickly fry mine up till almost cooked and then spread the mixture on each chop, pop them in the oven and they are usually ready to eat in about 25 to 30 minutes. Broiling them would be much healthier though.

Already Foiled Up My Menu Plan For This Week.

Yup, yesterday I wasn't feeling that great so I didn't cook up the turkey pot pie with ceasar salad but we did have it tonight and ohhhhhhhh but was it good!

I will not be having the beef barley soup as that was supposed to be schedualed for this evening so I will just carry on with the menu plan and have Fridays Glazed Pork chops with rice and green beans. It is quick, tastes great and super easy too....I love those kind of meals lol.

I can always add the beef barely soup either in next weeks menu plan or the week after.

I am going to wait for Saturdays flyers to see what is onsale next week for loss leaders and work around that for our meals.

For my turkey pot pies I used my left over gravy from Christmas dinner, cut up about 3 cups of turkey, added a can of peas and carrots, and I boiled up some potato I cubed up. I didn't cook the potato all the way as it cooked in the potpie while in the oven and I didn't want the potato overcooked. I did cheat with the pie crust, dh picked up some already made at the store which was nice since my pie crust is always a bit thicker than store bought. I should have made a biscuit mix instead I suppose to save money that is always good too.

Anyhow, I have an extra cooked potpie to freeze not to mention that while I was throwing everything together I ended up with a turkey mixture for another future potpie lol,. I will be freezing the rest of the turkey this evening for a future casserole, turkey soup and of course making up the broth for the soup and gravies.

My freezer in my fridge is getting stocked that is for sure between that and the meats onsale I have picked up over the past month or so.

Our January Goals

You know, I thought about making goals for the whole year of 2008 but then I decided to just make up a list of goals as each new month approaches.At the end of 2008 I will go through each month and see how we did. I have so many "Big" plans for our families finances among Frugal goals. I am not going to overwhelm ourselves either but only list 2 or 3 each month.

For the month of January:

(1) Start paying down our mortgage with biweekly accelerated payments.

(2) make a double payment on our credit card.

(3) make a menu plan each monday for the week and stick to it.

I think that the hardest ones will be #2 and #3. I already know that dh will be calling the mortgage company tomorrow to have the mortgage payments changed so that goal is pretty much a given. I still wanted to list it however as come years end it will be nice to review on the changes we will have made by then.

Anyone out there care to join me each month with their goals? We can at the end of each month review how we all did together :).

Editing to add that we have accomplished with changing our mortgage to biweekly! YAY GO US :), the other two goals still working on UGH.

Back to Paying Down Debt!

Well, today is December 26th, only one day after Christmas and I just went and put $500 on our credit card through online banking. Gotta love that online banking eh?

Basically a bit more than a double payment. We have met at least one of our December goals, Yay! Go us :).

I don't understand why it almost "hurts" to pay back money on debt. It was never our money to begin with but yet I found myself hesitating putting extra on our credit card. It really is one of our goals to get it paid off and we are totally excited to be debt free,like we were before this last move. Maybe it is a good thing that it does hurt, if I remember this feeling and learn from it I will be better off in the long run :).

Well, tomorrow is the big day when dh will be calling our mortgage company so that we can start mid January to pay biweekly accellerated mortage payments. We still have our regular monthly payment due the 1st of January of $873.14( This amount includes our property and school taxes) and then on January 11th it will start coming out every two weeks. It will be nice to break it up so that we are not paying the lump sum all at once.


How's everyone doing with their debt paydown?

Menu Planning

I need to get more motivated with a menu plan. I am finding that it isn't that we eat out alot or even order take-out but I am leaving it to the last minute on what we are having for supper on any given day. I have been so bad lately, it is to the point my kids will say "Mom, what's for supper tonight?" My response is for them to give me 5 to 10 minutes to think on it. Not every night do I go through this but lately it seems like at least 3 to 4 nights out of the week. I end up usually whipping up spaghetti,soup and grilled cheese, kraft dinner with hotdogs etc... It isn't so terrible as I usually have a big dinner 3 nights out of a given week. I usually have our salad in the fridge and if not I haul out the pickles and some bread to go with whatever we are having. I just need to get organized in this department to make my life a little bit easier :).

We had of course our turkey dinner today and I have Tonsssssss of turkey left. So I have decided tonight that for the rest of the week:

Wednesday: turkey pot pie with caesar salad.
Thursday : Beef Barely soup with homemade rolls.
Friday : Glazed Pork chops with rice and green beans.
Saturday : Grilled cheese with home fries and dill pickles.
Sunday : Ham slices, mashed whipped potato and corn.

I want to start this upcoming Monday with a weekly menu plan. I will be freezing leftover turkey for future meals and tomorrow I will be doing up my turkey broth for future soups and gravies.

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

I am skimming through this book right now, I will read it through after the holidays.

I found really interesting however on page 98 of the book where the author T.Harv Eker wrote this; I'm sure you've heard the saying "Birds of a feather flock together." Did you know that most people earn within 20 percent of the average income of their closest friends?

The friends dh and I have made over the years are actually within 20% of our income range. Just about all of our friends we have met through work.

Does anyone else find this to be true? There are exceptions of course but all in all the authors choice of words really hit home with me.

I do have a close friend with whom I went to school with and for years where you saw one you saw the other lol. My friend is doing quite well financially, and she associates with the wealthy. Dh and I lived in the same city as my friend for a couple of years and I met alot of wealthy people through my friend.One thing that sticks in my mind is that noone ever mentioned the cost of anything, like for example, I bought this new car and it cost x amount of $. Oh, look at this new watch, I paid x amount of $ for it.

I was treated with the uppermost respect. I am ashamed however to admit that I did have a feeling of nervousness in the beginning if that makes sense, I was going out of my comfort zone.People are people, however when it comes to money it seems to change ones thoughts on this subject.

What makes Your Hubby or Wife So special?

Ok, I know...kind of sappy! However, I am so thankful for dh and all that he does. Reasons :

(1) He will not let me shovel snow,he said that he will shovel till the cows come home before he will see me out there lol.

(2) He always makes sure that the garbage is out for first thing Monday Morning,

(3) He calls me up after work everyday when he is here ( not away for work) to see if I need anything at the store on his way home from work.

(4) If for some reason I am not home to cook supper he will cook it up for me :).

(5) When he is home I have "never" ever woken up without a fresh pot of tea waiting for me and that has been for the last 16 plus years :).

(6) I can't remember a day when he has not told me how much he loves me!, again, kind of sappy but I tell him how much I love him too!

(7) In the past I have messed up, he will try to cheer me up for sure! A couple of times he told me that if I am really feeling down to never forget that feeling and to move on and learn from it!

There is much more than this but I wanted to start it off by us all being thankful for our significant others :).

Please, leave a reply on why you are thankful for your Husband or Wife :).

I Met A New Friend And She Likes To Shop!

Although, they are mortgage free! Did I mention that their 3 second hand cars are paid off?

My friend received an inheritance from her Fathers estate. Her and her dh paid off their mortgage, WTG!

I have been riding with her to work as it is too cold for me to walk. This week with dh being in Toronto on a business trip I have had our car so I am driving her :). I have noticed that she shops alot but then again Christmas is just around the corner too.

After work a couple of days ago I took her into the city shopping, We had so much fun!

We went to 4 different stores and at the last one she picked up two beautiful sweaters, I said how nice they were and they felt so soft! My new friend said well we have time, go pick yourself up a couple and I will wait for you....I can't believe this but I "Almost" went for it! I looked at her and then I took a couple of steps in the direction of the sweaters! I stopped for a second and thought "what am I doing?". I rationalized that yes, I would love to have something new and nice for work but I have nice sweaters at home and buying a couple of these sweaters is not a Need, it is a Want. I turned to look at my new friend and said that I think I will hold off as I don't really need a new sweater or two right now lol.

I have been on this frugal journey now for 5 years , since moving here in this province I have not had a friend to go shopping with. It was just too easy for me to "almost" slip back to my old ways because I almost went on impulse.

I hadn't eaten anything all day and it was 4pm while we were still out and about so I did pick up a burger at McDonalds. My friend looked at me and said how I hadn't bought anything at all while out shopping. I told her that I still had loads of fun, and that I would be Christmas shopping at the end of the week.

So, today after work we will be going again but the difference for me is that I will have a list with me, always carry a list and stick by it whether it is for groceries, gifts, things for your home etc..

Am I proud of myself? You bet I am! :).

Where do you see yourself right now as well as in 10 years from now?

As I am typing this blog entry I am thinking of how great dh and I are doing. Over the past 3 months we have paid off $3800 in debt,funded our baby emergency fund with $1000, we are not behind on any of our bills, have lots of food in the house, our health is good, and we have a steady income which we are not taking for granted.We live in a modest bungalow of our choice along with a paid for car which means no car payment :).

We do have luxeries such as basic cable, internet,and phone with a long distance plan . I do consider these luxeries as they are not necessities,at least for us.

Dh and I have a dream where he has a choice if he so desires to retire in 10 years from now, I am pretty sure that we can reach this goal. Even though 10 years might seem so far away to some, in reality, it is like time being magnified under a microscope, it is closer than we think!

We have had a lot of fun dreaming about when that day finally arrives. Dh wants to sell the house pick up a used RV and just travel all over North America. I would rather keep the house,rent it out so that we will always have a place to call home.I think it would be neat to buy an old milk truck (my friend did this) renovate it ourselves (the interior) and possibly put in a better engine if that is required. It would be the perfect size for the two of us although I am not sure how fast they travel.

I have thought about having to store our furniture and dh said to just sell it all lol. I realize that furniture are only objects but I find that I have an attachment to a few pieces. Our dining room table for example, we eat there every night for supper as a family, we have had this table and chairs for many years. It was second hand when we bought it at a store and it took us 9 months back then to keep it on lay-a-way until we had paid it off in full to bring home. I remember the owner saying that we could take it home with us right away but we didn't like that idea until it was paid off. Funny how we were so smart as a young couple about that but yet so dissapointing in other financial ways.

For the fun of it I went to the NetworthIQ website to get an idea of where we are at right now, at this time dh and my net worth is $57,690 and once the credit card is paid off it will go up to $63,420. We will have another 10 years to add to that :). The thing is however, that is not liquid money, it is mostly invested between our home and investment property not to mention if we keep our main house we won't have that equity however, it is perfect for us for when we retire opposed to having it sitting around elsewhere.We also have to consider the capital gain tax we will have to pay on any profit once we sell the investment property.

Another thing for us to consider is dhs military pension.If we rented out this house, and had no mortgage payments to pay had money in the bank to cover emergencies including in case our house became vacant, his pension would do us nicely while on the road.

All in all it is a very good start in the right direction with our plan. I am not sure if we will travel around, maybe for one year but I want us to plan so that we will at least have that option when the time comes and the time will come.

Could You Live Off 70% Of Your Income?

Most of us have all heard of the 60/40 plan where you live off 60% of your income and divide the other 40% between retirement,savings,etc. We have also heard of Mary Hunts Plan where you live off the 80/20 plan, live off 80% of your income and with the 20% left you will tithe 10% of that and put the other 10% aside for savings. Of course it will depend on your income but even if you could live off 95% of your income that would be great! One could start off by doing up your budget, write down everything including entertainment etc.Here you will find a % guide for a family of four and here for a family of six. The main webpage for a % guide whether you are single,married couple,single parent etc can be found here. Get an idea on how low you could go to still live without feeling deprived. If you owe debt however, you would have to include that in your living expenses and not take that out of your savings from what I understand, correct me if I am wrong :).However, dh and I would have to throw that 30% onto our debt if we try out the 70/30% plan opposed to dividing it up into savings as long as we have the $1000 emergency fund still intact which we do have now. I guess that would be similar to the Dave Ramseys plan.

I am really starting to think that dh and I could live off 70% of our income. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, we do owe debt on the credit card which needs to be paid off however since paying off previous debt,everything else are regular bills. Our house in which we bought was well below what we were approved for by the bank,however we also bought another house prior which my parents are living in and they pay the mortgage although we are however paying the taxes and insurance each month.If and when my parents decide that they don't want to live in the house we bought for them to live in dh and I will be putting it up for sale. We will then take the equity from that house and put onto the mortgage of our principle dwelling.

Dh and I will have to go over the figures until we have everything budgeted to a "T".

Something to think about and we could at least try it for 3 pays or 6 weeks and see how we adjust.That is how long it normally takes us to adjust and we will know if it is a yay or nay. It is certainly worth trying after the New Year to start our 2008 goals on the right foot. We might just find that we can even move down to the 60/40% plan or we might even have to move up to the 80/20% plan.

Does anyone else go by living on a % plan for their budget?

Our Staff Christmas Party

Well, the Christmas party for my work was a hoot! I got home at 4:30a.m. There were 9 of us gals and we all went dressed in our P.J's and ended up playing hide and go seek through the whole first floor of the school. I honestly didn't think that at age 42 I would ever have so much fun playing a game in which I havn't played since I was a kid lol. We had a beef fondu,salad,french bread,rice,and veggies with dip. For dessert we had an ice cream log cake. Our party started at 7pm so that was a total 9 1/2 hours of fun fun fun. I havn't actually laughed that hard in a very long time. We played a couple of other games,listened to Christmas songs, chit chatted away and took our time opening our gifts. I can't believe how quickly the time went. Oh, did I mention we also did karaoke? lol.

I received for my gift handmade oven mitts, an apron and an egg timer. I soooooo needed those things as I had been using my tea towels to take out my baking etc from the oven.I did have pot holders but I can't even find them now, I am baffled to where they would be.I have never owned an apron and I love to bake and the kitchen timer I wanted so I could start timing myself when cleaning etc, like they do on flyladys website.

Dh will be gone tomorrow for a week. He has to go to Toronto for his work. I should have quite a few no spend days for sure! Today I will be gasing up the car and picking up a few things to tie us over until next Saturday.

Two No Spend Days So Far This Week For December 6th 2007

I am going to try for one or two more before this week is finished.

Today I donated $20 towards a family in need, we actually all chipped in a certain amount from work today.

I still have not started my Christmas shopping. Our tree is still not up but will work on that this weekend. I am hoping to also get our Children their gift bags completed next week along with their stockings. All that I will have left after that is one item off of their Christmas list. Their gift bags are filled with things in which they have not asked for, seems to save money for us there too and they always end up enjoying them :).

My staff Christmas party for work is tomorrow evening, just the gals and it is a fondu pajama party.....should be interesting? lol!

Have a great night everyone :).

My December 2007 Goals

Nothing big but every bit helps :). I came up with 3 for this month.


(1) Live at least within our means this month although I am hoping to live below our means and make a double credit card payment.

(2) I already set up with our ING account to automatically have $100 taken out of our regular bank account at the end of each and every month starting Dec 31st.

(3) Gas up once a week for work ,probably Saturdays, and on the same day pick up any groceries in which we will need for that week. We have lots of food so the trips to the grocery store should be very limited. This should help with our No Spend Days.

Should We Provide For Our Parents?

Dh and I are paying off debt however, we also bought an investment property this past July....I am sure you all must be sick of hearing about it by now lol.

The investment property we bought was for my parents to live in to up their quality of life. I don't regret it one bit. We do have debt to pay off on the credit card plus we are waiting to hear back regarding our appeal on our investment property taxes. They were too high.

Dh and I are paying the insurance which is $96. a month plus whatever the property taxes will be. They could have moved in with us I suppose but it would be in a different Province and my parents friends and son,my brother, live in their province and they do not speak the language here anyhow (French is the main language here).

My parents (mother and stepfather) are on their senior pensions. They pay the mortgage for our investment property which is a couple of hundred plus cheaper than their house they were in and now rent out. It is much better for them now.

We all see other cultures take care of their elders and even though sometimes for us it can be extra tight, it is so worth it in the long run. Take the Chinese culture for example.

The extra money we pay for them to up their quality of life I consider as tithing. Dh father passed away a year ago unexpectly and we try to also do our best with his mom who is also on a seniors pension. We try to even it out the best we can.

My mother and I were never close while I was growing up, my grandmother brought me up from the time I was 7 when my parents divorced. I strongly feel however that it is my duty and right to help out my parents.

What are your views on this?

Mushroom Gravy Sauce

Mushroom Gravy Sauce

1 can of cream of mushroom soup , noname is good.
1/2 can of milk
1/4 can of water
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce .

Stir until mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for a couple of minutes.

This can be used on Oven Meatballs, or served over mashed potatoes, french fries, hamburger patties, fried pork chops etc....

This recipe comes from Me :).

Sweet and Sour Sauce

This sauce can be made ahead and frozen or put into a jar for a dipping sauce. It goes really well with the Oven Meatball recipe I posted under Hamburger.I find this recipe very close to the taste and texture of the restaurant sweet and sour sauces. I usually double this recipe and freeze any leftovers.


Sweet And Sour Sauce

1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2/3 cup ketchup


Bring to a boil and add 2 tbsps. of cornstarch to thicken.

This recipe comes from an old cookbook (no cover) and was submitted by St.Theresa, Ear Falls, Ontario Canada.

Oven Meatballs

These are the "best" meatballs. When you are making the mixture it will be kind of gooey but don't let that fool you.Once baked they are firm and unbeliveable :). You can use either with a Mushroom Gravy Sauce and have a side of mashed potato, Sweet and sour sauce with rice, or even have meatball subs with a pizza sauce.



Oven Meatballs


2 lbs. lean hamburger
1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs (must be fresh bread)
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup onion
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. salt
pepper
Garlic powder.

Make into 1" balls and bake on cookie sheet at 375 for 30 to 35 minutes. Use a mushroom gravy or a sweet and sour sauce.

Bring to a boil and add 2 tbsps cornstarch in water to thicken.


This recipe comes from an old cookbook and was submitted by St.Theresa Ear Falls, Ontario Canada.

Well, We Didn't Put Extra Money On The Cedit Card, UGH!

For starters, we live on a snow belt and dh couldn't keep up with the snow so we ended up paying our snowplow guy earlier than planned which totalled $300 for the year. We are actually having our third storm of the season right now although this one is mega bad. Everything is shut.

Couldn't find Samanthas boots from last year so spent $91 there.I picked up lots of extra groceries as I wanted to stock up in case of a power outage so I "gulp" spent an extra $200 there. Food is expensive here not to mention we do not have double or triple coupons. Although I did go overboard and there are no "buts".

I keep thinking of the ice storm in which our province had in 1998. We didn't live here then but alot of people went without power for weeks.We have been hearing on the radio lately that this winter will be the coldest in 15 years not to mention the most snow in about 15 years as well.

The school lunch fees I still also need to pay which everyone pays regardless whether you children stay at school over lunch or not, unless you live right by the school.

Guess I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that I should have paid the credit card as soon as we got the extra money as I did with funding our baby emergency fund. At least we have that.

I feel like I have failed , at least this time around, however, when I fall off I "Will" hop back on :).

So, back to the drawing board!

Baby Emergency Fund Has Been Funded!

As I posted a couple of days ago we received a sum of $2200 from a claim for dhs military retirement move.

$1000 I have already sent to our ING account for our baby emergency fund! That leaves $1200 left over. We will be owing property taxes on our investment property but since we asked for it to be reviewed with a reassessment we do not know how much it will be. Certainly not the $2600 originally estimated but the lady at the town office hadn't heard as of yet. Also, since we bought our house in July and the bill runs from April to April, we will owe only 9 months of taxes opposed to the full year.

What dh and I will be doing is to start paying down the credit card debt in the mean time. $1000 on the credit card. The remaining $200 will be put aside to go towards our investment property taxes and each payday we will set a certain amount aside as well. Once our property taxes are paid in full this is where our freedom account comes in for our irregular expenses. We will divide up the yearly amount of taxes and each month put in the same amount of money so that by the following April we will be able to pay that off in full.Our Freedom account is also with ING so we will benefit from having the interest added to whatever the amount of money which is in our account YAY!

I am very proud of us because there was a time when dh and I would have said well, lets keep making minimum payments on our bills and spend that $2200 elsewhere, "We" deserve it! We realize now that what "We" deserve is to be debt free,to have freedom and to live a stress free life :). We owe ourselves that much to say the least.

Looks Like We Will Have Our Baby Emergency Fund!

Dh went to finalize his claim for his retirement posting and we didn't use all of the money in which we were intitled to. They let us know yesterday that we will be getting $2200 back!

We still owe property taxes and the credit card not to mention we have no emergency fund .

$1000 is going into our emergency fund with ING and the rest is being put into our other account at our bank which has no debit card access until we find out how much dh is getting back from his commission at work in a couple of weeks and we should have those property taxes paid off in full.

Dh hasn't had a chance to call and find out if we actually owe the full $2600 now after the assessment was redone last week on our investment property.If dh doesn't have time to call tomorrow because of work I will call to find out.

Having an Emergency fund back up and running will be such a relief!

Can you tell that I am doing the "Happy" dance? :) .

A Friendly Reminder To Start Thinking Of Your 2008 Goals!

I will be posting mine in a week or so. I am going to take my time with my financial goals opposed to thinking "Oh yeah! I also want to do this and this and this!", I am only going to focus on a couple. I can always add more throughout the year but not until I complete the couple I list, at least for my financial goals.

Personal goals well, I have a couple of those too but again, I have to prioitize.

Who else is thinking long and hard for their upcoming 2008 Goals?

Grandma Burks Soft Ginger Snaps

These have got to be the best soft ginger snaps cookies ever! This recipe comes from a very old cookbook which was given to me and was submitted by the Holy Family Church Delia, Alberta.

You can 1/2 this recipe if you like as it makes a lot of cookies or you can do what I do and either roll the dough into balls, use a fork dipped in sugar to press the balls down and either:

(1) freeze dough seperated on cookie sheets and once they are cold enough to keep their shape put into freezer bags to bake up later. I just take them out of their freezer bags and bake them at @ 350 but because they are frozen I leave them in for a few extra minutes.

(2) Bake them up, let cool then freeze cookies and put in freezer bags so that all you need to do is take them out of the freezer and thaw opposed to baking.


Grandma Burks Soft Ginger Snaps


3 tbsp. ginger
1 tsp. black pepper
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups lard ( I use shortening)
1 tsp. salt
4 heaping tsp. soda
2 cups molasses
2 eggs
1 scant cup of water, in which the soda is dissolved.
12 cups of flour


Mix in order. Let cookies ripen. Bake in 350 oven for about 8 to 10 minutes.

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I like to roll these cookies into balls, then roll in sugar and press down with a fork dipped in sugar so that the fork doesn't stick.

Magic Mix

This is a Pancake or biscuit mix where you don't need to add shortening to the mix. I got this from a very old cookbook which was given to me. The book is so old I no longer have a cover for it but the following recipe did come from St.Teresa of Avila Elmira,Ontario Canada.


Keep this on hand for making a quick batch of pancakes for breakfast or feather-light drop biscuits for dinner.

Magic Mix

6 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. plus 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup instant dry milk powder
2 1/2 tsp. salt.


In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly combine the flour, baking powder, dry milk and salt. Spoon the mixture into a 2-quart glass or plastic container. Cover tightly and store in the refrigerator. Magic Mix will keep for about a month.


Pancakes

In a mixing bowl, beat 1 egg lightly with a fork, then add 1 cup of Magic Mix, 3/4 cup cold water, and 2 tbsp. of melted butter or vegetable oil. Stir just enough to moisten the mix (the batter should be lumpy). Lightly grease a griddle or 12" skillet and heat it over moderate heat until a drop of water dances when sprinkled on it.Using about 3 tbsp. of batter for each pancake, pour the batter onto the griddle, allowing plenty of space between pancakes. Cook until bubbles form and then turn and cook on the other side until golden. Serve with butter and syrup.

You may also want to try one of the floolowing variations:

(1) Just before cooking, stir in 1/2 cup blueberries, washed and drained or 1/2 cup chopped banana.

(2) Stir 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg and cinnamon into the dry ingredients, then just before cooking stir in one peeled, cored and finely chopped tart apple.

(3) When cooking, before turning the pancakes, dot them with 1/2 cup crumbled, cooked milk or hot sausage meat or thin slices of cooked sausage links.

Biscuit Mix

This is a must have in our house! I usually make drop biscuits with this recipe and when I make say a chicken or beef pot pie I can either just drop by the spoonfuls on top of the pot pie mixture in a casserole dish set on a cookie sheet or if I want my biscuits to be firm on the bottom I will bake them on the cookie sheet beside the pot pie.

Thanks again Katie!


Biscuit Mix

12 cups flour
7 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cup shortening
12 tbsp. baking powder

Mix and cut in shortening and store in a ziplock bag or covered container.

To use: 2 cups mix plus enough premade milk (great for using dry powdered milk) to form a soft dough.

Bake @ 400 for 15 to 20 minutes on the middle rack of your oven.

Brownie Mix

I love having this mix on hand, they are sooooooooo good!

Brownie Mix

6 cups of flour
4 tsp. salt
8 cups sugar
2 cups unsweetened cocoa
2 cups shortening

Cut shortening into flour, Mix in the rest and store. You can either store in a large zip lock baggie or a covered container.

To Use: 2 1/2 cups mix, 2 eggs, and 1 tsp vanilla. Mix all and turn into greased pan.

Bake @ 350 for 20 to 25 minutes. You can add chocolate chips if you like.

Cake Donut Mix

This recipe I received from an internet friend known as Lambie, She is a Super Person! She has helped me save lots of $ by sharing her frugal mixes with me and among other people.

Thank you Lambie aka Katie!


Cake Donut Mix (3 to 4 times this recipe)

4 1/2 cups of flour 1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup dry milk 1 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup of sugar 1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tbsp baking powder 1 1/2 cups shortening


Mix all and cut in shortening.

To Use: 2 1/2 cups of mix, 1 egg, 1/4 cup of milk or enough to form a soft dough, 1 tsp vanilla.

Knead till smooth. Pat and roll till 1/2 inch thick and cut with a round glass and use pop lid to cut out the middle hole.

Bake @ 350 on your ovens middle rack for 20 minutes or fry in an electric skillet @ 350 to 375 turning on both sides till golden brown. Make donut bits with centers.

Dip and roll in powdered sugar, sugar and cinnamon mix or you can also spread the top with icing sugar with sprinkles on top.

These donuts are not fluffy, they are like a cake donut. When I make these I make them about 1 inch thick as we like ours a bit bigger but you can adjust it to your liking :)

I joined BlogRush!

It is free and helps to bring more traffic to your blog! There are different subject areas that you can classify your blog with blogrush when joining. I joined under the finance section as I am trying to pick up ideas on investing, debt payoffs,goals etc...

When I joined and upon approval they issued me this link www.blogrush.com/r12433712 as a referral. You can copy and paste it to your web address bar at the top of your page to find out more information or to join if you like :).

I am excited to see how many times my blog will be put on others...

If you decide to check it out let me know what you think ok? I will update in a couple of days with my experience with blogrush as I have only just joined but it looks like this is going to be fun!

How to save Money.

The key to this success if you havn't already done so is to change your habits. Start with trying "one" new savings idea opposed to several. Give yourself time to adjust.

Financial Goals are a great example. I know that if you are anything like me there are several goals which can be listed. It can become overwhelming to think or even write down your goals while all along thinking.....so many goals, not enough money to contribute to each and make an impact. What do you do in a case like this? It is called "Prioritize".

Ask yourself what is a "Must save for now" and what is a "Must save for soon". You need and want to pay off your debt but at the same time you need an emergency fund while all along you are also wanting to plan for a trip for next year with your family. Wow! decissions decissions eh?

Dh and I are at the point where we need to figure out what will work for us. I feel like we are going in circles. What we are considering changing is this:

(1) I picked up a part time job and have been putting that extra money towards our debt pay off. I am going to switch things up a bit and keep paying debt as if we don't have my income. I will start taking my income and putting into our ING account towards our emergency fund.

(2) Now comes the "fun" part. After the emergency fund has been funded with a minimum of $1000 I will be taking 1/2 of my pay to go towards our fun money and put the other 1/2 towards paying down debt again. Say for example I can put aside $200 a month for our fun money, it doesn't mean that we have to spend all of our fun money at once.That is a lot of money compared to what we have been spending. It is an idea to at least try.

So, we want to pay off our debt,still enjoy living in the present while all along planning for our future. We are trying to figure out a way to really have it all.

What are you all doing?

I changed my blog fonts and colours

I was getting tired of the lime green and white colours so thought I would change them.

What do you all think?

I am not a computer whiz, I don't even know how to download pictures on here lol. I really would love to have a digetal camera but I don't think that will happen for a bit yet.

Well, I am off to double check these colours :) .

Editing to add that I figured out how to add a picture lol.

Feeling and looking Great on the Cheap.

First of all, What do you all do to feel and look Great without breaking the bank while paying down debt and living the frugal life? Do you ever feel like you are in a rut? Where do you turn when you want to just give yourself a little boost?

I started shopping in my home first of all. I have had a small bottle of expensive perfume which I received as a Christmas Present about 3 years ago and kept in my dresser drawer, never used. I have always just used the spray cologne.I decided to treat myself and I dabbed a bit of the perfume on my wrists and along my jaw line opposed to behind my ears before going to work yesterday morning and the scent was there all day!

Do you ever do that? Have certain things which were given to you as a gift and for whatever reason you don't even open the box it is in? You maybe set it aside thinking one day maybe? I even have two foot spas! One I took out of the box about 8 months ago to try but for some reason I couldn't figure out how much water to put in it etc lol guess I was in too much of a hurry to take my time back then.....The other has never been opened. So, both have never been used. What a waste! I will be using the one which is already opened this weekend.....the other I will let my teenaged dds use.

I havn't used nail polish since this past summer and decided to use a light shade of my dds.WOW! I feel like a million bucks! I gave myself a manicure to boot, usually I just use the nail clippers and off I go. Oh, and don't forget your toe nails!

I usually only wear mascara when going out, if that. I had some light lipstick and a lip gloss which I had bought last year and had used only once.I felt like my makeup was complete the other day when I started using it again to go to work. You have to be careful with using outdated makeup but my lipstick and gloss were still ok.

Putting aside shopping from home, I went and paid to get my hair cut yesterday before supper. It cost me $16 as I went to a small home business salon. I can cut my own hair but I wanted a few layers added which is hard for me to do as I tend to over extend the layers thus it becomes slightly uneven not to mention that my arms feel like weights while doing this. I asked the stylist for a shampoo and cut, I did not need her to dry it this saved me and extra $2. The last time I went to a hairdresser was about 3 1/2 to 4 years ago so this was truly a treat for me :).

Do You have anything that you could shop for in your home? What do you do on the cheap/frugal for "You"? I would love to know :).

Our Investment Property Taxes Will Be Going Down

YAY! We had a new tax bill come out for our investment property a few months ago and we had just bought this place this past June. The taxes went from $1700 a year up to $2600 a year. They had assessed the house for $124,000 but when we had it appraised by the same office it was valued at $88,000. I found that odd and when I called their office the lady who answered the phone said that the assessment was what the house is worth and the amount you could sell the house for. I tried to tell her that she has the assessment and appraisal mixed up lol.

The house needs a lot of work but it is solid and sound. It was listed by the real estate agent for $95,000 and we actually got it for $82,500 as the owner was retiring and he and his wife were waiting to hop in their Rv to travel for a year around North America. the house was used as a rental prior to selling. The renters really did a number on the inside of this house, holes in the wall, the toilets and sinks are ok but not by much, we need to replace them, new windows etc...I guess the unobstructed ocean view, walk out basement over looking this as well, triple sized in town lot etc make up for it lol.

We had told the municiple taxation people that the taxes were way to high and we were appealing their decission. Well, they went yesterday and the tax man said that whoever had done the assessment must have parked down at the bottom of our driveway (it is 400ft long) and just taken a picture from there. He is going to have our taxes lowered....YAY!!!!

Dh and I will be calling one day this week to see what we will officially owe on our taxes.

I need to find a book/information for Canada regaurding what is claimable for tax purposes when owning an investment property.

I am so Happy that we had asked for them to recheck the taxes....this will save us quite a bit of money for now anyhow I am thinking.

March Break I will be going down to see about painting and patching up any holes in the wall. We owe $61,000 on this property and house prices down that way are still climbing. Dh and I have only seen pictures of this house but we had an inspecter go in prior to purchasing and the real estate agent is a good friend of the families whom we have known for years. My mother fell in love with the house and their quality of life has shot way up compared to the house they were living in before. My parents also rented out their house as it was not selling and after their mortgage,taxes and renters insurance are paid they have an extra $30 from the rent money.

The house needs updating but all in all this was a very good investment, especially since this was our first time.

I am starting to feel the Freedom!

With our debt being paid off with such intensity I know that it will be a matter of only a few short months until we are yet again debt free except for the mortgage which we will focus on paying that down/off as well.

As long as we have no debt we will be ok. I had posted an Entry not to long ago about a possible job loss for Dh. It was so out of the blue and we would have been in such a mess had this happened with the debt we needed to pay off. I will not be taking this for granted. With dhs military pension and my 80 minutes a day with my job we will be ok should a job loss occur in the future but not for the long haul,and again, we will have to be debt free for that to work.

I have always been one to cook from scratch and I love to bake, I have found a lot of frugal recipe ideas on the internet as well. A great website to visit for Excellent ideas for scratch cooking and emergency menus etc is at Hillbilly Housewife .

We could have taken the easy route and taken equity out of our investment property to pay off our debt however, Dh and I strongly felt that by doing this would only defeat our purpose of getting ahead and being accountable for our mess. I would rather embrace frugal living and pay down our debt by living below our means. Prior to selling our last house we had refinanced and taken out equity. We used most of the money to buy our investment property although other bits of the money just seemed to "dissapear" along the way. Lesson learned there.

We are on the right track, I am so thankful. It is so true when one thinks about how it can take only minutes to go into debt but yet it can take months if not years to pay those few minutes off.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Another Debt Bites the Dust!

YAY!!! We paid off our Mortgage broker yesterday. Now we have to pay off the Investment property taxes which should be in a couple of more weeks!

Because we have been going with such intensity on paying down/off our debt we decided to take a break and pay the minimum payment on the credit card until after Christmas. I went out and spent about $150 at once on groceries opposed to dividing it up to $75 a week, I had a blast too!

We have also started to purge through our clutter although my weakness really are books. I have so far 3 boxes to donate to our local library. I have no ornaments or clothes etc to donate to the salvation army as I do not have many. I do not care for ornaments as that means extra time dusting, I only shop for clothes at value village and pick up what I need at walmart for personal items about once a year so I really don't have much in the line of clutter there.

I saw Thursday and Fridays show on Oprah about a lady who hordes and I thank God that I don't have that problem, my heart really broke for her and her family.They did a wonderful service by appearing on Oprah even though it was hard on them. I started thinking of the books which I kept telling myself that I would take over to the library for example.

Monday I have to list 3 things in which I would like for Christmas for our Christmas party at work on December 7th. I can only think of 2 items which I really would like for Christmas gifts and that is a pair of oven mitts or an apron. I honestly cannot think of a third.

Well, it is Saturday night and Dh and I are invited to visit with a lady I work with and her husband. It is his 51st birthday. We even picked up a few beer to take :). They live within walking distance I should add as we do not drink and drive.

Ohhhhhhhh, also, I picked up this past week an extra 9 hours total @ $16.29 an hour. The school board also pays me my vaction pay and a couple of other little things on top of that on my paycheques. I am hoping to pick up some more extra hours next week but we shall see. It is great because I work at the school my 2 dd's go to :).

I am waiting for my contract to be signed, hopefully sooner than later. I love having a job in which when school is out so am I lol, although if I work after school I am sometimes there until 5:15 p.m but still I have my evening,weekends and holidays off. My friend even told me that they thanked her for recommending me as I fit right in and I am such an asset. Ok, I will stop now as my head is going to start swelling any moment lol.

Well, I had better start getting ready for our big outing this evening. Dh and I very rarely go out so I am extra excited :).

Have a Super weekend Everyone!

The Good,The Bad, The Ugly And The Future

The Good : Payday is in 3 more Days! Why am I excited? Because another debt bites the dust! The last $500 left owing to our mortgage broker will be paid in full!

Dh and I will have paid out $3800 on our debt in 9 weeks by cutting back to the bare basics,becoming "Really" creative, me picking up a part time job and of course we did end up skipping one mortgage payment which we had never done before.

The Bad : Dh last week had to go on a business trip. He deposited 2 cheques into our bank account from his boss to travel with and our bank put a hold on one of them as it was deposited through our debit machine. What little bit of money I had set aside in our account dh needed to put gas in the truck his boss had rented.He didn't call his boss as it was late in the evening when he discovered this. I have been dipping into the change jar as I did not do a complete grocery shop, well, with what I had left over to work with.

The Ugly: Dh used the credit card to pay for his hotel while on his business trip because of the reason above. It was that or he would have been sleeping in the truck for the night. I have to change the total owing on the credit card now as soon as dh calls for the total balance. Dh has not finalized his claim for this last trip so whatever his boss owes him will go onto the credit card.

The Future : I can see us having the credit card paid off in full within 3 to 4 months and then we will be living debt free except for the mortgage and regular living expenses. I miss this way of living that is a given! We have had this taste of freedom and all I can say is We definately want it back! :)

Now, with what little I did pick up for groceries and personal items guess what I ended up forgetting this time around? Shampoo! You can just imagine my horror yesterday morning getting ready for work and realizing we were out of this. I ended up coming up with the idea to use sunlight dish detergent which by the way I would not recommend lol, but in a pinch it does the trick as long as you have conditoner and I guess you could say my hair was "squeaky" clean. My payday is in 2 more days so I will only have to do this again once until then. I guess this would be called "making due" until then.

Again, trial and error will make us stronger :). I used up my last 2 eggs last night to make a double batch of sugar cookies with sprinkles for lunches over the next couple of days. I also still have 2 double packs of jello to make up along with some apples. I had gone back to store bought bread but will have to make up a few loaves of homemade this evening as we are almost out. I finally got the hot chocolate mix done up as well so I don't have to worry about snacks for everyones lunches.

I am thinking of taking $150 from my pay to spend on our groceries. I however won't be getting any convenience foods out of that as that takes up too many precious dollars,not that I have been doing that anyhow. I think that I will however divide that money up and grocery shop once a week with $75 opposed to shopping at one time for the two weeks. I find that I tend to run out of something or another when I spend it all up at once.

To help me stay accountable I will post my groceries on here and the price I have spent on them. I live in Canada some of the food will be priced higher then in the U.S.A. I should be doing this either Thursday evening or Friday afternoon.

So, there you have it. The good, the bad, the ugly and the future.

Christmas is Coming, Ready or Not!

Christmas will soon be upon us! Lynnae whose blog is being frugal has a wonderful entry "50 Frugal Christmas Ideas"

Please check out her blog, I am sure that you will become as addicted to her frugal lifestyle and ideas as I have :)

Dh and I will be taking off the month of December from paying down debt to making minimum payments only...although, Dh will be getting a commission cheque from work which we are praying will pay off our investment property taxes in full!

Over the past couple of years I do a gift bag for my children opposed to using a basket. I will definately be doing this again this year. For dd 14 I will be doing up a book lovers gift bag. I will be buying her a couple of books from a website called bookcloseouts I will add a pretty, maybe even a homemade bookmark and a bag of her favorite candy fuzzy peaches, a book light possibly, and I think that I will include a stuffed animal (kitten) in there to keep her company while she reads lol. The reason being for the stuffed kitty is because she has mentioned that she would like a kitten but we already have two cats so that is out of the question :). I think that I will also include a notebook of sorts and pretty pen so that she can jot down any ideas for writing a book of her own :)

I also found a link "Fabulous Gift Basket Ideas" lots of great ideas there.

Now for dd 16. I will do her a salon pack gift bag. Which can be found at the above link for gift basket ideas #29.

Ds will receive a young mans survival bag. I could put cologne, socks, gloves, scarf,and a movie, all from the flea market along with a snack,and a phone card.

I will be doing dh a road trip gift bag idea #51, again found at the above link for gift basket ideas, I will not however be adding hotel coupons ,tire gauge as he already has one or a beaded seat cover.

Our kids each receive one more gift along with their stockings. Any money we receive from family members is divided up between the kids which they can use to shop for any boxing day sales if they choose.

Christmas isn't just about giving and receiving presents. I like to sit down with my family over the holidays and discuss the true meaning of Christmas. We are celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus and how God gave us such a gift when he sent us his son.

Whoowhoooooo, I am soooooo excited!

I can't believe my luck! I was putting away some clothes on my dresser last evening ( dh did the laundry :) ) and guess what I came across????? a cheque from the cablevision company we were dealing with at our old address for $100! When we had joined their co-op each member paid $100 and they receive it whenever they move or cancel. I had seen it last week but was so preoccupied with everything I forgot all about it! I am usually on top of things like that, especially when it comes to placing our money.

Anyhow, our dds school pictures came in this past Friday and I hadn't put money aside for them , I had thought they would be due in another couple of weeks or something. That will be $30 total for both girls. I will take $20 for stockpiling and the remaining $50 will go towards our baby emergency fund.

I thought about putting the remaining $50 onto the credit card debt but then decided against it as right now we have only $10 in our emergency fund. With dh and I being use to having an emergency fund up until a few months ago it is a horrible feeling realizing that you now have nothing. I need to get the baby emergency fund up to $500 so I am thinking that this upcoming pay I will try to squeeze out $100 to put in there.

I really like Dave Ramseys babystep with having a baby emergency fund while getting out of debt :).

Well, time for me to get ready for work, I picked up an extra 2 hours and 35 minutes today as I am filling in for one of the ladies for after school. YaY! Go Me! :)

What I am Noticing About our Debt Paydown....

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the amount of debt owing, I think we all do at times. I am however noticing that with our determination to pay down our debt in an intense way there is more money available then we realized.Whether it is to pick up a part time job, cut back on groceries the frugal way,selling books etc on ebay, making a batch of homemade soup to put in the freezer to have as an appetizer before dinner helps to limit those 2nd helpings of meat and potatoe :)

I did end up getting a part time job at our dds school which is bringing in roughly $450 extra a month durring the school year. It depends on how many extra shifts I can pick up besides my 80 minutes per day on what my take home pay is and whether there are school holidays etc but all in all that is what it will average out to, at least that is what I have figured.

I am just amazed however at how creative one can get. We use to have our chip and pop night on a friday or saturday night, now it is air popped popcorn with some melted butter and a glass of juice.We no longer rent cheap movies, we see what is schedualed on t.v that night or swap a movie with a friend. There is no more dreading walking to work for me anymore (well most times lol) now it is hey! it doesn't take me 30 to 35 minutes to walk to work now, instead it only takes me 20 minutes! :), yes I am even getting in shape! Although once the snow hits we will see how I feel lol.

Instead of focusing on what I "could" have I am focusing on what I "Do" have. I try to always stay cheerful and have a warm smile to offer.Have you ever noticed how this can be so contagious? Just one smile will put a smile on someone else :). Yes, sometimes I do have the feeling of being overwhelmed by debt and among other things but I am finding that they are becoming few and far between and I have this inner peace of appreciating the "little" things in life more than I ever have before.

Well, the plan has changed, I don't know what else to do.

We owe our mortgage broker which we had made arrangements with him to pay him the money we owe him after the hotel was paid in full with this move and all. Our mortgage broker is a Great Guy :).

Dh received an email at work yesterday from our broker stating that he has a family emergency and needs his money ASAP. That is $1700. The only thing in which I could think of doing is to call our mortgage company and skip this months mortgage payment which is due on the 6th of November, we also asked them to please change our payment due dates from the 6th to the 1st of each month. We have never done this before with skipping a mortgage payment.

With my paycheque of $300 and dh pay of $900 that will give our mortgage broker $1200 and leave us with a balance of $500 left owing to our broker. We can then pay him off in full out of our next paycheques on the 16th of November.

I just think of the extra interest on the mortgage this is going to cost us in the long haul so I will have to make that up. Once our debt is paid off I want to start plugging away at the mortgage. Even if we put an extra $250 a month onto the principle that would be a start.

Well, I can foresee many more no spend days in our future :).

I added a FeedBurner FeedCount to my Blog :)

I was just curious to see how many pop in lol. I don't advertise my blog but I am so truly enjoying meeting other bloggers and really and I mean really appreciate the wonderful support in which I have been getting :).

I am having fun too visiting everyone elses blogs, I know that I am not alone when it comes to paying off debt, living frugal, saving money etc....and I have been getting some great ideas :). I don't always leave comments but be assured that I have been to everyones blog who has left a comment on my blog.

Well, just wanted everyone who reads this to know how truly grateful I am :)

Signing off for now...

Blah day today

I sat down and went over our bills and debts today, it is just so overwhelming! I am giving my paycheque to our mortgage broker on Thursday, it is $300, thank goodness I picked up those few extra shifts :).

A couple more bills came in that I had completely forgot about,that is not good. I forgot about the connection fee for the cable and our first bill is due Thursday on the first. $186, Yikes! our monthly payment is $36 but we had $150 connection fee. We also got a bill which is due immediately for the alarm system we had in the house we sold, that is $95.

I had a tooth pulled out this evening and I was planning on going to pick up my groceries after this. It took a bit longer to haul out and I ended up getting a couple of stitches...I went to the grocery store with dh after the fact but then felt "sick" , I had to get out of there lol. So, looks like tomorrow just may be another spend day although I have enough food to cover us for a few days so I just might take tomorrow as a no spend day anyhow. My dentist bill was $6.40 because we have dental insurance, Yay! :)

My parents couldn't make the rent of $370 to cover the mortgage on our investment property (a house), their house hasn't sold as of yet. My parents however are going to rent their house out hopefully in a few days so that will help them out as it is cheaper for them to live in our house opposed to their own. So, that is $370 we will cover out of our snowball. We decided not to sell, at least wait and see how it goes until the spring, We will be back on track before then anyhow :).

I am still determined however, I can't let a few bumps or potholes in the road get me down :)

2 days to prepare for my November No Spend Days

It is time for a family meeting. I need my whole families input so that I do not forget any extras such as toothpaste and whatever else which might cost me an extra trip to the store.I have been playing around with a few ideas over the past week or so to make this as smooth as I possibly can.

Tomorrow I will be filling the car up with gas, this is a must for dh driving to work and back. I will go tomorrow to pick up some groceries and have a list in hand.

My girls are doing well with the change jar in which we had set up for them. Today after work I will be going through our cupboards/fridge and freezer to take stock.

Planning is the key, I don't want to reach in the fridge for butter only to find that we hav'nt any left, that will not be acceptable.There will be no room for error.

Our bank account balance will be $0 after paying our debt,food,car gas etc...I have to do it this way. I will however be keeping about $20 aside. $20 might not seem like a lot of $ but if the kids need say an emergency dental appointment, this will cover it as we have dental insurance.Cough medicine? no problem.

Well, off to plan! :)

Great Deal but No Money.

Do you ever notice that when you have no extra money to spare that all of the good deals seem to come out? Why is this? Is it because of a feeling of deprivation? Is it because we feel like we deserve to live like we did before debt? Is this some kind of a test of wills?

I have heard it all, or at least a lot of excuses on why someone should purchase this or that by saying for example "Well, it only cost x amount of $ and it was too good of a deal to pass up."

Too good of a deal to pass up? If one is in debt how could you not pass it up? I don't mean spending money to survive like with food,housing,electricity etc....I am thinking along the lines of above and beyond what is a necessity.

I am writing this entry, because I have been offered a great deal! I owe debt but as myself being a human,I have been debating back and forth should I purchase this item? Should I actually just pay the minimum on all of my debts so that I may purchase this item? I justify this with the fact that I am still making minimum payments so what is the harm?

There is "harm" by doing this, for me personally anyhow. For one, the item is $500. Way too much to take out of a snowball. What I should have maybe done is when each pay came in take out a little bit of $ and set aside and that way when a great deal did come along it wouldn't be such a large amount of money at once. But then there is the emergency fund which needs funding.I really should have funded that first and foremost opposed to worrying about a good deal.

Another thought to consider,the $500 which I would take out of our pay isn't our money anyhow, it belongs to whoever we owe debt to, we had already spent that $500 prior when borrowing in the first place which belonged to someone else whether it be a credit card,personal loan etc.

Bottom line for me? Never forget this feeling of frustration and think twice in the future before spending someone elses money.

If I Were Debt Free........

I meant to have this post typed up a couple of days ago, ugh, with work and a few other occurances I havn't had a chance to get on line. Lynnae whose blog is being frugal Tagged me to write a post on "If I were Debt Free" :)

Dh and I were debt free except for the mortgage and we actually weren't doing too badly however, "things" happen and now we have a few debts to pay. One thing about having this new debt, is that it has helped me to rethink on a few obligations. Having already lived without debt (again, besides the mortgage) I am even more determined to go without in order get back to our previous way of living.

So,when we are debt free (which is a given :)) Dh and I will be focusing on:

(1) Getting our emergency fund back up and running, We will be aiming for 6 months of living expenses to begin with.

(2) Fully fund our Freedom Account

(3) Dividing all of our money left over each month after our regular bills are paid in full, we include putting money into our retirement fund as a regular bill. Our money will be divided into (a) paying down the mortgage (b)putting money aside for our girls education (c) a new to us car fund (we really do not want car payments of any kind :) ) (d) vacation money to visit our friends and family once a year.

That is what we will be doing......we might revamp this a bit but this is pretty much written in stone for now :)

Well, One bill down, a few more to go!

I tell you, I am sooooooooooooo Happy,Happy,Happy! Today was dhs payday and we got the rest of the motel paid off.

Next week will be his pension and that will pay for the regular bills.

In two weeks will be dhs and my pay again and we should have part of the money to pay the mortgage broker some and then have him paid off in full by the end of November.

We are putting every extra cent that we can mangage to come up with towards this debt. Dh did get the change for our dds change jar so that will do them for a month. I will be getting the minimum for groceries ( included is extra butter,eggs and milk lol)and again, use my imagination. It has been hard that way but all soooooooooo worth it in the long or short haul.

We are making our regular payments on the credit card for now but will snowball any extra on it as soon as we get the others paid off.

Life is Soooooooooo Good! :)

Kids and Allowances

I have been trying to rack my mind on different ways to help save money and for our family,to not have the feeling of being deprived. This has mostly to do with the children not feeling deprived actually.

We have two girls and they are 14 and 16, yes, two teenaged girls lol,who like to hop on the transit bus once in awhile to visit with friends or buy a hot lunch with their friends and even enjoy going to the odd movie.

We have not had the money to do this as we have been so focused on paying down our debt sooner than later. I think that i may have come up with a perfect solution..I hope!

Tomorrow is Dhs payday. When he goes to the bank to deposit his pay I am going to have him pick up $85 in change which will include one roll each of twoonies,loonies and quarters. I will then take two plastic jars one for each dd and put their names on them. Then, I will put $40 in each and this will be their allowance for the month which works out to $10 a week each. Prices are high here, just for a return transit bus ticket for the girls to go and visit their friends is $3.20 each and one hot lunch is minimum $6. That is a total of $9.20 for one week. If they want to go to a movie, for students it is still $8 and if they want to buy a pop or juice there I don't even know if $2 would cover it at the movies.

I am thinking with the girls seeing all of that change it will last longer subconciously opposed to giving them a $5 or $10 bill.

Anyhow, that is what we will try and see how that works. The $5 left over from the $85 we will put into our change jar.

How Low Can We Go?

Momof3 wrote a post "Could you live on $12,000 a year?". It reminded me of the past when I finally came to terms that our finances just weren't working out for us. I had sat down with pen and paper at our kitchen table and started working a plan with the question "How low can we go?" I started out with by prioritizing our list. First came housing, food and so on. I even went to the spending plan online calculator at Crown Financial Ministries but instead of putting in our actual earnings per year I put in our Net income, $0 for taxes, $0 for tithe and less income than what we were actually bringing home. So say if we were making Net $25,000 a year I would put in $20,000 a year.By putting in a lower income the money that was not included with income we tweaked to compensate for extra on the house,school,and whatever category we couldn't possibly follow that budget by.We took the left over money and put it towards our emergency fund and or debt. If you tithe you can either put the amount of $ you give in the box or you can subtract that amount before you do your budget.We help our parents, my parents lately it is every month right now so I consider that as our tithe at the moment. We also when we can put money in the jars at stores for cancer research,boy scouts etc. Not to long ago we gave $100 to a minister and his wife to send to a village in Africa. We try and do our best right now, even when things seem to be extra tight.

We seemed to get off track however but that is Ok, we are not perfect but we do know when we have had enough and it is time to do damage control.

This worked out really well for us. So yesterday, pen and paper on hand I started tallying up the figures.I figure that to live comfortably we can do this with $2568.75, this included mortgage,house and property taxes,food,hydro,phone,insurances,gas,cable,internet,along with a $300 freedom account,entertainment etc.
Our food budget I allotted for $400 a month, I wanted to go lower on the food budget but with a family of 5 and with 2 cats I know that we will be comfortable with that amount.

The freedom account will cover your irregular expenses but you still need money set aside incase of job loss, illness, insurance deductables and so on. This is where an
Emergency Fund is a must! Dave Ramsey has the 6 babysteps which include an emergency fund, this has helped a lot of people.

So, I challenge everyone to sit down whether it be at your desk or table at home with pen and paper on hand and figure out....Just how low can you go?

Possible Job Loss For Dh

Well today has not been the greatest day to say the least. Dh might not have a job. I will know more this afternoon I guess.

If this happens, we will have to sell the investment property which is a house that my parents are living in. I had to call my mom and tell her to give her fair warning on the situation. It might not come to that but I have a feeling that it will.

If we do end up selling, we will pay out our debts, help my parents get settled, put money aside in an emergency fund and keep a bit to help us live until dh gets another job.

I don't think that it will take long to sell as the price will be right for a quick sale.

Maybe us having to live extra frugal these last couple of weeks was Gods way of getting us started so that the transition wouldn't be so hard on us. We are eating so much better and with me walking to work and all I have lost a total of 4 pounds over the past couple of weeks :).

The kids are eating healthier too.I had bought bag of apples not too long ago, just the regular ones which the kids in the past would never think of eating, well, they have been eating them to snack on! My dd 16 said how much she is enjoying drinking juice now too lol. They are also not being so picky at meals, they said at one point there is nothing to eat in this house, I told them there was plenty, they just need to not be so picky and eat the cornflakes for breakfast, have toast with cheesewhiz or peanut butter etc....experiment with the veggies, pop some popcorn for a snack in our air popcorn machine and eat all of their supper. My kids all have different tastes but they really are now eating and enjoying certain foods that they would have passed on in the past. We all love the whole wheat in our bread which I have been making too.

Signing off....

A nice surprise with our Hydro Bill :)

We received our first hydro bill in the mail yesterday. We are on an equal billing plan and pay monthly. At our previous residence our equal billing plan we paid $217 every month, here our new monthly payment is $162 a month! That my friends is a total of $55 a month in Savings or $660 a year savings, WooooooooWhoooooo :). We pay less house/property tax here as well opposed to our previous house, savings there is an extra $100 a month or $1200 a year which is 1/2 of what we had to pay at our last house.

Talley it all up and we are already ahead of the game with savings: Monthly $155 or Yearly $1860.

What am I going to do with this extra money? I am going to do the smart and frugal thing of course, I will be putting that towards our debt but first, I will add it to our emergency fund until we have $500 in there....then it will be alllllll snowballed into our debt.

As the saying goes, you can't miss anything in which you never had lol.

Countdown, 5 days until payday!

Today I took out a ham. I am now running out of milk so I will have mashed whipped potato with this by using my powdered milk! I usually do my baking with powdered milk but have not used it for potato but it is going to be great! Oh yes, I will have corn niblets with this as a veggie :)

For lunch I have some pizza sauce and salami, I will cut some bread spread some pizza sauce on each, add salami oh yes and cheese. We have had this before and it also taste great bake at 350 till the cheese is melted and the bread is crisp.

I need to make more bread today, it will be 100% whole wheat.

I have 3 eggs left so I have to use that sparingly for baking. I need something sweet to bake and since I only have whole wheat flour I will have to surf the net. I do have a can of pumpkin and shortening for the fat, so we shall see.

Tomorrow morning for Breakfast I will make fried whole wheat biscuit dough with syrup along with left over ham from tonights supper. I havn't had fried biscuit dough but I do know that fried bread dough is a winner in this house :). I do have some cooking spray which I will use in the pan.

This is almost like playing a game lol.

6 more days till Payday!

And I cannot wait! I am running out of a lot of things. Note To Self: stock up with butter/margerine and flour for the freezer!

I have been doing so much baking and making bread that I went through the flour in which I already had, I remembered that I had a bag of whole wheat flour however, and much healthier too lol, so that will get us through for the next 6 days.

Payday I will be stocking up on a few things needless to say. I most always cook from scratch anyhow but I always had extra $ on hand in case I ran out of something.

Other then that, all is good :). We usually have chip/pop night on Friday or Saturday evenings but I replaced this with aired popcorn and juice which is crunchy and with a bit of melted margerine it is great!

This is a list of things in which my family did when starting off living Frugal

Lynnae over at being frugal asked her readers "What's the easiest frugal thing you do?" My response was just too long so I thought that I would post it here.

When I first started out 4 1/2 years ago now, I had never even seen the word "frugal" never mind knowing what the word meant. We had just moved to a new province (we live in Canada) and money was T-I-G-H-T to say the least. I did a search on the internet for low cost but nutricious meals for my family. A whole bunch of links came up and that is when I noticed the word "frugal". I remember thinking what on earth is that? I did a search on Frugal and boy oh boy was I hooked!

Durring the search on that very first day I also saw a saying, I can't remember where now but it said "Buying what I want now will often result in later Needing what I can't buy." The first thing that came to my mind was, what if my children need medicine? I quickly wrote that saying down on a piece of paper and carried it in my wallet for "Months", that saying is now of course in my subconcious :).


Since just moving I need to get my pantry stocked back up. I also wanted to add that we are in debt as of 4 to 5 weeks ago with unexpected expenses when buying our house,We will get out of debt however sooner than later this I know:).


The following are what I do and enjoy to live frugally:

(1) I Cut my families hair as well as my own, You can do a search on haircutting for more information and steps for doing this.

(2) Dh and I shop for our clothes at value village and have in the past gone to the salvation army. You would be surprised at what you can find that is just like new or in some cases still have the price tag on them. The girls like to shop at the "trendy" stores so we allow them x number of $ on what we think is reasonable and if say their shoes exceed the amount we are willing to give them, they have to make up the difference with money they have either saved or earned.

(3) I wash all of our clothes in cold water, when I am doing the sheets and towels etc I will still throw in some javax and they turn out great.

(4) We have always had basic cable. The phone service in which we had I did have long distance on it as we have no family where we live, I called to see if they had a better package as I was paying $29 just for long distance, they said that because I called they did have a deal which is not advertised, and I immediately got $11 dropped off my phone bill per month. savings? $133 a year. It pays to inquire, I then called my insurance company and raised our deductable to $500 from $250 deductable and saved an additional $4 a month. Another thing in which I was just told by an employee from our phone company is that alot of time a customer has to ask for certain deals, he said that they just can't call everyone. Maybe it wasn't the exact words in which he should have said but I am thankful that I had received this information.

(5) Shop the loss leaders, They are advertised on the front page of the flyers, These are usually the best deals but look at all of your food flyers to compare.

(6) Keep a stocked pantry with your loss leaders. If you eat a jar of say peanut butter per month (you might use it for making cookies etc) and you can save for example $1,00 a jar then buy 12, this will give you a years supply :).

(7) I will cook once but eat twice or sometimes 3 times. If we are having say a roast of pork,roast beef dinner, chicken etc, I immediately put aside approximately 1/2 to freeze for another meal. Even spaghetti sauce, make a double or triple batch and freeze what you are not eating that night for another night.

(8) We had paid cash for a (beater)car for $500, mind you dh only had to travel a 15 minute drive each way to work plus grocery shopping etc..but it lasted us for 1 year and a bit while we saved aside money for a better vehicle and we got I believe $50 for parts when we did get rid of it. This gave us time to save up money and pay cash for another vehicle when we upgraded. Not having car payments is truly a blessing! :)

(9) We buy all of our furniture 2nd hand.An exception would be appliances for us and we did buy new with cash our first bedroom set after being together for over 15 years( it was 1/2 price and it can be passed down for generations to come), Keep your eyes and ears opened for the good deals and think of the $ you will be saving.Our furniture was new to us, we just didn't pay the high prices in a furniture store :)

(10) We don't live above or within our means, we live below our means. :) We are not cheap, we are frugal :).

Being Frugal, not Cheap with Meals.

Being short on $ really is not much fun! I just want to get our debt paid off quickly and that will be the end of that.

One thing in which is a bonus however is being creative with our groceries.It helps that even when one is leaving no extra $ while putting most of it towards debt we still have plenty of food lol. The way things are going I am wondering really if I could feed a family of 5 plus 2 cats for about $250 a month Canadian $ and with no coupons to speak of. I am going to see if I can actually do that for next month. It might be difficult however as I already had a lot of my meats on hand for suppers but we shall see.

One thing in which I have noticed however, I have been using 1/2 of the meat in which I normally would use. Hamburger for example. I always used say, 1 lb for macaroni. I made this the other night for supper and used 1/2 a pound of meat but as I fried up the meat I did use a fork to mash up the meat so that it crumbled opposed to having bigger pieces. It worked out perfectly for us :).

I had cooked up a roast tenderloin a few weeks ago and put 1/2 aside for another meal. The roast cost $6 Canadian but it feed the 5 of us and, tonight I will be heating up the other half to have hot pork sandwhiches with homefries and veggies :)

I like keeping a salad made up in the fridge as an appetizer. I actually keep the lettuce seperate from the other veggies though,for example, I like to keep cucumber in a seperate dish so that the lettuce won't go soggy. By doing this the lettuce etc will stay good for at least 5 or 6 days, Plus an added bonus is that I already have lettuce cleaned and sepertated for when I make sandwhiches for lunches.If I find that the cucumber is starting to dry out a bit I will pour a bit of vinegar in the dish.

Another thing I did which I hadn't in a long time was buy some noname brand jello packages. I can get a package which makes double of the name brand jello and tastes just as good, for just about the same price.It felt good last night when I made up a batch of jello for lunches today, along with sugar cookies :).

I find what is helping to keep the grocery bill down and not feeling deprived or hungry is to have a big batch of salad made up for the week, homemade soup in 1 cup servings in the freezer,homemade bread (or store bought) on the table all as an appetizer or to go with your meal.

Whipping up homemade cakes,cookies,pudding etc is always nice too as a sweet after supper.....

So really, opposed to eating up all of the meat at once durring dinner and being so full you can hardly move away from the table lol, we have done ourselves a favour by frugally having a 3 course meal durring dinner time. :). For some reason we are eating better now opposed to when I didn't have to cut back on those $. :)

Another No Spend Day Yesterday Oct.7th 2007

I imagine there will be many no spend days between now and our next payday. Since I could only deposit a minimum of $10 into my ING account the other day( I am paying myself $5 per no spend day) and I only had one actual no spend day at that time, I will consider yesterdays no spend day already in the bank.

Because we are paying down our accumulated debt and I will have so many no spend days I am wondering if I will end up "owing" myself lol. Better to owe myself opposed to others :).

Well, from here on out all "No Spend Days" will be taken out of our next payday and I will have to decide then where it will go, I am thinking now on debt. I will try to squeeze an extra $20 out of next pay to put towards the emergency fund though.

Oh, wanted to add as well, the $10 which I sent to ING came out of Dhs gas money, that leaves him $30 for next week opposed to having $40 for gas. He figures that he will only need $20 for that week so I might have another $10 to tuck away :). I will wait and see next week.

Why we are behind financially at the moment.

I thought that I would do a post on why at the dh and I are behind financially at this time in our lives.

First off, I messed up! Well, Dh and I messed up but I am the one who does the finances, bill paying etc...for our family.Dh and I find that it works out better for us this way although, I feel like I have failed over the past few months.

We bought two houses within a 3 month period. We had taken equity out of our main principle dwelling this past Feb. $42,000 we ended up with after paying the lawyer fee etc. We bought a couple of second hand vehicles and a bedroom set, it was our first new bedroom set since being together for 15 1/2 years at that time. The rest of the money we put into savings. We then found an investment property in May which was perfect for us to invest in at the time. We put down total 25% plus paid inspector and appraisal fees,lawyer fees etc.. Total amount was just a bit over $25,000 cash. We still at the time had some money left in savings, not much but a bit for emergencies.

We then decided to move closer to our dds school. I was starting to make up to 5 trips a day driving the kids to their sports,friends and school on some days. Those 5 trips a day round trip would add up to 2 1/2 hours of driving in one day. The kids were getting frustrated too as in the winter I find it hard driving on the roads, I just wasn't comfortable driving around the river and all.

Ok, to get on with the topic, We wanted to keep our mortgage payments the same and just move our interest rate of 4.99% to the house we would end up buying. My mortgage broker told me that I needed to come up with $19,500. I had an idea on what we could sell our house for which should have given us $8,500 from the sale so Dh and I would need to come up with $11,000 I confirmed this with our broker and he said yes that was right. I honestly thought at first where on earth could I find that kind of money? Well, we sold a toy( one of the vehicles we had just purchased, used the rest of our savings, dhs vacation pay and his overtime and I can't remember what else right off the top of my head.

All I know is the day we signed the papers to finalize the sale of our house we were something like $3000 short! There were extra fees, surveyer fees among a few others which caught Dh and I off guard. I called our mortgage broker, I was in shock thinking, what have we done? We just sold our house and can't afford to purchase another one. Then to top that off, the bank had also made a mistake and all with the paper work, which was off by $2000. We wanted to keep the same amount of mortgage to port everything to our next house but the bank had put that we owed $2000 less then we actually did.

While talking to our mortgage broker he told us that he was putting money into our bank account out of his own pocket to help make up the difference with what we already had in our account. The money that we had in our account had to pay for our motel fees,we told him that if he felt responsible, not to,it was up to us to double check all of the documents,he insisted and said that it was already being wired. Dh talked to the front desk at the motel to let them know what was going on so we were able to delay that payment for a bit. The next thing I know though is that the credit card was climbing out of control as well, everything was crazy for a bit.

So, we owe,we owe...Ouch! The hotel bill was $2100, we paid $1400 on it 1 1/2 weeks ago. We have a balance of $700 which will be paid on Dhs payday the 19th of this month. That will be one bill paid off! YAY!

Then we have our mortgage broker to pay $1700 , again, the end of Oct we will be paying him $1000 because we still have our regular bills to pay...He will be paid off no later than the middle of Nov.

We then have the credit card bill......$5,900 yup, crazy I know but it just seemed to go up and up but I asked Dh for it tonight,we decided that once it is paid off in full we will decide on what to do with "it". I have an idea, it is called scissors lol, but I don't think Dh is ready to do that yet.Anyhow, come December, Dh will have some commission money due to him from work and we will be putting whatever he gets on the card.

I feel pretty good writing this down. It helps to see it typed out.

One thing is for certain however, I never want to ever forget the feeling in which I felt at that time.If I remember this feeling, I will surly never make the same mistake twice.

What I have on hand for suppers for the next 11 days

Ok, dh and I went to pick up a few groceries last night. I did get my turkey but they weren't on sale :( , I had planned on spending no more than $15 for the turkey and veggies for our thanksgiving dinner and the turkey alone cost $17.19! This was for a 9lb turkey which is to feed 9 of us tomorrow. We should be fine however, that should be plenty I would think lol. My turnip was $1.51 and cranberry sauce was $1.77(that was the cheapest I could find) Anyhow, I over spent by $3.05. This is what I bought:

Turkey--------------$17.19
Med ground beef-----$ 4.01
Med ground beef-----$ 3.96
Turnip -------------$ 1.51
10lb potato---------$ .97
10lb potato---------$ .97
iceburg lettuce-----$ .97
cranberry sauce ---$ 1.77
Colgate toothpaste--$ .69
Colgate toothpaste--$ .69
4 litres(3 bags)milk$ 5.13
________
Total $37.86
GST (tax) 6% .08
TVP (Quebec tax) .11
________
Grand total $38.05

So, I didn't waste our money , I bought two 10 pounds of Potatoes as I need to also make my everlasting yeast and I am feeding a family of 5 right now. There is Dh,me Ds aged 23, Dd 16 and Dd 14. We had just used up the last of our toothpaste yesterday and considering we brush our teeth 2 to 3x a day I figured I had better get two tubes just in case lol.

I have 11 days until my "First" payday from the school, it will include my first week there, last week along with this upcoming week. the following week will go towards my next pay. I am hoping to get about $200, I am not sure with taxes etc though.

On hand for dinners with Meat I have :

2 small steaks= 1 meal--------beef pot pie

1 small ham = 2 meals-------(1)Fried ham,mashed potato,veggies (2)ham,corn scalloped potato

2 lbs of hamburger = 3 meals-----(1)hamburger and macaroni (2)homemade spaghettie (3)Not sure of the 3rd meal yet

1 Turkey = 3 meals (1) turkey dinner (2)turkey soup (of course! lol) (3) turkey fried rice.

1 1/2 pork tenderloin = 3 meals---(1) Roast pork dinner,potato,gravy and veggies (2) pork fried rice, (3) Hot pork sandwhiches with baked homefries.

Ok, that is 12 meals right there for suppers, I do have a small pkg of salami,one green pepper,onions, mozorella cheese,and pizza sauce so I will be seeing how far I can stretch this to have a pizza night.

I think that I have too many meals with potato so we can also instead have something like grilled cheese (using cheeze whiz) and tomato soup. I also have 3 boxes of kraft dinner on hand. I have lots of spices and baking supplies.

Today I will be making- triple batch of sugar cookies with sprinkles, 1 banana bread (I have 3 ripe bananas in the house lol) I have a can of pumpkin so I will make either pumkin bread or muffins. I will sometime this week also be making up a couple of cakes but I put them in bread pans and freeze,that way the cake won't get eaten up all at once.I have powdered milk in the house that I use for baking, this helps save on the milk.

Breakfasts will consist of either cereal (corn flakes),oatmeal, toast with peanut butter or cheeze whiz,jam etc, pancakes,muffins, french toast,fried bread dough with syrup.

I have apples for fruit, the milk they can have with breakfast,I have 7 cans of frozen juice in the freezer.

Lunches they can take sandwhiches or leftovers or I have canned chicken noodle soup etc...

I also have enough salad to last us about a week so they can have that as an appetizer for supper etc...

I will probably tweak this as I just went through it quickly. I went $3.05 over yesterday on what I had planned for groceries so I will either take that out of our change jar or dh said that he should be ok with about $20 for gas till my payday we will see.

My payday is basically gone, I have to pay $190 to the school for the girls to eat their lunches there (no cafeteria, they take their lunches but everyone has to pay this fee). I am thinking of paying 1/2 of this on my first payday and then the other 1/2 at the end of the month.

Anyhow, I also have 1 pound of bacon so I am off and running, I am making for brunch today pancakes and bacon. Tonight for supper we are having the hamburger and macaroni :)

I transfered my No spend day money into our ING account

But, I just started this challenge and have only had one no spend day for this pay period.We are paying ourselves $5 for each no spend day we have. When I went to transfer the $5 into our ING account towards our emergency fund I wasn't able to do so, with ING apparently the minimum amount to transfer into our account is $10. So, I transfered $10 opposed to the $5 which with things being so tight right now was hard to do but I did it :).

Anyhow, I just wanted to post this to stay accountable :)

I am Preparing for More No Spend Days.

So, today is Saturday. We have decided that today we will fill up the car with gas for the upcoming week and I will be picking up a few groceries as well, just the necessities. By doing this all today this should prevent us from having to run to the store,gas station etc. throughout the week. Having a No Spend day 2 days ago has really helped motivate me and make me even more determined.

I will be also making up a few more loaves of bread if not today then tomorrow to put aside and freeze for the week ahead. This will give us 5 loaves of homemade bread for 5 of us for lunches,breakfast etc...I am hoping it will do.

There always seems to be something in which I have missed which causes us to make extra trips to the store, dh will call from work to see if I need him to pick up "something" at the store on his way home and I usually say "yes" and he will pick up butter or bread just little things and it all adds up.

I havn't gone through all of my cupboards etc but will do a quick check here in a bit before going to the store.

I have been so tired lately but I didn't realize how tired I actually was lol. Last night at 7:30p.m I told dh that I was going to lie down for 1/2 an hour or so, I didn't wake up until 8:30a.m this morning! That was 13 hours of sleep so I figured that I must have needed that. I can't remember the last time I have slept like that.

Well, signing off for now :)