Renovation 2014 and homemade food

Happy New Year. I can't believe another year is beginning. Since we are both off on vacation weeks, we were able to spend some nice family time together. I realized this year, however, that the holidays are truly the most stressful time of year. I felt so much better after Christmas was over. It feels so wrong to say that, because I do love Christmas, but the hustle and bustle can be too much. Also, since we both have fairly new jobs that adds so much stress to things. Originally I was staying at work and he was getting home first many days, but since he has a new job and a traffic filled commute the sitter is here for a lot longer in the afternoon. One of my resolutions is to get home earlier.

On the house front we are pretty sure renovation is our plan. We have our estimates and most of the money. Now many people would disagree about how we are handling this, but it really does make sense in the long run. We basically had two options sell and buy a bigger house or work with the one we have.

Option One

Sell and buy a bigger house-This option is not possible today because we don't have the equity to get out of our current house or the 5% down to buy something new. It would cost us a lot. We could wait a couple more years, save the down payment and hopefully walk away from the house without a lot of out of pocket costs. Houses here are pricey and it kills me to walk away from what we have after paying a mortgage for so long.

Option Two

There are a lot of people in our "bought at a lousy time no equity boat". Because of this there are many unsecured home improvement loans available. We were able to secure two of them. This will allow us to build two bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor of our home. I know, many people would scream "don't take on that debt" but keep listening before you yell at me.

We refinanced last year and only have fourteen years left on our mortgage. These loans will be paid back and the mortgage will be paid in less than fifteen years. If we buy a new house we would probably have to take out a thirty year mortgage, but we can't even do that for a few more years. The renovation will give the kids their own bedroom and open up their current room as den/office/family room. We will still have a crazy small kitchen, but we will deal with that down the road. Once we catch up we will have some equity to expand our kitchen. That is down the road at least seven or eight years. We also love our neighborhood and our yard.

It is tight right now with the loan payments, especially while our childcare costs are so high. June will be the end of high end child care costs since everyone will be in school full-time next fall. So cutting the grocery budget will help a lot!

So the bottom line is I am going homemade baby. I made yogurt last night, and I am working on homemade hamburger buns right now. I do work full-time, but cooking for me is an outlet that I really enjoy. Also we had a really exciting snow day today, so I have some extra time.

I will share my success or failure with my yogurt and buns later today.

Cutting the grocery bill to buy a house

Yeah, we think we might actually have to save for a bit and just sell this house. The jury's out, but I guess that is how people do things:) Whatever happens we will figure it out.

Regardless of what we decide to do we will need a lot of money. This is why I am trying to slash my grocery budget without letting us go hungry. Since August 17th I have spent $311.40. My original goal for the month was $600.00. That includes household supplies. School is getting back in session, so we are both working and will need lunches each day. I cooked and froze a bunch of things a week and a half ago. I can tell you that frozen things come in really handy, but you can get sick of things quickly. This week my goal is to create some meals with what I have and leave what is left of the frozen meals until next week. So far this week we had

Chicken enchiladas (freezer) Sweet and sour (chicken)-fresh recipes from ingredients on hand Chili-made with some precooked frozen beef

Tonight I am making chicken fried rice with cooked chicken that is defrosting and left over rice from the sweet and sour chicken.

So I guess I am still using items from the freezer, but there are some fully prepared meals are still in there. I have dinners through the end of next week sketched out. Can I really stay under $600.00 until September 17th. I don't know. After consulting blogs I like I thought $600.00 was way too much to spend, but after I saw what I have spent in ten days I was thinking, YIKES! However, I did buy a lot of back up with what I have spent. For example, I have enough cereal to get us through October. I know, some people that are extremely frugal don't buy cereal, but my kids really like Cheerios, so I just buy it on sale. I also have plenty of pasta and enough snacks for school lunches. I really would like to come in under $500.00.