Food Philosophy

I love grocery shopping. It could be because I love cooking or maybe because I usually don't bring the kids. It is alone time to allow me to sing along to the grocery store radio and read labels. You know you are old when you like the songs on the grocery store radio. This summer I have been thinking more and more about what I feed us as a family. The habits that the kids develop will take them into adulthood, and I want those habits to be good. I think our food industry has gotten out of control. There is so much packaged, preserved, nonfood out there that is is starting to scare me. However, I do believe in moderation. I think it is okay to have some of these things on occasion. For example, when we are at someone else's house I would not intervene in what the kids eat, but I would limit the juice to one:).

Overall Food Philosophy

I have been trying to purchase more organic and local products this summer. I have also been trying to make more from scratch, which is great in my lazy, summer fun. There is this thing I do have though, called a teaching job that will be pulling me back into the classroom in a few weeks. I love my summer, and feel very lucky to have it, but it is virtually impossible to explain how stressful and busy teaching can be. That being said, I know that once we are all back to the grind, I will not be able to make homemade granola bars. It just won't happen. Right now I am reading labels and trying to find the best snacks possible that can be purchased and are fairly healthy. Last night I bought Cascadian Farms granola bars. They only have seven ingredients, and if the kids like them that will be great. When I compare seven ingredients to the forty ingredients in the other granola bars that my husband eats I know what I want the kids to eat. I want my husband to eat them too, but I am taking it in baby steps.

Overall I feel like our summer menu has been popular. We have eaten fish tacos and it has become a family favorite with everyone. My picky second grader has been great about trying things and broadening her horizons. She is constantly asking me if something is healthy before she eats it. She will still eat it if I say no, but at least she is asking. My five year old is a pretty good eater already.

Below are some thoughts on the drinks that we buy. I will post some of my food thoughts later in the week.

Juice

This is something I purchase when one of the kids are sick or for a birthday party. Other than that you will not see juice in my cart in the grocery store. I think there is way too much sugar in it. Also, many concentrates, including apple, are made in China. I am uncomfortable with that. When at other people's houses I do allow them to have juice or a sweetened drink. My seven year old has developed a love for Sprite, but my five year old does not like carbonated drinks.

Soda

I don't care about soda in general. I do keep some on hand for company, but find if it is in the fridge and icy cold I may accidentally drink it. Oops. I don't want to do that. My husband, since it is the summer and we are free, likes to enjoy it, so sometimes I pick it up on sale. Overall soda does not make up a large part of our budget.

Milk

I have read a lot about milk and dairy in general and go back and forth in my thinking. The kids drink some milk and put it in their cereal. (I only give them half a cup at a time and limit how much they drink. They are both great water drinkers.) We use it for coffee and tea. I am in an organic milk phase (meaning I bought it last night-my phases are brief), but unsure of how I feel about drinking raw milk. I did buy some raw milk cheese that was very good, but certainly not inexpensive.

I love my coffee, and do try to buy the cheapest quality coffee I can find. We both drink tea as well.

We do buy water, but I want to try to get away from that. I know it is a waste of money and bad for the environment. We typically buy it for convenience. This year the kids took water to school in reusable bottles because I don't send in juice.

Speaking of the environment I have committed to using cloth napkins. I am sick of the wasteful way we use napkins. I am the worst offender. I am stocking up on cloth napkins and no longer purchasing paper napkins. People have been doing this for year, and I am late to the party but at least I showed up.

Vacation, Renovations, Summer

So many thoughts to share right now. We are on vacation just up the street from the beach. (This won't actually be posted until we return.)

Originally, due to the renovation, we weren't planning any trips. However, you only live once. We found a very reasonably priced cottage nine houses from the beach. I stuffed a cooler with food and have made all of our meals so far. This morning we are actually going out for breakfast. Well, it will be noon by the time we get there so for the kids it will be lunch. I guess that is a bonus. Now I don't have to make lunch. I have grilled chicken and left over macaroni salad planned for dinner. Our current plan is one night out and one night of take out. I have a few more dinners to prepare. I planned on making grilled chicken enchiladas with the left over chicken. We will be going to the grocery store today to get some ingredients for smores. That will be fun!

Vacation Update. We're back! It was fun, but family vacations are a lot of work. (I told my husband " a family vacation is the same play with a different setting". Basically five year olds don't have a vacation personality. They just have their regular personality, so if they are challenging at times that does not stop on vacation. Parenting is a nonstop adventure.) As I said, we have never gone away for that many nights. We ended up eating one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner out. Also, on the last night we got take out pizza. When we got home yesterday we stopped for sandwiches so we could unpack on a full stomach. Overall, our spending was okay. Yes, we did take a Pirate excursion that was pricey but perfect for the kids. Also a rainy day sent us to a movie. I think, considering it was a vacation, we did not eat a lot of meals out. I can't compare to the frugal blogs are I scour and read, but for my spendy little self I did pretty well.

Renovation 2014 starts Monday. I can't believe it, and I hope we can live through it!!

Renovation Update. We came home to an full driveway that includes a dumpster and piles of lumber. Yikes! This is really happening. I am excited. My original post way back when was about how small this house is. The definite plan is a shed dormer in the back with dog shed dormers in the front. The kids will each get their own, fairly large bedroom and they will share a new full bathroom. That full bathroom will be great for company to use as well. We will stay downstairs in our current (small) bedroom and the bedroom the kids are currently in will be turned back into a den like it was before we had kids. I know, I know nothing goes back to before you had kids, but humor me for a minute. It will be an extra room, which will be a luxury for us. We potentially may put a bar between the living room and kitchen to open up the kitchen, but that only a maybe.

The summer has gone well so far. I am trying to make a new commitment to my health. The "over 40" body just takes a dip. Gravity and flab. It is a wreck. Now this is not from a skinny person. I have always had a weight battle, but this is just ridiculous. When we return from our trip I am going to try some yoga cause this core needs to be tightened.

Random thoughts and thoughts on frugality

Random Thoughts

It is funny that, as a public school teacher, the blogs I gravitate towards are frugal blogs where the authors typically home school their children. I think my love of cooking and grocery shopping intertwine with the authors of such blogs. I have a love for take-out too, but I am trying not too. Part of me wishes I found these blogs earlier. For many years we had an old computer in our cold basement. Logging onto the internet was a chore that included going to the basement. We did not get a lap top until I went back to work full time. I wonder if I had been introduced to the frugal community earlier if I would have tried to hold off on going back to work.

Frugal Thoughts

We will be renovating our house within the next month. We have taken on a lot of debt in order to do this. Yes, I know many frugal bloggers would disagree with this choice, but I see it this way. A mortgage is debt. Most people have a mortgage. For us to buy a new house we would have to sell our old house, take a loss and start a new mortgage. Not to mention, we had to come up with a down payment. The average house in our area would have cost us well over $400,000. We opted to take out a variety of home improvement loans, proceed with the renovation, and pay the loans back. We refinanced last year to a fifteen year mortgage. We plan to pay everything off early. Once our child care costs have ended (yippee June)we will be able to easily make our loan payments. But back to frugality. I did make some frugal choices this week that I am proud of and some that could have been better. I also needed back brakes for my car, but what can you do about that? Yes, be prepared for those situations, which is what I hope to start doing.

What I really wanted to say is that frugality is hard. I have been working my tail off to make dinner each night, and pack four lunches each day. It is a lot of work and a lot of food. Last night, after a late night of school events we got the kids to bed and ate take-out. Since we had not eaten take-out for awhile it was pretty enjoyable. There was a time (not long ago) we were eating it two or three nights a week. That take-out money could have paid for my brakes this week.

This month my goal is to be frugal and make the best financial choices I can.

I have been sooooo good

for me anyway. I like to read blogs that are pretty frugal. I am really not that frugal. I did try to make yogurt once, and I thought it was good. However, I can be lazy, or scattered or just plain busy. My new plan is to make my own laundry detergent.

I spent all of yesterday morning getting all stocked up. We can eat for two weeks without food shopping. Yes, I will need to grab some fruit on Sunday, but overall we are set. I am so sick of wasting money on take out. It makes me feel so much better after we eat a home cooked dinner. It also sets a much better example for the kiddos.

I also got a great deal on two birthday gifts because I had some Kohl's coupons. So I bought two gifts and only spent $13.00. I was thrilled.

Now I have some medical bills to pay, and my brakes don't sound good. I am worried. That means absolutely no extra spending right now.

Not too mention the home renovation that will be starting soon.

I try to be frugal. Well sometimes I guess.

I just added up every restaurant or coffee stop in my checkbook for 2014. The total is $424.00. I am embarrassed by that, but I actually thought it would be worse. It is only my checkbook. It does not account for the meals purchased by hubby. It is too much spending!!! I need to tighten it up.

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.

My stomach hurts

It is all about the house. Yes, the house. It is always the house. We are at a point now that we are trying to decide if we should renovate or move. There are so many things to weigh. The renovation estimates are so much more than we bargained for. Do we scale back or go for it? What we would like to go for is not even what we hoped to do. Selling is a stressful thought, and we also need to save for a year or two for that down payment. There are so many unknowns with selling. So we can't sell right now. Will we be able to sell this house? Will we find what we want? What will the market do in the meantime?

How can we renovate now? Well we have tapped into the new home improvement loans that are being offered for people just like us that have no equity but good credit and a decent income. We almost will have enough to do a second floor addition. It will add two bedrooms and a bathroom. The kitchen will have to wait. The stress is unreal. I am so sick of waiting. I want to have a bigger house now. I know it will not be a giant house, but it will be a little bigger. Do we go upstairs with the kids and have one of them come back down when they get bigger or will they be okay going upstairs without us. Am I impatient and impulsive? I know the answer to that. When I compare to other people I know I feel like we are making this the starter home that other people are leaving for four bedrooms colonials. I don't want the four bedroom colonial or the overpriced raised ranch that we often see. I want an extra room to have friends over. I want toys off my first floor. I want someone else to make this decision for us. We have talked about it for years, but now that we actually may be able to do something we feel a huge amount of pressure. Will we be saddled with loans and still hate the house? I don't know what to do.