by Ashley
I’ve got a couple big deadlines right now with work that have been eating up my time, so this will have to be a quick update.
Remember how on the toddler birthday post I mentioned that we went over our grocery budget and I had instituted a no-spend week for the last week (really about week and a half) of the month? I wanted to give an update on how its been going.
So far, it hasn’t been too bad. We had a lot of leftover food from the birthday party so I’ve been eating a hot dog every day for lunch (luckily, there are about a million different ways to dress up a hot dog, so it actually hasn’t been too boring). We also have a couple chicken sausages still left that I’m planning to chop up and put into a pasta dish for dinner tonight (they need to get eaten!)
I also had a big pork butt roast in the freezer that I’ve been making into different meals. The first night we had it as a roast (with carrots and potatoes I already had on hand as sides). Then I shredded all the remaining pork and split it into two halves. Half of the remains are destined for pulled BBQ pork sandwiches (we have some hamburger buns in the freezer we can use), and the other half were made into carnitas tacos (I make homemade tortillas).
Perhaps the hardest part has been trying to figure out what to do with the girls all day. It’s so hot that its not safe to be outside playing for more than 5 minutes and I often used “grocery shopping” as a crutch for a thing we could do to fill our time. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money for the children’s museum or other paid events. Instead, we’ve gone to the play area at the mall, story time at the library, and to play at the children’s area at my new gym. We’ve also gone to the pool once (we have a community pool that’s free for us), and had one play date with friends. You may be wondering what’s with all the activities for the toddlers…..I’ve had them for about 2 weeks solid now (no daycare). That’s a whole other story for a whole other post so I won’t got into that here. Hopefully it’s not like this for long, but that’s the current state of affairs.
I’ve got to run but I’d wanted to give this little update.
Is anyone else on a no-spend week (or month)? Any tips on how you get by?
