Monday, July 18, 2011

Heart for Art-We are SO on board!



Stay at Home Babe has given us an opportunity to create beautiful pieces of artwork and send it to kids in Bali as a way to have penpals!   My boys are gonna love this!!  Thanks!!


If you are interested in sending your pieces of artwork to new friends in Bali click on Stay at Home Babe's link and keep note of the mailing address and mail them ASAP!!

http://stayathomebabe.com/2011/07/heart-for-art-the-world-isnt-big-or-bad/trackback/

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Italian-Style Sausage

Alright folks!

Here is the first installment of the recipes I used this week for my great big cookoff!

1 lb mild italian sausage, cut into small pieces
1 can (15oz) navy beans, rinsed and drained.
1/2 can chick peas (i used these because they were in the fridge but not needed in the recipe)
1 cup pasta sauce
1 green pepper, cut into strips
1 onion, sliced

I doubled this and cooked it in a 7quart slow cooker.(not quite full)

The recipe originally calls for precooking the sausage in a fry pan, but i decided that the little fat that was in the sausage would actually be good for flavour, so I just threw everything into the pot together...and it came out great!!

Eat this with cooked rice, or whatever you like!!

Cost breakdown:

I bought a $10 package of sausages from Food Basics' freezer deals....

sausages used            $4.00
onions guessed          $0.10
green peppers (2)      $1.67
can of beans              $0.77
half a can of chick peas $0.50         
pasta sauce jar-Ragu old style $0.99

There was no spices in this dish because of the sausage and the pasta sauce that I used, it already had great flavour in it!  But feel free to add some if you like it stronger.....my kids don't.

I got 6 decent servings outta this one......total cost is $1.34 per serving!

Bon Appetit!!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

What I am doing for me this week

Well, what I am doing ins't really considered for me....yet.  I am cooking a whole bunch of meals and freezing them, so that I can spend less time in my kitchen and more time doing everything else.  I spend a majority of my day in the kitchen making 6 meals a day and snacks so there is too much time going on in there!

What I need more time for....

AJ wants to finish off the Sonlight program we purchased back in April.  We had a rocky year trying to find interest, focus and seemless progression.  We didn't find it with me burning out creating all these topics from scratch only to find out after it was done that it wasn't fun, interesting or motivation for him.  So, after a few weeks with Sonlight we have decided that it was truly a blessing however because it puts him "behind" his grade level he is upset that he cannot tell his neighborhood-schooled friend that he is going to grade 4 too.

This is a huge upset for him, so we will be plowing ahead through the summer to try to finish it faster.  And for that I need more time away from the kitchen without anyone going hungry at the same time!

Last night I started preparing all the veggies that I will need, and even managed to start a meal in my crock pot.  Italian-style sauages.  i made a double batch of this recipe and it smelled good overnight and it made it hard to sleep!!

I calculated the cost of all the ingredients I used for this whole pot and then decided that I would get a good 6 servings (technically I should have 8, but my hubby eats more than the standard serving size) and figured it would cost ......

$1.34 per serving!!

I love that!!

This morning I am cooking up some dried beans I've had soaking to add to a few recipes, as I am now out of the cheap cans.  Which I think is kinda funny, I paid 77 cents for a bunch of cans of beans yet I am still saving money with the cost of them dried....although I don't factor in the cost of the electricity to cook them, that is just a fact of life and will never be able to eliminate that!

So what i am going to do is post here the recipe name and the total cost of what i spent and how many servings i get and we'll see how well i have done!

next: pork porkolt- an amazing hungarian dish!

and cookie dough to freeze!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Budget should be a four letter word!!

After realizing that we had spent well over 1200 bucks on restaurants and food last month alone I realized that we needed to rethink our so called budget!

I've done this before.  I have a great excel spreadsheet to keep track of where we spend our money.  Problem is it take a lot of time to enter in everything we are purchasing into their proper categories.

The bottom line is we know that we are spending more on STUFF than what we actually need, so do we really need to track every penny that way??  I wonder.

Gail Vaz-Oxlade (book) has us tracking everything to see where it is all going.  But I already know where its going...and that doesn't come as a surprise to me.  We need to stop shopping without purpose. Just cause I want it is the problem we are having.

So with a list of the things we are going to need to buy for car and home maintenance is going to help keep thing into perspective.  Not to mention the damn condo board is going to have us paying for more assessments to fix something in the next few months.

I made a list of all our non-negotiable bills and expenses and a list of the income we have. (well I had to average this because it isn't always the same in dollar amount) and realized that we actually do have enough coming in to pay for these bills, but the problem is that the money isn't always around when the bills need to come out.

I wish our pay would be as predictable in dollar amount as well as expectancy date as our bills are.  I always know what dates the bills are due, but the pay is always off.  That is why we are OD'ing our bank account.  How in the hell does one fix that??

I think for the next month or two, we are going to have to cut out all non-essential spending to keep more in our account to catch up and then find out what can be paid with an extra dose of money to get rid of it faster.

so armed with that and a grocery budget of $500, we'll see what we can accomplish.  Miracles I hope!

it would help of course if i could make money from home, but I am not interested in doing another party based business. One car is not able to be used right now, and the other is used very often by hubby for his two jobs.  I am homeschooling, so being home is imperative.  american opportunities are just that- american. so what now!

Monday, July 4, 2011

This week's Adventures

We had a great long weekend of family time, going to the Deifenbunker museum (i am sure i spelled it wrong), Dairy Queen, hiking in the Gatineau hills and enjoying a trip to the "quebec loblaws" as we call it and then finishing it off with a 2 hour drive to and from Arden ontario.

We drove our oldest to summer camp and hope that this year he'll cry a lot less than last year.

a sensitive  creature he is!

but thankfully (i can't believe i am saying this!) it is a catholic-faith-based western-themed camp, so friendship and support by everyone including his peers is the name of the game.

Last year he spent a lot of time crying and being upset by the whole experience that he never wanted to go back.  A few months ago he changed his mind, so i agreed to go along with it.  The night before we left he broke down and he welled up as I was leaving (after sticking around for an hour and a half)  I hope that his first night went better.

I think it may help that they actually remembered him!  can you imagine that!  every week for the entire summer they have new kids and a year has passed since he spent a week there, and as soon as they saw him they new his name!  One teen boy was his cabin councilor was so happy to see him he practically hugged him as he told him how happy he was to see him again!  Talk about making it easier to stick it out!

They had even sent him a birthday card and greeting magnet in September!  I like this place alot!  I may not talk about religion or faith in our home, however, I appreciate the values that the camp upholds and even appreciate the fact that the kids he is with are so much more faithful than other kids that "go to" catholic schools.  The cabin he is in now was listening to rock music on the councillors ipod boombox....after listening for a while it turned out to be faith rock.  not a bad influence if you ask me.

The only trouble i did have yesterday was convincing my 4 year old to come home with me, and that he was not able to stay there yet...boy was he upset!!  They are usually attached at the hip, and this does cause problems most of the time! As he already  missed his brother.


And i am going to spend the week with Gail Vaz-Oxlade's book and try to figure our how to do the same for our finances, so we can leave our condo by next summer and not move into another one!

Wish me luck with that one!  I have tried many different versions of a budget work sheet and they all end up being too much labour to follow so end up being left behind...maybe i am not committed enough to them...or maybe they just didn't work. i know that there was one version of having "accounts" on paper for each category of spending and that the money was put into each category, and that was what that account had to spend.  it looked great on paper, it looked great in the book i read ( which i cannot remember) but it never worked for us in reality, because the money never balanced.
Never give up and keep trying to find the one the works!