Weekend

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  Normally, the weekend would have involved us spending at least $30 for pizza on Friday and going somewhere on Sunday (including at least one meal out), but this weekend we stuck close to home.

I made pizza and french bread Friday night, and it was delicious.  The marinara sauce, crust, and french bread were all homemade, and we already had the pepperoni and cheese in the house.  I put butter and garlic powder on the bread to make our own garlic bread and everything was pretty tasty!  And CHEAP. 

While Pen was at work Saturday, the Piglets and I used some of the leftover marinara sauce for pasta for lunch (still some left in the fridge!), with mandarin oranges and some strawberries leftover from Piglet 1 and my project for the day.  While Piglet 2 napped, Piglet 1 and I made freezer jelly for the first time.  While making your own jelly costs a little bit more at the start than just buying a jar of jelly (the cost of the pectin, the fruit, and the jars), in the end we had three jars of jelly for the price of one, and we can reuse the jars for years to come.  We had a smoked ham roast we purchased earlier this year buried in our deep freeze, so we thawed that out and had it for dinner along with mashed potatoes and homemade biscuits.

Sunday morning everyone slept-in for varying amounts of time so we all had light breakfasts of cold cereal or oatmeal.  For lunch we had leftover ham sandwiches and chips.  For dinner I made fried chicken (we bought the chicken a few weeks ago) and macaroni and cheese (we always do mac and cheese from scratch, Pen hates the box stuff).  We strain and reuse our oil when we fry chicken.  We keep the oil in jars in the refrigerator, and it stays usable for quite some time!  I also made three loaves of bread for the week, although we already went through one loaf just yesterday.  When the funds are there, we're going to buy bigger loaf pans so the bread might last longer.

"Eating our pantry" has really helped us last week and this week saving money.  We have a small supply of food, and it will be enough to get us through the next week without having to go grocery shopping. 

Our Internet has been restored, thank goodness.  Our Internet company doesn't charge a reconnection fee, which is excellent because I hate paying fees and penalties.  I also paid our utilities this morning which was the last day we had to pay before shut-off.  I also mailed our mortgage payment last week before the grace period was over, so no late-fees there! 

Keeping our budget and check registry updated has been a huge help the past two weeks.  I can tell that right now we only have $179.91 in our checking account, as opposed to the over $1,000 our bank says we have.  It really is a huge help to see the money not accounted for.  Our budget is also matching up perfectly with our registry, so I know I'm on the right track there.