Making Progress - and trying my hand at frugality (one piece at a time!)

It's been a busy - but productive - week here!!  The kids have been keeping me running (as usual) and I've been keeping myself running!  I've also been doing great with sticking to my resolutions!!!

At my weigh-in on Thursday at TOPS, I was down a full 3 1/2 pounds!!!!  That is about half of what I had gained in the previous 2 months!!!  Honestly, there have been no gimmicks or fad diets or anything like that.  I have a couple of friends who are also on the weight loss journey, but are doing it by taking a lot of medications.  They are losing weight, but I worry about how they will do when they stop taking the medications.

What has been working for me?  Two things, really:

1) I have been writing everything I have to eat and drink (other than water) down.  I'm not tracking quantities or calories or anything like that.  But I think just being aware of what I'm eating helps.

2) Exercise.  I've been doing something almost ever day.  I went walking with my Opa a few times.  Otherwise I have been doing my Wii Fit Step again, for at least a half an hour.  Usually while watching some show of choice, like Grey's Anatomy or something else.

I have been trying to find ways to save money for our family still.  I will be posting various things that I have been doing and how it has helped with our family.  My current projects include:

1) Finding a recipe and making homemade bread that my family likes (after some experimentation, I found my husband likes the recipe for white bread in the Betty Crocker cookbook.  I use my bread machine to make the dough, but bake it in the oven.  He didn't understand why I do that until I explained how the machine leaves a hole in the bottom.  Awesome news on the bread machine - scored it BRAND NEW a the Salvation Army for only $10!!)

2) I have been making homemade laundry soap for over a year now.  (I actually made 2 batches so I always would have some ready.  The recipe I use takes 24 hours until it's ready.  When one bucket is empty, I use the other bucket until it's about half empty, then make another batch in the empty bucket.  I like the leeway it gives me.)  I figure for each 65-load batch I make, I'm saving about $11.20 over buying scent-free, dye-free Tide and getting just as good results, if not better.  If I have a particularly soiled load of laundry, I just set my washer to "heavy duty" and that takes care of it! 

3) Finding more low cost/free entertainment for the kids.  Home Depot offers a free kids' workshop on the first Saturday of each month.  Last Saturday, Beau had to go to make a bird house for Girl Scouts, so I figured why not take Scrappy?  It was free, would teach them skills about using tools and following directions, and would keep them happily occupied for a while. I don't know why we didn't do this earlier!!  But we didn't paint them until today, and they did that at home.... (I had a bit of a headache when we were at HD, and it only got worse with all the pounding!)

She was getting a little frustrated cuz a few nails were bending.

He was so proud - all Mommy did was hold the boards and he pounded
the nails himself(and my fingers a few times!)

They like a LOT of color!

We also got a free night of BINGO last night.  Beau's school had a family night event of Burger BINGO.  

My boys at BINGO

Each person in a family gets a card to play, and each family gets one raffle ticket to start.  For your first BINGO, a family wins a complete meal (hamburgers, buns, ketchup, jello mix, apple slices, 5# bag of potatoes, can of pork and beans, and a half dozen mini Hershey's bars).  After that, a family wins additional raffle tickets.  At the end of the night, they draw for various MOA tickets and for Tiger (school) shirts.  We only won the meal, but that's just fine since they only gave out 100 of them!! (I was the mean mom who told my kids we weren't paying $1 for each slice of pizza and ice cream because we had leftovers at home.  But honestly, our family eats out waaay too much).

4) Starting a price book.  Heather highly recommends it on her site, and has proven over and over again how useful they can be. (Per her recommendation, I checked out and am enjoying a money-savings book also.  I had to get it through inter-library loan, so I have been trying to track down my own.  I found a copy online today in good shape, and should hopefully have it in about a week or so!! I will post more on the book later!)

5) I've successfully learned how to can meat and stock!!!  Found out what I was missing too - it can ONLY be done safely with a pressure cooker.  I managed it - with the help of my Opa!

Meat and stock before sealing.

I'm also keeping a list of all the books I'm reading too.  If someone were to take a look at my Kindle, they would probably laugh.  I admit, I'm a self-help-book junkie!  I'm always reading on ways to help with time management or organization or weight loss or almost anything else you could think of.  I will periodically post my take on the books I'm reading, especially if they are something I find useful!!