Going Bananas

I love the produce guys in our local Ingle's grocery store. After bananas have been on the shelf for a couple of days, they bag them up in these great bags and sell the entire bag for $1.49. This is an especially good deal considering that bananas usually cost around $0.59 per pound and this bag is usually between 5 and 6 pounds of bananas.




Whenever I find these bags of treasure sitting out in the produce section, I grab them all!

The bags sit on my counter for a couple of days as the bananas are usually still a bit green and quite suitable for eating. After the green is gone from the stems, I peel and freeze all but one bag. I put three bananas to one quart freezer bag because this the the amount needed to make our favorite banana bread. This is also the amount we use in a family size run of smoothie mix.

The one remaining bag of bananas sits on the counter for a few more days and is slowly used in banana bread and banana muffins. Yum!!

Green Pest Control ~ A Battle Tale

I do not like bugs. No bugs of any kind do I like. Anyone who knows me, knows this. I run from bugs and scream like a little girl when they are after me. Of course, they are after me. It is a known fact in the bug world that any bug who can bite or sting me will be elevated to insect royalty. There is a bug bounty on my head!

Knowing my aversion to the little creatures, God blessed me with my best friend. Her husband, Brian, is a pest control guru.

One of the most common insects I deal with in my house is gnats. I love to buy those big bags of ripe bananas from the grocery store for 99 cents. Unfortunately, a few little critters always come home in the bag.

Once upon a time, the gnat army executed a well planned and orchestrated attack on my kitchen. What seemed like several thousand of the best of the extreme warrior gnats hid in the perfect bag of bananas that I was sure to pick up on my stroll through the produce section. When I got the bag home, they swarmed out like a wave at my head.

I did everything I could to fend them off, but it was to no avail. I even tried my old trick of luring them into the microwave with a ripe banana, slamming the door and nuking them.



Of course, I always thoroughly clean the microwave after resorting to this battle tactic.

It didn’t work this time. I was outnumbered and being overtaken.

They were winning the battle on all fronts. I knew I had no choice but to call for reinforcements. I called Brian, knowing that he would bring out some big-gun chemical to eradicate the invaders. I typically avoid chemicals at all costs but this was a matter of life and death.

Much to my surprise, Brian shared with me his secret gnat weapon – apple cider vinegar in a jar!

I ran for my recycle or repurpose bin where I was collecting empty yogurt containers to start my garden seeds in. I pulled out a few containers, filled them halfway with vinegar, covered them with foil and punched small holes in the top.




I spread gnat traps like land mines throughout my house, with a heavy concentration in the kitchen. Slowly but surely, they were all lured into the traps by the sweet smell of the vinegar.




The next day I had yogurt cups full of drowned gnats. Victory was mine!

I then created the ultimate gnat trap – a repurposed glass jar with screw on lid with holes punched in the top. It sits safely hidden on my kitchen counter with just enough vinegar to attract any new little pest brave enough to stow away in my bananas.




...and I lived happily ever after.

Healthy Green Thursdays ~ Homemade Baby Wipes

I have come to love making my own baby wipes. This is a skill that my bestie, Brandi, perfected first and I have recently added my own twists to the process.

There are a couple of reasons for making your own wipes: 1) it’s cheaper; and 2) it’s healthier for mom and baby and anyone else who uses the wipes.

Brandi says that she can make the wipes for ½ cent each compared to paying 1-2 cents for store bought wipes. I know that is not a huge savings but, every little bit counts. When you combine that with being able to prevent diaper rash, treat it quickly and safely if it does appear and being able to condition baby’s skin and mommy’s hands while changing a diaper, homemade wipes are a wonderful thing!

To make wipes you will need:
1 roll Viva paper towels (It is important to get these towels or a comparable brand.)
1 Tbsp Baby Mild Castile Soap
1 tbsp Sunflower Oil or Jojoba
1 cup Distilled Water
10 drops tea tree oil
10 drops lavender oil
Secure container with lid that is easily travel with

Here is the contaner we use (obviously, it is wipe making day).






Cut the roll of towels in half and stand lengthwise in a bowl or roll off towels and place flat in container with lid. Mix together water, soap and oils and pour over towels. Close container securely and use as needed.

See my favorite youtube video that demonstrates the process here. I have changed the ingredients to reduce chemical exposure and to maximize benefits to mom and baby.

You can learn more about herbal health and remedies by on the Vintage Remedies link below or on my sidebar. I have been a student of Vintage Remedies for quite some time now and love their teaching format!

Homekeeping Tuesday ~ Homemade Shower Spray

Making huge changes all at once has always overwhelmed me. I find that I am a person much more suited to baby steps. I took this into consideration when I decided that to eliminate chemicals from my home. Instead of going through my house with a trash bag and purging every chemical product I could find, I simply wait until I run out of a product and then find a recipe and make a natural replacement.

Today I am out of shower spray so, here is what I am going to replace the chemical stuff with:

24 oz spray bottle (I buy these at the Dollar Store and keep several on hand)
½ cup of vinegar
6 drops Castile Soap
10 drops tea tree oil
10 drops sweet orange oil
Fill with distilled water

This version of shower spray is completely safe, costs less and works perfectly!!

Weekly Menu

The goal of this week’s menu is to clean out the pantry, freezer and refrigerator in preparation for our once-a-month cooking (OAMC) on September 9th and once a month shopping (OAMS) on September 14th. This is the first week that we return to our homeschool co-op on Friday and we are working concessions for a college football game on Saturday to raise money for missions. I took those plans into consideration, took inventory of what we still have in the house and came up with the menu and grocery list based on those items. Here is what is on the menu this week:

Monday
Breakfast: Make Ahead French Toast (Recipe from the Raising Olives Blog here.)
Lunch: Burritos and Quesadillas, Fruit, Yogurt
Dinner: Mexican Chicken w/ Rice and veggies
Snacks: Fruit/Yogurt/Homemade Granola/Homemade Granola Bars

Tuesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal
Lunch: Peanut Butter and Jelly on Homemade Tortillas
Dinner: Black Bean Soup w/ Cornbread
Snacks: Fruit/Yogurt/Homemade Granola/Homemade Granola Bars

Wednesday
Breakfast: Mini Banana Muffins/Yogurt
Lunch: Chicken Tenders/Veggies
Dinner: Waffles w/ syrup
Snacks: Fruit/Yogurt/Homemade Granola/Homemade Granola Bars

Thursday
Breakfast: Waffles w/ syrup
Lunch: Make Ahead Black Mexican Black Bean Dip w/ Tortillas
Dinner: White Chicken Chili w/ Mexican Cornbread
Snacks: Fruit/Yogurt/Homemade Granola/Homemade Granola Bars

Friday
Breakfast: Granola Bars/Yogurt
Lunch: Peanut Butter and Jelly Wraps/Applesauce/Veggie Sticks
Dinner: Teriyaki Chicken w/ fried Rice and Veggies
Snacks: Banana Muffins/ Fruit Leather/Peanut Butter Cookies

Saturday
Breakfast: Oatmeal/Yogurt/Fruit
Lunch:
Dinner: The majority of this day will be spent working concessions for a missions fund raiser.
Snacks:

Sunday
Breakfast: Yogurt/Fruit
Lunch: Veggie Soup/ cornbread
Dinner: Leftovers

Many of the recipes for our homemade items will soon be included under the "On the Table" section above.



I print out our weekly menu and post it on the refigerator on Sunday afternoons. This eliminates the constant "what are we having for ______?" questions and also reminds me of what I need to thaw, put in the crockpot or prep for the next day.

Check back on Tuesday for more of the how and why of menu planning!

Frugal Friday ~ Steps 1 & 2 of Once a Month Shopping

Here we go! The once-a-month-shopping adventure begins. Sometimes I still can't believe we are trying this.

Step One should definitely be discussing the idea of only going into department and grocery stores on one day a month with your spouse. If your husband is not on board, it will never work because he will either (a) go to the store anyway and spend more money than budgeted or (b) he will be very grouchy when he does not get all of his needs on the list and you are not making the weekly or daily runs to the market.

This went fairly well for me. My husband is usually on board for anything that will save us money and he is always ready for something new and exciting. Personally, I think the thought of a complete months worth of groceries stacked in the back of our van was enough to win him over :) He will be blogging about his own frugal adventure in Healthy Home Fitness here.

Step Two is research. First you need a general list of the things you will be purchasing. We generated this list from the grocery list that was already hanging on our fridge and taking a complete inventory of our fridge, freezer, pantry, bathroom, and storage room. I also downloaded a couple of master grocery lists to help remind me of things that I might forget. I found the most useful ones here and here.

We have also begun Step Three which is price scouting. More on that next week.

Adventures in Frugality: Once a Month Shopping

A friend recently told me that, even though she is once-a-month-cooking, she is still spending hundreds of dollars a month at the grocery store. This caused me to do some investigation into the grocery spending in the Langford home.

I was hit in the face with several harsh pieces of reality:

1. My pantry is full of items that are pieces and parts of recipes that were purchased due to poor planning.



2. In reviewing my receipts I noticed that every trip to a store included some sort of impulse purchase.


(We save all of our reciepts in a basket to be reviewed and sorted at the end of the month. Of course, this sometimes piles up and we have a couple of months at a time.)

3. According to Steve and Annette Economides in their book America’s Cheapest Family, 6 of 10 grocery store purchases are unplanned.




4. In the last two weeks, I have darkened the doorway of a grocery store or department store 11 times! That is more than every other day!!

With all of these facts staring me in the face, I decided to take action! After tossing the idea around for a couple of days, I presented it to my husband. I proposed that we challenge ourselves to shop only one day for an entire month. It sounded much more reasonable in my mind than it did when I said it out loud. Now it sounded absolutely crazy but, having verbalized to my husband my preplanned list of pros and cons, I felt in some way committed to the idea.
After talking over some ins and outs for a few minutes we decided to jump off the deep end and give it a try.

For the month of August, we will be blogging all of our prep efforts, plans and lists and countdown to our big shopping day on September 3rd. For the month of September we will be blogging all of the daily issues that pop up, adjustments that need to be made, difficulties and successes as we move toward our next allowed shopping day of October 1st. Our goal is to not set foot in another grocery or department store after that date until the October 1st date. (Even now it sounds insane!)

We will be posting our list of detailed guidelines as we develop them. The ultimate goal of course, is to save money by avoiding the stores, sticking to our budget, planning our meals and eliminating restaurants all together for a month.
You are welcome to jump in on this challenge with us and link up your blog to our regular posts or just read along as we muddle our way through this latest and greatest adventure in frugality!

Frugality with a purpose...

I have always been a frugal kind of gal. I have been called everything from frugalista to tightwad. I prefer frugalista, of course :)

My penny pinching ways have always been for the benefit of my family. I am of the opinion that if my husband brings in the money, it’s my job to stretch it as far as it can possibly go. One of my favorite ways of accomplishing this has been to make my own laundry detergent and fabric softener. This saves me about $25-30 per month.

Another way we stretch our dollar is to once-a-month cook (OAMC). I get together with some of my favorite friends and cook about 200 meals in about 5 hours. We buy all of the ingredients in bulk so, our savings are significant. I then take about 40 meals home and freeze them and just pull them out daily. If we made dinner at home every night, our meals would cost around $10. If we ate out a meal for our family would be no less than $30. If I estimated that we would eat out twice a week and cook at home the other five days, that would cost $110 per week or $440 per month. Our average OAMC meal cost $4-5 and sometimes less. That costs only $35 per week or $140 per month. That gives me a savings of $300 per month. Plus my family is eating healthier food and we are around our table for precious family time.

Here is where it gets good!! With my $360 per month saved I can feed 14 orphans every month or one orphaned child for 8 years!! I could also save that money and once a year have $4320 for a mission trip. Sounds like a good deal to me!!

Peanut Butter Day

One of our favoite ways to eat healthier and save some money is to order peanut butter in bulk from our favorite whole foods distributor, Something Better Natural Foods.

The peanut butter comes 9 pounds at a time in a big bucket. Since the peanut butter is all natural, it must be stirred. This is the fun part!



Dad gets to use his power tools in the kitchen. One mixer attachement fixed to the cordless drill and we are in business!



Once the peanut butter is stirred, we divide it into small glass recycled jars. When the process is complete, we have about 9 jars of very healthy peanut butter for about $10!

CVSing

For many in our country, whether by choice or necessity, frugality has become a way of life in this present economy. I could not believe it when my freshman grammar class had never even heard the word frugal. We got a nice vocabulary lesson that day :) Anyway, its true, we are all pinching pennies a bit more these days. Many of my friends have asked me how we seem to stretch our food and necessity dollars so well with so many in the home and one still in diapers. My oft repeated reply is cooking at home, clipping coupons and CVSing 101 as taught on moneysavingmom.com (see link on my blogroll). The first two are self explanatory, time consuming and worth it! The last is a bit of a puzzle for some.
Though I have directed many friends to the MSM site, they seem to come away either confused or in disbelief. I have promised for a while to show the CVSing in action so, here is my first post.
On Sunday after church, I stopped by the local CVS on the way home to pick up a newspaper and the new monthly Extra Care Bucks (ECBs) book. This is always available on the first of every month and should be tucked away as reference for the entire month of CVSing. I admit, the planning of such shopping takes some time. In fact, I had not been CVSing in a while so, I was nearly starting from scratch with my ECBs.
So here is the concept, you invest a little money in the beginning to get lots of ECBs, combine those with coupons in the following weeks and keep rolling them over. Essentially, you turn an original $20 out of pocket purchase into free toilet paper, paper towels, toiletries and other necessities for months.
Here is how I got started again. I pulled all of my coupons from my Sunday paper, printed all available coupons online (including the ones emailed from CVS) and began scouring the CVS circular and monthly ECB book. I found the items that I could use that I had coupons for and offered ECBs. This usually makes for the best purchases! I had a $5 off of $15 purchase and a $4 off of $20 from CVS to start with. I also had a $2 off of playskool wipes from the CVS website. So, there was $11 off of my first $20 before any other coupons or ECBs. Playskool wipes and Pampers were on sale at CVS this week offering ECBs as well (buy $20 of these combined and get $5 ECBs). There were also coupons in the paper for pampers. You see the deal coming together?? There were several other items on sale that I could use that offered ECBs and for which there were also coupons available. Here was the result of this week's CVSing:

This is a 6 pack of Charmin, 8 roll pack of Bounty, 2 Jumbo packs of Pampers, 2 large tubes of Crest, 2 bottles of Tylenol PM, 1 Secret deodorant, 2 bags of playskool wipes and a 16 pack of duracell AAA batteries.

We got all of this for about $30 out of pocket with $18.99 in ECBs to start out with next week. I know that $30 may seem like a lot but when you consider that two jumbo bags of pampers cost at least that much, you see the savings. Plus we got a lot more! Also, we will not have to spend that much again unless I fall behind and quit turning over my ECBs again. A typical weekly CVS shopping trip costs me anywhere from $4 to $8 out of pocket and we come home with at least this much. I will keep posting these shopping excursions for a few weeks until those interested parties get the hang of it. Happy shopping this week!