The Sweet Life On A Budget

Making small changes that have big results. On Friday’s I share 5 frugal ideas to help you maintain The Sweet Life on a budget.  These things will have money saving ideas and/or a way to enhance your lifestyle for very little money. Meal Planning- The power of meal planning is fabulous alone without really applying more cost saving techniques to further cut your grocery bill.  For example, using a zero waste process to decrease the amount of items needed each week. I am starting to look at the zero waste concept and applying slowly and systematically to my meal planning process.   Freezer/stocking up on easy meals- This week our local Kroger has Hillshire Kielbasa and Shrimp on sale.  Although we do not have this on the menu this week, we are picking up some of each and placing in the freezer/refrigerator for use when we have busy evenings  or find us in a situation where we didn’t plan on having a busy day. Both of these items can produce a ...

Budget Travel for Sports  Our son is very active in swimming and therefore we travel all over our state.  In order to maintain our budget, we need to be careful when traveling.  All of the hotel(s), meals out, snacks, drinks, etc.  really add up if your not careful.  Here are a few travel tips for when we travel for swimming: 1- Packing  Make a master list of what you need and pack extras of key items such as competition suit, googles, towels and caps.  This will help you not to forget items and/or if an item fails to have a back up.  Forgetting a cap will run you about $10.00 but forgetting a suit will cost you between $30-$50.00 depending on what is available.  2- Lodging Cost   We are fortunate that my husband earns hotel points from traveling for his job, but if you are not so lucky try lower grade hotels (e.g. Home Suites), comparison shopping, changing credit cards to earn you free nights stays, becoming a reward memb...

Caprese Salad The Caprese Salad dates back to prior to World War I Italy where it appears on the menu of the Hotel Quisisana.  This simple, but elegant salad represents Italy’s flags colors (green, white and red) and incorporates many of the flavors of an exceptional Italian dish.  The key to making a great Caprese Salad is to use the best ingredients, vine ripe tomatoes, mozzarella ball, good olive oil, and fresh basil leaves. There is no set recipe with all it’s measurements, list of ingredients and directions for this salad, but rather a simple road map to get you to this delicious salad.  For the cost breakdown, I used what I typically put into my salad, but it can be increased or decreased as you desire. This simple salad is made by slicing the tomatoes and placing them on a plate.   Next, put basil leaves on tomatoes.   Then slice or cut mozzarella into pieces and place on top of basil.   Finally drizzle the balsamic v...

Basil Plant from Clippings Growing a Basil Plant from a simple clipping is easy.   First cut the stem of the top of the Basil Plant just below a leaf node.   Then, keep the top few small leaves, but strip the rest of the Basil leaves.  Keep the stripped Basil leaves and use them in your cooking.-- Yum.     Next, place stem in a cup with water.  In about 4-7 days,  the stem will start developing roots.   Then final step is to plant your new Basil Plant and enjoy the fruits of your labor.  

National Doughnut Day June 1, 2018 is National Doughnut Day and several doughnut shops  have specials and some of them even give away a  free doughnut per customer.   My son and I went to  Krispy Kreme and picked up our choice of  donut to enjoy today.  Yummmmm!

Making small changes that have big results.  On Friday’s I share 5 frugal ideas to help you maintain The Sweet Life on a budget.  These things will have money saving ideas and/or a way to enhance your lifestyle for very little money. Our household is a little tired this week from all the travel last week. We needed to really break the tasks up into small pieces and do a little bit each day because we didn't have our weekend preparation time for the week and I worked all week. Soooo- Here we go. 1. I made sure we packed lunch every day. This was a little challenging because I usually pack all of our lunches on Sunday and we just didn't have the time. However, with a 15 minute commitment each night to pack lunches for the next day, we were able to make it through the week. Our lunches were basic (e.g. salads, sandwiches, or left overs, fruit and vegetable), but everyone enjoyed them each day. 2. We ran out of strawberries on Monday and waited to purchase ...

Our son likes to host a game night for his friends every 4-6 weeks.  Our first game night was not well planned.  We payed the "Stupid Tax" to the tune of $37.00 - pizza order ($32.00) and snacks ($5.00).  WOW! I was amazed at how much we spent on such a small event. Well, you can't go back so I decided that I would try to decrease our out of pocket expense for hosting this night by at least half which put my budget at 18.50.  Our first idea was to change the time and just provide a few snacks, but unfortunately most of the group couldn't attend at an earlier time.  So, here we are again, hosting game night over dinner time. What's a girl to do?    Tip 1-Take inventory of what you have and plan around it.             I checked my pantry/refrigerator and found --taco shells and black olives (both free from previous grocery deals), tortilla chips, taco seasonings, sour cream, cheddar cheese, onions, cila...