Less Spend January: Week 3

So this is probably going to be a short post since not much exciting happened this week. We have totally stuck to our guns with the "no eating out" aspect of our challenge. The other part of our challenge was to only spend $200 this month on groceries. Well, I have already failed miserably. I believe we have already spent about $240 and we are only in Week 3. In my credit, we have had every single meal at home, not counting the free food I get at work. Also, I baked some yummy treats for people and that required extra baking goods. Normally our grocery budget is about $350, so I might be able to beat that!

Friday night was spent putting together a package for a friend which included baking and crafting. We also had a delicious salad with spinach, tomatoes, goat cheese, avocado and crushed pistachios. So good! Also, for those of you who don't know, yesterday was Tegan's 2nd birthday! We had a little Skype party with my parents' dogs and whipped cream was involved. The "party" itself was chaos so no pictures were taken, but here's a picture from last year's party.  We know that we are dorks for having a dog birthday party, but we are ok with that! We can already tell that our kids are going to be spoiled!

This morning we headed out to Manana Ridge Trail. We had already done part of this trail on the way to "Heart Attack Hill" on a previous hike, but this time we continued along the ridge-line instead of going down into the valley. It was a beautiful day here in Hawaii! 

Tonight we plan on booking everything for our Big Island trip that we are taking next month. We are going to be spending 4 or 5 nights there. We will fill you all in later on the details, but if anybody has any suggestions of what to do there let us know! We will be there Feb 8-12/13. 

Aloha

xoxoxo

-D 

Less Spend January: Week 2

Well we have made it 11 days into our "Less Spend" month and I am already feeling a little anxious about making it to the end, even though our lives really haven't changed that much. Isn't that strange? I keep thinking of all these things I "need" to buy and making a list for next month. Maybe by the end of the month I can cross some of that stuff off the list.

We pretty much followed our plan for last weekend. Did dinners at home and a Spa Day on Saturday. I even let Alex cut my hair and it looks great! I convinced Alex to do this awesome cinnamon, lemon and honey facial and I did this hair mask using mayo, yogurt and egg white. This was all done using stuff from our kitchen! We felt really good after and had more dinner salads, which we are loving by the way! Alex finally finished reading Game of Thrones so we started in on watching the first season.

*Alex doesn't know that I am posting this pic of us in our facials*

On Friday I once again compiled a list of recipes for the week. These include: making turkey soup from our leftover turkey, rice/beans/onions and pineapple (one of my favs), turkey sandwiches for Alex's lunch, and I will be making some whole wheat zucchini bread for dessert!

*Yummy zucchini bread made from scratch using vanilla yogurt*

We started our Friday night with a nice sunset run around the neighborhood, followed by dinner and movies at home. We tapped into Netflix again for "Heathers" and "Adventureland." "Heathers" got good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and we just love "Adventureland"...Alex has a thing for Kristen Stewart. :) Today (Saturday) we slept in and then headed into town to meet up with some friends and their adorable new baby at the Honolulu Zoo. We all have passes so this was also free. We ended the evening with a trip to the beach with the Tegs. On the agenda tonight: dinner, maybe a movie, homemade pretzels, and some crafting for a friend's present. 

We hope you guys all had a great week and we hope this coming week is even better! 

xoxox

-D 

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Less Spend January: Week 1

Surprisingly, Alex and I have had a good year financially.  We both worked a lot and saved a lot and we able to pay off the majority of our debts, all we have left is 1 of our cars. Alex would attribute most of this new found financial success on this guy...Mr. Money Mustache . We have been able to set up a little nest egg for ourselves and it feels amazing. We decided not to get any presents this year for Christmas and it has definitely helped jump start our year. I recently read on another blog about a "No Spend January." Basically you try and not do any spending other than what is necessary. For us, this means cutting out all eating out, entertainment out, and any clothes shopping. Using our normal budget, we should be able to save over $500 this month! I am also trying to reduce our grocery budget by $150, so we might be able to save about $650! We have already composed a list of free things to do on the weekends and I took inventory of all the food we have in the house. I am not sure how many of you will find this interesting, but hopefully we can inspire you guys to try the same thing! Also, writing all this out helps me get it all straight.

Week 1:
-Took inventory of all the food we had at home and came up with about 15 meals we can make.
-Made a list of free things to do on the weekends.
-Went shopping @ Safeway and spent about $59 for the week.
-Meals for the week are turkey/veggies/potatoes (we got the turkey for free @ Thanksgiving and froze it!), turkey sandwiches (Alex makes amazing homemade bread), rice/beans/onions, oatmeal, yogurt, and homemade cookies.
-For our first "date night" we made salads and homemade wheat thins  and watched Netflix movies (Thanks Mom and Dad for your password!).
- Tried going for a hike on Saturday but got rained out so we did a Zombie Fit  workout in our neighborhood and are going to do a "Spa Night" at home with haircuts, facials and hopefully massages! Maybe we can find an interesting documentary on Netflix as well.

We will need to get creative the rest of the month but we are looking forward to it. I hope to post each week.

xoxox
D

P.S Just wanted to include a pic of the hubby and I from 2004 on my high school graduation. hehe I thought you guys might like this!