Catching Fireflies July Controlled Spend Thread

[MittenKitten]

August's thread is up:

notmsnmoney.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=wir&thread=11972

FP: These ladies are a huge help in the finance dept. Also check pioneer woman's website, although I don't think a lot of her stuff is low cal. I also use my basic Betty Crocker cookbook tons. Food.com is another site I use for recipes. I know we are pretty tired of the same old food around here so I have been searching for recipes to play with.

If you have a CVS or a Walgreens iheartcvs.com and iheartwags.com are great sites. They will help you get your makeup and a lot of stuff cheaper.

[dakota4600]

Drumroll please- 14NS, 4CS, 22NEO, I can't remember my goal, probably a combined 20 NS/CS, but I feel really good about how we did in July. In fact we didn't eat out as a family at all this weekend. Saturday mini-D and I went to BK because he had to go the the grocery store with me and I figured it was a good compromise. But it was a CS, because groceries were budgeted and BK was under $5 for the two of us, plus I used my allowance money.

I came home on Friday and DH had made hamburgers for himself for lunch so we had those for dinner. Then Saturday night we went to a b-day party for a classmate of mini-D's (it was from 4-8), since they served corn dogs, which I don't eat and mini-D didn't want to taste, he and I had the last of the burgers when we got home. We also had Bebo overnight for his first sleepover at our house. They did great, though DH did have to and sit in the bedroom to the boys to be quiet and fall asleep. Of course mini-D was up at 5:45 and woke his cousin up, we managed to get them to stay in bed until 6:30am, then they started saying they were hungry, so I got up and made them whole wheat pankcakes.

Question for our wise women. Last night I was cleaning out the pantry and asked DH to soak my terra cotta brown sugar bear. I wasn't watching what he was doing and he soaked it in the container we use to thaw vac sealed frozen meat. It does get washed, but it kind was makes me leery of putting it in direct contact with brown sugar. Is there a way to sanitize it or do I need a new one?

FP- I have a pretty picky DH so I have to choose new recipes wisely. I usually will go through a cookbook or magazine and flag recipes I like, then he lets me know which of those he would be billing to try. Once we have a recipe we both like, i put it on a recipe card and it goes to the box, so that when I'm menu planning I have different things to choose from. Also try some Rachel Ray recipes, while they don't actually take 30 mins, they usually are pretty easy to do.

[muttleynfelix]

This weekend was a weird spend weekend. Saturday we were going to go to the pool, but then it was lightening and thundering and I was getting mad because it wasn't raining but the pools probably would have been closed (small thunderstorm and we live 15 miles from a couple different pools). It finally rained (first time in 3 weeks, the grass greened up just a bit). We were sitting around the house and DH grabs DS's shoes and says lets go for drive. So we went to Sonic and they have an outdoor play area and we got ice cream which was so funny watching DS eat it (since he isn't exactly awesome at using a spoon yet. Then he got sand all over him at the play area. When we got him home he was a sticky, sandy mess. Yestday we did go to the pool. DS wasn't quite sure of it all. He can be pretty cautious, but I think if we go again he will like it. We nearly got rained out at the pool. Then we got Taco Bell before going home. DS ate half of a Taco Bell Quesodilla! Plus half of a Banana I had brought from home and half of a mixed fruit cup from home! What a piggy.

DH has a dentist appointment today and DS is going to visit me at the office. It is going to be a LONG week. The highs are all forcasted into the 100s for the next 7 days (on top of being 101 yesterday).

Dakota - Congrats on your no spends and NEO.

FP - Thanks for posting your budget.

[shanendoah]

Finaly July Update: 12 CS + 12 NS = 24 of 27
So, didn't hit the goal, but still did all right.

FP: If you try other skin care products, look to see if you can get them in travel or sample size first, and have at least some of your current stuff still with you. My DH has psoriasis on his scalp (most people think he just has bad dandruff) and face. He wears a full beard because shaving every day just irritates too much. He uses his special shampoo (used to be available by Rx only) on both his scalp and his face.
If your psoriasis extends to your scalp at all, we've found that tea tree oil shampoo is the next best thing to the medicated stuff. While using the tea tree oil stuff, DH only has to use the medicated shampoo once a week or even once every 2 weeks (even using like head and shoulders, he used to have to use the medicated 2-3 times a week). CostCo sometimes carries it, otherwise, I pay attention to when the discount salons (hairmasters, supercuts) are having 2 for 1 deals and go buy the tea tree stuff from them.

[mizbear]

I lost count. I know I have had a lot of NS/CS but I also totally went over budget.

[financialpeace]

Thanks for all the budget tips and everything. I will consider them all as I attempt to get August spending down and prepare for my layoff.

shanendoah- My psoriasis is pretty mild and easily controlled. I occasionally have problems on my scalp, but one or two uses of my foam RX takes care of it. My face is just really picky. Anything that dries it out even the littlest bit will cause it to flake. I am frequently trying stuff that sounds like it might work, and I plan to do more of that in the coming months. So far, I have found only one brand that doesn't dry it out or cause me to break out. It's a tricky balance because I have to use formula meant for dry skin even though my skin is really combination.

I am going to hop on over to the August thread, now. I probably won't be checking in here anymore.

[singlemomky]

FINAL update - 20 CS and I actually tracked every day of the month!

[shanendoah]

July Final Numbers

Name	Goal	Total
3catslady	-	27
azmom	-	7
dakota4600	15	18
dvm07	8	16
Honeylioness	-	27
kcgaloz	-	30
midwesternjd	18	12
Mittenkitten	-	21 ;D
mizbear	25	2
moneysquirrel	15	24 ;D
MuttleynFelix	-	5
pt_in_ny/pointy	23	23 ;D
reeneejune	-	7
sapphire12	-	3
shanendoah	27	24 ;D
SingleMom-KY	14	20 ;D
spruby	31	26
zippy478	15	10

5 CS/NS Days
10 CS/NS Days
15 CS/NS Days
;D 20 CS/NS Days
25 CS/NS Days
Reached their goal