Since we’re down to one income for now, it’s important to me that I start learning how to coupon all over again. Yup, you guessed it. I jumped on the coupon wagon. Although I’m disappointed that couponing isn’t what it was like two years ago. I use to to go to Dillon’s and double my coupon along with an e-coupon. Now I have to use one or the other.

However Dillons was having a Mega Sale this week and I jumped on the opportunity. Almost everything they were selling were things we actually eat. Even if I didn’t have the coupon for the sale item, I purchased it anyways. I ended up saving almost $18.00 + by shopping at Dillons vs walmart. For example, I purchased Dillons bread for a $1.00 vs $2.29 at Walmart for Sara Lee brand. I also calculated that if we get our milk from Dillons every month, we will be saving $16 a month. $16 to us is a lot! Especially when we can make two casserole dishes for about $16.00. By making ht extra effort to budget wisely and to shop the sales, we’re already saving $32-$36 a month.

So what was my grand total of what I spent pictured above? Right under $100. Not bad, but I still rather be spending a lot less! I don’t think we can get our groceries down below $350 a month, but my husband would like for us to get it down to $200 – $300.

Lately I’ve been cruising Pinterest for some favorite casserole or big dish recipes to help keep the budget at a decent level. Last week was the first time I tried a Pinterest dish (White Enchiladas), and it was a hit! My goal is to keep trying a new dish every week to expand our menu of cheap affordable items to be able to reach our grocery budget goal.

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I know there’s plenty of websites out there that can help us with this journey. However each family is unique, and I certainly know that mine is. I know the general price of a food item with our local grocery store and I also know what my husband will and won’t eat for left overs, and what food my children eat.

Our next meal we’re going to try this week is;

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So what do you do? Do you have a budget that helps you? What are the cheapest meals that your family will eat?

One morning, I was in the bedroom while my husband was sleeping in and I noticed light coming from our vent which resides in the floor. Our house is built in 2007, and since we moved in we knew our house wasn’t built to the standards of “Builder Code.” We had a nice lovely draft that blasts us every winter from our all-electric fireplace into the living room. Our bedrooms were always freezing.

Our utilities are sky-rocket high because of our unknown ventilation problems. Fast forward to an inflated economy and two babies later, we finally decided to do something about it. I have no real excuse as to why we didn’t act on this sooner. Call us lazy. My husband decided that with rising utility cost, it was time to do something about it.

He ended up buying Duck Tape and we did a little home-improvement job ourself instead of contacting a professional to find the source of our leaks.

We went around the house and took off every cover of our floor vents and found wonderful gaping holes, bigger then what I originally saw. We uncovered the crawl space under the house to show you just how big of a gap of air we were losing to our crawl space vs the living space.

After all the covers for the vents were removed, my husband took a piece of tape and aligned it to the inside of the vent. He had to pry his finger under the carpet to be able to get the tape to slide in.  He had enough left over so he could then continue taping the gap closed with the edge of the floorboard.  To secure it, he had enough tape to tape it underneath the carpet so the vent should no longer have a wonderful gaping hole.

We noticed a huge difference immediately in our utilities. Our bill hasn’t come in yet, but it’s a lot warmer in our house. We also noticed that our air conditioning/heating unit has not kicked in as often as it use too. I’ll keep you posted on how much we saved.

Are there any home improvements you have done to reduce your utility bill?

Pst – Our house is an all electric home.

How cool is this? The following video shows you how to wrap gifts such as wine bottles, chocolates and books. You can use your imagination for the rest.

The plus side about this is its environment friendly! You can reuse the fabric for other gifts, and the presents under your tree (or any other occasion) is going to look great!

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All you have to do is purchase some awesome fabric that I blogged about on my previous posts.