I threw a birthday party at home for my seven year old. We stayed within our budget and were still able to do everything and have everything that Kaitlyn wanted. As she helped plan and prepare for the party this was a good teaching tool for real life budgeting with her.
To help save money I did not use paper plates or cups. I did use a package of cute paper napkins I had purchased some time ago for a quarter. I usually keep a box of those.
Since this was a “Snow Fun” party we made snowman ice cubes during the week before the party and snowman chocolates for each of the girls to take home.
I had a snowman shaped tray already and we put “frosted” fruits on it to go with our pizza lunch. I made the blue snowman cake from scratch. It’s blue because that’s what Kaitlyn wanted but I did make his face white. I used snow flake sprinkles that I bought on clearance after Christmas.
The banners or bunting in the kitchen and living room were homemade from scraps I had in my stash. The snowflake ribbons decorating the living room were actually just stickers that I purchased for .25 per package on clearance after Christmas in the Scrapbooking dept. of our craft store. I simply took curly ribbon and stuck matching stickers on both sides and then hung them. They looked really cute hanging up for the occasion.
Party bags were “snow” white bags I purchased in a package. Boxes of snowman chocolates were purchased on clearance after Christmas for this. The little snowman pin on the right was a party favor… each girl crafting her own with my 14 year olds help with the hot glue gun if needed. The girls just used tacky glue. I already had all the materials leftover from previous crafts to make these little snowman pins. Our games were all homemade too with sale candy prizes and a pass the snowball game with dollar prizes for each.
We took some money we had set aside from a third paycheck and went to the LDS cannery on the way home from my husband’s business trip to an educator’s conference. The cannery is on the way home and the mileage was paid for as business expense. We were thrilled to find that they are selling black beans in bulk once again and the prices as of February 1st were down from our November pricing. We were able to buy 25 pound bags of black beans for $15… best price around. We purchased 50 pounds of Black beans, 50 pounds of Great Northern beans, about 50 pounds of oats and just over 50 pounds of powdered milk. Hooray! If nothing else this will offset the loss in the grocery budget for a while.
Traditional books and audio books were purchased directly from Scholastic at a special educator’s sale. Nothing was over $5, scratch and dent were just $1 and one whole isle was marked 50% off of it’s under $5 price tag. Combine that with a $25 off coupon and we got a box full of books for a fantastically great price which will be gifts for our children’s birthdays and Christmas.
Egg prices have been on the rise. I found an egg sale at Sav-A-Lot that was so good I decided I had to try this store out. I bought 7 dozen eggs for $6.94 which will take us through the month. This was more than a $4 savings for me.
I purchased smoked sausage for .99 and bought five.
Shampoo and conditioner went on sale for .79 each just as we were on our last bottles!
Packaged deli-meats went on sale for 1.99 each if you bought multiples of 8 with a limit of 2 specials. I was happy to buy 16… the last 16. Lunch meat stores well and we have enjoyed more variety to our lunches.
Cream cheese also went on sale for .99 if purchased in multiples of 8; Good for making our annual cheesecake on March 18th… the anniversary of our first date and first cheesecake I brought over to my husband’s apartment… my contribution to the meal.
Pot holes have been a huge problem with this winter weather we’ve been having. My husband hit a large pot hole late one night on his way home from work that made the tire bulge. He called the city and they said they would pay for repairs only if the hole had already been reported. We figured it probably had because early the next morning (the morning he made the call) it had already been repaired and had an orange cone over it. Upon taking the car in for a new tire we found that the rim was severely cracked from hitting the hole as well.
My husband went to the salvage yard and they had some cars that utilize the same tire rims there although you really have no idea what condition anything is in or if the part has already been taken. He paid the $2 to go out into the yard to take a look around. He found a good rim, got it off the junked car, pried the tire off and paid the salvage yard just for the part. By turning in the cracked one he was also able to save money by not paying the “core” charge. He then took the good rim and got the new tire put on it. While this seems rather kind of us to save the city money we also know that it will be months before we might see any reimbursement check at all.
These were our money saving adventures for the month of February.
