A Hundred and One Bucks of Fun

11/21 - Beginning Total-    $300
11/21 - Costco -               $  67
11/23 - Grocery Stores -   $107
11/23 - Family Dining Out - $20
11/29 - Salsa and Sodas -     $5
12/2   -Mid-term Total -    $101

A Hundred and One Pounds of Fun, those were the days before I had four kids.  Now, they'd have to rework the song and take all kinds of creative licence and artistic liberties to get a proper description of me out of it.  But, I digress. 

Here I am with two and a half weeks and three birthday parties to go before I can draw more funds and I have A Hundred and One Bucks of Fun left.  However, for some reason, when I counted through my cash, I found I had $7 extra.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe I found it rolling around in the dryer, my kids aren't as careful as they should be. Or, it could have come from the Honey Bun the cash fairy who watches over a very special orchard of money trees. She might have left it.  At any rate, I put it in the Treat Jar.

I want to tell you how meals have gone since Thanksgiving.  It hasn't been great.  We've had strep throat, board meeting, work Christmas parties and all kinds of other chaos going on.  The best dinner we had was for a daughter's birthday.  Grandparents and Heba contributed Italian sausages and eclairs, brothers made sauces, sister made her first batch of brownies by herself.

I should clarify that I'm only going to list dinners because breakfast and lunch are pretty standard around here.  Breakfast is usually whole grain toast (from the ghetto store where I pa a buck a loaf for it), hot chocolate (just add water but it is and a tasty mix I buy in bulk), and a piece of fruit (right now we have a big box of easy peel tangerines we're making our way through).  Lunch at home is a sandwich, mac and cheese or ramen noodles, plus some sort of fruit of veggie.  Lunch at school is yogurt or bagels (both from the ghetto), a home made treat, more fruit, a hand full of nuts, something savory like tortilla chips or dried flavored seaweed.

• Friday:  Straight Leftovers
• Saturday - Homemade Personal Pizzas, sweet potato bread
• Sunday - Sick kids - Turkey Tortilla Soup
• Monday - Birthday Dinner - Spaghetti and penne pasta, marinara and Alfredo, garlic bread, salad, Italian sausage, soda, brownies, eclairs, ice cream!
• Tuesday - Summer squash, hamburgers, french fries, salad
• Wednesday - Thanksgiving leftovers again
• Thursday - Fend for yourself - Mom and Dad on a date

So, I have a hundred and one bucks left for two and a half weeks.  Should be okay, although I don't have a plan yet for the birthday parties and accompanying dinners.  Also, I have two more birthday dinners to host between now and then.  I plan to spend $30 on Bountiful Baskets to keep our steady stream of produce.  I went looking for cold cereal this week and actually left the store and my basket of groceries behind when I pondered how much "real food" I could purchase for the sum I had planned to lay down for Puffy Pops or whatever the heck I was going to buy.

Weekends are the hardest times to conserve food funds.  It's like we're addicts to eating out, picking up odds and ends at the market, stopping at the convenience store more than we should.  Maybe there is a 12 step program for people like us. 

Next up, my plan for the hundred and one.