25 days and counting down...

Okay.. so day 1 down! lol! I've been thinking about doing this challenge for awhile. In fact Mary over at
OWLHAVEN did this in September with her husband and 10 kids!! Yes you read that right 10 kids!! Her day to day blogs were inspiring as she has a huge garden so much canning was going on that month along with many other homemade items. Her goal was to spend under $200, however, she had spent an extra $200 the month before stockpiling items. She felt her pantry was full enough to give it a go, and she pulled it off!! Amazing.

Also over at another one of my favorite blogs Precious at Frugal makes Cents she had talked about the same thing I am here, using up her stockpile. She had some of the same guidelines that I did basically stating that if she could get something for rock bottom price she was going to get it. She is simply going to take the next 6 months to use her stockpile. Easy enough.

I have been banned from shampoo purchase and cleaning product purchase so that does leave me with less to coupon anyway. (I have bought some shampoo/cleaning products but only stuff I could get for free)

My first day at this!!
Yesterday was my first day, I hadn't announced it on my blog yet. I wanted to put some real thought into it. What rules/guidelines I wanted to follow and I still have to work on the budget for this. I've found plenty of milk for $1.99 so I'm confident that the maximum amount of milk will be $6 this month although sometimes my son goes through a ton of milk.. hmmm might be more like $10. still not bad. As far as Mary at Owlhaven goes I would have spent the $200 just in milk if I had 10 kids. I think she had gift cards and did some trades here and there if I remember correctly.. not for just milk but for other supplies as well.

Okay so Day 1 went like this.
Breakfast
Cereal or leftover big breakfast from Sunday

Lunch
leftover dinner from Monday or Onion soup with bread and cookies

Dinner
Shake and Bake Pork Chops, steam broccoli/cheese, cranberry sauce, and potatoes. The potatoes were supper yummy. A neighbor told me how she makes them and it came out really good. Basically she cubes up potatoes, mixes them with EVOO and a packet of onion soup mix. Bake at 350-400 (depends on your time frame) until tender. I decided to start using the stockpile so I scrounged up some salad dressing I had gotten awhile back for free. It's some Jalapeno red pepper ceasar, weird huh? It had some oil in it and some flavor with a kick.

Okay Day 1 done.. 24 to go and already I'm planning a few shopping trips.. one for today, a couple for tomorrow, and actually one for next week.