Hi Cares, I just read the whole thread.... whew. you've been busy!! Apologize, I collected posts to reply to. I'm a SAHM, with home daycare in Canada...welcome to the club.So it's gonna be long....
Steam veggies for baby snacks they love it!!! And it's good vitamins. And cost effective.
Home made soup frozen in appropriate sizes. Maybe quart for the family, pint for your lunch.
Pasta dishes, frozen in lunch sized containers
Buy a quart of yogurt and serve small servings to the daycare kids. Big savings over buying the individual servings
I echo making your own soup. It's better for you and the children, and tastier. For babies, you can blend it smooth easily.
I started making my own yogurt. I fet the 750 gr plain yougurt to start a 4L jug of 3% milk. Use the crock pot. 24 hours later I have approx 3L of yogurt, and I keep the whey for smoothies, muffins and pancakes. NO waste. You can flavor as you like. If you want I'll dig up the exact recipe. I only get the 750 g yogurt for every 4th batch.
I would really like to help you in anyway I can.
If you can build up a little bit of a stockpile and have a freezer I may be able to help you. In my post "Let the games begin a group of us are attacking the grocery budget.
Great thread, Cricket!
Do you have a Sam's or Costco near. I am ignorant on Canada's Bulk buying store equivalent. I buy the size #10 cans of tomato sauce for $2.47 a can~that is NOT a typo. There are about 11 cups of sauce in there. Open it up and pour it into a large pot and add minced onion and bell pepper and cook on a lowish temp until the vegetables are soft. Add a little brown sugar to taste and salt pepper if needed. Cool it a little and pour it into ziploc freezer bags or canning plastic bowls(the square ones from ball for the freezer have measuring notching on them for easy measuring of portion sizes) and freeze them and when you are ready that morning(or evening before, put in fridge overnight) pull out what you need and thaw and use like manwich. Even if you use 2 cups per pan you still get 5 pans for the $2.47 plus the cost of onion, bell pepper and brown sugar(which is really a pantry stockpile freebie right?)
I really feel like you have already had the frugal mindset you just need to tweak it just a little like the rest of us and squeeze out that last bit of change.
Envious of US food prices. I will need to check on the #10 can but I think it's almost 5x that here.
Went to Costco! Now I'm wishing we bought a bigger deep freezer! :dunce: lol
4 Diaper Genie refills. I tried living without. Found out with daycare, it's a NEED! lol
I don't use a genie, I've never owned one. We use grocery bags or produce bags. dirty diaper gets tossed on one of those, knotted and in garbage. Garbage goes out at end of day. Try it out. I always hate paying for something I'm going to just throw out.
Ya, that wasn't sitting well with me last night. The thing is though, with home daycare, I can't leave the kids and go to the hospital. If one of the dc kids gets hurt, it's call 911, the ambulance takes them away, I stay home with the rest of the kids, and call the parents to meet the ambulance at the hospital. If one my own kids gets hurt, I'd have to call 911 and I'd call the parents to come right away to get their own kids so I could go to the hospital. I'd also probably call another dc provider to come over so I could leave asap. that's the one thing about doing this business that I don't like. And hope and pray this situation never happens! Gah. But yeaaa..... then if my own kid gets hurt, I wouldn't have a car sitting here for me to get to the hospital. I'm not sure if my dc provider friend has an extra car that I could borrow (she's right down the road). I don't think so.
I agree with you, 911 is the way to go. If you are diligent, you won't have an incident to worry about. I've had 13 yeays experience, and the worst incident is a scrapped knee. Remember if you child has an accident, your dh is only 15 minutes away to help you out. We had dd break her arm at school, dh met her at the hospital, and a friends dad brought her. You can make it work, having that vehicle isn't the be all end all. I do have a van for daycare, but I need to get my kids to different places. A choice we made.
And hubby is going to take my car for a while and see if it saves us gas money or not.
Great idea!!!
really warming up to the idea of starting a small veggie garden. I watched this TED talk from an 11 year old boy discussing GMOs and the like, and it's fueled a fire to really start moving over to organic as much as possible. My town SUCKS for organic produce. I have a choice of organic bananas, and.... organic bananas. Ya. I feel like I should do what I can. I can start some small containers and grow easy to grow produce that we use often in the summer. Lettuce and peppers, perhaps. Maybe carrots too. Can I freeze any produce to hold over winter? I don't have a canner, and am not ready for that yet.
Trying to think of some cute and fun containers to use..... that are not easy for little hands to get in to! We don't have a deck at all. Nothing but lawn and privacy fence.
Oh, might start growing some herbs in my kitchen window too. I saw this idea to plant each herb it a little tin bucket (in various colours, so pretty and cheerful) and hang the buckets by their wire handles from a string attached across the window. So cute!
I do container gardening with tremendous success. It's not pretty, I have food grade buckets, but it's very efficient. Tomatoes, zucchine, pumpkins, peas, beans, lettuce, etc. going on 3 years success with it. Just keep adding compost
:furious:
Finally got LOC statement. Remember I put $1450 down on it last month. Well, it didn't all show up on the statement (I guess I paid some outside of the statement date boundaries), annnnd DH put quite a bit on it for the reno.... it went UP!!!!! DH prefers to put reno costs on the LOC, and I make big payments on it. I know next statement will show another $800 on it, plus $400 that I"ll pay next week. It'll go down. But this isn't what I was hoping to see.
The reno is allllmost done. I can't wait for it to be done, I need it for my sanity being stuck at home with little kids. They're going nuts too. We need a good play space for them. But all this spending is getting yucky. And we're doing all the work ourselves. Annnnd it's been 5 months since we started.
:weeping:
I hate that too. I figured if it's due on the 1st. Anything applied after the 1st is for the next month....wrong. For me, my LOC is due the 1st, but between the 2nd and 8th it is not paid toward the next bill, but the one due on the 1st. Their system is screwy. So now I stalk them online to see when the date due changes. THEN I give them money.