One Week Challenge - The summary.

What we would call our blog videos had we done one each day:

Day 0: This is exciting! 

Day 1: Isn’t this fun!

Day 2: Look at all the cool stuff we made!

Day 3: Wait.. What have we got left?

Day 4: Yep. We’re out of food. 

Day 5: Sick of pork (We’re effing hungry!)

Day 6: What am I supposed to do with just carrots?

Day 7: Hangry!/ Can we go to Mandarin tomorrow?

What we used from the “pantry staples”:

• A lot of flour
• Soy sauce, spices, ketchup, vegetable oil. All in small amounts 
• Sugar, baking powder, jam, vinegar.. again, not a lot
• Lemon juice, gravy sauce packet
• 4 servings of pasta
• Oatmeal (we figured you can get a box of 10 for $1.99), 6 packets
• 2 servings of white rice
• Couple teabags
• Cooking chocolate bar
• All of the free takeaway butters
• Vegetable broth (make your own free from veggie scraps - we keep a bag of scraps in the freezer and when it gets full enough you just boil it with water)
• 2 Popcorn bags (again figured 1.99 for a box) 

Some things that were free for us:

• Chicken noodle soup from grandma 
• Swiss chalet dinner and pop from grandma
• Free coffee and tea at our works
• Candy and mints at our works
• Free birthday cake
• Those little packets of butter and ketchup from restaurants 

So, what did we learn?

• Eating on a budget seems to make you eat less. Maybe this week has helped to shrink our stomachs/ portion sizes a little? Better for diets as basically no snacking
• You learn workarounds - I had one bottle of pop I made last 4 days. Makes me wonder whether I need to drink a whole one in one sitting next time
• Rice only and salad only is not filling
• We liked marinating meat, homemade bread, poor mans ice cream (smoothie in the freezer).. all new stuff that we tried
• Only one protein all week is too much. Need to break it up with at least another flavour
• We learned we can make some new things, and had some fun making a couple. When you make it yourself it seemed to taste better too
• Prepping makes all the difference. Going forward we need to grocery shop on a Friday and both prep and cook a week of meals on the weekend as we just cannot be bothered to cook through the week. Prepping and portioning the veggies and fruits made it easy to pack a healthier lunch in the morning too
• We learned we CAN only buy what we need if we grocery shop each week anyways (why buy 10lb of potatoes if you might end up throwing 1/4 bag out)
• Our $35 shop +pantry staples wasn’t enough for 42 meals. We think $50 a week would be doable though
• Eating on a budget and being hungry means you day revolves around food. Watching the clock until it’s an evceptable time for the next meal. I had moments at work where I was so hungry I couldn’t focus and went and raided the candy bowl again 
• Team effort and staying strong was important. The cravings and the temptations have been so awful at the end but together we kinda talk the other off the ledge
• We’re dreaming about cheese and pizza. We’re having terrible discussions and thoughts about blowing the remaining $ we would have spent on a fast food feast

Overall I’m happy we did the challenge, although I’m not sure James agrees. We didn’t have enough food, especially if we didn’t count the pantry staples in the beginning rules, but I’m happy we learned stuff and actually completed it without caving on the last day. We have some tips and tricks that will influence our future shops, including knowing we can basically half our previous normal grocery budget by simply stopping at two stores instead of just the high-priced Zehrs across the street. 

Let me know of any one week food challenges you’ve tried, or want us to try!

One Week Challenge - The Final Days

Friday-

Rather uneventful other than being hungry. Breakfast for me was the last of the biscuits and freebie butter packets and for James a banana and oatmeal. 

For lunch and dinner James took the rice and pasta meals, and my work day was chaos so I ended up not eating besides some mini chocoate eggs that someone had put out in the work candy jar. James tried to fill up on free coffees, but we both came home starving. 

We had some bread and a package of popcorn before bed to try and help fill us up.. not the most nutritious of meals unfortunately. We would not have been able to do this challenge without the pantry staples for sure - proves that you do need to spend like 10% of your normal food budget each week on these pantry staples, plus soup cans, veggie cans and more. 

Saturday -

This day can be summarized by “Hangry”. We had a sad breakfast of oatmeal and bread with jam, and decided to head out for a great idea... free samples at Farmboy! We were going for a drive anyway and it was enroute, so we parked and went in. I guess at 10am though they don’t think anyone wants free samples of cheese or sausage so we hugely disappointed. Poor James has never been legit angry from being hungry before! The drive for the rest of the day was wondering if restaurant gift cards counted in the challenge..

For lunch I had the ramen packet and a big cup of juice and James blended up the remaining carrots and spices with some vegetable broth for a spicy carrot soup. We decided to use vegetable broth because this is an easy freebie to make from any veggie table scraps you normally have. A bit of bread to dip in the soup and he was finally almost full. 

 

We were so hungry we decided we need to do something to take our mind off our bellies. I dragged a sick James to the grocery store to do next week’s trip and we were thrilled to find some free kielbasa, cracker and chip samples at our local butchers. We tried to shop smart and were pretty proud of all we bought to get through next week. 

For dinner we made up 2 more servings of pasta and the remaining pasta sauce. James sprinkled some crumbled bread on top. I miss cheese.coiple cups of the last juice and the remaining half of the baking chocolate and we completed the challenge!

One Week Challenge - Day 4 and 5

Wednesday -

We cut up all the remaining strawberries the night before so they were portioned and ready to go. I grabbed one and some oatmeal for breakfast and James had strawberries, yogurt and a wafer. I had some cucumber snacks and stole a lollipop at work from the communal treat bin, although to be honest I was still hungry. 

For lunch, we enjoyed another new creation.. lemon juice and spices in a baked pork chop with mashed potatoes and a packet of gravy. It was really tasty and a change from “normal” work lunches. 

Dinner for James and I was the last of the pasta and pork bits. I think we’ll be making pasta again in other weeks! We had a little tv time and polished off the chips and wafers. 

Thursday - 

We are certainly getting close to the end! Another bowl of strawberries and oatmeal for me, and James is starting to get desperate with the last of the strawberries with a pudding. 

We made more meals on Wednesday night, and tried “stir fry” of carrots, cucumbers and a pork chop with rice with soy sauce, which made 2 servings. Then also made 2 servings of pasta with some nice (not from scratch) sauce, cut up carrots and the last pork chop.

For lunch I had the last salad with vinegar and James had one of the rice concoctions. For James’ early dinner he had one of the spaghettis. 

Now remember how grandma sent me home with some free soup and applesauce? Remember how I said we would save those for next week after the challenge? Well.. we caved and had soup for dinner tonight (8pm). James and I are SO hungry today. We figured they still counted in the challenge as free food, but we’re scraping the barrel! 

Learnings:

-So. Many. Dishes. Meal prepping and making from scratch means a lot of dishes during that process, but when James and I each come home with 2-3 containers.. our poor dishwasher! (Thanks mom and dad for all the containers for Xmas!)

-We are out of everything so it’s probably easier to list what we still have.. a bit of milk, a smidge of butter, half a jar of pasta sauce, carrots, a ramen packet, all the juice (made 2 containers) and pantry staples (although we’ve killed the soy sauce and 50% of a big flour bag)

-This is seriously hard to do when surrounded by food and snacks you do have in the house. We’ve been very good with no cheating besides the soup, but with a freezer full of veggies, a fridge with lots of apples and yogurt and drawers full of snacks and chocolate.. it’s so tempting here near the end to just grab something 

- We now see bananas as treats.. and look forward to a different protein next week. 

As a final learning, don’t do a food challenge like this while also starting a new excercise regime (60 day fitness), as your hunger goes up and your available cook time goes down. Poor James. 

One Week Challenge - Day 2 and 3

Monday – back to the work week!

It was nice having everything prepared for myself in the early morning, so I packed a yogurt with strawberries and some biscuits (with the freebie butter samples you get at restaurants or Timmies). For lunch, I took a large salad with vinegar (I couldn’t finish it!) and a schnitzel (with those freebie ketchup packets). I drank water all day, although I was fighting a headache the whole time so I think I might be having the caffeine/sugar withdrawls…

James did the banana/strawberry pancakes for breakfast, some soda bread with jam and a slice of Free birthday cake at work for lunch, and enjoyed the schnitzel with wedges for dinner.

I don’t normally eat dinner, or at least only eat a small one. At the beginning of this, we made a rule about “nothing goes in our mouth unless it’s free” this week, so I snuck in a nice dinner with Grandma tonight (who never lets me pay)! From grandma’s house I also brought home big bowls of soup and applesauce (which we will save and eat next week). I’m mentioning these, because if you are struggling financially, you can always try and have a meal or two with your family for free. They may not be able to give you a loan, but they can usually help you save on a meal or two!

Tuesday –

I had a breakfast same as yesterday, and some cucumber slices for my snack. Hubby did the pancakes for breakfast and some soda bread and salad for lunch. We both get coffee and tea free at work, so have had a couple every day as well.

My lunch and his dinner today is another first for us… Homemade pasta! What an experience, but it turned out like pasta! Tastes different than the store-bought version, but I don’t need to add butter to it for taste like I normally do. With it we have an 24 hour marinated porkchop each (ketchup, spices, and soy sauce) that was then baked. My dinner will be a combination of pasta leftovers from today’s lunch (too large a portion for me) and the little bit of leftover salad from my lunch yesterday.

Tonight will also be a bit of snackage – a bowl of ketchup chips for me and some strawberries and wafers for him.

Learnings so far:

• You use a lot of flour making stuff from scratch
• We are out of yogurt and eggs already
• I need some more sugar/caffeine in my life
• We CAN make new stuff successfully!
• This is fun!

One Week Challenge - Day 0 and 1

To kick things off we got out our whiteboard and wrote out a basic plan of attack for the week. I work a normal 8-5 job, but James works 12-8, so we kinda have to do as much prep as we can on the weekends, so we tried to plan some of that in too. 

Saturday afternoon after our shop we were excited to get going (even though at 1 wasn’t going to be until Sunday)! We made strawberry & banana pancakes with a chocolate drizzle (3 servings), a soda bread loaf and a bunch of tiny biscuits... all from scratch! We were pretty happy with how our first-time creations came out!

Then Sunday was a busy cooking/prep day! We started off each with a strawberry yogurt smoothie with cut bananas and some crushed strawberry wafer cookies, tea, water, and biscuits with jam for breakfast. 

2 potatoes and spices made a nice bundle of wedges (we used our air fryer but they would have been good in the oven too). The lettuce head, cucumber and a bit of carrots made three big salads and 2 side salads with lots of carrots to spare for future challenge dinners. 

Then we were eager to have some fun.. could we make schnitzel? We used one egg, flour and spices, and crumbled up some of the soda bread. We made as many schnitzel as 1 egg would do, which ended up being 4. 2 of these would later become dinner. 

For lunch, we did some soda bread with butter as we weren’t really hungry. 

Dinner was really tasty with pork schnitzel, salad and wedges for us both, followed by a yogurt & strawberry smoothie with wafer cookie base, all having sat in the freezer for an hour. Like poor man’s ice cream, it was really tasty! Great end to our day one challenge. 

One Week Challenge - $5 a day - The shop!

Starting off our $35 a week challenge with the grocery shop(s). We spent total just under $35.

We started with a list (as you should) and with a plan to go first to a new store near us (which will become our “local butcher” and Walmart. Off we go for store #1 and their “one day sale”.

What a zoo! There were deals to be had though in the meat section, as it seemed nearly every chicken or pork had a sale sign up. We wandered the store and decided that 10 pork chops for $10 seemed like a really good deal.. and though it was a big chunk of the weekly budget, we all know James needs some meat in his meals to feel full! He was dreading a vegetarian week on this budget so we were happy to add them to the cart. Add in 2 for 1.50 cucumbers, a head of lettuce and a bag of baby carrots for .99 each and 3/$5 strawberries and we checked out.

Quick note - weigh the options. A 3 pack of romaine was on for a good price, but the head of lettuce was cheaper and we won’t have any waste.

Next stop we decided on a Freshco instead. We spent a bit of time wandering here and picked up bananas, eggs, potatoes and I used a coupon for a free bag of instant rice. The store wasn’t that nice so we decided to round off the trip with Walmart after all. We’ve since decided this Walmart is not for us as it was extremely short on actual food or most of our “no name” options. We got yogurt, snacks 1 ramen noodle pack and pasta sauce and headed home.

To round off our trip with the extra money we had left, we factored in 1 bag of milk, 1 mostly full butter brick and a frozen juice. Everything else in our house was now off limits, besides the previously mentioned “pantry staples” like flour and oatmeal and ketchup.

One Week Challenge - $5 a day Groceries

After watching a string of budget busting, live on $1 a day video blogs, hubby and I decided to try our own.. but something a little more sustainable than these $1 a day meals where the people are still hungry or only eating rice and beans and pasta. 

We started with an idea and some rules. $5 a day for both of us / $35 a week total. This does not include buying “pantry staples” which we are assuming every house likely has, with a photo below. This include flour, sugar, salt, vinegar and condiments. Pasta, rice, oatmeal and various spices. Baking powder, some sort of oil, sauce or gravy packets. And probably some tea or coffee. All of these are easy add-ons to normal grocery trips to replace and last a long time when you do buy them. Often we buy a few of something if it’s a great deal or we have a coupon, which then waits in pantry to be used later (as evident by our ketchup/relish/mustard pack not yet opened)!

Also pictures are some freebies - like jam made from your grandma or condiments/butter samples from restaurants or Timmies runs (always take extras when you see them!) 

Then, everything not to be used for this week’s challenge was separated off in fridge and cupboards. We’ve ended up with one drawer and half a fridge of what we’re “allowed” to use! 

Then.. off to grocery shop! (See next blog)

Request Coupons for Stuff You Like - batch 1

Happy Mail Day!  Every few months you can request coupons from some favourite suppliers to help with groceries (of which coupons can be harder to find than say cleaning supplies or candles), and when they come in the mail I call it my happy mail day! Today I received 4 envelopes.

Land O’Lakes - Kozy Shack - I said I adored their rice pudding through the online contact ya, but needed some help with bringing them into our monthly budget. They sent .55 coupons. They emailed to say you can request coupons twice a year. 

Johnsonville - Save $2. I emailed them and requested “any and all available coupons”. They emailed back letting me know they can send coupons every 90 days if requested. 

Walmart  - Walmart.com/coupons. Order often (I think I do twice a month). They send you a sheet that you cut up. I’ve used these coupons outside of Walmart. 

Bolthouse Forms - I emailed them through the contact us page praising their products and asking for any coupons. They’ve sent me $1 off any product. 

I think between Jan and Feb I’ve sent maybe 20 email forms out to various companies requesting coupons. Some of my “rejections” were below.

Maple Lodge Farms - please sign up for our newsletter or follow on social media for any coupons.

Becel - Response was from a “brand ambassador” saying sign up for newsletter and Facebook/Twitter for upcoming promotions.

I’ll post more blog entries as I get more happy mail days! 

New Kitchen Counters - a Warning!

Suggestion and rant time!

We built our beautiful Ikea kitchen, and got a quote from them on both laminate, quartz and granite options. We wanted to do the best we could for resale value without breaking the bank. The Ikea quote for laminate was good, but the other options were way overblown. We started research on independent options. We shopped around, went to showrooms, and eventually settled on one place that was recommended by a family friend. They had the best quote for quartz by a mile, and promised to install everything in our time frame. We borrowed some samples and finally chose a really pretty grey with sparkly flecks (man-made, not natural).

Cue the problems. 

1. When I went in to book and pay for the countertops, I found the sample I was holding on a different rack for the next price bracket lower. I brought it over to the lady and she stumbled over herself before eventually agreeing it was the same piece, and she’d honour the cheaper price for me. She reeked of marijuana, and I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could… I paid a half deposit and felt pretty proud of myself for savings us some more money by doing a quick look around the showroom. We would have nice counters installed for $2220.
2. They came one day and measured everything. Promised to cut out and seal in the sink too, and when they were done on install day we would be thrilled. No red flags yet.
3. They were late on the day of install, and it was one guy and a friend who both didn’t look strong enough to lift granite. We had my parents come over for backup and basically tried to stay out of their way for the few hours. When they were finished, they tried to head out as fast as possible. We then noticed a major issue – we had different colour counters! Apparently they differed from batch to batch, and as we had a join line, it was very pronounced. We also found another smaller counter piece was also the different shade. More than half of our kitchen was the “wrong” colour. We had not been told about these variances, especially because you can be super-accurate with man-made quartz.
   
   
   
   
   
   

We showed them. The one guy kept saying “No it’s just a shadow”.. We were getting angrier. Eventually he agreed they were different colours and told me to call the office the next day to schedule a replacement.

4. Then when I called, they said they would replace the largest piece which was the actual wrong colour, which happened to be the piece the sink was now glued into. We didn’t want to risk damage to the sink and replace that large piece, but they were not offering any other solutions.
5. I called every day for a week.. eventually I got a hold of the lady who said they had roof leaks which caused the communication delay. Then another excuse, then another. She didn’t want to put anything in writing at first, so eventually I resorted to only emailing to try and protect myself.
6. At the end of the day, they offered me a discount of $665 to leave it as is, and I said no.. come back and replace it then. She emailed saying “what would you like to pay”. We settled on $1243 total, and we just have to have placemats over the join area.

So, what have we learned?

My husband jokes – “How to save money on countertops: Have them screw it up”, but it’s hard to tell whether a company will be good or not to work with in the beginning. I did the research and they did have good reviews, plus our family friend had used them in the past. And it’s hard to judge whether a company will have a lack of professionalism until you’re in deep with them, but my first meeting with weed-lady should have been a clue. They did a lovely job of the cuts and corners though, and the slab pieces are really pretty. 50/50 quality/experience. 

All I can suggest is to have multiple meetings with a company before signing on the dotted line, and to even try to price match a good quote with a place you don’t get the heebie-jeebies from. In hindsight, I should have taken the borrowed sample piece we liked to different companies (along with the quote) and see what they had comparable. I think if we had pushed a little harder at other places, we could have gotten what we needed there.

Building a Kitchen from Ikea As-Is

Shorter post as I literally could write pages on this topic!

Hubby and I bought a new house that had a functional, although ugly kitchen. We always had a dream to have an Ikea kitchen, and thanks to Christmas presents from our families were able to make that happen last year.

There are lots of ways to start with an Ikea kitchen, but we did with an in-Ikea appointment and room builder. Then came the fun of playing on the computers (home and Ikea) to tweak the designs to perfection.

Eventually we settled on a couple options that maximized space, took advantage of the Kitchen event promotion (get up to 20% of your purchase back in Ikea gift cards) and snuck in some new built-in appliances. We were super excited!

We put all of the items on order right near the end of the event, and then printed out the itemized list you get which became our “Bible” for the next month. Free shipping included (which was worth its weight in gold!)

Then cue the car-rides! We basically spent 3-4 times a week driving to Ikea to shop in the As-Is section. As people were buying kitchen items all the previous month, the returns to this section grew daily too! For us, this meant we could shop the already-built pieces against our checklist, buy them for 50-75% off, and return the same untouched piece still sitting in our living room for full price next trip! We made Ikea trips a ritual and honestly found 1-2 pieces every time we went. Over the course of a month, we found nearly half of our kitchen in the as-is section.. a considerable savings!

Some tips:

1. Double and triple check dimensions! Don’t trust the As-Is sticker label. Once bought, you own it!
2. Obviously, check for damage. In some cases we came across marker or marks on the outside, but if we were sandwiching that piece against another, the marks wouldn’t be seen
3. Door fronts and panel pieces are here too! We saved a boatload on frosted glass door fronts and the long fridge side panel that were silly expensive at full price.
4. Bring a big car. This sounds basic, but even we had some struggles with a SantaFe when we found some of the big cabinets at As-Is.
5. Sign up for the IKEA Family. If you have a Family card, IKEA will honor a past sale up to 90 days after.  This means you have 90 days after buying your kitchen to buy all those extra pieces you forgot about later.
6. Ask for free extra pieces when you’re returning the “new” pieces... We ended up needing more L brackets, screws and small bits while installing, which you can get for free from the Returns dept. 
7. Don’t just stop at the cabinets! We found our sink here in the as-is section because it was missing an “accessories” box. Well, we walked over to Returns and requested the exact box for free, which was delivered to our home a week later. Half price on a sink for.. no reason!
8. Ask the staff.. We became regulars for that month and bugged the people in the side/receiving room each visit if we could see cabinets that hadn’t yet been priced (we found two cabinets this way).
9. When returning the new item, they will ask if you got the Kitchen Event discount, and for how much, as they will take it off of the refund amount for each piece you bring back. If they don’t ask.. don’t tell! 
10. Taking a month to buy As-Is kitchen pieces mean you will need to have SPACE somewhere to store them all! We ended up with one room just for the as-is built pieces, and the whole living room for the “to be built/building” pieces.

Playing the “I’m Broke!” Card

Roughly once a year, I challenge you to try and save some money everywhere you can. Make a dedicated effort for a week and see what you can change with expenses you would normally call “fixed” (excluding groceries and shopping).

Here’s some examples from my attempt this year:

1. We were paying $165 a month for 2 phone plans. Called my phone company’s Customer Care and Loyalty Team to explain that I’ve been a loyal Telus  subscriber for many years, but what we are paying for our phones is too much. I explained that I shopped around in my local mall and found plans in the $50 each range, and since my hubby and I were both out of contract (on month-to-month), we were considering making the change to “the other guys”. At first, she offered me a great deal on more data (for more money) but I pushed back explaining that I wanted to make our bill cheaper. She put me on hold for 10-15 minutes and came back with exactly what I asked for, plus a little a month for some data. Overall, our bill each month will now be in the $135 range. It took 20 minutes of my day to save us $360 a year in our phone bills.
2. Called our insurance company and spoke to a really nice lady who I played the “we’ve run into some financial difficulties and could really use your help” card with. She went through line by line for us in our car insurance and found a 5% discount we weren’t using. She told us she had more wiggle in the house policy, so we took a look at that line by line too and she found a bit extra we could save on, and applied a loyalty discount on top for us. This short phone call was able to save us $150 more a year on our policies.
3. Found out Netflix has different subscriber plans… I did not know this. While their rates are going up next month (again), I dropped us down to the 9.99 tier (instead of staying on the 13.99 tier). Next step to save money would be to cancel it entirely…
4. My husband and I each have our own bank account, and then a join account we share. For each account we were paying more than $11 a month in fee.. that adds up!  I went in and whined and they helped me out in understanding the different account tiers and we dropped down to the lowest tier without any change to how we use the accounts (how many transactions a month you’re allowed). Now we will be paying $4 a month instead! 

In total, I probably spent a half hour on everything above and in one year, it will save us $810.

Cineplex Family Favourites

Long time without an entry.. trying to get back into the groove of couponing/saving/sharing again!

Suggested from a co-worker, Cineplex has a great little deal on if you’re looking for something to do with the kiddos to kill some time on a Saturday; They call it Family Favourites.

It’s a movie on the big screen playing at 11am for only $2.99 a person. Usually it’s cheesy childhood favourites like The Land Before Time, but my hubby and I went on a little date the other day to see the new Smallfoot movie.

We spent a grand total of less than $6 to get in, smuggled in some drinks and sweets, and killed some time together.

One week it was the new Jumanji movie, and this weeks’ is The House with A Clock in its Walls.. so it seems to be a neat little mix of new and old movies.

And a bit of a feel-good ending? A portion of proceeds go toward supporting WE Charity, a youth empowerment movement that “brings people together and gives them the tools to change the world”.