At Home

As a stay at home mother I spend lots of time with my kids.  It sounds like it'd be great, right?  But really it just means I spend more time cleaning up after them.  It also means that I'm crafty, as much out of necessity as desire.  With me staying at home with our three kids it means the five of us have only one modest income.  Luckily, it also means that I have plenty of time to find ways to cut costs and have fun doing it!

Here I'll explore my adventures cutting costs in the kitchen (which is unfortunate for you because I'm a terrible cook), saving money around the house, my renewed interest in sewing, keeping children happy WITHOUT buying new toys, and all things generally crafty!

For years my family ate quick, mostly prepackaged meals like hamburger helper, boxed potatoes, canned fruit, veggies, and beans, and the like.  We did this because it was fast and easy.  It was also expensive.  I know that convenience cooking is, well, convenient.  But one of the easiest ways to cut your monthly budget is to cut your food costs.  I'm always looking for an easy way to prepare these convenience foods from scratch.  I'm not much for trying fancy recipes, but when I can, I will try to prepare as much as I can ahead of time, and store it to make things easier for me later.

There's no more generic a statement you'll hear than 'saving money around the house.'  There really are about a million ways to do this, but generally it goes back to the 3R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Yep, I'm notorious for this.  Expect to see a lot of this.

Oh, and sewing.  Well... its just fun.  I like new clothes, but I don't like that they never fit right.  I used to sew my own clothes as a preteen and I'm not sure why I ever stopped, really.  So I'm going to give it a shot again.  This might be the best thing I ever do. 

Or it might be a train wreck.

And, of course, since I spend nearly every minute of my day involved with my children I can't leave them out of the discussion.   I'm always trying to find ways to entertain them without spending much money (or without spending ANY if I can help it).  I'm also always on the market for new and fun crafty projects to do with them, or do alone and claim I was 'testing' it before I tried it with them.

I can tell already we're going to have a lot of fun here!

~Nicole