How I'm Trimming My Grocery Bill

Before I started OperationGet Shit Together, I think I was spending around $500 a month on groceries, maybe more. We were also eating out a lot, either because I bought food all willy-nilly and couldn't actually make many meals out of it or because I didn't end up cooking, letting the food go to waste.

Now I'm spending about $400 a month and we are rarely eating out for lunch or dinner. We have probably spent that savings on date nights, but I am 100 percent okay with that.

I was feeling good about myself until i found bloggers who only spend $40 a week for 2 people or even $200 for a family of four. Impressive, until I noticed that people were achieving that kind of savings by getting all their toiletries at the dollar store, cutting out things like alcohol, cheese, and bacon and replacing butter with margerine. You gotta do what you gotta do to make ends meet, but things will have to be unimaginably grim before I allow margerine to pass through these doors.

If you want to trim your bill even just a little, a couple simple steps will help.

1. Meal plan based on what's on sale. Check weekly ads for your favorite stores, take stock of what's on hand at home, and plan meals accordingly. Pro tip: plan meals with like ingredients. Something call for 1/2 cup buttermilk? You will have a lot leftover. Make a salad/slaw dressing with it, buttermilk pancakes for breakfast for dinner, buttermilk chicken. Better yet, make your own buttermilk. You get the point.

2. Throw a coupon in when you can, and/or take advantage of double ad days if available. A lot of coupons are for crap I am not interested in, but organic brands sometimes offer them if you sign up for their newsletters, and my local natural food store has a monthly coupon booklet.

3. Cook what you buy! This might require meal prep days, depending on your schedule. Make friends with your slow cooker, whatever you need to do so it doesnt go to waste.

4. Eat leftovers for lunch.

5. Get some low cost recipes in your repetoire. Shredded meats are your friend. E.G. - pork shoulder on sale? get 2-3 pounds and cook it low and slow and use the meat for tacos, sandwiches, over mashed potatoes, on nachos, on homemade pizza.

6. Stock up when prices are way low. Get your freezer in on the action.

7. Cook from scratch as much as you can. jarred sauces, packaged cookies, and the like will quickly drive up your bill

Number 1 is the first step, I think. I check the ads, put together my meal plan, and make my list on Saturdays.

I still buy organic cheese, sour cream, yogurt, and high quality butter. We still have beer or wine in the fridge. I go organic with meat as often as I can or go to a local grocer whose meat is not technically organic but is raised in the area without antibiotics or hormones. I buy mostly organic fruits and vegetables. and so on. Point is, we eat in much the same way as we did before but still manage to save some money.

Eat well, enjoy your food, and save a buck.

21 Day Challenge: Crap That's Been Cleaned

Remember when I said I already cleaned out some of the items on my crap cleaning challenge list? Here is photographic proof, mostly in the form of before shots. So, photographic proof of what a shitstorm it was.

 

Above you will find my hall closet, looking so messy and gross, and the contents of my hall closet after I pulled everything out. 

That's what I threw out, plus some give-away stuff not pictured, and I had a stack of equal size or bigger that actually belonged in other areas of the house, like four handbags! I also cleaned out the handbags and scored 3 lipglosses and 8 hairties, at least.

From my bedroom closet, I cleared out a stack of clothes that I don't wear anymore but decided to keep anyway and a couple bags of give-away items. The clothes I'm keeping are nice quality that maybe I'll be able to fit again someday or might want to give to someone. (Every time I buy something on ebay, I think back to the clothes I used to have that I wish I'd kept.) Those clothes were put into an underbed storage container, which of course I had to clean out first.

Now to finish my challenge, make another one for actually organizing all the stuff, and then allow myself to even think about starting some of the other projects looming over my head.

21 Day Crap Cleaning Challenge

Achieving results, y'all (via Forbes, who else)

I’m still doing a decent job of cooking regularly, planning meals and using coupons to save money where I can, and exercising more than I had been (which was not at all, so that’s like an easy A.)

Now I really have to get serious about organizing the apartment because even when it's clean, it still feels like a huge mess. I’m going to have to do this in phases and eventually totally reconfigure how we use our storage. 

I am getting serious, Jermaine!

First up, I have to get rid of all the extra crap. I thought one of those 21-day or some other number of days challenges would help, but I had to customize my own because nothing I found made sense for our space. For example, I don’t have a laundry room, or the luxury of devoting an entire cabinet to Tupperware.

Behold, my 21-day challenge crap cleaning challenge:

1.    Linen cabinet

2.    Craft cabinet

3.    Under kitchen sink

4.    Under bathroom sink

5.    Freezer

6.    Refrigerator

7.    Mail/Paperwork

8.    Bedroom closet – clothes

9.    Bedroom closet – drawers and shelves

10.  Utensil drawers

11.  Baking and spice cabinets

12.  Dishware cabinet

13.  Pots and Pans

14.  Hall closet

15.  Medicine cabinet/storage

16.  Media stand

17.  Under bed

18.  Handbag

19.  Work bag

20.  Car

21.  Balcony closet

Except I’ve already done four of these, so I guess it’s my 17-day crap cleaning challenge? And do I have to do this in order? I don’t want to. This is my customized challenge, so I say no!

After I clean everything out, I will devise a system for organizing what’s left. You know I’m already on my Pinterest game for this one.

Update on Those Bloody Shelves

They are finally up.

Where was our drill? We still don't know, but we borrowed one from my boo's brother. We didn't have the right bit to drill through the bracket so we could have holes that matched up with the studs. Improvisation was required.

Then, after we were finished, he found the correct bit in a bag.

The shelves look nice I guess, but one is about six inches farther to the left than I wanted it to be. I measured where I wanted them to go before I found the studs, and then once the studs were found, things got wonky real fast. Oh well.

This is my only real concern.

Are all my beautiful vintage cocktail glasses going to slide off and crash to the ground?

It's the Freakin' Weekend - Make Yourself a Drink

Summer is almost over! (Don't you dare tell me that it's already over because it's after Labor Day and kids are back in school. Don't you dare!)

 Before summer is actually gone, you should take an opportunity to enjoy its bounty. By that I mean, you should take some summer fruit and mix it with ice and alcohol before it is too cold and too cost prohibitive to do so.

Skills, I like to think I has them.

While in Miami, I felt like it was only natural that I drink copious amounts of rum-based beverages. I also insisted on stocking the condo with fruit, less because I was feeling health conscious and more because it seemed like the right thing to do in such a tropical environment. The rum and fruit came together with mint in a glorious union known as the mojito. I made classic mojitos, strawberry mojitos, and watermelon mojitos.(See above photo, obvi) I suggest you make some tonight, and if you don't know how, you're 'bout to know.

I have this sitting on my vanity. I don't do yoga. Get yours here.

First you will need to make a simple syrup. If you want to get fancy with some sort of flavor-infused simple syrup, please, go nuts. I am going to put the simple in simple syrup. It's basically one part water to one part sugar, brought to a boil until the sugar dissolves and then cooled. It keeps for awhile, so if you make too much, do not worry. This will give you a reason to make more drinks over the coming weeks. In fact, make too much.

Muddle 1.5 ounces of simple syrup in a glass with a whole mess of mint leaves and a wedge of lime. I don't have a muddler so I use a spoon. Muddle the shit out of that mint, lime, and syrup.Some recipes will tell you to use the juice of the lime, but all sorts of delicious lime flavors comes out of the rind as you muddle. Use the wedge.

I leave all the bits in, though they do get in the way, so if you must, take out the lime wedge. Then add 2 ounces of clear rum and a generous splash of club soda. Ice too. Mix and serve. To make the flavored kind, add some strawberry slices or scoops of watermelon (or whatever fruit you want to use. probably not apples, though) to the muddling step.

I'm so vain I thought this post was about me and not the drinks.

That's it! Easy! Go get drunk!

The Chronicles of Hairnia

If you know me in real life, you know that I have a ridiculous amount of hair. (Most of) my hairs are thick and wavy, and there are a lot of them. They are also greying rapidly, which is introducing a new, wiry texture into the mix.

This may as well be a picture of me, only I have more hair

In spite of all this hair and yet also because of it, I am a pretty low maintenance chick. There is too much hair to ignore altogether, and it looks good when I put in the effort. I mean, I didn't win "Best Hair" in 8th grade for no reason. However, when it's been awhile since my last cut, it can take me 60-90 minutes to blow it out. I won't lie and say I don't have that kind of time, but I'd rather spend it watching Bravo.

it had been awhile, and that was no laughing matter

Given all of this, it is of utmost importance that I go to a stylist that can take out some of the weight and style it in a way that looks good wavy, curlyish, or blown out. All this while avoiding the grow-out crisis - about two weeks after visiting the salon, the top of my head gets this strange, fuzzy, puffy quality as the hairs grow out.

It took 10 minutes to wash by this point.

success!

However, a good haircut is only half the battle. There are also the products and every day styling to deal with. During Memorial Day weekend I visited a battleground the likes of which I had never seen - Miami. I armed myself with frizz-ease serum, frizz-ease hairspray, and gel.

frizz-ease serum, some gel, and hairspray. and i was drunk

I was very pleased with the performance of the frizz-ease and other products. By 3:30 a.m., after dancing, sweating, and a drunken pizza run, it pretty much looked the same. I would recommend the serum to any curly headed people existing in very humid places. I divided my hair in three sections and used one pump of serum for each section, but most people could get by with one pump for all their hairs.

I also took the advice of my soulmate Susan who told me to swim in the ocean and let the ocean's salt water do its work. Let's compare.

salt water, and I was not drunk

It's a lot frizzier, obviously, but it photographs okay. The texture was not great in real life, and it got super tangled. Would I recommend it? Mmm, I would say if you don't have time to wash and style your hair after a day at the beach, don't sweat it! Let the public see what real "beach waves" look like. If you do have the time, wash your hair.

Do you have thick hair, thin hair, lots of thin hairs, a few thick hairs? Wavy, bone straight? What is your hair routine and maintenance like? Spill ya guts.

thanks for the pic, Babylon Sisters!

Trying to Get Lost in Fullerton

This Saturday I forcibly removed myself from the couch and went for a walk. Although the trail looked like something one might see on a hike, for some reason I just can't bring myself to call it that. A walk seems more accurate, albeit a hot and dusty walk along a dirt path.

I walked the "Lost Trail," which I came across on the interwebs after some searching for local walking trails. The name implied that the trail was perhaps secluded, but I figured it was a misnomer. I asked google its opinion, and it told me that the trail was an escape from suburbia! The idea of this delighted me.

My quest to lose myself on Lost Trail in an escape from suburbia began at a most suburban setting - the Fullerton Municipal Golf Course. I walked a short distance on a different trail to get to the Lost Trail start and was surrounded by suburbia for much of the trip.

Golf course to my left and condos and a hospital to my above right

Once I reached the tunnel to take me under a boulevard and to Lost Trail, the apartment complexes and condominums faded from view, although I could still hear the roar of traffic down the boulevard I had taken to get there.

This was one creepy ass tunnel

On the other side of the tunnel, the tanned OC Gods gifted me with a little creek. I walked along it for a bit, wondering if I was on the Lost Trail or just getting lost trying to find it.

I quickly found my way and just as quickly realized that while the trail may have been lost at one point,  it was now found and sat squarely in the middle of high-end suburbia.

Does this make you feel lost?

I agree! Though, I think this was built for "adverts"

what is that I see in the distance?!

Pumping for oil, that's what!

Although I had been set on escaping suburbia, I decided not to let the presence of large ranch-style homes, gardeners and landscapers of said homes, and manicured soccer fields and golf courses bum me out. I accepted the surroundings for what they were and had fun trying to think of as many "lost and found" jokes as I could. I wrote this blog entry in my head as I walked, none of which is actually within this post as I promptly forgot it.

You can tell this house has a pool, and I was ready to find myself in it

There was some trash and graffiti, but unlike the taggers of Hermit Falls, these kids encouraged me every step of the way. And are avid readers, apparently.

If you can't tell, it says "you is important" and you IS

You is also smart

The walk wasn't particularly long nor was it very secluded, but I enjoyed myself. I saw dragonflies, birds, lizards, squirrels, and butterflies. I also saw a lot of horse shit but only one horse. There wasn't very much shade though, so it was freaking hot. The city website rated the trail as Easy/Moderate, and although I have no idea what that means, if it was a 90 degree day that shit would be hard as fuck.

I have decided to implement an arbitrary rating system for my outdoor experiences here in Southern California. To the Lost Trail I award 3 bags of Haribo gummy bears (out of 5) because it's really close to my house, tells me I'm smart, and has lots of birds and stuff.

The New People's Champ of Making Parties

I threw myself a party once. It went pretty well. I've arranged birthday happy hours, which involves little more than picking a location and sending an appointment in Outlook, and those went well too. I think it's because of those, um, "events" that my sister decided to turn to me to request a party for her birthday this year. She asked me before Christmas, giving me plenty of time to plan a party for somewhere around March 31st.

Did I mention she wanted it to be a surprise? Yes. She requested a surprise.

If you want great ideas on party decor, planning, and the like, there are many online resources to help you and also make you feel like a loser for not being able to execute all of the fabulous ideas, even when you start planning months in advance. I made a fabulous surprise party for my sister in April, and it was perfect. Not because I implemented all the million+one ideas that I found on the trusty interwebs, but because the end result was beautiful and great fun. I'm pretty sure that is more important than custom appetizer picks and candy buffets with professionally calligraphied (that IS a word) labels.

See my inspiration. I was feeling pretty ambitious.

I wanted flowers in mason jars and candles in big hurricane vases. I wanted to wake up knowing how to make a flower arrangement. I wanted an unlimited budget. I wanted!

I wanted to serve a few cocktails and mocktails. I NEEDED a photo wall and planned to use fabric for the background. And who doesn't want tissue flowers or poofs or lanterns or all of the above?

Other items on my (ideal) party to-do list included: finding a venue that was wheelchair accessible, coming up with activities to give us something to do (some family parties have been a little...stiff), creating the perfect playlist, getting enough indoor seating and tables (a party in Portland in April - using the outdoors is no guarantee), figuring out a way to keep the kids happy, creating and executing the perfect menu, and actually pulling off the surprise!

Here are some pictures of the actual event:

L to R, T to B: flowers and notecards for birthday wishes; buffet; bar tables with more flowers and notecards; and appetizer table with Wii (that didn't get played due to abundant sunshine)

The decor ended up being heavy on the green and light on the blue in spots, and heavy on the blue in others. We ended up not having any pretty pitchers to serve the drinks with. I think we used a regular ole' cooler when we realized we didn't have galvanized drink tubs. The indoor activities were unnecessary because the surprisingly amazing weather drew everyone outside. Lastly, I had way too much food and seating because some party guests weren't able to come.

Look at that face.

But who cares? There is definitely a middle ground between party perfection and something with as much thought and effort as a bad frat party.

The look on her face was worth every moment of planning and every plan gone awry.

We had good food, good music, great friends and family, and lots of laughs. My sister Sarah acted as head chef, and together we made potato salad, collard greens, green salad with beets and blood oranges, spicy coleslaw, carmelized onion dip, and taco dip (I promise its good). My brother-in-law provided delicious pulled pork, and we also had a fancy meats, cheeses, and olive platter.

Liz's friends helped us mix up a pom-lemonade vodka cocktail, and also had beer, sodas, and sparkling water.

It was a freakin' feast.

 
I brought what I thought was enough decorative paper to be a backdrop for the photo wall. It was not. So, no backdrop. And you can see the tape holding up the custom sign I made. Meh, what are you gonna do?

The photo wall was so fun. Those pictures are my favorite from all the party pics!

Aw, mother and daughters! Let's just pretend that my mom's eyes are open. 

Also, did I tell you that the sign is gold because it was Liz's golden birthday? She turned 31 on the 31st (of March).

Here are Liz and some party guests enjoying the day. It was so sunny and beautiful Liz could hardly see. One thing I love about Portlanders is their enthusiam for nice weather. Since most times of the year the sun rarely shines, people waste NO time in moving a party outside on a nice day. Even if that means sitting on the ground, which some people did.

Also, please note the adorable tots. My cousin is showing off her manicure, if that wasn't obvious.


We didn't get any pictures of The Liz Quiz, a trivia game I made up about my sister that I forced everyone to participate in, even my friend's boyfriend who had met Liz for the first time that day. I was quite pleased with myself.

If I do say so myself, I made a pretty badass party. Normal, not ready for a magazine shoot, but badass nonetheless. I am a normal party making champion.