Saving Money Challenge, Thoughts on the Pantry Challenge, and Goals For Next Week

I normally don't have weeks at work where I am pulling my hair out, but unfortunately this was one of those weeks.  Hopefully things will soon return back to normal, but in the meantime my grand plans of super frugality and grocery store domination have been scaled back!  In fact, this is all the grocery shopping I got done this week.  Do you think that clearance paper looks to Christmasy?  I was thinking I could use it for kids' birthday parties.  The apples were on clearance for $.59 a pound so I bought 6 pounds for crockpot applesauce.  It will go well with our turkey dinner.  The prices for milk and butter were crazy nuts, but I didn't have time to go to Trader Joe's.

Last weekend, I spent a lot of time organizing my pantry and my downstairs cleaning goods stockpile.  I do much better when I can see at a glance what I have.  This inspired me to make mocha quick bread and granola bars for the freezer.

I brought my lunch to work all week, except for one day when I worked at home and I didn't have to bring my lunch anywhere.  Actually, that day I was so busy I forgot to eat which was not a good thing.  I also took long walks with a friend 3 days this week.  DS and I are going to go swimming this weekend using our city pool pass.

When I'm not trying to save a buck or working, I've been pushing myself to get ready to enter this contest, which has a deadline of Feb. 1st.  Wish me luck, would you?

My goals for next week:

• Walk 4x swim 1x
• Get all of my handwritten pages typed up for the contest
• Cook a turkey and make freezer meals
• Sign up for the spring consignment sale & call the consignment store I am selling with now to see how I did.  Make arrangements to pick up what didn't sell.