Menu Planning: Step by Step Part 3 (Using Mealboard)

If you haven't already read the first part of this 3 part series, click here to check it out. This is a very basic, step by step instructional for how to be a successful menu planner. Part 1 covers the first steps (using both paper systems and MealBoard), part 2 covers how to set up your paper menu planning system, and part 3 tells you how to set up MealBoard and use it if you would rather have an automated ios program do all the hard work for you. 

The reason why menu planning is so important is that you can save an enormous amount of money without actually sacrificing the quality of your life. Let's say you eat out 3x per day for every day on a week. We'll assume an average of $4.00 for breakfast (bagel and cream cheese with a coffee), $7.00 for lunch (sandwich, chips and a drink) and 12.00 for dinner (chipotle or diner). You would spend $322.00 in a week to feed two people, or $483.00 to feed three people. Through menu planning, I can feed everyone great meals that they love for between $100.00 - $120.00/week. For two people, that would be a savings of $10,504.00 per year and for three people, that would be a savings of $18,876 per year. Now likely, you don't eat out for every meal. But if you really track your grocery spending carefully, unless you're menu planning, I bet you'll find that it's easy to spend $200.00 or more per week to feed your family.

This doesn't have to be hard though! It's actually really easy! Click here to complete the important first steps (#1-4), then come back to finish your system on MealBoard!

Step by Step Menu Planning Using MealBoard:

5. Download MealBoard (only available on apple products at this time) for a price of $2.99 (if you don't have that money budgeted, consider doing your meal planning by paper- it takes longer and I think MealBoard is well worth the price but you should never spend money that you don't have, even if it's just $2.99.

6. Start adding simple meals! For simple breakfasts, create your own recipes... Bagels and cream cheese, milk and cereal, yogurt and granola, oatmeal and raisins. If you work, plan simple breakfasts for the morning and save the eggs and pancakes for your days off. When you create a recipe, add the ingredients for that recipe (I.e. milk and cereal would list ingredients as milk and cereal) add a recipe for leftovers with no ingredients listed so that if you plan to eat last nights dinner for lunch the next day you can add that to your calendar without adding anything to your shopping list.

7. Start collecting recipes. Now the fun part starts! Head to the recipes section and then the import button. It will give you several choices for recipe sites (almost all of the popular ones are there and they're always adding new ones. Taste of home, Kraft, Martha Stewart, Spark Recipes, and Allrecipes are my favorites.

Browse for a bit and import any recipes you like the sound of. When you import a recipe, the entire recipe will import. It will add the photo, ingredients, and directions to your menu board. It will ask you to choose a category to file it under and you can clarify an aisle for any ingredient it doesn't recognize (I.e. If it says Philadelphia cream cheese instead of just cream cheese it won't recognize it as a dairy product. 

8. Figure out how you're going to handle lunch. Will you take leftovers in from dinner? Make sandwiches or salads to bring in? Will you buy lunches? Buying lunches out is still menu planning if you're making the conscientious decision to do that. For instance, if you pack a drink, trail mix and an apple and make the decision to buy a $3.00 six inch subway sandwich every work day, you'll be spending about $15.00 out per week in lunches. Likely that's about what you spend now on one lunch. 

9. Create a recipe for whatever you decide for lunch. Don't worry about directions, just enter ingredients. For instance- turkey, muenster and pickles on rye. Then list "lunch snack #1", and "lunch snack #2" as an ingredient. This lets you know to pick up two items at the store that you can use for lunch snacks all week. Word to the wise, if your new at this or on a budget, don't plan 5 different lunches for the week. Plan 2 with three interchangeable snacks (yogurts, granola bars, trail mix etc). You can repeat the lunches and save on ingredients. You can also fill in with leftovers if they fit into your plan. If you drink something other than water, don't forget to add that to your ingredient list. Don't worry about making a side dish and dessert for each meal. We just keep the freezer and pantry stocked with veggies (.49 for cans at Wegmans, and .99 for frozen bags). We usually add a salad to a day, and the ingredients are listed with enough ingredients to make salad for 3 days.

10. Take a look at your schedule and start assigning meals or recipes to different days. Make sure that most of your recipes are quick and easy unless you're a seasoned cook. 

11. Add preparation into your schedule book. Note the day you need to prep the slow cooker, the day you need to make ahead the freezer casserole, and the days you need to thaw meats. I freeze any meat I won't be using by the next day and then follow a thawing schedule. 

12. Once you're done, switch to the shopping list tab and ask it to sync your list for the week you want. Go through your kitchen and check off anything you already have. Delete all checked items.

13. Go through your list and add estimated prices (round up to the nearest dollar), while you're adding prices, ensure that each ingredient is listed in the right aisle for your store. Once you assign a price and an aisle to an ingredient you won't ever have to do it again. This is a program that gets better the more you use it. The first few weeks, menu planning still took two hours. Now it takes about 10 minutes. It's rare that I have to add prices now. Check out the top of the app- look at the total price for all groceries. Is that number workable for your budget? If not, figure out if you can substitute ingredients for store brands, eliminate unnecessary ingredients, or buy in a club pack to share with next week's menu. If you still can't make that number what you want, eliminate one of your recipes and switch to a cheaper one (it doesn't get cheaper than homemade macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli or rice and beans... actually, pretty much anything meatless). 

You can then email your menu and shopping list to family members (add it to your blog, whatever...) or print it out for the fridge.

 Before you get to the store, you can go into settings and arrange your aisles so that they are listed in the order that you would hit them in your store. Head to the store and just check things off as you grab them.

14. Tips and Tricks: If you're packing lunch, you need a small cooler and at least 2 ice packs. It's imperative that you remember (or your husband!) to bring in your cooler at the end of the day, put your ice pack back in the freezer and empty your cooler. I would have a minimum of 2 ice packs per person available in case you forget one day. 

For the first week weeks, utilize post it notes to remind you to thaw food, prep food and take your lunch to work. (To this day of I don't leave Jon's lunch hanging on the door knob or leave home post it note reminding him- he won't remember to take it).

Good luck! Come back and tell me how much money you saved!

Menu Planning: Step by Step Part 2 (By Paper)

If you haven't already read the first part of this 3 part series, click here to check it out. This is a very basic, step by step instructional for how to be a successful menu planner. Part 1 covers the first steps (using both paper systems and MealBoard), part 2 covers how to set up your paper menu planning system, and part 3 tells you how to set up MealBoard and use it if you would rather have an automated ios program do all the hard work for you. 

The reason why menu planning is so important is that you can save an enormous amount of money without actually sacrificing the quality of your life. Let's say you eat out 3x per day for every day on a week. We'll assume an average of $4.00 for breakfast (bagel and cream cheese with a coffee), $7.00 for lunch (sandwich, chips and a drink) and 12.00 for dinner (chipotle or diner). You would spend $322.00 in a week to feed two people, or $483.00 to feed three people. Through menu planning, I can feed everyone great meals that they love for between $100.00 - $120.00/week. For two people, that would be a savings of $10,504.00 per year and for three people, that would be a savings of $18,876 per year. Now likely, you don't eat out for every meal. But if you really track your grocery spending carefully, unless you're menu planning, I bet you'll find that it's easy to spend $200.00 or more per week to feed your family.

This doesn't have to be hard though! It's actually really easy! Click here to complete the important first steps (#1-4), then come back to start your paper meal planning system!

To create your paper planning system:

Set Up A System

Step #5. Find an old binder, fill it with a menu schedule. You can print one here from Passion for Savings Blog. Fill it with blank pages for shopping lists or print these blank shopping lists by clicking here from Cornerstone Confessions. Do you use lots of cook books? Have a page with a recipe index including the recipe name, cook book and page. If you'd rather just print recipes from the internet, print away and then add them to the binder. You can organize them alphabetically or into categories (chicken, beef, pasta etc).

Paper Preparation

6. Get out the menu schedule sheet for next week and add dates. Separate each day into 3 sections: B L D (breakfast lunch dinner). Take a look at your schedule for next week and make small notations of things that will affect your meals (early days at work, event invitations, overtime etc).

Breakfast

7. Start assigning breakfasts. Think simple! If your working, keep to simple breakfasts. Try Milk, cereal and bananas; Oatmeal and raisins; or Bagels and cream cheese. Keep a stash of either protein bars, or granola bars in case you over sleep and need something to grab while dashing out the door. We don't assign things like juice. If we want to have juice in a week, we'll just get a jug and drink a little at will.

Lunch

8. Choose your method for lunches. You can either pack, buy or plan to take leftovers. Planning to buy lunches is still menu planning because you have a set budget and your incorporating a set amount into your menu budget for those meals. A great way to handle that is to know you don't have the organization skills yet to pack a lunch in the morning, and to bring a drink, an apple and a bag of trail mix to work and then hit Subway for a $3.00 6 inch sub every day. $15 in a week for planned eating out isn't bad! If you have a big family, you may not have enough leftovers for lunch the next day unless you double the recipes. If you plan to take leftovers, think ahead. For the first week, since you don't know how many leftovers you'll have with each recipe, have a few days where you can enact the above subway plan if needed.

Dinner

9. Plan your dinners. This is my favorite part! I love meals eaten together. Choose a mix of recipes. A simple easy dish, a recipe that you guys already love, a brand new recipe, maybe a complicated recipe for a cooking date night one weekend (or a family cooking night!). Unless you're a pro, don't plan recipes for a main dish, side dish and dessert. We've been doing this for a while and still rely on frozen veggies, canned veggies, salads, and pantry staples for meal accompaniments. Often, I don't even feel the need to plan the veggies. I keep the freezer and pantry stocked with veggies ( about .49 cents per can and .99 cents per bag at wegmans) and buy something delicious and in season at wegmans for their club pack price. This week, I got a giant club pack of grapes that we've been snacking on all week. Pick out your 7 dinners but don't assign them dates yet. Just a heads up, recipes that have many ingredients (not counting spices) tend to cost more.

Preparation and Planning

10. If you're using printed recipes, pull them out of the organized section- you'll keep them up front while you're making them this week and then refile them after. Browse through the cookbooks. Mentally note any ingredients in your head that would go bad quickly and that won't freeze. I want you to only have to do one grocery trip for the week, so if any of your recipes have ingredients that don't last or store well, plan for them on the first or second day of the week. I'm a food safety nut so I freeze any meat that I won't use right away. If you're the same, then plan on freezing meat right away and make notations on your schedule of what to thaw on what day. I.e. You're making chicken potstickers on Tuesday and grilled steak on Wednesday. So mark a notation on Tuesday to thaw steaks in fridge before making pot stickers. Some fridges might need two days in order to thaw (that would be my fridge set to the lowest setting... the food safety nut). If you're planning on a freezer casserole for a busy night, pick a day to make the casserole (like a day off or on a day that you're already cooking with that meat). If you have a slow cooker meal planned, mark a notation the night before to mix ingredients in the crock and leave in the fridge, so all you have to do is insert into crock pot and turn on in the am. Then mark a notation to leave yourself a post it note on the door the night before, because you know you'll forget to start it if you don't have a reminder.

*HINT* If you're an avid coupon user, this would be a good time to pull them out and decide what ingredients you can get cheaply. If you aren't already using coupons regularly, skip that for now until you can easily menu plan. We shop at wegmans with consistent low price lists (they change seasonally to reflect the lowest prices of items popular for that season). I'll occasionally coupon, but I mostly use the CPL list to plan. You'll still save tons of money by eating in every day, even if you don't coupon or use flyers (as long as all of your meals aren't lobster, filet mingnon and beef wellington). 

Create your Shopping List

11. Write categories on a blank piece of paper (meat, dairy, deli, produce, canned, etc) or use the link on step #5 to have a preprinted list. Think about where the ingredients are in your grocery store. List those areas. Start adding the ingredients from your recipes (even if you think you already have that ingredient!) to the correct category. If you come up with a duplicate ingredient, just add it to the first entry like in the photo below. Check through your kitchen and cross off any ingredients you already have.

Pricing and Budget

12. If you have a pretty decent idea as to what things cost, estimate the costs of each item by putting a small number to the side of it. If you aren't sure, estimate up. Add up the costs of your groceries and decide if that's a manageable number for your budget. If it's not, take a look through the list and decide where you can save. Is there an ingredient that can be cut? Can you cut out mushrooms or similar ingredients from a recipe? Is there a substitute that can be made (purchasing store brands for cheaper or buying in a bulk pack to use the ingredient next week as well)?  Is one of your recipes particularly expensive? Can you substitute that recipe out? Can you go meatless one day? After you're all done and you have a final price, add that amount in large numbers to your grocery list. That's your goal amount. We're almost always under our goal amount and if we aren't, something will be getting cut. Our grocery budget for two adults and one child, plus 3 additional children during the days (breakfast, lunch and snack) is between $100-150, depending on what our monthly budget goals are. We average $120.00/week.

Grocery Shopping

13. Head out and buy those ingredients! Store things so they will last until they are needed. Post your menu and schedule on the fridge so you can refer to it every day and ensure things will run smoothly. 

Tips and Tricks

14. If you're packing lunch, you need a small cooler and at least 2 ice packs. It's imperative that you (or your husband!) remember to bring in your cooler at the end of the day, put your ice pack back in the freezer and empty your cooler. I would have a minimum of 2 ice packs per person available in case you forget one day. 

Good luck! Think of me when you're chilling in Disney World spending the money that you saved!

Menu Planning: Step by Step Part 1

Do you love the idea of saving a boatload of money through menu planning, but every time you try, it seems to cost you more money? You've come to the right place! No complicated coupon cutting, you don't even need to shop the ads! This is a very basic, step by step instructional on how to start menu planning. This post will be broken into three sections. Part 1 will be the first planning steps. Part 2 will continue with the next steps for those who would like to create their own paper menu planning system. Part 3 will continue for those who would like to use MealBoard, an amazing iPhone app that does all the work for you. You can find out more about MealBoard here, and we'll cover it extensively in Part 3. 

Your grocery budget has the most potential to reduce your budget and is also the hardest to reduce because it takes an enormous amount of preparation. If you do it wrong, you'll spend $120/week for 21 meals and then spend another $400 in a week eating out every day because you didn't plan appropriately. It doesn't have to be hard though! Follow these steps to do it the right way and make a significant cut in your budget.

You'll notice that many of these steps have nothing at all to do with groceries. That's because meal planning effects your daily life and it's necessary to have organization in other areas of your life before meal planning becomes a possibility. What if you don't have that organization? Don't worry! I can help!

Assess your life. Seriously, this is the most important step. Some lifestyles are impossible to menu plan for, or at least traditionally. If you work 12 hours a day, hang out with friends every day after work and just make it home in time to crash for the night and start again the next day then menu planning may not be for you. Maybe your weekends are different though? Maybe you can plan to eat at home or pack a lunch just on the weekends. Or maybe you're like us, with a pretty regimented schedule and time in both the morning and afternoon. If you're not like us, don't give up! We menu planned when I worked evening shift, Jon worked day shift, we never had the same day off and were seriously overwhelmed. 

Figure out what the toughest part of your day is. What's the obstacle standing in your way to eating at home every day. Do you just not feel like cooking when you get home from work? Consider using the slow cooker and freezer meals that you can plan ahead for.

Figure out how many days you can reasonably eat at home. A number that fits both your budget and your schedule. Figure out where you're coming from. Have you been eating out 7 days a week? Do you know how to cook? Do you have raw meat phobia (don't laugh... I hate raw meat and it took a long time for me to be a full time eat at homer because of that!). If you're coming from a mostly eat out lifestyle, start small. Plan to eat at home 3x/week (mostly on your days off). If you don't know how to cook, start with mostly convenience cooking (my popular post on 15 minute meals would be a great thing for you to check out by clicking here). 

                                                                                 

Keep a schedule. Either written or on your phone. As soon as you have an engagement (an invitation to a BBQ, scheduled overtime, even a crazy deadline that you'll be stressed out for), write it immediately in your schedule. You're doing this so that when you menu plan, you'll be able to peek at the week ahead and know what days you need meals for. For example, the day you have a BBQ, you'll just plan to make a side dish to bring. On the scheduled over time day, you'll either pack a dinner to bring with you, or you'll decide to set aside $10 to eat out that day. On the stressed out crazy deadline day, you'll either have a freezer casserole ready to go if you plan to do the extra work at home, or you'll plan to pack a dinner that day (even something that you don't have to make like a can of cheddar broccoli soup, oyster crackers, an apple, and trail mix). If you have a family, keep everyone's engagements together. You can sync schedules with your family using something like google calendars or COZI, a free family calendar.

Have a family meeting and make the decision (or don't) to commit to this for two weeks. This doesn't mean that you turn down last minute invites because you don't want your thawed ground beef to go to waste. This means that when you break down and suggest to your husband that you just call in for a pizza rather than making dinner, he reminds you of your goals and doesn't rush to dial dominos. The reason this is important, is that you don't want to waste $100.00 on groceries if you know you won't commit to eating at home. This is why you start small if you haven't been eating at home at all. Make this an easy to reach goal.

                                                             

Decide how you will track your menus and shopping list- by paper or electronically? If you choose paper, this will take longer and be considerably more work, but if you enjoy it (like a hobby), that may be the motivation for you to continue. If you want to do it electronically, and you have an iPhone, take a relaxing breath. You're covered. You have MealBoard, which is the most useful app that I've ever seen (and the only reason I refuse to give up my iPhone!) We'll go over the steps for both paper and Mealboard in the next two posts.

Coming up... Creating a Paper Menu Planning System 
Want to make sure you don't miss the next post in this series? Subscribe by email in the box to your right and I'll reach out to you when it's posted. 

Time Saver Tip: Lay Out Your Clothes The Night Before

Time Savers Tip:

Lay your clothing out

the night before

 

If you know me at all, you know that I'm a huge fan of FlyLady. I fought a long and hard battle to become organized, I wasn't born that way. FlyLady was instrumental in that battle and to this day, I find myself repeating her mantras. My two favorites are "Imperfect housework still blesses your family" and "You can do anything for 15 minutes".  You can find out more about how Flylady changed my life here and you can head over to the Flylady's website by clicking here.


One of the foundations that FlyLady teaches is to lay your clothes out the night before. Every once in a while, I cheat and don't lay my clothes out and the difference in the morning is considerable. There's something so motivating knowing you can safely click that snooze button for 10 more minutes, because everything you need is ready and waiting for you when you wake up. I shower at night, so I can get ready in 10 minutes. About 3 months or so ago, I started laying out my husbands clothes too. He loves having his stuff ready to go, and I love that the closet stays organized and easy to use (which actually makes laundry an enjoyable chore). Last month, I started stuffing t-shirt bags (So easy to make!... Click here for a tutorial) with gym shorts, a t-shirt, socks, underwear, and a towel to go running in.

There are a million beautiful pinterest-worthy ways to lay your clothes out, but I'm a fan of free and easy. The most important thing is to make it a sustainable habit, after that's done, you can pretty it up with dress forms or garment racks.

We keep it simple, we each have a hangar... at the old place, the hangars hung on two hooks on the back of the closet door. At our new place, we haven't gotten around to adding the hooks, so we just designated the center section of the closet for our hangars.

We fold the pants over the bottom bar of the hangar, hang the shirt over top, hang sweaters, cardigans etc over that, tucks the socks into the shirt (the pressure of the shirt and pants keep the socks in place, boxer briefs usually get tucked in here as well), Bras and panties get hung over the hanger hook.
Shoes get set out below the hangar.

To give myself a break on the weekends, I normally take a few extra minutes and lay out clothes for the weekend as well (since my schedule on the weekends is more lax).

Give it a shot! Then when you've made it a routine, check out these "pinterest pretty" ways to leave your clothes out the night before.

Photo Credit: thelittlestthing.com

 

 

photo credit:

http://3coffeesaday.blogspot.com/2010/01/i.html

 

 

photo credit:

http://www.parents.com/parenting/clean-your-kids-closet/?rb=Y#page=2

 

 



Cooking Once, Eating Twice. Making Dinners into Lunches.

One of the biggest daily challenges I face is cooking healthy lunches for a group of six including picky eaters, and packed lunches. Jon needs a packed lunch ready by 8am, so we've been packing him leftovers from last nights dinner and then I cook something separate for the kids. The problem is that feeding four toddlers (I run an at home day care), cleaning up after them and then doing the dishes is a lot of time that I'm distracted and they're up to all sorts or (albeit adorable) mischief. I would love to have that extra time to spend with them doing projects, reading books and enriching little minds.



About two weeks ago, we switched to doubling the dinner recipes. It's almost no extra work, and the lunches are great! How many day care centers can say they feed the kids chicken picatta and asparagus? Eventually, the goal is to be doing batch cooking and long term menu planning again, but I'm baby stepping my way back to that (Do you baby step? It means making small sustainable changes towards your ultimate goal so you can easily meet your goals over time. I'm a huge fan.)



For instance, As I write this, I have a giant pot of homemade sloppy joe simmering (grab the recipe here... I don't even like canned sloppy joe sauce, but this stuff is mouth watering delicious). This will be our dinner, and after I'm done serving, I'll pack Jon's lunch for tomorrow and make up our plates. When lunch rolls around tomorrow, I just have to microwave a few plates and I'm all done!



Breakfasts are easy in our house. We eat according to the recommendation of the USDA, a fruit and a whole grain since we have the day care. With this plan, I'm only really cooking one meal per day, and then just quick prepping the other meals and snacks.



Give it a shot, it beats the monotony of turkey and cheese sandwiches every day, or the expense of the Chinese place right next to your office.

Free Printable! Reward Program - Meet your goals, chart your results, earn a reward.



As I'm adjusting to life with baby, I'm faced with a difficult challenge. Out of the 12 weeks I have off of work, I'm not allowed to work out for 6 weeks. That gives me 6 weeks to get myself into shape to go back to my very physical job. Begin panic mode.

Since Jon gained a little bit of weight when I was pregnant (totally not his fault-I would sneak extra cheese in his dinner so I wouldn't look as big in comparison), he wanted to do something that we could work at together. Since I had six non active weeks to think about this, I went all out. I wanted to focus on something that would reward us for changing the behaviours we wanted to modify, but didn't seem overwhelming. I originally wanted to do something competitive between us, but since Jon and I have very different views on competition (I'm Miss Congeniality, Jon believes that second winner is the first loser), I veered away from that. I decided instead that we should compete with ourselves.

We're working on our fourth week of this program and LOVE it! We've both registered a weight loss each week. In total, I've lost 45 pounds. Here's the program that we use, though it can be modified for any goal you would like to reach.

1. Initiate an immediate spending freeze for the house. You are allowed to purchase groceries, pay bills, and pay for anything on a list of essential purchases (such as Jon's haircuts) that you both agree on. You can read more about our spending freezes here.

2. List the goals that are most important to you. Focus on smaller aspects of your main goal.  For instance, don't just list "Lose Weight". List "Work out 4x per week" and "Eat 3 servings of fruits and vegetables each day."

•     The goals that we listed are:
• Log what we eat every day into the free calorie counter myfitnesspal.com (they also have smart phone apps). We have to have it set to show our diary to our "friends" (each other), and we must log by midnight, so that the diary is shared to our "friends".
• Be under our calories for the week. We wanted to focus on a weekly calorie goal versus a daily goal. That way if we eat the chocolate cake on Monday, we can focus on eating healthier the remainder of the week to make up for it. myfitnesspal.com has an easy to read chart in the home page which tells you if you are over or under your weekly calorie goals.
• Work out 4 times per week. For now, we have a goal of 30 minute work outs 4 times per week but will increase it to 60 minutes for week 6 of this program.
• Eat absolutely no fast food. To us, fast food is defined as any restaurant that has a drive thru. Since the spending freeze is in place though, there shouldn't be any restaurants involved.
• Take a multivitamin every day. This is more for Jon than me, since I feel like I've been taking prenatal vitamins my whole life. 
• Register a weight loss at the end of the week.
• Don't drink any soda or energy drinks. We wanted to try to focus on healthy energy and break our addiction to MIO (Jon) and Dr. Pepper (me - but I did a pretty good job breaking that addiction when I was pregnant, so now I'm just reinforcing).

3. Assign points for each of the goals you listed in order of  their importance. To earn the points, you must meet the goal each day of the week (except for things that are determined weekly such as working out and weight loss).  For us, Logging our food and working out were worth 5 points each, since that was most important to us. Registering a weight loss at the end of the week was worth 3 points since that's the next most important. Everything else is worth 2 points. There are a total of 21 points with our goals. Out of those 21 points, we need to earn 14 points to earn the reward. Judging is very strict. If you don't meet the requirements of the goal, you don't earn the points, and you don't get a reward.

4. The reward for meeting your goal for the week can be anything. Date nights, back rubs, a fun family activity. My darling loves money. To be fair, he really loves hobbies. The hobbies just happen to cost money. His current hobby is brewing his own beer. No Mr. Beer kits for this guy. He's Jerry-rigged our downstairs closet as a brewery complete with  carboys and his own labels. Sigh. While it would benefit me if he loved reading or blogging instead of flying, brewing, cake making, and ham radio equipment, I love his passion for life and would give anything (except our house and our retirement account) to not stifle that. I set a small monetary reward for our goals. We can each earn $20.00 per week that we achieve our goal point balance. If we fall short, the $20.00 is deposited into our Roth IRA account (get it? It's a win-win! I love win-win's).

5. You can also use this to teach savings, whether it be to your teenager or your 30 year old husband. You have the option every week of either buying something with your $20.00, or saving it for the next week to buy something larger with $40.00.

You can edit my chart to meet your needs and print it off by clicking here. Good Luck!

Local Review: Diet To Go Food Plan

When I first started on this budget journey, my biggest problem was food. I would buy groceries for the house, then we would eat out instead because neither of us felt like cooking and we worked weird schedules. One of us would look at the other and say "We should go to PF Changs for dinner!" and the other would readily agree (What can I say, we like to support each other). The very first thing I did when establishing our budget was to go through our bank account and categorize every single charge for the previous month. It was painstaking. What I discovered was we had spent 1,600.00 on food in a month. How is that even possible??!?!?!?!? I could feed an entire village on that now. We tried unsuccessfully for the next several months to change things and we kept doing the same thing that we had always done. I started to think outside the box. I researched "Diet To Go", which is a company that makes food fresh and you can pick it up twice a week. It's meant to be a calorie reduced diet plan that is nutritionally balanced.

For $131.59 per person per week, they give you breakfast lunch and dinner, all made fresh without being frozen. The portions are reasonable (for a diet) and the food was surprisingly delicious. Chugwater chili and ham and cheese sandwiches made with french toast were my favorites. You could substitute any meals that you didn't like and the menus are available here on their website. The food isn't frozen, it's made fresh and delivered to a diet to go pick up location. Ours was at my gym (at the time) - Gold's Gym in Lorton, Virginia. They also operate in PA, NJ, CA, and MD.

This cost us 1,056 dollars per month, which is a ridiculous amount of money to feed two people. However, I am so grateful that we did this. This started us on the path of making much better choices. It sounds silly, but we actually saved money that first month compared to what we had been doing.
By the end of that month, we both had lost weight (I can't remember how much now because it was so long ago-but we felt fantastic), we got used to eating proper portions, we stopped craving foods that were bad for us and we had so much extra time from not cooking, shopping and doing dishes that it made the next phase easy to transition into. After that month, I started making everything from scratch with whole ingredients. That lasted another month with the opposite affect. OH MY GOODNESS that was a ton of time spent cooking!

To me this has been a process... a long process that will most likely continue for years as we improve with each phase and always try to balance health and money. I'll always be grateful for diet to go for giving us the shove in the right direction.

Spending Freeze: A great way to kick off a new budget and save a ton of money quickly!

I'm so happy to be back! Baby boy (who we affectionately call squishy face, or squish for short) is almost 5 weeks. While life is far, far from normal, I can now see clearly that I will one day have a normal life again. No idea when, but Squish is pretty adorable and I can wait... I have time.

A long, long time ago (okay, a few months ago), I read a blog about a spending freeze for a year. Knowing that we would both fail if we tried a spending freeze for a year, I shortened it to a month. Prior to our spending freeze, I couldn't get Jon into packing his lunch (or to be more exact, bringing and eating the lunch I packed for him). He had a "lunch budget", but he would consistently go over ( not his fault- he has a medical addiction to Red Robin burgers) and create havoc on our budget.

I approached him with the idea of the spending freeze and explained it as a challenge. I did my homework before I even mentioned the idea. I used my USAA bank account to chronicle every bit of unplanned spending for two weeks. I included lunches into the unplanned spending. The total unplanned spending for that two week period was just over 509 dollars. Ouch. When I explained that the 509 dollars went to Starbucks (his), Chipotle (ours), Amazon (his), and Michael's Crafts (mine- but that really shouldn't count- it was an epic scrapbooking sale) he could see what I saw, that if we were handed 509.00 cash we would have chosen to spend it differently. It was our lack of fore thought and our inability to understand that the $7.00 we spent in coffee is $7.00 that isn't available for the things we really value (like scrapbooking! - sorry, that wasn't the point).

We set the spending freeze for a month and made the rule that there be NO unplanned spending. I had a list of bills that needed to be paid, and we had our 120/week grocery budget and nothing else could be bought. No matter how badly we wanted something, we had to wait until after the month was up before we bought it.

The first two weeks were amazing. We had only one unplanned purchase, Jon's haircut (which we should have added into the planned purchases- but we didn't think of it). The next two weeks proved bearable but a little more difficult. We ended up having several small unplanned purchases, adding up to about fifty dollars. It's funny looking back how badly we felt about that fifty dollars when we never batted an eyelash for the five hundred dollars in the two weeks previous to the challenge.

The best part of the challenge was that it broke us of bad habits without us even realizing it. Jon had always resisted taking his lunch because he worked closely with two other people and if they went out for lunch it was awkward for him not to eat. Because he had something to blame it on, he got used to taking his lunch and working around that. He saved money, calories and effective time at work. I learned that I don't "need" things as badly as I thought I did. There were 3 or 4 purchases that I thought were "must haves" and considered making exceptions for several times. I sucked it up in honor of the challenge and I'm glad I did. It turns out that after the month was up I didn't even buy them. Actually, I can't even remember most of them.

After the challenge was done, we went back to spending money, but it was a lot easier to turn down the things that weren't important to us (like going out to lunch)... Its been several months and we still haven't gone back to eating lunches at work.

In the end, having the spending freeze really helped us kick start our budgeting goals and put us on the right track. I'm planning another spending freeze for November 1st through November 15th to keep us on track. We're going to put any money saved into our Roth IRA (I know, boring right? Jon wouldn't let me use it to buy shoes though.)

On Babies and Xboxes...

I promise not to get off the frugal topic for long, but there had to be at least one baby post right?

Jon loves Xbox (well, now he loves playing DayZ through the computer which he's hooked up to the 73 inch TV). He got pretty spoiled during the last few months because nothing felt better to my ginormous pregnant body than to sit in the recliner and write for the blog. He sat next to me and played Dayz well into the night, then woke me up to bring me to bed when he went to bed (sleeping in the recliner was the only good sleep I got thanks to acid reflux in the last trimester).

We knew his xbox days were dwindling down though thanks to the arrival of Baby Groner. We had talked about it, and decided together that we would spend significantly less time playing xbox.

We stand corrected. I've only been a parent for two weeks, and we've been blessed with an extremely easy baby, but as far as I'm concerned Xbox is the greatest baby invention of all time. Baby Groner gets 5 hours of uninterrupted chest to chest daddy time, all the while daddy is talking in his ear in a low voice (through his headphones). Granted, Daddy is coordinating zombie attacks with his sweet whispers, but Baby doesn't know that. Since the game plays through his headphones there aren't any freaky noises to scare him and he seems completely content so that I can sleep in my favorite recliner, and get a little extra sleep. Kudos to you Microsoft!

Obviously, this won't last forever. When Baby Groner stops sleeping 16 hours a day, we'll have to reduce xbox time. For right now though? Xbox is better than bubble baths in my book right now.

How we reduced our spending by $23,537.00 in a year. (specific stepsand calculations included)

I'm reviving one of my favorite posts for this weeks link up with Living Well, Spending Less's Thrifty Thursday. You can check them out by clicking here. 

Since we've been married and I began tracking our spending, we've made a lot of changes. None were dramatic, but they led to some pretty dramatic figures. The following list was implemented over time and led to us saving $23,537.00 in the last year. By my opinion, we were already living relatively frugally when I began making changes, so if you aren't already paying attention to how you spend your money, you could easily double this number.

I also think it's important to point out that I don't believe in sacrificing for money. We live just once, I won't use a product that I don't like or cut things that are important to me out of our budget. The goal in budgeting for me is to spend less to get the same thing, or something that works better.


1. Eliminated Eating Lunches out at work, for better packed lunches that save time, calories and taste better.
Savings: $7,200 (70.00 per week per person) - 2,080 (40.00 per week for lunch ingredients) = 5,120.00 saved

2. Began menu planning and strategic shopping using Wegmans online tools to reduce grocery spending.
Savings: $10,400 (200.00 per week) - $6,240.00 (120.00 per week) = $4,160.00 saved

3. Began using the library exclusively and stopped buying books at all.
Savings: $3,600 (about 70.00 per week on average) - 0.00 = $3,600.00 saved.

4. Stopped drinking bottled water and switched to filtered water in reusable bottles exclusively.
Savings: 42.97 per month (from water bottles and deer park delivery - cost of filters, and purchasing high quality water bottles and the occasional gallon water bottle to bring to work to refill) x12= $515.64 saved.

5. Established a home stock room, researched best unit price for all items. Also saved significant time running errands and shopping. Click here for more information on my home stock room and keep a look out next week for me to post my stockroom inventory list including best unit prices.
Savings: $1,357.43 per year. (see next weeks post for specific break down of savings).

6. Cancel cable and use hulu plus for TV exclusively (Jon also hooked up our seldom used desktop computer to the TV so that you can watch the free full episodes on the network sites in the TV).
Savings- $2,220( 185.00 per month) - $1,092 (for epic Internet- 91.00 per month) = $1,128.00 saved

7. Cancelled the Gym membership and began using the community association gym and pool for free.
Savings: $600.00 (50.00 per month) - 0.00 = $600.00 saved.

8. Began using moderate coupons on items I'm already buying.
Savings: 260.00 per year (an average of $5.00 per week)

9. Switched to Suave Rosemary and Mint shampoo and conditioner from Pantene:
Savings: $101.65 per year

10. Signed up for RX by mail through my health insurance company:
Savings: $360.00 (30.00 per month) - $120.00 (10.00 per month) = $240.00

11. Began the $10.00 Christmas Tradition with my extended family.Click here to learn more about that.
Savings: $300 per year - $80 per year = $220.00 saved.

12. Purchased clothing needs at thrift stores and discount stores. (Not exclusively- still a few pieces purchased at retailer).
Savings: $620.00 less spent this year on clothing than last year.

13. Stopped purchasing music on iTunes and began renting all of my CD's from the library (which can be turned into MP3's by hooking up to your computer.) Note: While unenforceable, please delete MP3 after CD is returned to the library to avoid copyright infringement. While no one would ever find out, it's the honest thing to do. Also- No one (except me), even rents CD's from the library, so you can just keep re-renting it if you love it).
Savings: $14.95 per month for Rhapsody and 40.00 in iTunes purchases (approximate- I can't tell from iTunes which is apps and which is music) = $219.40 saved.

14. Implemented a Spending Freeze for two weeks (I'll write a post about this later- you don't buy ANYTHING except absolute necessities for 14 days- it's actually pretty fun!)
Savings: about $400.00 (though this is highly debatable - just my assessment).

15. Cancelled Netflix and switched to Amazon Prime.
Savings: $300.00 per year ($25.00 per month) - $70.00 (also get free 2 day shipping on most products purchased on amazon) = $230.00

16. Refinanced Mortgage to historical low interest rate. (I'm just using our monthly mortgage payment to calculate savings, not savings over the life of the loan which are considerably higher).
Savings: $274 per month: $3,288.00 per year.

17. Talked Jon out of purchasing every single video game that his group of Xbox friends want to play in favor of finding games that have longevity.
Savings: Last year we spent $380.00 on video games, this year we spent $35.00 (Thank you Dayz and Minecraft!)= 345.00

 

TOTAL SAVINGS IN ONE YEAR: $23,537.00!!!!

Now the challenge is to reduce it by another $10,000 for next year!


If you have any other ways to reduce costs- let me know! Even if you haven't had time to run the math on it - I can help you out with that.

Living Room Snack Station: (and how to adjust your program when needed).

Last week was an epic fail. I'm 38 weeks pregnant. We live in a 3 story townhouse that feels like a mansion when you have to go from the bottom floor to the top. For about three days last week, I slept less than 5 hours a night due to the pains in my pelvis. I was exhausted. Jon helped out a lot by taking over my chores, then we would sit downstairs in the living room with me propped up on about a million pillows with my feet up. Twice last week, during these days I'd end up starving at about 8pm. When I say starving, I mean starving... Like, I could eat a cow raw. There was 0% chance of me going upstairs to make something (even though there were plenty of options), and Jon was just as tired, considering he works a crazy schedule and had to do most of the chores those days. So, when I casually glanced over and said "We should order pizza...", he readily agreed despite having eaten dinner just 3 hours before.


Now, I'm not an expert on prenatal nutrition, but I strongly suspect that pepperoni pizza and cinnastix aren't really beneficial to our unborn child right now. Not to mention, we wasted $60.00 on something that didn't give us any pleasure at all. If this had happened once, no sweat. But TWICE in the same week? We had ourselves a problem. I didn't beat myself up about it, but I did brainstorm to try to think of ways to prevent the same thing happening in the future.


I could have easily said "Next week, if I get hungry I'm going to walk upstairs and make something healthy", but I know that's not going to happen. I have to plan to handle myself at my laziest. So, I assume that I won't be able to change how I feel during those moments, and that I won't be able to alter my willpower and came up with a workable solution.


We had a mini fridge that Jon bought on clearance for about $30.00 at Walmart a few years ago. It was sitting unused in our bedroom from when we used to keep individual water bottles stocked in it. Jon brought it down to the living room for me, and I added a few healthy filling snacks to our grocery list this week.


We now have a mini fridge right next to the couch stocked with Stacy's pita chips, red roasted hummus, containers of chocolate milk, trail mix, clementines, pears, apples, baby carrots, ranch dressing and cheese cubes. We had mini paper plates, plastic cutlery, and napkins left over from the baby shower so we set those up as well.


Now when that 8pm starvation hits, my lazy future self will choose the path of least resistance. Much easier to grab those snacks than to call for pizza, find my wallet to pay, walk up the stairs to get the pizza when the delivery guy comes, and have to wait 45 minutes to an hour to eat. Hah... I've tricked myself! If I can parent baby Groner as well as I parent myself...We might just make it through this!

40 Bags in 40 Days: Decluttering Project

Recently, I saw a post here about decluttering 40 spots in your house over 40 days. I love the idea, Fly Lady has had me doing that in 15 minute increments for the past few years. I like this idea even better because you have an easy plan to follow. Just grab an old grocery bag, hit the area for 5 minutes and throw as much stuff out as possible. The idea isn't to clean the area, it's easy to get overwhelmed if you try to do both decluttering and cleaning. The important part is to remove as much as possible so it's easy to clean later.

If you're organizationally challenged, you have two options to get this stuff out of your house. The first is to stick it right into the trash. Not exactly eco friendly- but you're in crisis mode. If you try to donate this stuff, it's going to sit in a closet for a few more years and you're going to give up. If you can't stand the idea of throwing it out, jump onto craigslist and list under the free section- "Miscellaneous Bags of Free stuff. Major Decluttering project. 40 bags available of assorted goodies. My loss is your gain! Bags will be out front at 6pm tonight." You can list your address, or if you're not comfortable with that, a public location close by (the end of your road maybe?). If you leave it somewhere other than your property, attach a free sign and come back in a few hours to make sure its been picked up. We've done this several times and it's always a great experience. Before we moved, we emptied half of our house onto the front curb and people were circling the block HOURS before the pick up time. Every single thing got picked up. Jon's gotten his fair share of free stuff off of Craigslist so we think of it as our way of giving back.

As a bonus, once you start throwing out everything in your house and you start feeling so much better, it easy to break the shopping addiction. You start looking at things in stores that you would ordinarily snatch up and think, "eh. I'm just going to throw it out in next months decluttering". Once things gets cleared out, it's really easy to organize the things that you actually use.

This is my personalized list:

40 BAGS IN 40 DAYS

***************************************

1. Laundry room

2. Kitchen silverware drawer

3. Utensil drawer in kitchen

4. Utensil cup in kitchen

5. Under the kitchen sink- left side

6. Under the kitchen sink- right side

7. Refrigerator

8. Spice cupboard

9. Freezer

10. Bookshelf in entryway

11. Closet- my clothes

12. Closet- Jon’s clothes

13. Dresser drawers

14. Nightstand drawer in bedroom

15. My jewlery box

16. Headboard

17. Underneath master bath sinks

18. Upstairs guest bath under sink

19. Craft room's bookshelf

20. Craft room closet- right side

21. Craft room closet- left side

22. Sewing table desk shelves

23. Trunk of my car

24. Car

25. Pots and pans cabinet

26. Kitchen cupboards

27. Hobby closet

28. Top shelves of office desk

29. Office desk

30. Underneath office desk

31. TV cabinet drawers

32. Tool cabinet

33. Spare closet (where the water heater is)

34. Entry basket

35. My purse

36. Underneath downstairs bathroom sink

37. Financial Files

38. Craft room scrapbook area

39. Bookshelf in downstairs spare bedroom

40. The gardens

20 Gift Basket Ideas for every occasion...Thoughtful, Cheap and Awesome!

I adore gift baskets! Not only are they cost effective, they look beautiful and can be personalized to anyone. If you've been giving gift baskets for awhile, you can also add the materials to your stockroom list. You would essentially be making a gift stockroom when you see really good prices or bargains. For instance, this weekend starts the crazy back to school sales, now would be a good time to stock up on materials for the school basket. For more information on how I establish and maintain my home stockroom (or supply closet), click here.


Don't stock up unless you already have an established, working supply closet! This is kind of the advanced step and if you try to implement this first, you're going to have a lot of mismatched stuff in the back of a closet that you'll never see again until one day you decide to declutter and you throw it all out in defeat.


You can put gift baskets in anything, boxes from Costco covered in wrapping paper, shipping boxes if you plan to mail it out, organizing totes from the dollar store, baskets from Homegoods or TJ Maxx. Keep your eyes open and when you see a basket that's a great price, snap it up.


Don't give yourself free reign to purchase anything you want towards your gift closet. Either budget this in, $15.00 per month or count it into your grocery budget. We're normally below budget, so when you see a great bargain, scap it up and budget it into your groceries for the week. If you go nuts and buy every "bargain" that you see, your spending much more than you would if you just bought gifts as they came up.


This system makes it easy to budget in gifts. You're spreading the money out throughout the year so that there are no surprises. More importantly, you're saving time from having to search all over to find a gift last minute (often buying something that you wouldn't consider to be the perfect gift).


When I started giving gift baskets, I purchased an enormous roll of cellophane wrap from amazon to wrap the baskets in. I can then just tie off the tops with ribbon. The cellophane was a great investment for me and considering how much I've used it and how much I have left, I suspect that this will last til I'm 50:) You can get your very own giant roll of cellophane from Amazon for $23.00 by clicking here.


Always include a letter or a note with your basket. We have few opportunities in life to tell someone what they mean to us. About 20 times a day I look at someone or talk to someone and think about how much I adore that person's personality or how much I admire a particular trait of theirs. If we just took that rare opportunity to let them know, it would encourage them to keep being awesome.

GIFT BASKET IDEAS:

1. Travel:

• A toiletry bag of good quality.
• A set of reusable plain bottles with vinyl labels (if you have a cricut or something similar, make your own labels).
• A toothbrush and tooth paste holder (if you have basic sewing skills, you can make your own by clicking here.)
• A hairbrush for a girl, a shaving kit for a guy
• A monogrammed luggage tag.
• Bubble bath!
• Sleep mask.
• Lavender potpourri (make this yourself by clicking here)

2. Best of "Virginia" (of wherever you happen to live):

• Fill a basket with your local favorite products. For us, It's Virginia Diner Peanut selections, Dominion root beer, locally made honey, organic soap, Edwards or Smithfield hams, Route 11 potato chips, or even a dogwood tree if the recipient has a green thumb!

3. Welcome Baby!

• Fill a basket with often overlooked helpful items to get mom and dad through that first week or two. Include a 15 minute dinner "recipe" and ingredients (you can even do a pantry meal so you don't have to refrigerate). If you have the option of delivering something cold, whip up an instant freezer casserole. Try this one for Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole by clicking here. I just assembled this and it took less than 3 minutes and the ingredients cost about $7.00 (with extra chicken thighs for your family!). I should warn you, our little guy doesn't arrive for another week or two so I'm not an expert on whats useful that first week for baby. But for Mom and Dad, I'm thinking food, snacks, sleep masks (I use one to sleep when Jon wants to keep the light on, I'm thinking it will help in trying to fall asleep at 2 in the afternoon), accessories to help with breastfeeding like cooling pads, nipple pads etc (make sure Mom's breastfeeding first, you wouldn't want to hurt someone's feelings with a gift).

4. Dinner and a Movie Night:

• Find an old, amazing, but often overlooked movie. Be prepared to spend some time searching through Walmarts 5.00 movie pile. If there is a particular movie that you shared in the past, grab that one. I have tons of movie associations! Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my sister, Angus and Clueless with my Dad (he's clearly an awesome guy), The Cutting Edge and Dirty Dancing with my Mom, The Notebook with my friend Blake, (who is quite possibly the only man who loves the Notebook more than any girl), Star Wars with my friend Todd, Tin Cup and Finding Nemo with Jon, Twilight with every female friend that I have (no judging!). Pair it with a recipe and all of the non perishable ingredients for the recipe. Obviously, popcorn is a must here. If your doing a few gift baskets at a time, I buy the really fancy glass bottles of specialty root beer and separate them into gift baskets - 2 for this one, 2 for a different gift basket.

5. Pasta Night:

• Fancy imported pasta
• Fancy Pasta Sauce
• Italian Spices
• An extra that you think they could use or don't have- a quality colander, a cool apron, an Italian cookbook.
• The best spot to find the ingredients for a basket like this is "Home Goods", "T.J. Maxx", or stores like it.

6. Spa Night:

• Spafinder gift card
• Eye Mask (maybe a cooling one with gel in it?)
• lavender potpourri (again... you can make this yourself)
• Massage Oil
• Nail Clippers
• Tweezers
• The perfect nail polish shade (go for something daring - she already has a pile of reds and pinks, go for a trendy color)
• Body scrub, loofah etc.

7. Care Care Kit:

• Car Trash bin (I make mine using food storage containers with lavender scented small trash bags from Walmart lining the inside). Now that I think about it, I should do a post on that... More info to come soon.
• Lavender scented trash bags
• Hand Sanitizer
• Wet Ones (to be fair- I'm a total germaphobe, this may not be "Car Care" to anyone else.)
• Car wash soap, wax, glass cleaner, interior wipes, tire "black" spray, wheel cleaner.
• Air fresheners (skip the trees and go for something that presents a little better)
• If the recipient is the type to appreciate attention to detail, include a small accordion file and label the files for car maintenance receipts, fuel receipts, insurance and registration etc. (by "appreciates attention to detail"... I mean borderline OCD).

8. Project Gift Basket:

• This is my favorite by far. Search Pinterest and find an awesome, useful project. Print out the tutorial on high quality paper (if its small enough, get crafty and mount it on cardstock with border and embellishments). Buy all of the materials needed for the project and include them in the gift basket. This is like my dream come true. I ADORE projects, but its hard to justify the costs and the errands to gather the materials. Pinterest.com is chock full of amazing fun projects that can make the start of some pretty cool gift baskets.

9. Sickie Basket:

• Fill up a gift basket with things that are guaranteed to make someone special feel better
• Chicken Noodle Soup (Try Progressive so they can just heat and eat)
• Chocolate Bars
• Advil
• A book in their area of interest (I'd still buy it used, but people know me and wouldn't take offense to this).
• Lysol Wipes (again- I'm a germaphobe, this may not be appreciated by everyone)
• Ridiculously super soft tissues (the ones that you would never buy for yourself)
• Sore throat lollipops (found in the children's aisle, they taste so good!)
• Trashy Magazines (the ones that are highly entertaining but you actually lose brain cells as you flip through them. Like that National Enquirer)

10. Our Story Basket:

• Fill up a basket with an odd collection of things that you share with the recipient- I'll give you two examples to help:
• My Sister: Buffy the Vampire Slayer music CD (because we both love Buffy), a make up bag filled with make up (because she would have $5.00 to her name as a teenager and spend it on make up for me), travel brochures from a travel agency (because we're working on an "Around the World in a Year" project and she can cut them up and use the pictures), A bag of change (because we both have giant water bottles that we collect change in), Tropicana Casino chips or a book about playing craps (we go to the Tropicana every few months), a small piece of cardstock, trimmed and embellished, with a list of the songs that remind me of her ( I'm pretty sure "She's a wild one" was written for her), Since she uses Napster, I don't need to get her a gift card to purchase the songs.
• Jon: Super Mario Brothers video game (because we used to play that for hours and now I miss it), Legally Blonde the Musical on DVD (because our first marital fight went down because I wanted to play Call of Duty: Team Death Match and Jon wanted to watch Legally Blonde the Musical streamed from YouTube), Snyder's Honey Mustard Pretzel Pieces (we're obsessed), a note that tells him I signed up for 100 free samples to be mailed to him (Jon's favorite thing in the world is getting the mail and finding something other than bills), a (used) book on a casino table game that he doesn't know (he's perfected craps), and a small bottle of sweet tea vodka (You'll have to trust me that this was a funny story), a IOU for me to taste any mystery meal concoctions (Jon's an inventive gourmet cook, and I'm a chicken fingers kinda girl....  this one is a big deal), and an iTunes gift card with a list of songs that we share (I actually just did this as part of his birthday gift, it started with songs from when we were friends, then when we were dating, married and it ended with a nursery song).

11. Nostalgia Basket:

• This is highly personalized and not for the novice. The idea is to go out and collect items that were popular a long time ago and hard to find now. The  items should be useful and sorely missed. Things like candy and non perishable foods are great, but think beyond the obvious. For someone my age, a few good choices are hackey sacks, Rubik's cube, garbage pail kids collectible cards, etc. Jon found out that I still have The Baby Sitters Club books hidden in my room , and got me "The complete guide to the babysitters club", that was more romantic to me than any other gift I've ever gotten in my life. A few more ideas are pogo sticks, slip n slides, and cabbage patch dolls.

12. Road Trip!

• Atlas (because you never know when your iPhone will lose service)
• An Entertainment Book (filled with coupons etc for travelling)
• A backseat organizer for toys snacks etc.
• A box filled with a variety of snacks and drinks
• A small cooler to hold drinks
• A travel pillow
• A warm small blanket
• Magnetic Board Games or age appropriate distractions for kids.

13. Gardening:

• A variety of seed packets
• A carrying bucket
• A kneel board
• Gardening Gloves
• Liquid Fertilizer
• Peat moss containers to start seeds
• Garden ID Spikes to identify plants (you can make these yourself too!)
• A book on square foot gardening

14. Organizing:

• Be careful with this, only give a basket like this to someone that you know shares an interest in this or someone that you're very close to. You could hurt someones feelings if they thought you were trying to say that they were unorganized. 
• Stick to a particular project or area- Pantry, Laundry Room etc. Buy containers, make chipboard labels with ribbon attachers, include project idea pictures etc.
• I once did a fly lady gift basket (a double gift because I got to support my favorite blogger by buying her projects), that included all of my favorite products from her. 

15. School Basket:

• Mom was famous for making these when I was a kid. They were always a big hit.
• Fill a bucket or pail (or lunchbox!) with every school supply imaginable. Don't forget fun things like crayons, markers, cardboard, safety scissors, and paste. Mom would hit the sales during the back to school sales (which start this weekend by the way- check out capitallyfrugal.com for price match ups) and stock up so she could make plenty of these throughout the year. 

16. Picnic:

• Fill a picnic basket with a waterproof lined blanket (You can make your own here)
• Paper plates
• Paper bowls
• Plastic cups
• Plastic utensils
• Freezer ice packs
• Collapsible cooler
• Trimmed, embellished cardstock with picnic menu ideas and great places to go to.
• Salt and pepper shakers
• Wet Ones

17. Video Game Basket:

• Thumb extenders for xbox (you can find them here for $9.99)
• Rechargeable AA batteries and base
• Turtle beach headphones
• Microsoft xbox points gift card
• Glass bottles of root beer.
• Crunch n Munch

18. Journaling:

• High quality full sized journal
• High quality pen
• Stationary
• Wax and seal kit ( I love these! I bought mine 8 years ago on clearance from Barnes and Noble and use it all the time. You can get one from Barnes and Noble for $9.99 by clicking here)
• If they own a home, get them a designed address stamp and an ink pad (again, one of my favorite thing ever.. I'm always looking for an excuse to write someone a letter! I got mine from here for $26.50, but if you search around, you can find a better deal. That purchase was made pre-frugal.)

19. Sewing Kit:

• Fill a sewing basket with needles, patches, threads of different colors, a pin cushion, pins, a fabric marker with disappearing ink, a wire threader,  an assortment of basic buttons, and and a wrist wrap with a pin pad on it. If they have a sewing machine or they are an avid sewer... you can add some more advanced things.

20. Scrapbooking:

• You've seen the prepackaged scrapbook kits before. This is the same idea, only your going to put together the materials for your own and it will be about a million times better. Choose a theme, grab a scrapbook, colored patterned paper that compliments each other, stickers that go with the theme, etc. If they are new to scrapbooking, include a paper trimmer, a hole punch, and edger, scrapbook glue, and paper scissors.  

There are tons of other gift baskets you can make. If you have a favorite, share the wealth and let me know!

Best of Virginia Gift basket

$10.00 Car Care Kit Gift Basket ("Basket" is actually car trash can with a top)

Pasta Night Gift Basket in Shipping Box

Spa Night Gift Basket in Shipping Box