After rising early, I made us a breakfast of SteakUmm’s and 3 eggs each. I love this easy breakfast. Fortunately, I have a 60 count box of eggs in our refrigerator. It has gone up twice in price since I purchased them. So we are using them sparingly.
On Saturday night, I put the stainless steel racks from both of our ovens in one of our bathtubs, filled it up with hot water, and threw 4 Cascade Platinum Dishwasher Pods in the water to soak overnight. I took this picture this morning and you can see how dirty the water has gotten. It took all of the grease off them and most of the brown baked on stuff. I had to use a Scrub Daddy pad to get it all off but it was relatively easy. So the racks are like new.
One of our favorite charities is Tunnels To Towers. We give them large checks about twice a year. We don’t do the $11.00 a month thing but give much more in our checks we send. I finally braved the cold and snow to go out to our mailbox to get our last few days mail. We got these beautiful birthday cards from them. On the right is the cards and the matching envelopes are on the left. It is always nice to get a surprise from them.
When I came back in, our sweet Eloise was asleep on top of her favorite leather chair. I just had to share this pic with you to show you how big she has gotten. She is 8 and 1/2 months old now.
We had a quick dinner before the game last night. One of our favorites is shrimp cocktails. Later in the evening we had some monterey jack cheese on crackers.
One of the ways we save money is to always buy on sale. The shrimp was on sale a while ago for $6.99 a lb. We used the whole lb. between the two of us.
We finally got all of the forms that we need to file our Federal and State income taxes. I am afraid by just eyeballing it that we will owe this year. I will be very surprised if we get a refund. So I am in no hurry to do them right away.
I did two loads of laundry in warm water to try to catch everything up around here. I did use my dryer with our wool balls to cut down on the time needed to run it.
This morning I ran a lot of errands that needed to be done. More on that tomorrow.
This morning Eloise let me sleep until 6PM. That was fantastic. Since I went to bed early, I got 9 hours sleep which I badly needed. So I immediately started a load of wash using cold water and hung it to dry. Then I did a second load of sheets and blankets. Those were dried in the drier.
For lunch I made turkey melts and we had SF chocolate pudding for dessert.
I did not go out today because it is in the teens. But I do have a Walmart delivery coming tonight. I needed some produce, etc. so I placed a small order. I will take a picture and show you tomorrow.
My back is really bothering me today but whenever I grocery shop or have a grocery delivery I clean the refrigerator and take stock of what I need. I had to take little rests in between and sit a bit. But I worked through the pain and got it all done.
I empty it of all the stuff and then take all the drawers and shelves out and clean them very well with soap and water. Then I scrub all the walls of the fridge before I put them back.
It’s pretty full right now mostly with condiments. But we are working at eating them all up. They are on the second shelf on the left. On the top shelf on the left is the eggs that were left when I got my 60 count box the other day. You can see the box behind the ones in the front. The box always fits perfectly up there. To the right of them is a container with 2 hard boiled eggs left that I cooked the other day. We use them for salads and snacks.
On the top shelf on the right is butter that I got on sale stacked all the way to the back of the fridge. Eloise’s dinner is in the container and then jellies and jams..
Back behind our medicines are 2 boxes of ready made pie crusts that I purchased over the holidays on sale. I will be using them to make pot pies.
Third shelf on the left is a container with sour creams, dips, cream cheese spreads, and cottage cheese.
Next to that is our leftovers which right now consists of red beans and rice with hot smoked sausage and some cooked mushrooms. Behind that is an overflow sour cream and a jar of applesauce.
On the third shelf on the right is bacon thawing in a pan for us to have BLT’s tomorrow night. I will cook all the bacon and we will use some for brunches too. On the other pan are 3 half and half’s, a quart of milk, and a cold cream for coffee. Behind all of those items are a diet cranberry juice and 2 Ready Whip Zeroes. I keep meats and milks on these pans because I do not like having to clean my shelves of drips and leaks. It’s much easier to clean the pans.
The fruit drawer on the left is just a few apples. The veggie drawer on the right has a package of romaine lettuce, 5 lbs. of carrots, and 1/2 of a huge onion.
The drawer underneath those drawers is my cheese and meat drawer. It has various shredded cheeses, blocks of cheese for snacks, sliced cheeses for sandwiches, and a few packages of pepperoni.
We will be using the mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, and pepperoni to make a pizza on naan bread for dinner. We season it with a lots of Italian spices.
We have all the bedrooms, bathrooms, and office doors closed to keep Eloise out of mischief. When my son left I meant to close the heat registers in all of the rooms except the bathrooms and our bedroom. So I remembered today and we will see if it saves us anything on our heat bill. With the temperatures so cold this past week and this week, I think we may see a $300.+ bill this month for the first time ever. Ugh.
That’s it for today. I need to go collect all of the garbage so I can put it outside tonight.
I hope you are all having a great day. Be back tomorrow.
Eloise had me up at 5AM which wasn’t too bad. I think she was cold so I wrapped her in a very soft blanket for a little while till she warmed up a bit. The heat starts coming up to 68 from 66 at 6AM. Then at 8AM, it goes up to 70. I wish I could set it lower but Hubby gets too cold.
I made my coffee with a reusable pod. I used up the little bit of coffee that was in my air tight canister and grabbed another can of coffee from my storage. While I was down there I took 2 hamburgers out of the freezer and we had those with sauteed onions and mushrooms for dinner. We had nothing else with it because we were not very hungry.
After doing some picking up in the house, I heated up some of the leftover chicken and biscuits for brunch. We have a couple of pieces left for a snack during our football game tomorrow. Waste not, want not.
Most of the day I have been cleaning and organizing. I went through my 2024 planner so that I could pull the pages out that had personal info on them so I could shred them. The bulk of the planner went in the recyclables and the garbage.
I cleaned and organized the drawers in our vanity and the cupboards in the toilet room. I filled up the 2 rows with t.p. so that it is handy. It will last a long time because we have a bidet. Then I cleaned the tile floors. The toilet is cleaned every day. I used to use the Lysol toilet cleaner until the price went too high. Then I tried the toilet bowl cleaner from Dollar Tree which was awful. It is 90 % water. So I am back again to cleaning the toilet bowl with a denture cleaner tablet. I just let it melt in the bowl and then scrub. It does a great job. I can get 126 count Equate denture cleaner tablets for $4.44. They will last me about 1/2 a year.
It snowed here for the third day in a row so we did not go out anywhere.
Late afternoon I watched some news on You Tube. Then we watched some football and golf.
It’s a mostly quiet day today. We did get a bit of snow but the sun has melted it.
We got our property tax bill. I knew it would cost us more for our garbage because we got a second can but that part of the bill was well worth it for $50.00 for the year. Our total bill was for $4664.+. Last year’s bill was $4788.+. So even with the $50.00 additional cost our bill decreased by $123.+. I am shocked because everything has just been going up and going up. It looks like our town and county leaders have done a good job with contracts, etc.
We both got our notices from Social Security showing our 2.5% increases. However, the Medicare payment for each month of 2025 which comes out of each of our checks went from $ 174. to $ 180. so the increase for our Social Security checks wasn’t much. But we both paid into SS and Medicare for years as everyone else does. At least we are getting a bit of money back over the years since we started getting it. I am hopeful that when President Trump is inaugurated that he and the Republicans will fix SS so that our children and grandchildren will be able to get it like we have.
A couple of weeks ago Nielsen sent me a survey and a $1.00 in cash to fill it out and send it back. It only took a minute or two and the return envelope was postage paid. They promised that if I did, they would send me an additional $ 5.00 in cash. That came today. $ 6.00 and a couple of minutes sure beats running all over inside of stores to ShopKick to cash out at $5.00 which I don’t do because it isn’t worth my time or gasoline. It would be nice if these surveys continue. But I am not counting on it.
I entered my last two weeks of receipts into Fetch today. I love getting the Walmart gift cards. They help defray the cost of my Walmart orders.
Brunch this morning was an apple fritter with our coffee. We had purchased a box of them recently. They are Hubby’s favorite. This year I am going to see if I can find a great recipe.
Dinner tonight will be canned Chunky soup and crackers. I am waiting for Hubby to get back from his orthopedic appointment before I pick out what we want from our pantry. The cortisone shot did not work so he is getting the gel injection to see if that works. I hope it works because I hate seeing him in so much pain. If it does he can get them every 6 months. If not the next step would be a knee replacement. Ugh! I am praying that he gets relief from this gel.
I ran the dishwasher last night. It had been three days since I ran it. I spent my hour cleaning yesterday and today in the kitchen. I am organizing at the same time and getting rid of things we don’t want.
What have you been doing to work on your goals for this year?
It has been a rough week. My back has been bothering me but is a little better today. There is really nothing they can do for it but surgery. I refuse to do that so I will manage it with OTC pain killers and exercises from my chiropractor.
Hubby tore his meniscus in his left knee. It has been bothering him for a while but he finally was able to get in to see the orthopedist who made this diagnosis. They gave him a cortisone shot. It seemed to work the first day but he says he is in pain now. Next step is an injection of gel. Final step is a knee replacement. So I have been busy most of the week taking care of him. We also had doctor appointments yesterday and Hubby has 2 next week and I have some tests one day also. Needless to say I have been really busy and exhausted each and every day.
Fortunately, I have wonderful neighbors who have been bringing our garbage cans up from the road after they have been emptied. Then all I have to do is open the garage door and put them away. I was grateful last week because we had a lot of snow and this week because it was 22 degrees and extremely windy. So I will be baking homemade banana bread for them and their families soon. They think I don’t know who is doing it but my outdoor cameras are showing me who it is.
However, we did not get take out for meals. I was tempted but resisted the urge. I made all of our meals all week. We had pork chops one day with Spanish rice, soup twice, and red beans and rice with smoked sausage. Leftovers were eaten for breakfast along with bacon and eggs and chicken salad. Today we should finish the chicken for brunch.
The grocery deals were not that good this week so I didn’t miss those. I may get to Aldi and Dollar Tree this morning very early. I haven’t looked at the Top’s ad for next week yet but unless they have really great deals, I will not shop. It will be too crowded.
We have been craving filet mignon, baked potatoes, and a salad so I will defrost the meat today.
We were supposed to have Christmas here tomorrow with some family but one of them is sick and they don’t want us to get sick. So it has been changed to Sunday but most likely that will end up getting cancelled. We were looking forward to it but things happen. At least I have all the stockings filled but they can wait until some future time.
Since I was sitting a lot because Hubby wanted me to watch some taped shows with him, I wrote 23 Christmas cards out and got them mailed. I have one friend who is almost blind so I will call and chat with her soon.
I am so happy that Christmas money envelopes and all 5 stockings are done. I would not want to be running around now gathering those things.
We are not putting up our tree this year because of Eloise. She would either knock it over or become an ornament in it.
We continue to work on our budget for 2025. We were bitterly disappointed when our pest control company sent us notice of an increase in our quarterly cost. I just paid $202.+ for the past three months. Now it will be $234.+ a quarter or $936.+ a year. That is a yearly increase of $ 128. per year. I was not happy that every year they raise it but this is the largest increase. I hate spiders, all bugs and bees and wasps. So we are researching what we can do. We also have traps that they put food in each quarter to get rid of the voles that ruin our lawn. If anyone treats these things at the their home themselves, I would love to hear about in the comments and any products you use. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I hope you are all getting your Christmas food at the stores and your gifts done.
I woke up with a flare up of my sciatica going down the back of my left leg on Saturday. I tell you this not for sympathy but to let you know that growing old is a REAL pain. So I need to get a lot done but I won’t get as much as I want to. I have spent part of my morning putting ice on my leg. I am supposed to do it three times a day. It did help for a while.
I pulled 2 pork rib eye steaks out of the freezer to thaw. Hubby grilled them indoors because it was raining here. We had cinnamon apples for the side.
Breakfast on Saturday morning was grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee. Then it was time to fill my pill containers. It is a job I hate to do, so I fill 4 weeks at once. Then I don’t have to do it every week.
All the laundry was done the other day. I think we will use coated paper plates so there will be hardly any dishes to rinse and put in the dishwasher.
I just finished entering two weeks worth of receipts into Fetch.
I scanned the weekly ad for Top’s that starts on Sunday. I will be using a $ 5.00/ $35.00 order Top’s coupon, $ 2.00 off fresh produce coupon, and a coupon for 100 extra gasoline points this week. I will keep my order as close to $35. as I can.
Hubby and I watched some of the college football games.
Sunday was another easy day. My son and West came to visit. We took them out to our favorite Greek restaurant for breakfast to celebrate my son’s birthday that was last Wednesday. I was happy not to have to stand to cook breakfast. Hubby made a homemade pizza for dinner. It was delicious.
I spent some time making a list of what I have to get done for Thanksgiving. I have a lot on my plate.
We again watched some pro football. But not the Bills because they have a week off.
I went to bed really early to rest my leg and so I could get up with Eloise. She slept late for a change.
It is Monday and I have a very busy day. I will be back tomorrow.
I have been deleting and unsubscribing to e-mails that are trying to sell me something. If I don’t know about a deal, I am less tempted to buy it.
We installed cameras around the outside of our home. Hubby thought he needed something extra to install the doorbell camera. We didn’t so I returned it to get a refund of $ 8.63. It was a refund from Amazon so I didn’t even have to take the item anywhere to return it. No gasoline used. Every little bit helps.
Hubby has been enjoying watching Thursday night football on Amazon Prime. This Thursday night will be his fourth and last game on there. This free trial has been very useful not only for football but for the Amazon Prime days earlier in the month.
We have been eating homemade meals at home. We have had filet mignon and tossed salad, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken breasts, and corned beef reubens. I found another on sale corned beef that I purchased after last St. Patrick’s Day so I cooked it in the crockpot on Sunday. After we watched the Buffalo Bills game, Hubby made the reubens. We ate them again last night. They were delicious. Hubby will use the rest of the meat to make corned beef hash for breakfast this morning.
Brunches have been bacon or SteakUms and eggs, cranberry orange muffins, French toast and sausage.
I prepped two pounds of strawberries into mason jars that I put in the fridge. I diced up 10 Hass avocados that I got for $1.00 each and got 100 free gasoline points too for buying them. I froze them in portions.
I stocked on canned Fancy Feast Tuscany Chicken for kittens for Eloise. I took advantage of a $20. off coupon and got free shipping at Chewy.
I did two loads of laundry using cold water. I did a load of clothes and a load of new sheet sets for our beds. I bought 2 sets of sheets at Amazon on the Prime Days for a total of $ 20.17 after a great sale and using Amazon points. We now have enough sheets for our beds so that we don’t have to launder them but once a month since we have weekly sets. I hung the clothes to dry and dried the sheets on low in the dryer using the dryer balls.
I am back on the treadmill walking to see if it helps my back.
I scanned my recent receipts into Fetch to use for Walmart gift cards.
We have closed off some rooms in our home to see if it lowers our heating bill. I am not sure it will. We’ll see. This also keeps Eloise from getting into those rooms.
Speaking of electric, we got our monthly natural gas and electric bill 2 days ago. We used 400 KWH of electricity and 15.5 therms of natural gas for 27 days. We have only had the heat on for about a week of that period. The bill was $ 128.78. I figured it would be lower than last year because we have had a warm fall and this had been the latest that I ever turned on the heat.
So I compared it to the same bill period in 2023. We used 393 KWH of electric which was only 7 KWH less than this years. We used 23 therms of natural gas which was 5 and 1/2 therms more than our current bill. The 2023 bill was $ 114.27.
So this years bill was $ 14.51 more for less usage. The bill would have been much higher if we hadn’t saved therms. Moral of the story is you can conserve all you want but the bill just keeps rising month after month. According to our news, we can look forward to more increases over the next 5 months of winter.
Our news last night spoke with one of the utility companies out here yesterday. They gave a forecast for heating months of an 11% increase each and every month for the next 5 months which equates to a natural gas average increase of $ 560 over those 5 months. The average increase for electric they said will be 1%. Time will tell.
We can’t wait to get our smart meter installed so that we can monitor this much easier. However, we are the last area in NY for that to be completed. We won’t get ours until somewhere between July 2025 and December 2025.
But I refuse to be defeated and will do what I have to to lower it this coming month. But it is an uphill battle! Today I will be buying some more snakes to put in front of outside doors to keep any drafts out.
Hubby has been doing the fall cleanup in our yard, trimming bushes, weeding, and mowing the lawn really short. If we had hired the landscapers, it would have cost us about $2500.- $3000. But they are hired for the spring cleanup which is always a huge job.
That’s about it for now. I have two more blog posts ready for this week. So see you tomorrow.
Here’s Eloise. She is growing bigger. She was 5 months old yesterday. It only took me 5 takes to get a picture of her standing still.
The end of the week was busy. My birthday was Friday so on Thursday night we went out to dinner at Wagner’s to celebrate both of our birthdays. Wagner’s is a family owned restaurant with good food. We decided to go on Thursday instead of Friday because Friday nights are busy because they have a fish fry special. It was an enjoyable evening.
On my actual birthday, Hubby knows that I take the day off. We had plenty of leftovers to choose from for dinner. However, you know what happens with the best laid plans. I went to my freezer about noontime to bring up a half gallon of ice cream to go with my birthday pie. The ice cream was like mush even though I had put it in there a day ago. I put it in the freezer on my fridge to try to refreeze it.
But then that left me with the question of whether my freezer was working or not. So I ended up spending 2 hours to empty my freezer into coolers, defrost it, take all the ice and water out, and dry it really well. Everything else in the freezer besides the ice cream was rock solid. Then I took inventory as I reloaded it. It needed to be defrosted anyhow. This is a small glimpse of what is in there. I finally got some Margaritaville Coconut Shrimp on Saturday when I went to get West’s vanilla ice cream. I didn’t have my raincheck but it was still on sale. So I can get those 10 when my freezer is emptier. Except for the chicken patties, that shrimp, the cheddar cheese and yeast, everything else is fish, beef, pork, sausage, turkey, chicken and other meats.
On Amazon Prime Day(I am on a free trial), Hubby ordered 3 cameras that were on sale for outside the house. My son installed them for us yesterday since I did not want Hubby on a ladder. This gives us an other layer of security. Hubby has since ordered a ring doorbell which came today. It was not on sale on Prime Day. So Hubby took some time to research and make sure that the way he wanted to install it, he could. It is already installed.
My son and West were here for breakfast. I made bacon and eggs for my son and us. I served West mashed potatoes and vanilla ice cream for breakfast which is what he wanted. He does not like eggs. He just got his invisaligns and his mouth is sore so soft foods only.
They brought me a beautiful vase and flowers for my birthday and after dinner, my son went online to the Buffalo Bills Store to get me some official gear. A sweatshirt and a winter hat are on the way. I really only wanted the hat because I fell in love with it. But my son talked me into the sweatshirt which I will wear on game days.
While I was making breakfast, I prepped the hamburger that I needed to put in a casserole that I was making for dinner.
I made a large hash brown casserole for dinner. Hubby and I each had one piece and will have another one tonight. The rest were frozen in portions to eat for brunches the next month or so.
On Saturday, these coupons came in the mail. It always pays to ask.
Today I purchased 6 lbs. of bacon for $ 2.99. This is the best price I have seen since 2020. If I had had more room, I would have gotten more since this is on my diet that I discussed with my doctor last week.
They also had Top’s ice cream for $ 2.99 which is a great price. However, we still have vanilla ice cream. Plus I want to give up ice cream except for holidays this winter.
Tonight is Buffalo Bills football and I want to give a quick call to my sister.
I hope you all had a great 5 days. Did you get any good deals this week?
It has been a crazy few days. We have been getting our home ready for winter. We finally had to turn our heat on 3 days ago. The nights started getting chilly. Hubby got up one morning to take his shower and he said it was too cold. So the heat went on for the fall and winter. This morning it was 38 when I got up at 4AM with Eloise who doesn’t like to sleep at night. Since we turn the heat down to 64 at night, I quickly turned it up to 70. It was just too cold in here for me.
On Sunday morning, I went up to Top’s to get on sale fresh salmon for $ 7.99 a lb. and the ad also showed the Margaritaville shrimp on sale for B1G1 again this week. The Margaritaville they did not have. The fish guy told me they should be in later in the week. He said they are out of stock. They only had 3 small packages of the salmon( I took 2 packages which had a total of 3 pieces.) and this was the first day of the ad. I asked it they had more and he said no. He told me maybe later in the week. I guess Top’s sales ads are useless this week. There was nothing else that interested me. So I have to go out later and will stop by there to see if they have any of the things I wanted. If not, I am going to get rain checks.
Anyhow, I had not had salmon in over a year because the price was way too high. So I had one piece baked with 2 eggs for brunch yesterday. It tasted so good!
I defrosted a large ham over the weekend that I purchased at 1/2 off after Christmas last year. Then Hubby cut it all up for me. We have lots of slices and chunks to use up. These three food saver bags that you are looking at are separated into 4 meals each. So you are looking at 12 meals that I froze for the future. We have been eating off of a large amount of slices that Hubby put in the refrigerator. We have had ham and cheese sandwiches and navy bean soup. We have had 3 meals for dinner and 1 meal for brunch so far.
I made the soup with the ham bone, 5 cans of navy beans, extra ham pieces, mustard seed and other spices. I usually make it from dry beans that I soak overnight but I had the canned beans needed to be used up and it also made it easy for me on a day that we would be out. On Monday, I quickly threw it all in the crock pot so that it would be ready when we came home. It was delicious. We have already eaten about 1/8 of another jar. We have this one left to finish this week or to freeze if need be.
On Monday morning, Hubby did a lot of cutting back bushes, trimming hedges and pulling annual flowers to get ready for the winter. I worked for a while in my pantry to see what gaps needed to be filled in the next few weeks to stock for winter. Then we had mid afternoon annual checkups which took an hour and a half. My primary is fantastic. He explained to me some heart issues that my heart doctor had not. He really went into detail and showed me how to check my pulse. He told me it might be a good time to buy a watch that does this for me. So I am looking into that.
On Tuesday, my back was so painful. I couldn’t take it easy because we went to get our senior flu shots and to pick up Hubby’s prescriptions. I am glad we had a ham meal that we could quickly put together for dinner.
Today my back is better so I will run a few errands. Since I will be at Top’s, I am then going to stop at Dollar General to check their $ deals, next will be the liquor store to get the cheapest vodka I can find. I am almost out of vanilla to bake with. Since I have vanilla beans, I will make a whole bottle.
Last stop will be across the street from the liquor store at Big Lots to see what kind of deals they are running.
The rest of the day I am going to take it easy and just gather the garbage cans within our home to take out to the garbage in the garage which gets put out tonight.
We were only able to save $ 4127.46 this month. It was a month of spending on some fast food and three restaurant meals for us and family.
We also had higher bills for our utilities: electric, natural gas and a water bill we paid for the entire summer. Our medical bills were higher than they have been all year due to the fact that we try to group our appointments and tests over the spring, summer, and fall. We don’t do winter appointments if we can avoid them. We have two dentist appointments between today and the first week in November. They are very expensive especially since we lost our dental plan. We also have 2 doctor appointments this month. Most of Hubby’s prescriptions have been zero except for one $60. one. Mine are usually $60. each even though I don’t take many drugs. They add up.
We also had maintenance bills for the furnace. This month we have a tree being taken out and the sprinkler lines being blown out. They will be hefty bills. Life is expensive when you have a home and property.
It seems like costs are going up everyday. Now that the longshoremen are on strike along the entire east coast and west to Houston, costs are going to get even worse. Inflation will be horrible in a few weeks if they don’t go back to work. They were offered a 50% raise in pay amongst other things and they didn’t take it. I think most people would love to get a 50% raise. Biden says he is not going to interfere which is ridiculous. He can but he won’t.
If they are out for any length of time, people will starve. Food banks are already not doing well so they are not going to be much help. I just pray that people have stocked up knowing this was coming. If not do it now. It will take a week or so for the prices to go up unless the grocery stores raised then overnight to gouge us. Soon you will see shortages like you have never seen before. It only takes 3 days to strip a grocery store. Economists are saying it will take months to get the supply chain back to normal especially if they are out for a long period of time.
I will be keeping my eye on prices and you should too. I plan on buying nothing except what I need on sale. They can’t so anything about this week’s sale ads that are already printed and out. Get the sales now!
Take care of your needs and your families. I am praying that this strike does not last long.
