Visits and Frugal-ness

Time for an update from Brown Acres! 

Our lives are a hectic mess right now=(.

Between football, school, and laundry, there isn't much time for anything else. 

Still, with this schedule we are keeping, I am trying to live as frugally as possible. 

It's alot harder when one is working full time, has a house to upkeep, and a child involved in sports, but I am trying anyways. 

First:

I garden and can my produce. 

Mom and Dad have a great processor that I used a couple weekends ago. I got 8 quarts of tomato juice! I was pretty pleased. My sis (blurred out in the background) helped a bunch! It went very fast thanks to her! 

Secondly, I have been price matching at Wal-mart. 

This saves time and effort from running all around town to get the store "loss-leaders" advertised each week. Plus, if wally world doesn't carry a specific brand, they still will price match an equivalent. 

I mainly buy meats and produce as those are usually the best buys. I save at least half of my grocery budget each month doing this. 

I also have been doing freezer meals and filling up our upright freezer with fast and easy dinners. 

I stock up on a loss leader (like chicken breast for .99 cents a LB) and then following recipes that we either already love, or from these cookbooks I whip up some meals, package them in ziplock bags, and freeze them up. 

This has been a huge time saver. 

And lastly, for now, I am trying to make some extra cash by  re-doing furniture. I have some end tables in the works right now, but its gonna be at least a couple more days before I show those off, because I just don't have a bunch of time to commit to them right now. I spend an hour or so, give or take, each day working on them, so hopefully they will get finished. 

Why, you may ask, am I doing all this? Well, I would like to be able to save some money up so that if we do ever actually buy a farm or property, we will have a cushion to get ourselves started. Plus, I would love to quit my job and be a farmer/artist in whatever form that takes. 

In other news:

Here is our sweet Hazel. She is such a good dog. Now if I could only get her not to run off into the woods every time she's off a leash we'd be great.

My brother got to come in for a quick visit! I love this man. He is the coolest. We had such a great time hanging out with him over the long weekend. The kids were super excited to see him. 

 There was a lot of fishing involved.....

Zach friend, Matt. So silly. 

It was a great visit! I can't wait till thanksgiving! 

It's storming today....

Here is a crazy picture from my front stoop. Looks like fall.  

Yup, those are leaves.

Its an inside day today! Woot woot! I may read....all day=)