Mega Shopping

First of all, I realize things look a little, well, plainer around here.  As much as I liked my last template, it didn’t have the functionality I needed.  I’m going to toy around with a header with the days to come to make it look a little less cookie cutter, but that may take me a little while.  I have toyed with moving over to Wordpress.  Everyone says Wordpress is so much better but, frankly, I just like blogger!  I guess I could pay to have a blog design done, but I just don’t feel like throwing any money at it right now.

Anyway, today was the mega shopping day.  As I’ve said, I’m trying something new—planning all our dinners out for the month.  Well, I actually did that!  I downloaded an excel template and set up a calendar:

Okay, you can’t see it that well, but that’s not important (besides, you don’t need to see how many times I have Shake ‘n Bake listed!  Hey, it’s the hubby’s favorite!).  All the blue squares are slow cooker meals.  I’ve realized that I have to use the slow cooker on Tuesdays and Thursdays due to our schedule.  The pink squares are pressure cooker meals.  Anything bolded is a new recipe and there is a note indicating where the recipe is.

Once I did that, I wrote a huge shopping list out for everything.  My plan is to buy all the proteins (which can be frozen) and all the non-perishables of the month at the beginning of the month, along with the perishables for the week.  So, this morning, I made sure my list was complete (it was a two-sided list….):

And then we headed out.  Luckily, my husband was with me to help for this first run.  That also meant that we could hit Costco first (he’s the only one with a membership—he inherited a lifetime membership, so there is no reason for me to pay for one).  I had three items to get at Costco:

And, that didn’t go exactly as planned!  To be fair, a few of those things were items that were on the list and were cheaper at Costco than at our grocery store.

We went to the grocery store straight from Costco, which is a lot of shopping.  My husband ended up taking my son back to the car halfway through the trip and I finished shopping with my daughter.  The cart was loaded and then we ended up with the slowest, crabbiest checker alive.  Ugh!  I was so ready to be done!  But, we did it and now our freezer and pantry is stocked!

Of course, I will be heading back to the grocery store again this month.  My plan is one weekly trip to get perishables, so I should only have one BIG shopping trip a month.  Also, I only planned out dinners, as I usually eat the same things for breakfast and lunch.

I have to say that I like this plan so far, but we’ll see how it works out budget-wise.  My hope is that it lowers our grocery bill.  I tracked our spending in 2012 and I spent more at the grocery store than I would have liked, and I really think that was because I wasn’t planning well.  So, we’ll see.

In other news, it almost feels like Spring here.  After the hellacious winter/spring/early summer we had last year, I am loving this!  We aren’t going to church tomorrow since my son will still be in the “highly contagious” period of his latest tango with a norovirus, so I may go out for a walk.  Or I may go to the gym.  I haven’t decided yet.

Now, however, I am off to bed.  All that shopping made me sleepy!