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What are your tips for reducing spending?
Two Mondays ago, I mentioned that we cut back on spending in 2009, and Chez Julie asked me to share some of my tips. What a great idea!
I have a lot of tips and I bet commenters will too – so don’t feel bad if you can’t read them all – PLEASE SHARE your ideas!
I broke my tips into three categories: Shopping, Entertainment and General. Click “more” to read (skim, really) on.
The Pharaoh
It’s too soon after posting these pictures, BUT I had been eying this Pharaoh hat at Target for two months. Imagine my delight when I saw it in the Halloween clearance section last week for 75% off ($1.25 total – not sure if it’s even worth that!).
Doesn’t it look great on Data?! He didn’t like it so much. I had to bribe him with food to wear it so I could take a picture. (I think he deserves it after trying to wake me up for 3 hours this morning.)
Killer House Plants
We have a lot of house plants in our lower level – seven of them! Two of them, somehow from across the room, decided to band together and grow super stinky, killing flower pod things (not yet bloomed) this past week. I am convinced they are trying to take over the house.
The little flower pod.
Both plants are corn plants. We have had one for at least 8 years, and the other for maybe 3. It’s curious that they are blooming now, when they never had before! I’ll let you know what they look like when they open (I imagine there will be little daggers in there, which the plants will use to attach us in our sleep).
The whole corn plant.
Nutritional Yeast Fail
Why is my pasta naked, sad and lonely?
Because it is supposed to have this on it:
A Nutritional Yeast based pasta sauce.
But one bite of that made me want to throw up. Steven tried to fix it with spices and he couldn’t.
Most of the vegan websites I read talk about using nutritional yeast to make a pseudo mac n’cheese dish. I was intrigued so I bought some and was really excited to try it. I tried this recipe from vegweb.
I don’t know if nutritional yeast is a very acquired taste, or if my stomach was just too upset after my run, but this sauce made me feel nauseous, and I lost my appetite. I am hoping I just did something wrong, or it was the wrong recipe, because I have read SO MANY raves for this product!
I felt really bad for “ruining” dinner. I am pretty sensitive in the kitchen, since I am not a very good chef. I need lots of praise and good feedback to keep me going (ha ha). Luckily, Steven was not upset about it. But I think we will be making something “safer” for dinner tonight!
Life
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bloom, Cat, cat costume, chef, corn plant, Data, flower, kitchen, macaroni and cheese, nutritional yeast, palm, pasta, Pharoah hat, plants, Target, Vegan, Vegetarian, vegweb
Hmm, my reminder on the monthly calendar to pick up my medication looks kind of funny next to the day I have marked as off from work.
Somehow, I ended up on autofill for the monthly prescription I pick up at Target. I figured this out one day when I got a creepy automated voice message telling me that my prescription was ready to pick up.
That was several months ago. Since then, I have been trying to figure out how autofill works. I only got the creepy voicemail reminder once during that time frame (until last week) so I’d been asking the pharmacist each time I went when my prescription would be ready, but they could never give me a straight answer. I just went with it, since they always had it ready.
Well, this Saturday, on the 31st, we stopped to buy some groceries and pick up my prescription. Surprisingly, I had received another one of the creepy voicemail reminders on the 26th, so I figured my prescription would be ready.
Uh, no. I got back there, told them my name, and they couldn’t find it. They gave me dumbfounded looks and asked how to spell my last name again. They looked it up in the computer, and told me I had waited too long to pick it up and it had been sent back (huh?). They said they fill my prescription on the 24th, and they sent it back because I had taken more than 14 days to pick it up.
Um… it was the 31st, a mere 7 days later. And I got the creepy voicemail reminder on the 26th. They then informed me that the reminder told me they were sending it back, not that it was ready. Guess I need to get my ears checked, because that is not what I heard on the phone.
So, they told me it would take an hour to “fill” my prescription (which is not actually pills, so I don’t know what was going to take so frickin’ long). I was not very happy, because we were trying to get home by 1:00 pm for trick-or-treating (we got 24 trick-or-treaters in a six-hour time frame – FAIL) and still had one more stop to make.
We did all of our shopping in about 25 minutes and while we were in the checkout I went back there to see if my prescription was ready, by chance, and lo and behold, it was. Ugh. I don’t know why they told me it would take an hour when all they have to do is get something out of a refrigerator. They lady kind of apologized to me and thanked me for being patient. And I asked again, PLEASE explain to me how this autofill works. PLEASE. And all they told me is that my prescription will be ready on the 24th* each month. So, I will give it one more shot, before I go back to requesting it myself during each visit. When I do that, I expect the hour wait. What’s the convenience of autofill if it’s not ready to pick up?
*My calendar reminder is on the 28th because I don’t go shopping on the weekdays. I’m going to call and make sure it’s ready.
Do you have any clothes hanging in your closet with the tags still on (or never worn)?*
Fess up!
I certainly have a few items. See that tag hanging from that beige suit jacket in the photo below? I think I purchased that jacket well over five years ago. It was on sale at Target for $6 or something ridiculous. And the gray jacket next to it has never been worn either. I bought it last season at New York & Company, then lost too much weight, and it was too big to wear. Hey! I think it would fit now. Woo-hoo! Not.
The other clothes that still have tags on them are gifts, and they’re mostly stored in boxes. I try to only hang up the clothes I actually wear. And I also I try not to buy clothes that are the wrong size, or not my style, but I have definitely made a few mistakes!
Thanks for inspiring this question, diane!
I love the convenience of shopping for groceries at Target, I really, really do.
But I am really, really frustrated with shopping there right now. They keep dropping the products we buy – Cocina Nueva Mexican rice, 8th Continent Soy Milk, whole wheat flour (why the hell would they drop that?), Odwalla bars, Barabara’s Bakery products… the list could go on. And the selection is just crap. I cannot find any vegan margarine or vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips. They have hardly any organic produce. They’re always out of the cereal we want. Ugh.
I really don’t want to be one of those people that shops at four different stores on the weekends. I liked getting everything I needed at Target, and not wasting too much time. But it sounds like I am going to have to make a supplemental trip somewhere else. Perhaps I will finally step inside a Whole Foods since I still haven’t visited once since I moved out here over two years ago. I am grateful that I live in such a big area and have these other stores to shop in. I know I will find what I want, it just may not be as convenient as I like it to be.
I actually wanted to share a few products I have tried lately and liked. Ironically, I found one of these (the Odwalla bars) at Target one week and they were gone the next. Oh well.
Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza: I really like pizza (who doesn’t, right?) so I’ve been wondering… what kind of pizza does a vegan eat? We found this vegan Roasted Vegetable pizza to try. It has marinated organic shiitake mushrooms, roasted red peppers, sweet onions, marinated artichoke hearts and no cheese. Yum yum yum! It smelled super strong when it was cooking, so I was kind of worried that it would taste too “fancy pants” for me, but we both ended up really liking it. It’s very sweet – I think the onions used are vidalia. It’s not like eating a cheese pizza, but it’s very tasty. I would also like to try Amy’s other vegan pizzas – Rice Crust Spinach and Non-Dairy Rice Crust Cheeze Pizza. Of course, we don’t have these at Target, and I am surprised they still had the Roasted Vegetable when I visited Target yesterday.
Odwalla Chocolate Chip Peanut Bar: Two weeks ago, Target had entire boxes of these flavor of Odwalla bar. I bought one to try since I like Berries GoMega so much. HOLY CRAP! These are so good, and they’re vegan! I actually wrote a sticky note on the box that said, “Steven, you HAVE to try one of these. They are like a little slice of heaven.” Like the other Odwalla bars, it is very chewy and dense, which are characteristics I like in a granola bar. And it’s sweet, but not too sweet. The perfect treat! They were gone on yesterday’s Target trip though. The Berries GoMega bars where there. I noticed they had two different kinds of packaging – a 6 pack with 2.2 oz bars, and a 6-pack with 2 oz bars. Hmm, which should I buy? Way to phase those out, Target. On a side note, I found out that another store in our area has almost all of the Odwalla Bar flavors, but in single serving only. I got Strawberry Pomegranate (not that impressed) and SuperFood and Super Protein (haven’t tried those yet).
Stonewall’s Jerquee: A coworker told me about a health food store downtown so I decided to check it out. They had a few different brands of vegetarian beef jerky, so I picked up two packages of Stonewall’s to try – Original Mild, and BBQ “Beef” (BBQ “Beef” is the only one they carry that is not vegan, because it has honey in it). I called Steven to tell him about it, and it seemed pretty weirded out. BUT, we ate the the BBQ “Beef” packet on Friday night and were shocked – it is so realistically close to tasting like beef jerky, that Steven actually said, “It feels wrong to eat this.” They got the chewy texture just right. What a fun snack. I ordered some big bags off of their website.
What a piece of the vegetarian jerky looks like.
And while I am at it, I must admit that I tried THREE new kinds of Luna Bars this week, while at the same store I found the jerky in. I just got really excited to have such a large selection to choose from. I tried Luna Bars – Dulce de Leche, Cookies ‘n Cream Delight, and and Iced Oatmeal Raisin. These were all really good, but tasted very sweet. So sweet, I think they are more a of a treat, and not something I should eat that often (they have WAY TOO MANY ingredients in them). I try not to eat bars that often. I’ll have one homemade one a day, and sometimes one after I workout, if I don’t have dinner right away.
Extra points if you made it this far!
Things making me happy this Saturday:
Too lazy to take a photo with my actual camera!
What’s making you happy today (whether or not it’s Saturday when you read this!)?
*I am planning on making trying veganism soon, and his support really means A LOT to me.
**I love calendars. I love writing out what I have to do and crossing it off. This makes me really giddy.
***Not better as in “faster is better,” but better as in, better breathing, better form, etc.
Peanut Butter is a trigger food for me. It can sit in the pantry for weeks and I don’t even think about it, but once I open it, I eat WAY too much.
We had two containers in our pantry from November – creamy and crunchy. They were both half full this week. They are now gone – mostly because of me.
We went to Target today to get groceries, and even stopped by the peanut butter, but I didn’t say that we needed any, because I didn’t want it in the house. I was being selfish.
Steven noticed we were out when we got home. He was upset that we didn’t get any. I can understand that. He likes to have it every once in awhile. And it was wrong of me to only think of myself when making the grocery list. I told him I would go pick some up, but that it is a trigger food for me, so I had no idea how long it would last. And I have no idea how long this overeating/binging phase is going to last for me. Why do I go through phases like this?
So now I feel guilty for eating too much AND for not getting any more peanut butter for the pantry. Yay.
I love Target for inexpensive “I’m in between sizes” clothing. A lot of my work pants are too big now (and the one pair that fits has a hole that needs to be fixed) and some tops are as well. I would love to go drop the cash at Banana Republic and buy the pants I really want (hello, Martin fit), but what is the point when I am losing weight?
I noticed something funny yesterday when I was trying on tops – everything I tried on was either teal or a ruby shade! I guess jewel tones are in!
Has anyone else noticed this? An abundance of emerald green, amethyst purple, ruby red, topaz yellow, sapphire blue, turquoise blue, and tourmaline green (color descriptions taken from here)? It seems that I read about these shades in one of my magazines… of course now, I don’t recall which.
These photos don’t do the tops justice – trust me, they’re cute. And what is the deal with the Target models? Are they not allowed a full head?
Is anyone else trying out the jewel tones?
I sure am! I just hope I can still wear my plum and mustard clothing. I invested quite a bit in plum, and have even been rockin’ a mustard top (although a timid one) lately.
Click here to read about another blogger who loves jewel tones! Oh, and after watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with Steven last night, I realized their uniforms are jewel-toned as well. Ha ha.
Has your favorite store ever stopped carrying one of your favorite items? What was the item? What did you do when they stopped carrying it?
I ask, because this seems to happen to us ALL THE TIME. We do the bulk of our grocery and non-grocery shopping at Target, and they seem to be a bit inconsistent with the items they stock. We’ll try something new, fall in love with it, buy it for 6 months or so… then it’s just gone one day.
They’ve gotten a little better, but I think what we have been dreading is true – they are no longer carrying the Nueva Cocina Mexican Rice Mix – something that has become a staple in our “Mexican” dinner nights.
At first, the shelf for the rice was empty, but the tag was still there. So we figured they just needed to stock it. But then, we kept checking for a month or two, and it was never stocked. Then last time, the tag was gone.
We’re pretty upset..
How silly, right? Why don’t we try something else, or even try to make it ourselves? I’m sure we will resort to that if we must. It’s just that when you buy a product, and you really start to love it, you hate to replace it.
For now, we’ll probably search a few other grocery stores, or maybe even buy it on amazon (which seems very, very strange to me).
Update: I just got back from shopping at Target, and guess what? They stopped carrying our favorite stick margarine, Imperial. I wonder what Steven will say about this… Oh, and P.S. I stopped at two other grocery stores and didn’t find our rice mix. Wah!
Hi! I'm Kim, a 34-year-old living in Chicagoland with my husband, Steven, and our cats, Khali, Apollo, and Starbuck. I work in the design industry (architecture), follow a vegan lifestyle, am addicted to running, and am an ACE certified personal trainer (working at Essential Fitness, LLC ("Efit"))! I write about a variety of topics, and consider this a "life" blog - a place I can share anything that's on my mind. Please visit the "About" page to get a better idea of who I am! :-)
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