French Toast

Starting my budget meals off with a bang.  The kiddo had a friend over so I got fancy for breakfast with French Toast and fruit.  Worked out to be $1/serving.

I realized it's going to be hard to calculate some things because  if I've had them in the house  won't likely remember how much they cost.  Also milk & coffee are luxury items for me so I don't count them against the budget.  

Milk as a luxury?  Yeah, I prefer the taste of raw milk.  It's WAY WAY WAY more expensive than regular supermarket milk.  It's also something that can be eliminated from the monthly budget if I feel tight that month.

With coffee, it's more complicated.  I'm not going to eliminate it and I'm not going to drink cheap coffee ever.  Maybe it's a necessity, not a luxury.  I do save money by roasting my own beans.  That makes it about 20 cents a serving most of the  time.    That's a big savings over 45cents a cup from the kind I buy when I purchase roasted.  Funny thing even that is cheaper than those darn K-cups which are not not not good coffee (and bad for the environment).  Some people think it's fancy and rave over them, but gag - no.

Coffee is an experience for me.  From roasting to hand grinding to pour over brewing.  I don't take cream or sugar in it very often now.  Good coffee will do that.  You learn to enjoy the taste and don't want to hide it with other stuff.  You can follow my coffee life on one of my other blogs www.krulewich.com  I'm posting my year in coffee there.  On my instagram I post a cup a day from my collection  I love thrift shops and have tons of cups.  Too many.  I'm displaying them this year and as part of my minimizing my life I will keep a select few and sell the rest.  They are almost all vintage cups and as much as I enjoy them - I just don't have the space.  I'll post a link when I get around to that.

Back to budget food:

Lunch is leftovers and dinner will be black beans cooked in stock made from the bones of those hams I bought yesterday.  I boiled them with some peppers and made 3 quarts of stock.  Two will be saved for later and one was used today.  Black beans with a bit of ham and some gf cornbread from a mix I have on hand.  Today's food will come in at around $3 per person.  That's a tiny bit lower than my goal.  Good, because some days will be over a bit.    It's a rough estimate of course.  I'm not sure how to count the ham stock.  Mostly those would be trash, but I was able to get some good eating out of them and turn the stock into several more servings.

Oh well, as long as I only bring in $300 worth of new groceries for the month.

Bubblewrap on the windows

Like anyone who goes online I've seen a LOT of tips for this or that around the home.  One that I've been interested in trying is putting bubblewrap on the windows for extra insulation.  Our house does not have the best windows.  We rent so I have zero interest in replacing them.  I also don't have any interest in higher bills.  Every year I put plastic over the widows for some added insulation but it's a pain.  This year I decided to try the bubble wrap thing.

How Stuff works has breakdown of the R value of adding bublewrap

http://home.howstuffworks.com/green-living/insulate-windows-bubble-wrap.htm



Build It Solar also has a breakdown of the cost savings.  Plus many other wonderful tips that are worth trying.

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/bubblewrap.htm

I bought a small amount of bubblewrap and used up what I had on hand from packages I have received.  This project cost me about $16 total.  I'm sure if you ask around you can do it for zero dollars just by finding stores willing to give you left over bubble wrap.

All you need are bubble wrap, some scissors, a ruler and a spray bottle of water.

*important note - water - NOT FREBREEZE.  I didn't have an empty spray bottle and I figured, why not, the Frebreeze is right here.  I had to redo that window because it didnt' stick as well.  Water is cheaper anyway, but I'm impatient and didn't want to wait.  The kid had an empty spray bottle so I was back in business in a couple of hours.  Didn't have to use extra wrap, that was still fine - it just came loose as the frebreeze dried.

Measure the window and then cut the bubble wrap to size.

Spray the window with water

press the bubble wrap to the glass, bubble side down.

easy peasy - you're done.

On my North facing windows I added a second layer.  Same method, just put it on top of the first layer.

Lots of great looking photos on line  - but I'll use the ones I took of my actual windows.  Got a nice blurred effect from the diffused light coming through the wrap.

In the second photo I played around with the expose just to show the bubbles in the bubblewrap.

This was about a million times easier than putting up plastic.

One drawback is that I can't look out and see the birds, but I'll trade that for lower bills this winter.

A HUGE plus is my dog.  One of my dogs is terrified of bubblewrap.  He's also the one most likely to jump up on the door.  Now the can't stay far enough away.  My door frame might stay clean this winter!

So there you have it - an easy, fast way to insulate the windows.  One of those things from Pinterest that actually does work the way people say it does.  (Sometimes I think people on Pinterest just make things up so I'll look stupid when I try them)