Grocery Bills

This has been brought up on several of my boards over the years and it continues to boggle me. I keep hearing of families of 3 spending $600 a mth, families of 6 spending more than $1000, ect...

I am feeding a family of 4. Currently I'm still buying school snacks/juice boxes, ect... for a school child. I'm also feeding a labourer. He eats roughly twice what a average "desk-job-man" would eat. He has to. His job relies on the amount of calories he consumes. I, personally, am a lover of food (could be the reason part of this blog is about the diet I struggle with lol). Then there's the baby, who on some days, eats close to what Brianna eats!

When you add in the amount of food Lee alone consumes, I am essentially feeding a family of 5. But even going by an actual count, I'm feeding a family of 4. We spend roughly $200 a month.

Now, I am not one of these super crunchy house-wives who lives and breathes for natural/homemade everything. I mean, yes, we have a garden, but seriously? It's like 6x8 feet. It gives us slightly more than we can eat in a summer. With the exception of this year's green peppers, we usually never have anything left from the garden past October. I don't make most of my own grain products. I mean I like baking and will occasionally make muffins or quick breads, but for the most part I buy store bought. I buy store bought everything with the exception of what the garden provides during the summer. And even then! While I buy a lot less, I DO still buy fruits and veggies from the store during the summer!


I don't keep livestock, so I buy all my meat and dairy from the store (some of the biggest expenses at a grocery store too!). I also buy a lot of convenience foods. I don't soak beans, I buy canned. I buy boxed foods once and a while. I buy things like Mr. Noodles and Kraft Dinner (Mr. Noodles especially lol). 

 I buy a lot of brand name products. I DO buy some no name, but honestly, most of my foods are brand name. I don't deprive us of certain foods (eg. meat and dairy) to save money (ok, I will go once and a while without cheese because of the expense). We DO eat vegetarian sometimes, but it's because we LIKE it, not cause we're skipping meat to save money. Heck, I bought pizza pockets this week lol

I truly DO NOT understand how a lot of people are doubling (or more) our grocery bill. And especially my American friends! I remember (before the big passport broohaha) I LOVED shopping in the US for groceries because of how CHEAP it was! For example. A HUGE block of velveeta cheese is $6 or so. Here, a block 1/4 of that size is $6. A savings for 75%! I WISH we had American prices here!


I truly DO NOT mean this as an insult to my friends whose grocery bills are higher than mine. This is honestly a bit of pure confusion. Maybe cause we are used to living off of so much less money per year than some of my friends, we are able to make our grocery budget stretch further. Maybe my friends eat fancier foods than we do. I just don't get it.

Awesome Sale!

Value Village had a 50% off sale. Perfect timing too since it's back to school! Let's see what I got:
For Lee:
2 work shirts
1 nice polo shirt
For Brianna:
4 pairs of jeans
2 sets of pjs
2 sweaters
1 long sleeve shirt
1 jean jacket
For Olivia:
3 pairs of pants
1 pair of overalls
1 dress
2 shirts
1 sleeper
All for a measly $52!!!! Other than winter boots, Brianna is set for winter and Olivia's well on her way!

Girls Day Out!

No babies or boys allowed!

We went to pick up one of those awesome Ikea kids chairs that are egg shaped and have a closing canopy on them... Brianna loves it! It was supposed to be for her birthday but she had to get it early so I could make sure it was big enough for her!

Next stop was a hair cut! Her first cut in a salon. I finally convinced her to go short. I guess every time I talked about cutting her hair short she was thinking like Lee's hair. Noooooo, a normal girly short hair cut! She's madly in love with her new hair.

Then we went off for some shopping. Brianna got new shoes, toothbrush and toothpaste (she's still at an age where that's exciting lol) and a new skort. We also went out for hot chocolate and donuts.

All in all, a great day! We discussed how when he behaviour is good, we like to do this kind of stuff with her. How if he behaviour was good over the summer, we could do this kind of stuff more often! Hopefully that sinks in!

Almost a Good Day

So we had a mostly good day....

Took Brianna to her hearing test. While the tech said the vibrations weren't as high as she liked (but didn't explain that at all *sigh*) her hearing is perfect :S HUH? So what's with the yelling and the odd accent??? The yelling she said is common enough that she sees at least 2 kids a week for, but she couldn't explain the odd accent. So we'll go back to Dr. Joseph June 17th for a follow up of her feet and ears and see what he thinks.

Come back into town and pop by my old friend's house to check out the washer and dryer we were discussing yesterday. Not as new as I thought it would be but her dad gave me a "warranty" on them saying he'd give me my money back if I don't like them within 30 days. Sold. $100 for a washer AND a dryer! They even delivered them to my house! I can't wait for Lee to install them tomorrow!!!

Tried Value Village for new shorts as mine are starting to fall off even though the scale hates me. No go. God I hate buying clothes! Thankfully I've got a few shorts that still fit. Supposed to get hotter over the weekend and hit 30C by Tuesday! (And somehow I've got to get Brianna to wear her sneakers/inserts to school in this heat!)

Came home, ended up having to nurse Olivia since I didn't pump this morning and was gonna blow up (and at that point I'm too engorged to pump). So I guess she'll start her noon sippy feedings tomorrow. We both went for a nap while Lee sat on the porch watching Brianna play outside. When we got up Olivia and I went to the grocery store while Lee and Brianna played a game on the computer (since she had been good all day). Come home and Brianna's playing on the computer by herself, obviously Lee was happy with her.

Made a totally awesome chicken bake for supper. OMG yum! Starting to massively heat up in the house so we've got all the windows open. Olivia highly protested going to sleep cause she was hot and sweating in only a onsie. Maybe we should put in the air conditioner? Get Brianna to get ready for bed. I'm on the porch and hear: LEE!!!! Go inside and all I can smell is Lee's cologne. *sigh* Lee's done what I did the other day and turned off the bathroom light to ignore her tantrum. Ensuing fit. In the bath tub again. Finally get it out of her that she just wanted to smell it. So I showed her how she can smell the cologne anytime she likes without having to pour it down the drain and waste is. She thinks it's wonderful that she has permission. (WOW, another time where ASKING is better than just doing something).

Soooooo hoping that we can make it through the WHOLE day tomorrow being a good day!