Winning!

Dontcha just love free things? Especially when you win them?

The other day on Facebook I noticed my local mall had a contest on to promote the new stores opening up this summer. Normally I ignore these but I decided to give it a shot. They had three t-shirts in a picture and you had to tag yourself in the one you thought was from one of the new stores. Apparently I was one of the people who picked the right one and my name was entered in a draw and I won! I thought it was for the t-shirt itself but it turns out it was for a mall gift card for the price of the t-shirt . Which I suppose makes sense, it’s a lot easier than having one of every size ready since they wouldn’t know what size I am.

I decided to look around the mall to see if I could find any good deals, and wow there were tons!
Who knew the end of the season was July ?

I finally settled on these shorts from Aeropostale - on sale for only $12 (regularly $39.95)!  Normally I avoid this store as it’s not my usual ‘style’ plus I find the sizes make me feel giant (definitely geared for younger shoppers) but they had some great sales and I really needed new shorts so I figured I’d give it a shot.

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I kind of maybe want to cut out the tag with the size on it. Even though I know their clothes run super small, it still sucks having to buy a size much larger than I am used to. Colleen from The Lunchbox Diaries did a great post on buying what fits, not what size you wish you were/want to be. I made sure to remember that while in the fitting room today.

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Daily eats (No pictures unfortunately) but here’s what I had:

Breakfast – two pieces of French toast (whole wheat toast, 1.5 eggs – well I used two but there was still a fair amount of egg left in the dish afterwards so that’s what I’m guessing I used) and I tried to go easy on the syrup. Not the healthiest I know but I had a crazy craving for it.

Lunch – California Roll made with brown rice and a Nature Valley granola bar

Snack – A pita with peanut butter and jelly all wrapped up

Supper – A piece of salmon with a cup of frozen veggies (broccoli, carrots and cauliflower) + a peach.

Not bad overall. We are running low on groceries so I’m trying to get creative with what we have left.

Planning & Budgeting–First Attempt

Now that Brandon and I are going to be living together, our grocery bill is definitely going to go up.

I’m hopeful though that it won’t go up too much (even though that boy sure can eat!). I currently spend about $160-200 a month to feed mainly myself and sometimes him when he stays here a few nights a week. I am hoping after the move we can only go up to about $65-70ish a week (I’m aiming to stay under $275-280 a month). I feel like that is a “do-able” amount, especially considering I was able to keep it as low as I did when it was just me.

I decided that do try and keep our budget under control we needed a plan.

And a plan is what I have!

A little while ago Chelsey from Clean Eating Chelsey featured a grocery shopping series where she tried to stick within a budget and she shared this wonderful grocery shopping list that she uses each week and I loved it! I thought it was such a great idea.

A few days ago when trying to figure out how I was going to plan, I remembered this list. Luckily she uploaded it to Google Docs so others could have their own copy! I immediately saved it to my computer and tweaked it a bit to add/remove some items.

I am way too excited about this!
(I showed Brandon the list and his first reaction was “That’s intense”)

Maybe it’s a little intense, but it’s so helpful too!

We usually do our grocery shopping on Fridays, so I plan to start this week!

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Last night I conquered my fear of touching raw meat!

I made turkey burgers from scratch. Which meant I had to get my hands right in there and get dirty. Normally I avoid touching meat at all costs, even if it means I look hilarious using my tongs or whatever I can find to handle it, so this is HUGE for me!

While they were ok, they weren’t really worth sharing the recipe yet. I have a few ideas in mind for the next time.

While putting the extra burgers in the freezer, I remembered I had this in there:

I’ve been wanting to use them forever, but can’t decide what for! Any suggestions? I was thinking they might make a great little hors d’oeurves when Brandon and I have our apartment warming party in a few weeks.

Oh! Speaking of our new apartment, we finally got a new futon! Well new to us, we got off of Kijiji. We LOVE it! It’s in great shape, matches the rest of our furniture and is sturdy which was our big thing.

Don’t mind the mess around it – I had to pile all of the boxes along the wall to make room for it in my living room. We don’t move for another week but they wanted it gone right away, so my livingroom is super cramped right now!  And Queenie has officially found her new favourite place. Too bad once we are in the new place she is going to be banned from that room! Brandon is adamant about keeping that room cat/fur free since it’s where the computers and other boy toys (playstation 3, tv, etc) are going to be kept.

We finally are signing the new lease this afternoon, and hopefully our super’s have good news for us! We are still waiting for the old tenant to get her bum out of the apartment, so we can move in.

xo