This past year I realized we have fallen down a hole of eating not so healthy foods more often then we should. We totally fell off the bandwagon of both eating well and keeping our grocery costs down. The pandemic has really split our routine into many different parts. We now have to base our budget on whether or not the store has our food in stock, if the kids are home from school for a bit and whether our oldest daughter will be at our house. Since the oldest has moved out this has become less of an issue and she fully embraces scrounging for food whenever she stops by, and “shopping” our pantry but honestly now that she is on her own we don’t really worry about food costs for her any more.

We have also in the last couple of years had to adjust how we eat. We now have a nut allergies, gluten-free, vegetarian, and sensory preferences to account for and honestly we now have so many different foods for everyone that we have to keep on hand that we would be fine for at least a few weeks if we had some sort of emergency situation where we couldn’t go to the store as long as we have the right foods on hand. Our biggest issue is with our kid with food preferences since the rest of us are more flexible and will be ok with alternates. I am always worried the store will be out of one of their preferred foods and we will have to figure out a work around, which is not fun on a bad day. We did run into this over the summer when the correct dried fruit leather was nowhere to be found or beyond overpriced. Luckily fruit was in season so I was able to make some fruit leather on my own and that was an acceptable alternate. Phew…

A few years ago I wrote the below Meal Planning post in my first attempt at meal planning. Let’s just say, attempting to change our eating ways right before starting a new job was not one of my best ideas but it did make me think about how we can do better. Over the past six months or so I have been obsessively been watchin grocery haul, extreme grocery budget, freezer meal making and meal planning videos on YouTube and I have gotten tons of ideas. I especially love the videos where they make meals for a week from the a dollar store since there are so many people living in food deserts where Dollar Tree is the only grocery store around. I will link some of my favorites down below.

An Overview of Meal Planning

I thought we would take a stab at meal planning again this fall in an attempt to keep our costs down and create some organization to the chaos of our lives. As you can see, there are a lot of holes in my meal planner for November/December. The kids helped me with some of it and we instituted chicken nugget night for our selective eater so that with pizza night as well, they had at least two nights of the week that were predictable and dinner was something they liked. Most of the time the grownups eat chicken nuggets as well on Tuesdays but if there are extra leftovers I usually eat those instead since gluten-free chicken nuggets are really expensive and I am not a huge fan of fried food. We did run out of chicken nuggets a few weeks ago and it was predictably a disaster. Fish sticks were not an acceptable alternative and dinner was skipped that night. We now have chicken nuggets back in the freezer so hopefully we will not forget to get more next time we are low.

Our first month was definitely an adjustment and overall it went pretty well. I made a lot of dishes from my childhood such as steamed potatoes, cabbage and Kielbasa, tuna casserole and tater tot casserole (a huge hit with my daughters). There were a couple of nights where something else was made by my husband but we just adjusted and I pushed out the next night of cooking. I am hoping to be better about following the plan in the future though since it threw off our groceries and when we were using up things in the fridge.

We are mostly vegetarian and I am gluten-free so most family meals need to follow along those lines for us. One of the ways we did some light meal prepping was to hard boil about eight eggs and then eat them over the course of a few days for extra protein. We all love lentils so when we make them we usually eat them for dinner the first night and the kids have them for breakfast the next day. I bought some gigantic Spanish Queen olives from Costco last month. I am trying to eat fermented foods or olives every day and a great way for me to do that is to eat an olive with one or two meals a day. I love kimchi as well but we are currently out of it. We should probably make some more!

One way I have been trying to eat healthier is to eat vegetable soup a few times a week. Usually I put in greens from the garden, carrots, tomatoes, beans and whatever else I need to use up in the fridge. In September and November I made a bunch of veggie broth and put it in the freezer along with blanched greens from the garden. I have been using that to make soup every couple of weeks. I did however make a batch from the turkey broth we made from Thanksgiving which made the soup seem really rich to me after months of straight vegetable soup. Usually I serve it for dinner and freeze half the batch into portions for later. When I heat it up I add in an egg or leftover meat for protein. Both my daughter and I love soup so usually when I make it she will eat some as well.

Another item we have been eating a lot of are pancakes with a hard boiled egg on the side. They are easy to make, keep for a couple of days and I got an excellent deal on some gluten-free pancake mix at Grocery Outlet so we have tons of it, like literally I probably have 10 of 15 boxes left at this point. Since these are confetti pancakes we usually serve them with jam and then make Nutella sandwiches with them for lunch the next day for the kids. My selective eater loves Nutella sandwiches (who doesn’t?) so on that day usually their lunch comes back pretty empty which is a major win for us. This is a great way to cook once and have meals for a couple of days. I usually make half the box at a time and honestly I am not above snagging one later on for snack time with a hard boiled egg. You could totally make the whole box and freeze some for later in the week as well if you are short on time.

One of my favorite YouTube recipes I have found is this Oatmeal Bake from Acre Homestead on Scratchpantry.com. I absolutely love it because it contains almost a dozen eggs and it is great to make and freeze half of it for later. It is super healthy, full of protein and in a first, keeps me full until lunchtime. Usually with oatmeal I get super hungry an hour or so after I eat it but with the eggs and fruit in there this one keeps me going until lunch which is fabulous. Only two of us like to eat this for breakfast so usually I slice and freeze half to thaw out the second week. That way I am only making two a month which really saves on time. We are also currently without a microwave so I have found a great way to heat it up is to mostly thaw it, slice it and then cook the slices in butter for a crunch edge. It is delicious!

We love roasted vegetables in our house and can eat an embarrassingly large amount of them for dinner. Our favorite is roasted cauliflower and honestly when my oldest is home we can eat a whole Costco bag in one meal. It is that delicious! We have been trying roasted broccoli since the bag is much larger and cheaper. So far we love the broccoli as well. We have made it several times and there are usually no leftovers either. Roasted veggies are something that are quick to put together and you can make ahead. They freeze well if you are putting them into containers and can be heated up on the stove or in the microwave. They also add some fabulous flavor to soups if you need to use some up.

All in all our meal planning is going better than I expected. We are going to keep it up for January along with an attempt at eating through our pantry. We did go to the store for a major grocery haul today which I was not planning on but we were low on a few key items and with the new Covid variant spreading like wildfire I wanted to get groceries now and then not go for as long as possible. I am pretty sure we can make it to the end of January with a couple of exceptions like eggs, seaweed (we forgot it) and salad greens.

How do you incorporate meal planning in your house?

Links:

Oatmeal Bake from Acre Homestead

My favorite YouTube channels:

AcreHomestead

I love how Becky tries to eat everything from her garden and she has some fabulous freezer meal recipes.

Frugal Fit Mom

Christine does a great job of showing how to make cheap and healthy meals on a super restrictive budget. She is also a fan of bargain grocery shopping like me and I love sharing the thrill of a good deal when she finds them.

That Lisa Dawn

Lisa is a fabulous person trying to spread the word of how to buy groceries if you have a limited budget. She has my same love of beans and is an excellent cook. Lisa is probably my favorite because she is so kind and I love how much she tries to help people find ways to get around food insecurity.

Jamerrill Stewart

Jamerrill is a mom of a large family who has a no frills way of showing how she feeds her family. Honestly when Jamerrill first showed up in my feed I was skeptical because so many large families try to capitalize on their kids but Jamerrill’s respect for her kids’ privacy and honest videos when things go wrong are so refreshing that I fell in love with her.

Oscoey’s three year anniversary passed in March and as much as I wanted to write a post about it we were dealing with Covid-19 and still adjusting to working from home, teaching our kids and being home together all the time. Oscoey was something I started when I was home with the kids as a way to stay home and maybe make some income off of it. To date I have made exactly zero dollars off of the blog but that is ok. Writing the blog and joining the personal finance community on Twitter has been a fabulous learning experience. I have met so many people and grown from where I was at with blogging when I first started. There were so many mistakes (paid advertising with minimal blog posts out much?). So, so many. Below is my first blog post and looking back it seems as though in an effort to maybe bolster how many posts I had I posted three posts my first day! Wow. Looking back I probably should have split those up a bit but hey, we all have to start somewhere.

Welcome!

My posting has been somewhat sporadic and since I am now a working parent time is very limited so that probably won’t change much. Working from home has given me back the 3-4 hours I was commuting but my workload has significantly increased which makes for longer work days. I am now regularly 9-10 hour days which includes some fabulous overtime. I have also been happily turning the extra time and money into outside/gardening time with the kids as often as I can and our garden is looking great!  I would love to do the blog full time without working a traditional job but unfortunately that is not possible at the moment. I have run our numbers many many times and in order for us to feel “safe” with only one of us working (Mr. Oscoey isn’t ready to leave the workforce any time soon) we need to continue to both work and save as much of our income as we can. My kids are happy at their school and my job is pretty good with excellent benefits so that makes things much easier.

2019 was a really rough year for our family and we strayed quite a bit from our Financial Independence path by taking on some debt and keeping a blurry and somewhat blind eye on our budget. Honestly though, our family needed that break from the grind and most of our extra spending was in the travel department which I 100% do not regret. We were not able to take a vacation for many years due partially to a strict budget but mostly the difficulty of doing anything with a high needs child so once we discovered said child could actually travel a little bit with some accommodations we went a little wild. We made so many memories last year. Our kids love travel now and are pretty bummed that everything closed down this spring. Our last trip was in December when we went to our beloved Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C.. We saw the lights, we went ice skating and we walked around the harbor checking out the sites. We were scheduled to go back this weekend but it looks like the earliest we will be going will be next winter so we will miss out on all of the flowers.

One thing 2019 taught me is that we need to set aside a larger portion of our budget for travel expenses and another is that it is perfectly fine to drop the ball sometimes. Last year I dropped the ball with our budget but this year I have come back with more determination to bulk up our savings, increase our investments, pay down some debt and set aside larger amounts for travel. So far we have been pretty successful in this department. We have significantly increased our savings, paid down a large chunk of our debt and I am maintaining our investment amounts through the end of the year. I am hoping that by this time next year we will be at our increased Emergency Fund goal, have paid down the two debt items I am focusing on and will be ready to shuffle that extra money into our investment accounts. Part of our savings currently is set aside for travel but maybe, if things are looking better with Covid infection rates in our area we will cashflow a smaller trip at the end of the summer and/or a trip to Victoria in December. For now we are trying to be content with travel consisting of rotating from the front to the back yard and exploring our neighborhood during our daily walks.

Hawaii has been repeatedly requested over the past couple of years as a travel destination but the thought of flying that far with a child with a narrow comfort window and the inability to express themselves fully filled me with a sense of doom. We were however able to successfully fly to San Francisco and made one of our trips to Canada successfully without massive sickness at the border so I have some hope. I am tentatively planning on going to Hawaii in early 2021 but it depends on where we are at with a cure/vaccine for the Corona virus. Ideally we would go to San Francisco again first since it is a smaller flight just to get the kids used to flying a little bit more but I am not sure if that will happen.  I would also like to travel somewhere new next year but I am not sure where that would be.

The last three years (and counting) of blogging have been great and even though I don’t have a regular post schedule I am going to keep up with it. Writing is a good outlet for me and I love to talk about personal finance, our vacations and what is going on in our garden. I have ideas for a few more posts so you might see me around more in the near future, especially since working from home allows me more free time. I would love to regularly update the “Fabric Crafts” section of my blog but I have not been super motivated to stitch and my sewing machine is currently on loan to the oldest. In the mean time please enjoy some of my top posts.

Dried banana chips are one of my son’s favorite foods. I have some in the dehydrator as I am writing this! This recipe is super simple and you can make as many or as little as you want.

Dried Banana Chips

My grandma’s fruit salad recipe is by far my most popular post, even with not so great photos. My grandma passed away last year and every time I check my post stats seeing this recipe up there reminds me of her.

Easy Dairy-Free Grandma’s Fruit Salad

For some reason this post always pops up in my top posts for the week even though it is pretty old and outdated. We did pay off my student loans that year and increase both our savings and investments which is great.

A List of Sort of Financial Goals for 2018

Travelling has always been something that we have wanted to do as a family but we have never actually done much of. Before we had the youngest we took 2-4 small trips a year spread between Oregon, the Washington Coast and Vancouver, BC for a weekend or so with a relatively tight budget. Our cheapest trip was probably the first one we took with our oldest and our two dachshunds (Oscoey’s namesakes) to Cannon Beach where we stayed for two nights for under $300.00. Our budget was very tight for so long that when we finally started having a little bit extra real travel was so far out of our minds we just continued to take the same trips until we had to take a break.

Our younger kids also really enjoy a pretty set routine and traveling threw them way off so we decided to take a break until they were old enough to communicate better with us. It is much easier to find out what is bothering a three year old versus a one year old and waiting cut down on traveling with crying children which is not very fun.

We love the Oregon Coast and Portland. They are some of our favorite places to go and it is pretty easy to find pet friendly accommodations. We have not taken George yet but Zoey loves the beach and is like a puppy again running around in the sand. If you go slightly north or south of Cannon Beach and book kind of last minute you can usually find a decent Airbnb with a kitchen for a reasonable price. We are super frugal and cook our own meals when we are on these short weekend trips and that drastically cuts down on the cost. We basically spend in food for our trip exactly what we would have spent at home for groceries plus maybe $20 extra for special treats such as chips, a small amount of candy and maybe ice cream one night as a treat. You don’t have to spend a lot on food to make a trip special. Just buy something you wouldn’t normally buy and that makes it special in your kid’s eye. Hint: Pringles are never present in our house but I always buy a can before a beach trip and the kids love it!

Our first big trip as a family (sadly without our oldest) was to San Francisco in February. We had been talking about going for a long time and then when we heard that Paine Field was opening up and that tickets were ridiculously cheap we decided to take the plunge. I was super nervous since it was the kids’ first plane ride but we ended up having an awesome time! Look for a future post on our not so frugal trip to San Francisco! The most important part about San Francisco was that it proved that we could finally start broadening our reach when it comes to travel. Our kids did great and although we were all exhausted the last day we came back with so many memories and it expanded our kids’ world so much I would do it again in a heartbeat. The shared experience of the trip was a huge bonding moment for our family and brought us out of the winter funk that we were in with the endless cycle of school, work and weekends filled with housework and birthday parties. None of those things are done alone as a whole family and spending several days alone together was priceless.

This spring we took a short trip to Eastern Washington which is something we have wanted to do for several years but it never “worked out”. This year with my new determination to actually take some of the trips we have been talking about I decided we were just going to do it and see if it worked. The drive was about five hours for us which is the longest our kids have ever been in a car and I fully admit my expectations for the amount of crying we would endure were pretty dismal. Luckily our kids did pretty well. Our son was a little bit cranky for the last bit on the way home but otherwise he was able to sit still (with breaks) for the whole trip with minimal fussing which was a huge relief!

One of our stops was the Petrified Forest on the Columbia River. I was really excited to go hiking and explore but the weather ended up being really yucky and cold which we were not prepared for so we ended up walking around the visitor center for a little bit and then heading home. Our kids were tired from swimming that morning and not impressed with rocks that used to be trees but driving out there again would make an excellent day trip so we plan on going back at some point. We haven’t done a lot of exploring around our state with the younger two kids but several trips are definitely on our radar.

We also made it out to the tulip fields this spring. We hadn’t been in a couple of years and I put it on our calendar so that we would remember. Usually we go to Roozengaarde but this year we ventured to Tulip Town since the owners are retiring and it may be the last year. Going to the tulip fields this year inspired me to start thinking about Holland as a travel option. We are a few years away from International travel (besides Canada) and I know it will take a while to plan so I am starting to gather ideas.

Overall our Declaration of More Travel has gone well. We are headed to Victoria, B.C. this summer and most likely will do our traditional beach trip at the end of the summer. I am already looking ahead towards Thanksgiving and Christmas break.  At some point this summer I want to sit down as a family and make a list of where we want to go in the next year. Bringing the kids in as part of the process makes it fun for them and I might even start talking about how to create a travel budget as part of our goal to have financially literate children and because our 5yo really, really wants to go to Hawaii and that is going to be a very expensive trip for sure!

I wish we hadn’t hesitated so much about taking our kids places but in reality the timing has worked out perfectly and I am really glad we are now becoming a family that travels, even if it is mostly free local day trips. Building memories doesn’t have to be expensive!

How are you getting your family out more and exploring your world?