Mr. Oscoey and I took some time a little bit ago to spend some time together since I have so much more free time now that I have been laid off. We had a great time exploring the Amazon Spheres, Pike Place Market and just wandering about in downtown Seattle. Mr. Oscoey was able to obtain passes to the Spheres through his work so we only spent money on lunch and on some gluten-free muffins I couldn’t resist from Pike Place Market. Spending time alone with your spouse even if you have been together a long time is very important. It is something we have been working on lately and I must say it is nice to spend time with Mr. Oscoey without the constant needs of our children being priority. Our kids love to talk and we take great delight in what they have to say but it does not leave any room for more meaningful grownup conversations!

I am a huge lover of plants and since I had not seen the Amazon Spheres yet we decided to go down for the day to check them out.

We saw so many beautiful plants and it was nice to spend some time in a warm tropical environment on a cold day.

Although we missed the gigantic corpse flower in full bloom it was definitely really cool to see. I had no idea it would be so tall!

One of the many smaller plants I was fascinated with.

I love these ones because I think they are the same ones that are frog homes in the rainforest which is super cool!

I loved these beautiful flower bouquets featuring cabbage plants at Pike Place Market. We did not buy any but they were stunning!

We had an awesome time and I am really glad we got to hang out together! We are trying to make these adults only excursions happen more often but I am struggling to find things for us to do that are frugal and won’t make us feel guilty about not bringing the kids along. I have been having trouble with my knee so hiking is out (doctor’s orders boo!) but I am sure there are tons of free events coming up for the holidays and we can find something.

It is really important for couples with kids to find time to “date” each other, even if that date is only going to the grocery store by yourselves for an hour. Too many people let life and kids get in the way and one day you wake up 5, 10, or even 20 years later and you and your spouse don’t know each other any more. I have seen it happen to so many of our friends and we are determined not to let it happen to us. So my advice for the day will be to spend time with your spouse (and not just watching tv) and have a real uninterrupted conversation with them at least once a week!

What kinds of frugal activities do you do with your significant other? (Without the kids if you have any!)

About eight months ago I took a break from blogging. There were many reasons, the most pressing being a complete utter lack of time while trying to maintain balance with both Mr. Oscoey and I working full-time with small kids. To say it was difficult to balance everything is an understatement and I am very impressed with everyone who can keep their households running successfully with both parents working full-time! We were only semi-successful at keeping everything running smoothly but lots of corners had to be cut and the blog was one of the activities I had to drop in order to get at least a little bit of sleep every night. I do not function without a full night of sleep so going to bed on time was mandatory!

Oscoey was also discovered by some people in my real life through the magic of Instagram suggestions and I squeezed in some time to think about the direction I want to take with the blog and how much I want to reveal about our finances. On one hand I would love to be fully transparent about finances and put it all out there but I know that it would not work for the Oscoey household so I am going to try and reach a healthy medium. I am still not sure about how much we will reveal but look out for more Personal Finance posts in the next few months! I definitely want to follow up on our 2018 Financial Goals and lay out the direction we will head in 2019. Yes, I am already thinking ahead to 2019!

I hope everyone had a great time this spring, summer and fall! Feel free to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest! Please look for my post later this week about recently being laid off and in the meantime here are some of Oscoey’s most loved posts!

Going back to work after being a Stay at Home Mom

Easy Dairy-Free Grandma’s Fruit Salad

How we Avoid Birthday Present Overgiftingitus

We are entering our final days of the Frugalwoods Uber Frugal Month Challenge and it has been a great refresher for us to get back into our frugal habits. I am finally caught up on all of the emails and they really made us think about how we spent our money. Last week was a rough one for us and the entire week seemed against us but it did not effect our spending and we are on track with our grocery spending for the month. Yay!

We dug into our pantry a bit this week and used up some cans including olives, refried beans, tomatoes and a can of chicken. My kids love the cans of Costco chicken made into chicken salad and it is one of the few things I can send in their lunches that they will actually eat. I have tried making it from scratch chicken but even though I love it my kids are iffy on it.  We also used up some of the corn tortillas I found in our freezer. There are still quite a few in there though! Here are a couple of our other meals:

As you can see a simple green salad with sunflower seeds has become a staple in our house.  I have always loved salads and try to eat at least one a day but I fell out of that habit while I was pregnant with our son. For some reason any sort of fresh fruit or vegetables made me sick and nearly two years later I am still trying to recover from it. Have you ever had a weird food aversion like that? Thankfully I can now eat salad again but I am still working on fruit. It just isn’t appealing to me any more even though I used to love it. I am hoping this summer when we are out picking fresh fruit it will spark my interest again! Our kids are not super fond of salad although they will eat a piece or two of lettuce sometimes when we ask them to try it so we always offer another vegetable and give them a choice of what they want. In the summer when we have lettuce growing in the garden the kids eat it all day long so apparently lettuce is only tasty to them straight from the garden? I may have to finally try growing some indoors and see if they will eat it.

One of the things my husband did for the kids this week was make homemade English muffins and make them breakfast sandwiches in the morning. They absolutely loved them and my son ate a whole one by himself which is crazy! Other days they ate them with peanut butter or even some of our homemade jam. We have ground our own meat for many years and my husband makes the most delicious garlic sausage. He made it this week and we have been eating it all week. I love garlic so it has been wonderful!

The other food we have been munching on quite a bit lately is popcorn.  My husband loves his spicy but the kids and I love his dairy-free kettle corn made with coconut oil. We have been making it so much that we wore out his stove-top popcorn maker.  A new one is on our list of high priority household items to buy in the next couple of months. We use it several times a week for a cheap and easy snack!

We had more than a little bit of cabin fever this week. Our kids were finally getting over two months of back to back colds and needed to get out and do something. Since we are being frugal we tried to find things for them to do at home but there reached a point last week when we had about 30 minutes to take them outside in the windy and very wet weather to jump in puddles to burn off some energy. It ended up being tons of fun! We went on the trail through the woods that I have been hearing about since we moved in but never gotten around to walking on and it was a pretty trail to walk on. We ended up doing a 3/4 (2yo and I) and 1 mile (4yo and Mr. Oscoey) loop and both kids walked the whole way and jumped in as many puddles as they could.  We will probably start doing more family walks around the neighborhood like that, especially since our son didn’t need to be carried. It is a great free activity for the family to do and it is important that our kids know the layout of the neighborhood for when they are older.

Another boredom buster we did was to break out the paint. I realized we stopped doing our afternoon art because we got busy with the holidays. We have started it up again and the kids picked painting this time and had a blast. We cut up some sponges I bought a couple of years ago to paint with and our son wanted water colors so he practiced his painting skills and blending colors. They did make quite a bit of mess and we had to talk about how we behave while we paint but overall it was a success.

One unexpected thing that came up this week was some damage our puppy did to our wall. My husband patched and repainted this spot masterfully a couple of weeks ago but our puppy, being the crazy dog that he is, ran into the wall again and dented it with his gigantic bony elbow.  He is incredibly observant and noticed right away that the wall was slightly different so he investigated it and discovered he could peel back a section to chew on. Seriously. He did this while I was dealing with a kid “emergency” and he was not the least bit remorseful. In fact he tore another chunk off as soon as I wasn’t looking. I am really thankful that my husband is able to repair minor drywall damage and we do not have to pay someone to do it.  We have saved so much money doing small repairs ourselves and Mr. Oscoey has gotten better over the years and now you can barely tell that it was repaired. I highly recommend that you learn how to do minor house repairs like this so that you aren’t paying big bucks to have it fixed.

Overall the week was super frugal and we hardly bought anything besides necessary groceries like milk, fruit and some small key ingredients for recipes. I am excited to write up our end of the month recap later this week so look for it on the blog!

The Uber Frugal Month Challenge is almost over but how are you being frugal in your every day life?