Friday, January 30, 2009

Money Saving Ideas

Neil and I want very badly in the next 4-5 years to be able to have enough to put a down payment on our first home. So with this newfound motivation I've been doing some deep thinking on how to reduce costs at the homestead. We've been blessed to be house sitting instead of renting so beyond the typical house utilities our expenses are pretty much just utilities and food. Also, Neil works at Google so a lot of his daily food costs (lunch and dinner if he's working late) are paid for by the company which has an awesome cafeteria for its employees. But I'm at home with Lanalou and that means I have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. Generally what happens since I'm always always running in 5 directions at once is that I eat a yogurt, a quick sandwich, or whatever is leftover from the dinner the previous day. We make our own bread and that has been really really great, but the yeast costs a lot for a 4 oz container, 8.50 or more at Safeway. I found out that Costco sells a 2lb package of yeast for $3.90 so I had my neighbor pick one up for me. The cost of yeast was the majority of the cost of breadmaking so that was a GREAT find.

The new idea I have is to make my own yogurt. I spend a LOT of money on yogurt. I LOVE Brown Cow Yogurt, the chocolate kind. It's full fat not low fat or non-fat and it is by far the yummiest stuff I've ever had as far as yogurt is concerned. So. If I could find a way to make my own substitute I'd save a lot of money. I've gone online to find some instructions on how to do it. I'd like to go get a candy thermometer in order to be precise on the temperatures for the milk and then I'm going to give it a go this weekend.

Well for all of you that come online to check on Lana status. I don't want to turn you away disappointed here's our Lana pic for the week. This is how Lana helps me to sort our Junk Mail for the Recycling Bin.

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