Juggling

I have been doing a LOT of juggling over the last few months. Since school is back in session, I have been trying to fit in all of the things I need to do and failing miserably!

Between working a full-time job and doing homework with my kids at night, it feels like anything and everything else is not getting done. I haven't been diligently couponing because I don't have the time to dedicate to searching for all the coupons I need, and have been unsuccessful in finding a lot of the ones posted on blogs because my weekly paper just simply does not have them which is depressing!

I'm keeping my chin up, but only barely.

I have been trying to stretch my grocery budget as far as possible so I have been doing a couple of things to get multiple uses out of my grocery items. Some of these things I have read about on other blogs, but here are a few things that I do to save a SMALL amount of money:

1. When I buy a bunch of bananas and we don't eat them all, I stick the over ripe ones in the freezer to use for baking.

2. I have been buying a roasted chicken to make chicken salad for lunches. After I pick the chicken and cut up all of the vegetables, I throw the bones and skin from the chicken along with all of the discards from the veggies and make chicken stock.

3. When we finish a loaf of bread, I stick the ends in the freezer until I have several, then I put then in the oven to dry them out and put then in the food processor for bread crumbs.

4. This weekend I took the pumpkins from Halloween and roasted the pumpkin and the seeds. I use the pumpkin to make pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving (and other baking) and the seeds make a delicious snack.