And I'm Back

I really am the worst blogger in the world! Like I said in my last post (written in JULY), I knew these past few months would fly by and what do you know, it's already the middle of January! A brief catch up on what has been going on in the Kuhns house:

1. Tom is still working on becoming a police officer. A couple months ago we decided that if this is something he truly wants then maybe it is time for him to start looking somewhere else, besides Connecticut. After looking up different towns and states along the East coast, we decided the first towns to try would be Richmond VA and Savannah GA. Tom will be spending the weekend of February 15th in Richmond for testing/interviews, and is waiting to hear back from Savannah. He has also continued to apply to towns in CT because- as much as it would be exciting to move down South where it's warmer and the cost-of-living is less- we have made ourselves a home in our condo here, and the thought of leaving it all behind is kind of sad. This is what Tom wants more than anything though, and if it takes moving to Georgia to make his dreams a reality then I'm all for it.
2. We recently took an 8-week  therapy pet training course with Mika. Our hope is to one day get her licensed so that we can take her to hospitals, retirement homes, etc. All we need to do is pass the evaluation, which we have not scheduled yet as we are not sure what the future holds for us at the moment.
3. Back in September Tom and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary, and our five year together anniversary! Where has the time gone? How is it possible we've already been together five years? When we first started dating we were 18 and 20 and so young, now here we are 24 and 26 all grown up, making grown up decisions and paying bills and all that "fun" stuff. 

Me and the husband at my brother's wedding :)

                                                               Meal Planning: Part I

As I said in my last post, I really want to try and blog about ways I am saving my family money, as well as recipes I am trying that I have really enjoyed. For the second half of this post, I want to talk about something I have really gotten into the past few months; meal planning. When Tom and I first bought the condo (going on three years ago!", we were not the best grocery shoppers. We would go in with absolutely no plan, no idea of what we really needed, and would just wander the grocery store throwing whatever sounded good in the cart.  All of a sudden we're at the checkout and the bill is over $100. Every. Single. Week. This used to be okay while I was still taking classes and had plenty of money to spare, but now that I have way too many student loans to pay each month spending over $400 in groceries alone was not going to cut it.

I had to find a way to save us money on food, which led me to meal planning. I had never really put too much effort into deciding what we would have for dinner, and each night I would stand in the kitchen wanting to bang my head into the counter because I had no idea what to make. Oftentimes this would lead to me complaining to Tom and us ordering pizza or Chinese food and spending unnecessary money on takeout when we had just spent $100 on food three days before. I needed to stop this cycle of overspending which led me to my variation of meal planning. This is not something that takes careful planning, if you have 20 minutes of free time to sit down you can do it.

Every Sunday morning I sit down with the grocery ads and look to see if anything really great is on sale, especially meats, breads, or items we eat a lot of that are buy one get one free. Then I look in the freezer to see what meals are already in there. I always try to eat whatever we have on hand to save us money, while keeping the "menu" varied. Tom could eat the same thing every other day, I on the other hand get bored with food fast, so I am constantly trying new recipes. By sitting down for twenty minutes and coming up with a plan as to what will be made for dinner each night- along with a couple other tips I will get into in the next couple posts- I have managed to cut our grocery bills down to an average of $60 (on an expensive trip) a week, saving us a minimum of $160 each month. That's a lot of extra money ;)