Budget

Glad I Made Up My Mind

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to decorate indoors for fall or not but finally made up my mind and went for it! I’m so glad I did. The house feels cozy and it was a great creative challenge for me to decorate for the upcoming season without spending a lot of money in the process. 

I pulled out all sorts of decor–even items that aren’t traditionally decor like cake stands and banneton baskets. Once I got a feel for what I had, I made a quick run to Dollar Tree and grabbed a few floral items and a wreath frame and even collected some twigs in our yard to add to my wreath.

I also found pillow covers and a comfy throw blanket on Amazon (<– all for about $25 total!).  Lastly, I used a gift card I received for my birthday to Joann Fabric and purchased a beautiful metal leaf garland that was half off. I filmed the whole process, too, and the video is here. My favorite part is Sadie jabbering away at the beginning 😉

Here’s a few photos of how everything turned out!

Before and after fall decor on corner shelf

Fall decor with cake stands

Neutral fall decor

Before and after window fall decor

Fall lantern decorated in neutral colors with pumpkins and ribbonMetal leaf garland for fall from Joann Fabric

Fall wreath made from Dollar Tree fall decor

Couch decorated for fall with pillows and throw blanket

Grateful, Thankful, Blessed fall sign from Dollar Tree

In the vlog I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I shared this verse…

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

How beautiful is that scripture? Our seasons may be changing and our world may feel chaotic at the moment, but Jesus remains the same forever ❤

More Ways We Save Money on Food

This is a sort of follow up to the top five ways we save money on food post that I blogged about over a year ago. I’ve changed some of my grocery shopping techniques, so I wanted to share what has been working for us!

venison-chili-corn-muffins

The previous top five ways we saved money on food were:
1. Setting a budget
2. Meal planning
3. Shopping once per week
4. Using coupons
5. Visiting more than one store

Since that post, I no longer do two things on that list. I don’t coupon anymore and I don’t physically visit more than one store.

What changed?

1. I started shopping at Aldi around June of last year and haven’t looked back. Since beginning to shop at Aldi, we’ve been able to cut our weekly grocery bill down by over 30%.

Pumpkin spice ginger cookies

I’m not sure if everyone is familiar with Aldi, but it’s a grocery store that’s unique for a few reasons:

  • Aldi does not bag your food for you. If you want bags, you must buy them or bring your own. You can also use cardboard boxes that are in the store.
  • They don’t sell a lot of name brand items. Most of them items in Aldi are their own brands.
  • Aldi sells mostly weekly must-haves like bread, milk, meat, cheese, etc. This allows the store to be smaller in size, which saves money.
  • To use their carts, you have to have a quarter (which you get back). This saves the company money because they aren’t paying employees to retrieve carts.

2. Whatever I can’t buy from Aldi, I purchase on Jet.com.

I’ve found that I don’t love the Aldi brand dishwasher and laundry detergent. They also don’t have a huge selection of toothpaste, shampoo, body wash, and other personal items. Basically, I fill in the gaps with Jet. You can see my explanation of Jet in this post.

christmas-dinner

These two techniques have saved Jimmy and I a lot of money and hassle over the past six months! It has definitely taken some experimenting to figure out what works for us, but it has been worth it.

I’m sure I’ll be back again in the future with more tips and tricks as I continue to experiment with different approaches to grocery shopping 🙂

How do you save money on food?

P.S. This post isn’t sponsored in any way, shape, or form. It’s just me sharing what works for us!