Still Saving Money

I went on a No-Buy last month and so far, so good.  I've been focusing on just purchasing the basics and trying to cut down in those areas, too. Such as trying to save on electric, grocery bills, etc. I usually spend a crazy amount of money on groceries a month and it's just me. You would think I had 3 mouths to feed with what my bill costs! So this week I spent only half of what I usually spend at the grocery store and will try to make that last throughout the whole week.  I bought mostly fruits and veggies, some fish and chicken, tortillas and oyster sauce to make some thai stir fry. I love drinking coconut milk, so I found a coupon online for that. I just Googled coconut milk coupon and found one. You can find a lot of coupons for things you regularly buy by doing this.
I have a friend that's really into coupons and she even invented her own coupon organizer. It is set up by Aisle, so if you shop the same store all the time, this could come in handy. You can get them from her at Coupon Compass.  There is a link to her site on my sidebar, too.

What I am most excited about the warm weather is things are coming back in season and it's salad eating time again!  I hate not eating salads in the winter, nothing is in season here in the winter to make a good salad with. I never had that problem living in Florida and it's hard to get use to not being able to eat things during certain times of the year here. I have recently become obsessed with something called the Caribbean salad! I first had one at a restaurant and I just tried to mimic what was in it and it turned out great.

Caribbean Salad

I just threw in some leaf lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, pineapple, oranges, chicken with Caribbean seasoning and topped it off with poppy seed dressing. There are a variety of ways to make these types of salads, I just used what I had on hand. The salad was so big I got full before I finished it, but Little Foot was happy to finish it off for me. He loves veggies!  I love this so  much, I'll be eating this for lunch all week. I cooked up 2 chicken breasts to cut off of and throw in and they had pineapples on sale for $1.98.  I know sometimes they sell them for $4.00 or more which seems insane.

Although I'm excited about the new fruits and veggies coming into season, we still don't have too much yet like we will in the summer. The Mount Airy Farmers Market still  looks a little sparse right now because of it, but they had lots of strawberries!

Mount Airy Farmers Market

[In the parking lot of the Andy Griffith Theatre.]

Ok so this post is  just me rambling about saving money, but I love a challenge and the only non-essentials I spent money on this month so far is Mother's Day and going to the movies twice (and you know my Johnny is coming out in Pirates of the Caribbean this month, too).  Okay after this month I will try to stay away from the movie theater! A movie theater diet?  :p

Oh and one more money saving thing I wanted to share. The electric company I use is giving away FREE fluorescent light bulbs to help people save on energy. So I signed up and I now have 15 free light bulbs coming to me! Pay attention to your bills when they come in because they advertise things like this sometimes. I would have missed it if I hadn't looked through my bill this month. I have all of my bills deducted automatically from my bank so I never have to worry about late fees, so it's easy to ignore the bills. My electric bill was also twice as cheap as the month before this time, too, but probably because we haven't had as many cold days. I've kept my windows open almost everyday the past month, minus the little cold front we got last week.

Coming May 20!
Argh! Argh!