So we are now more than halfway through the month. I’m doing well with the food budget: I have $378 left to spend, which should be plenty. (I upped the budget to $1,000 this month, after trying to keep it at $800 for a few months. I am tired of hearing my husband say that there is no food in the house.) Most other categories appear to be on track as well. There haven’t been too many unexpected expenses (knock on wood); really, just the $100 co-pay for my daughter’s ER trip.

I had a fairly thrifty week last week, if not a super healthy one. We ate at home Monday (omelets and sausage), Wednesday (onion-crusted chicken, rice, veggies), and Friday (Spaghettios, leftovers). Tuesday my husband wanted to go to his favorite restaurant to celebrate something business related; Thursday we ordered pizza. Saturday, we had the first barbeque of the season, which is always the best BBQ of the season, I think:

Yellow squash with olive oil, garlic and cheese

Sitting on the front porch Saturday evening after dinner with my beer, watching my daughter do log rolls down the front lawn, enjoying the perfect weather, I felt completely blissed out. I read an article once about how parenthood works like an addiction. The highs are so awesome that you are willing to put up with a lot of crap and degradation in hopes of achieving that high again. I read the article when my middle son was a baby, and I remember changing him on his changing table and him suddenly giving me one of those toothless gummy smiles, and thinking: Yep, that article nailed it.  

My high lasted a few minutes, until said middle son opened the window behind me and started bellowing about how he wanted dessert, NOW.

Other thrifty victories:

1.  I gave myself a pedicure at home one night and it came out very nice. (I’ll spare you a picture of my big block feet.)

2. I resisted the urge to go to Target on Friday. The main reason I wanted to go was to get the kids out of the house on a rainy afternoon. Instead we stayed home, painted, wrestled (them, not me), and organized the playroom, somewhat (mostly me). God knows what we would have bought had we gone. Probably this.

3. I found out that eBates was offering 15% cash back on certain sites this week. So I ordered some necessities from jcp.com (socks and undershirts for the husband, a bathing suit and some shorts for my daughter). Plus JCP had its own promotion going on, so it was all pretty cheap. I’ll confess that I bought more things than I planned in order to hit $100 so I could get free shipping.

I had one big sort-of splurge: a Mary Kay lady (girl, I mean, she’s younger than me) came over and I bought some makeup and skin care products. I suppose that if I did some research I could find natural substitutes for skin cleansers and exfoliants. But I don’t like to mess around too much with my skin. And I still need (yes, need) foundation, eyeliner, mascara, etc. if I am going to be out in public, and it just so happened that I was running out of everything at once when I met this rep. So I am enjoying my purchases and I really enjoyed the convenience of her coming to my house and me being able to try things on. I don’t enjoy her trying to talk me into selling Mary Kay myself, but I think she’ll soon realize she’s barking up the wrong tree.