Affording Such A Large Family Fun Edition

Feeding ducks at the duck pond.

I actually got them in order by age too!

That NEVER happens.

What do we do for fun? You name it! No, we don't have a lot of money but we are super creative. I love researching and finding free events in our area. Facebook has made this much easier.

We attend a bunch of free activities. Barnes and Nobel does story and craft times on Saturdays. Lowes and Home Depot offers building workshops. The gyms sometimes do family swim and movie night. There is always some kind of free festival going on downtown.

We go into nature. We live near the lake so we love to go swimming. We will go hiking and do a picnic. We feed the ducks (PSA: Bread is bad for them). We go on bike rides. Shaving cream fights out side. Side walk chalk. Bubbles. Races. Trampoline. We have even done backyard Olympics. Camping. Bon fires.

Family Movie Night. We have Netflix movie night with popcorn or we will go to the drive-in ($30) when they are having a double or triple feature. We look for Redbox codes. Our will just pull out an old favorite or a movie from our extensive collection. We buy movies by the box at yard sales. Unfortunately, we get a lot of scratched movies due to little hands.

Family cooking night. We will do ice cream sundae bars. We will do build your own taco bars or make your own pizza.

Game Night. We will do this as a family or with friends. We have even found an organization that will allow you to do a game (video, board or card) as a marathon fundraiser. You get donations just like you would if you were running a 5K and that money goes to our local children's hospital. We taught the kids chess, which is actually apart of their third grade curriculum, and they have excelled and kick our hind ends.

We are even go on vacations. We are currently planning a trip across country. We will travel the upper US to the west coast to visit family. Go down through California to Disneyland. Come home via the lower half of the US and visit the Grand Canyon, The Alamo and New Orleans and end with a weekend at the beach. We are saving for this trip and couponing. We will be tent camping at KOAs across the country to save on lodging. We will cook our own food, except at Disney, well because DISNEY (everyone needs a Dole Whip in their life). We are actually looking at taking a train from east to west and then renting a car to drive back (but I feel like we will miss out on stuff that way)!

In February, I took the three younger guys to the beach. Though it was to visit a dying family member, so not really a vacation or happy time, but we still made some great memories.

Check out more from this series:
Affording so many kids: school edition

Affording Such A Large Family: School Edition

Yes, we have thought about college but first we have to get through primary school. DS1 and DS2 go to public school as they live with Baby Mama during the school year. She does send them to one of the best public schools in our area. DS3, DS4, and DS5 are home school. There are costs to both public and home school. But I am only going to touch on the home school part because that is what I am most knowledgeable about.

We do have cost for school supplies, umbrella school, co-op and curriculum. We try to make it as cost efficient as possible for us. We don't have the Internet, but my parents do. They let me use their Internet, printer and computer to print school work as needed. The boys use Easy Peasy All-In-One curriculum and we love it! It is free and very interesting to the kids. Pretty excited because their science and history is going to line up with co-op this year. We buy our supplies when everything is tax free. Yes, I am a hoarder when it comes to TP rolls and scratch paper. Why throw stuff away when you can reuse it.

But in addition to reading and math, I enjoy teaching the kids life skills. We learn how to budget and coupon and how to use these skills how to help others. We are currently couponing for Operation Christmas Child. Learning these skills don't cost a thing. But it instills values we want them to have. We also let them do community activities. As they get older, they will build a community service portfolio for colleges.

We utilize the library. Most library have a large movie, cd and audiobook selection. So we can find lots of cool things here and the boys think it is a field trip so win-win.

Craiglist often you can find craft things like paper rolls and pipe cleaners. That is great! I also contact our local paper and get newspaper roll ends for free. It's great to draw on and to trace their bodies to make a skeleton.

We also can find supplement curriculum at yard sales, used book stores and the local private school hosts a yard sale and they are a dual school (both private and home school) and we find amazing things there!

As for college, our state offers free tuition for the first two years at a community college. There are also grants for home schooled kids. DS3,4&5 will have their dad's GI Bill as well. They can do work study programs while in college. They all have savings account, which don't have a lot of money, but we ask for CDs for them instead of gifts (or experiences if people insist on getting them gifts). They will have jobs as soon as they are able to work. We want them to have a work ethic and we will be teaching them how to save their money instead of just blowing it. We also hope for scholarships. There is always the FAFSA as they will probably qualify for the Pell Grant. There is always job corp too. Which we encourage all of the kids to go to.

Affording Such A Large Family: Clothing Edition

Our kids must all be wearing clothes with holes in them and ratty shoes. There seems to be an idea that clothing children is expensive. And, yes, I guess it could be. That depends on you. We chose to shop yard sales, thrift store, clearance aisle and totally accept hand-me-downs.

Yard sales are great to find mostly springs and summer clothes. At least around here, you don't find a lot of pants and long sleeves a lot. But you can find crazy amounts of shorts and t-shirts and the occasional new with tags shoes. I buy our clothes here as well. Two of our kids are in "teenage sizes." I do have trouble finding trendy young men clothes at yard sales but that's where thrift store come in.

Thrift stores are awesome for finding non clothing items as well, but that's not what we are talking about. I find handbags, shoes with tags, teenage boy clothes, junior miss clothes for me (too young to wear misses and too old to wear juniors... the struggle is real!), I have even found make up that is still seal and in date.

Clearance items are amazing. I don't have a lot to say about this but use coupons and store rewards to make it last.

Hand-me-downs. I am very lucky to have some amazing friends who pass their kids out grown clothes on to us. We do the same in return. We hold the outgrown clothes out until the next kid can wear them and when DS4/5 out grow them. We see if we have any friends who need them. After our friends pick through them the rest we put in a yard sale and what doesn't sale goes to Goodwill.

Gifts. We ask family and friends for Christmas and birthdays to please not get the younger guys clothes because they honestly have so many. For the bigger guys we ask for gift cards so they can buy their own clothes (they are at that age).

On average we spend about $200 clothing and shoes.
Here are a few of my tips:

• Find a good stain remover!
• If stains don't come out or the idem cant be fixed, throw out, repurpose or compost if you can.
• Fix small things like missing buttons.
• Vacuum bags are amazing.
• Repurpose clothes into cloth grocery bags, cleaning rags or even family cloths.
• Look for events at local thrift stores... a couple times a year our thrift stores will do free or donation "fill-a-bag" events. We each get a bag to fill so we often end up with more than we can use so we donate it.

Affording Such A Large Family: Food Edition

So I have recently touched on how to feed a large family on a budget. Honestly there is so much more to it. I probably should have (and may) do a series on it. As previously said, we believe that God will provide for us. Often, we are in prayer as we do our monthly budget. Our sons eat like horses! I have never known children that eat as much as they do! Where do they put it? I have prayed for ideas to help manage the food for our house and have received answers. I have been sent a group of friends with equally large families and they have blessed me and I them with our shared ideas. Here are a few more thing that I have discovered that has helped it tremendously:

1. Make snack packs: Left to their own devices, my children will go through 4 cans of Pringles. DS2 and DS4 proved this last week. I have bought sandwich bags and filled them with the "snacky" foods and they are allowed to get ONE... at snack times. Any more than that requires approval from one of the parents. We filly baggies with: pretzels, chips, mini muffins, cookies, kale chips, half sandwiches, crackers, etc. We also have a fruit bowl. I also will buy cereal in large quantities when it is one sale and fill small plastic containers with the appropriate amount. Plastic containers are also filled with: homemade pudding, jello, applesauce, sliced fruit, veggie/cheese "tray." Portion control is EVERYTHING with our kids.

2. Car snacks matter: How often do you get in the car and hear I'm hungry/thirsty. So often I would pull through and get one of those nasty dollar burgers or stop at a gas station and pay dang near double the price with my first. Four kids later, I carry a thermal backpack with water and some snack that wont melt. I hate when the kids eat in the car because of the mess, but sometimes it is just easier than hearing the fussing.

3. Bring snacks to events (as allowed): We will pack a tote full of snacks when we go to the lake, festival or the drive in movies. They offer concession but do not mind you bringing your own food... so that is exactly what we do.

4. Freezer cooking: I will buy groceries every two weeks and cook according to our meal plan. Then I will put them in the freezer and if there is a good sale, I will make a double batch (which is awesome to keep on hand for if we are invited to a potluck or need to bring a meal to a friend). Freezer cooking has eliminated our "need" to go out to eat. I will lay the meals for the next day out when I am doing my night time routine. Then pop them in the crockpot the next morning (when I can, I love the crockpot. Its energy efficient and honestly I can put it in and forget about it) or in the oven.

5. Again take up on free food offers: We have had Bible school all week and our church has offered a free dinner to all the kids and parents each night this week. It has been a wonderful budget saver and time saver. We are Methodist and we love to eat-- haha. So we often have meals at church. We have the opportunity to eat on Wednesday nights for $35 but we just can't rationalize that recurring expense in our budget.

6. Split meals with friends: We often go to my best friends' house for game night. We let the kids play and we have adult conversation and it's great. We will split the cost of the meal and usually buying larger quantities saves all of us on the cost per meal.

So that is how we feed them...budget everything. And as you can probably tell from our chunky guys they are fed well.

DS1 and DS2 not shown for privacy reasons.

DIY Planter Boxes

Brad has spent the weekend building planter boxes for our deck. Where we are renting we certainly do not have the room to put out a garden... so we are doing an urban garden. We are really strapped for cash so we are going about this the cheapest way that we know how. This past week we have been blessed with being able to gather supplies for free.

Brad was able to get lumber out of the throw away pile at work and a 3 gallon bucket. He is going to fashion the lumber into a vertical garden. I was able to get some planter pots from bushes that my parents had purchased for their flower bed.

My mom just purchased some plants for her garden and there were multiple plants in the pots. She is going to give me clipping and extra plants to start our garden.

I am so excited to save money on our grocery bill and not to mention teach the children new skills and have a little more control over what we put in our bodies. I feel so blessed that we have some skills that will allow us to do extra things that we otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.

Refurbished Patio Furniture

So I got a sewing machine for Christmas. Between kids, moving and life in general I haven't had a chance to use it until recently. My mom is trying to salvage her patio furniture and make it last one more year... that is when the brilliant idea was born. She bought sturdy table clothes at the dollar store and we used the tattered cushions that were already on her patio furniture and we refurbished them back to life and now they are water proof.

So we measured the cushions to make a pattern. Since each of the cushions were slightly different in shape and size we could not use a standard pattern.

After we cut the fabric to match our needs. We folded them inside out and sewed them with a straight stitch leaving one open wide side. *Double stitching was used for durability.

We then turned the covers right side out and stuffed the cushion in. Once we had placed the cushion in and made the material smooth. We made it too tight to be reasonably stitched on the remaining open side. We used gorilla glue to seal it shut.

This was a fun and simple project that was relatively inexpensive. Cushions for her patio furniture was pricing out around $20-$30 per cushion. The total project cost $20. That's a huge win!

Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool

I love that I am able to homeschool our babies. I am very thankful for the Easy Peasy curriculum. It is what I used when first starting out homeschooling and working full time. Then I switched to an expensive curriculum. The kids hated it and now we are back to EP.

It is free. It is computer based which my kids love. I love that it includes Bible lessons. It goes all the way to high school. We do supplement because they lessons are a bit short for my kids. But Pinterest has some great ideas for that.

What are some fugal homeschooling sites you use?

Banana Ice Cream

DS3 has had a dairy allergy up until recently. This limited us on what we could cook or eat. I have found several alternatives to ice cream that I will be happy to share. One of our favorites is super simple. Banana ice cream as I mentioned in my Meal Planning post.

Banana Ice Cream:

What you need:
Bananas
Blender
Ice

Instructions:
Peel bananas... I do one per person
Freeze bananas. A couple hours work, but honestly I just peel and freeze in a bag as they are about to go bad and pull them out when we have enough.
Put in blender and mix until creamy. If too runny add a few ice cubes.
Enjoy :)

Pretty easy right!? We use this with the kids for cooking lessons. Ok who am I kidding... we are homeschoolers, its cooking, math, reading, economics and science and possibly greenhouse.

Menu Planning

With a big family comes lots of hungry bellies and lots of running around. I love to keep life a little more simple. Hey, mama's got to have her time too, right? Our kids will eat pretty much anything that doesn't eat them first and that is a bit of a burden on the budget but also not good for some of them. We have two of our precious boys that are heavier. We don't want them to struggle with their weight so we are trying to teach them to eat healthy. I have turned to meal planning and grocery booking (price book) to come to the rescue.

I do my meal plans a little differently that other ladies I know who meal plan. I use a word document and divide up to breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.  I have it on four 4 week cycles... one for each season. We do more soups and stews in the fall and winter and more salads and grilling in the spring and summer. I include a weekly shopping list for each weeks menu. I then go and check the sales ads as to where I need to go. I laminate them so I can cross what I already have or have already put in my cart off the list. I like to be able to reuse my list and menus.

I include two left over days on our menus. One is always Thursday for dinner. We have scouts that night and really pushed for time that day. It is so much easier for us to do that. The other day is Sunday lunch time. That way we can all come home from church and relax and it clears the clutter for where I make a large Sunday dinner. Plus I hate food waste. It is a major pet peeve for me! I actually save left over veggies and fruits out of the serving bowl, bones, soups, broths, meat, and grains without sauce. I put them in separate bags in the freezer. I use leftover bones, onions, carrots, celery, peppers to make bone broth. I save left over broths and veggies, grains and meats for soups or casseroles. I save fruits for smoothies or compote. I will freeze yogurt and milk right before it goes out of date and will mix it will the fruit and some ice to make fruit sherbet or ice cream (we love banana ice cream).

I use a lot of ziplock bags. I do rinse and reuse until they are on their last leg. Once I realize I am only going to get one more use out of it, I will use it for raw meat. I do not reuse bags that have contained raw meat.

What are some of your meal planning tips?

Manicure

My nails were a mess! I really want to feel better about myself, and if I'm being truthful, I want to be amazing for Brad. I want to everything he's ever dreamed of. So I kind of want to model myself after June Cleaver. She was always stunning, upbeat and Suzy homemakery! Now, I'm a tomboy and that's not going to change. I'm just me...take it or leave it! With that being said I'm a lipstick tomboy. I want to get dirty and sweaty with the boys, but I want to look pretty doing it.

So another Pinterest trick of two was tried tonight. I wanted to do my nails, because I refuse to pay salon prices this month. So here are the pins and results:

Elmers Glue: So it worked well. I did not have any polish that I couldn't get easily off of my cuticles. So basically, you put Elmer's glue around you nails at the cuticle. Paint. Dry. Peel off glue and perfect nails!

Listerine Foot Soak: It smelled and felt great! However, it did not work for me the way that Pinterest suggested. I ended up using my PedEgg because I know it makes me smooth. In all fairness, I don't have a lot of dead skin on my feet due to regular maintenance. I might work better for someone with flakey skin.

Polish in the Fridge: I didn't really notice a difference to be honest. I know that it is supposed to make it thicker and therefore smoother. I did not notice a difference. However, I am cheap and refuse to pay out the ying yang for polish! I buy mine at the dollar store, but I use an Avon Top Coat. I will buy more expensive products if I have a coupon for it.

Follow Me on Pinterest @thriftymamaof5