What We've Been Up To

Well, we've certainly been slacking in the posting here! We've been bad and have been slacking in the budget as well. July added up to about $240 for groceries not including the $30ish that Jon spent on bulk nuts and seeds (I'll get him to write a post on that). We may have to up the grocery allowance to $250 just to make sure we have enough fruit and whatnot on hand for healthy snacks, especially now that Alice is having meals and snacks along with us.

I'll just divide this post up into Good/Bad categories!

The Good

• The apartment is fairly clean all the time because Alice will put anything she finds into her mouth
• Alice sleeps in her own bed! I've managed to get her to sleep by 9 most nights too! This gives us some much needed time to ourselves to either relax or try to tackle some things that we can't get done while she's into everything
• I've got my Etsy shop open
• Work has been very busy for Jon, which means more $$$
• We have a payment schedule planned out for the credit card
• Still sticking to the meal plan
• Still spent a little over $200 on groceries, we got extra meat, boxes of cereal and I splurged on cherries while they were only $2.99/lb
• I'm finally caught up on laundry and now do a reasonable amount in the tub every 2 days
• I had nearly $50 in credit at the baby consignment store, I got Alice some really cute things!
• I learned how to knit so I'm working on a scarf for myself for winter
• I forgot about our HST rebate, an extra $400!
• I bought Jon a Kobo Touch E-Reader as a late birthday present since we already made our VISA payment 
• My Canadian Child Tax Benefit went up, I get an extra $90
• I had $13 credit in my BAF account so I used it on a pair of hematite plugs that were on sale. Only ended up having to pay $4ish
• We sold the jumperoo! The money will go back into Alice's account where it originally came from and will go towards the next big expense, probably a toddler bed in a year
• Bedroom has been organized and I did another decluttering. I have more stuff to auction and consign.
• My basil plant is still a trooper, growing almost 2 feet tall and still producing really good tasting basil!

The Bad

• We got takeout this week, it was pizza
• I've gone to Value Village 3 times this month ( everything I bought was on the list of what we need for winter though!) The last time I had a 25% off coupon that needed to be used in a certain time frame, we got toys, baby clothes and Jon ended up getting a good pair of jeans for $7.50
• We bought pop a couple times
• It's been too warm to bake so I've been buying bread (and nanaimo bars and coconut buns)
• Still no word on what's holding up my EI, it's been over 2 months now since I won the appeal. I called and was assured that I would receive it by the end of July and it would probably be a lump sum for the entire 12 weeks.
• I did a bit of shopping online assuming that I would be receiving my EI cheque on time. Oops. Never a good idea to do that. You should never spend on the assumption that money is coming.
• Really low on gecko food so I had to order that online as well
• No sales on the Etsy shop and I haven't managed to get anything new listed
• My tomato plants seem to be dying after only producing 2 small tomatoes each. I may have to get them some more soil. There are a few more flowers but they don't seem to be doing anything.
• We've been running the AC so the power bill may be a bit higher than usual

I think that's about it for now. I'll try to get a recipe up in the near future, I have to have a look at the meal plan to see if anything interesting is coming up.