I updated my debt tracking in the side bar area...everything is on track though my goal for the year on the car loan seems far away. I did receive my bonus last week so I made a big additional payment to the car loan and will pay the rest of my bonus (down to the penny!) to that debt next week. I'll be so excited to update again by the end of the month.

We've been doing pretty good with snowflaking this month as well, mostly finding money consistently in the gas budget. I haven't done as well on squeezing money out of the grocery budget as we've been feeding 2 extra people (brother & sister) a couple times a week.

I also just put together the budget for April. I budgeted very frugally for spring/summer clothes & shoes for the family during that month. I find a lot of good stuff for my son at thrift/consignment shops, but between Garanimals at Target and $4 sales at Target & Kohl's, I can sometimes do just as well buying new.

I've been addicted to walmart.com lately - I purchased a jersey dress with birthday money and found a pair of black dress pants for $5. The site to store feature is nice. I go back to work next Thursday, and my body has a way to go, so I've been pulling together work clothes. I borrowed a couple of dresses from my sister as well. It's so great that she lives here now - we even have the same shoe size! I also used the walmart.com photo service to order birth announcements for under $10 - I thought that was pretty good for 30 custom photo announcements with envelopes.

--Chrissy

I've seen folks document their menu plans for each week and thought I might do the same.

A bit of background: My husband is a stay at home dad and he usually does all of the grocery shopping. Over a year ago I joined Weight Watchers, so in order to control the food that comes into our house I started doing the shopping (sometimes we just do it together). So I make a menu plan for the week and post it on the fridge - I don't designate a meal by day - after dinner each night we decide what we'd like the next day from the list and get something out of the freezer.

So here's a batch of dinners for Mon-Fri this week:
- Burritos (ground beef was reduced at the grocery store & red beans and rice was on sale)
- Chicken "wings" (we cut boneless breasts into chunks, bake, toss in wing sauce)
- Chopped steak & onions (from the freezer - reduced at the grocery a couple weeks ago)
- Pork chops (another reduced meat price purchase)
- Leftovers (most likely burritos - we love those reheated!)

I tend to buy family packs of sale chicken breasts & split them up & freeze them - same with ground beef. Our regular store almost always has reduced price packs of meat between 98-cents & 1.98 (end price, not per pound!). We eat a lot of meat There are some nights we'll have soup or sandwiches - this week was particularly inexpensive in the meat department.

When I'm working on weight loss we'll eat beans or fish in place of a beef or pork at least once a week.

Has anyone tried e-mealz.com? I am particularly interested because they have a Weight Watchers version. Just interested to see if it can add some excitement to our table.

No real update to post Every Friday I update our weekly spending and hubby & I do our weekly budget committee meeting. Lately we've been doing really well and snowflaking in a few categories.

This past Friday we didn't have any snowflakes. We put on a New Year's Day party for about 10 friends and used grocery money to fun sodas & appetizers. We used our gas money that was underspent to order several pizzas (with a deal) from Dominos. It was a lot of fun.

We should have a good week this week - I'm adding some extra snacks to the grocery list for next week, plus extra soda. I'll be putting together a welcome basket for my sister & BIL. They are moving here to Atlanta a week from Tuesday, so I want to bring them some goodies since they'll have moved 800 miles and won't have a chance to immediately get to the store.

And unless the new baby comes sooner I have these next 2 weeks in the office before maternity leave starts. We should be able to scrap up even more money over my leave since I won't have my full commute to work everyday - more gas money to pay on debt!