Getting to Goal, Step One

I love that everyone around the blog world is getting organized and starting challenges. It's a great time of year for it and maybe our collective efforts will help drown out those winter blues while we wait for the sunshine to return.

Next up, Ill be participating in a six week pantry challenge hosted by Melissa at Mom's Plans. It begins tomorrow and runs until mid-February. My new budget allows for only $300/month for groceries/household items and so I'll be using this challenge to find ways to keep myself within that parameter. From here until February 15th, I plan to spend no more than $450. I have no take out in my budget planned for that period either so if I decide to order a pizza or whatever, it will have to come from this amount.

Some things that will help:

1. My deep freeze is pathetically low, to the point where it's probably not worth it to have it plugged in. However, I do have a whole chicken, two small hams and a pot roast in there. I've just taken out another pot roast for tomorrow's dinner as well. My regular fridge's freezer has a bag of perogies, two meals worth of mozzarella stuffed meatballs, two meals worth of cooked ground beef with onion and one meal worth without the onion. I've also got 4 meals of homemade turkey soup in there as well. All together this counts for the main parts of about 3 weeks worth of meals, minus sides.
2. My kids can be picky and don't like a lot of different things. They mostly eat plain chicken, pot roast and spaghetti. Otherwise they like simple things like grilled cheese and kraft dinner. If paired with lots of fruits or veggies, these can be good additions to pad out our menu.
3. The boys will all be gone for 3 days during this 6 week period and Owen will be gone 6. I usually just eat left overs when Im home alone so these days will be a good budget stretcher, although they're not new.
4. We still have quite a few goodies around the house from Christmas. The boys all got chocolates, chips and candy in their stockings and we still have some of it for the times when they want a snack.
5. I made the pioneer woman's cinnamon rolls and although we gave two trays of them away, we had lots left over. They are sooo good though that I had to sneak a pan of them into the freezer before the kids noticed! I've also got a batch of muffins that Ill be taking out next week for school lunches and snacks.

Is anyone else participating in a pantry challenge this month?