I knew that life was going to be different making the transition from a two income household to a single income household, once I made the decision to stay home with Jason.  Although it was hard to donate my Banana Republic wardrobe that no longer fit, and replace it mostly with the latest Old Navy Trends, I seldom miss things I used to know and love like fashion.  The things I now know and love are when Jason’s face lights up with excitement or scrunches up with confusion, when he throws himself into a fit of contagious laughter spinning around in circles, when he holds his arms out and asks for a hug, the list goes on and on.

This weekend while Brian went to UF’s homecoming game with his Dad, Jason and I went to a local Fall Festival, the festival was free and we had no money in our budget to play with.  It was very busy and chaotic when we first arrived, too chaotic to let him out of the stroller. After a few min of strolling around I found an Aveda Salon and snuck in and got my eyebrows waxed.  Jason sat very nicely in his stroller while he discovered some of the candy we had been given. After that we found a cafe and got a bite to eat.  When we were done, the crowd had died down and we were able to run around and play. On the way out, I saw The Learning Express and knew there was just a bit more fun to be had, Jason played with the train table, and puppet theatre and we found him an adorable Plane watch by Activa.We paid full price and it was worth every penny because it turned out to be such a fun day, but here is a soccer one for $3!:

So, almost $50 was missing out of the budget and the only place with any wiggle room was the grocery shopping. With a little bit of effort, and one hamburger helper night, I was able to save $60 of this weeks shopping budget… including the props for my apple martini photo shoot today. Kraft has an entire Budget Wise section on their website that was very helpful, and even a “1 bag 5 dinners” shopping list that I did except for the pizza.  Instead, I brought home some Campbell’s Tomato Soup (I use milk to make it creamy) and was going to make Grilled Cheese to go with… but since we had turkey and bacon already, I made Turkey Club sandwhiches instead. My usual $15 wine purchase was replaced with the bottle on sale for $6, and in addition to $6 in coupon savings, I was able to save $19 from shopping the store sales. I even managed to replace Jason’s sidewalk chalk for this weekend’s trip to Miami (See you soon Dad!) I did all this with Jason! The race car shopping cart, free ballon and free cookie helped too…Thanks Publix! So before you pass up fun next time, think of where you have some wiggle room…and wiggle wiggle wiggle!