This is how we do it...

In case you missed it...here is the video to recap.
New video coming up tomorrow on today's purchases.

Click here for the latest video!

I hope everyone had a good weekend.

No No No November Already? Got Preps?

Wow I cannot believe that it is already November 2011. UNBELIEVABLE how quickly the year has gone buy. It is going to be a mere 3 weeks until Turkey Day. As I did my slide show and recap for the month of October I realized I was so busy I didn't do as much as I usually do. I basically had it in my head that for the months of November and December I was going to kick it into high gear. For the last 11 months I have maintained a minimum of 50lbs of food a week in preps. 50 lbs is a regular week - 100 lbs is a more normal week and 400lbs is a fantastic week.

Some people ask how do I calculate what I need. I have a very basic formula - 1lb of food per person per meal. That is a REALLY high estimate and it assumes waste (there won't be waste) So let's say that it is Mr.Man and Me...for 3 meals that would be 6 lbs. Out of the 6 lbs you have to figure out bread - it takes about 1.5lbs of flour to make 2 good sized loaves and that would be 2 days worth or maybe not in an emergency. So lets say breakfast is oatmeal with nuts with milk and fruit. Morning snack is maybe a half sandwich. Lunch is a bean and veggie salad, and some tacos, afternoon snack is homemade trail mix or crackers and cheese, dinner is some form of stew with bread or rice. Truth be told a lot of these meals extend into secondary meals and I could make 4lbs of food work, but I calculate the 6 because if we start to do a LOT of physical labor we will also be more hungry. It is the easiest formula I could figure out.

Some of the more intensive folks do caloric content, fat content and all that. I'm not into all that because I can do a menu and make something out of whatever we've got. I personally don't think it's fair to tell people to learn yet another thing (caloric intake values) on top of all the other stuff they are trying to learn. I think 1lb per person per meal per day - and just make sure that you have veggies/fruits, protein, grains, cereals, fats. Follow the stupid FDA triangle just change their position. You can't go wrong with the formula. In fact you'll have extra.

So here we go - I had a good head start yesterday for November preps:

3 types of nails - 1/2-3/4 full over 10lbs of nails - only $5 per case. yeah you heard me. Those bostich nails alone are worth well over 50 bucks b/c they sell those about $1 per strip.

I love you Ace Hardware!














8 cases pints $10 each
1 case half pints (straight side) $7.50 ea

sugar at Wally world is still $13.48 a bag.

I went ahead and got a bag it's not getting cheaper that's for dang sure - in fact the price of it seems to be going up everywhere else.




I stopped at target for Halloween Candy and found these notebooks on clearance for 62 cents - I just picked a dozen of the prints I liked - that should keep me in notebooks for a few semesters. yaaay ME.









I found this Mitre box for Mr. Man...I thought 2 bucks sounded good. I don't know much about these things.











I've been wanting egg timers for awhile but they are always so dang expensive - Lucky me I found these last 2 for $3 each. Now I can tell myself onion is for canner, garlic is for oven. I left the bellpepper one. haha.








The staple gun seemed handy mine is just a plastic job. The staples were only $1. Seemed like a good price to me.











I found this at Ace hardware too - I'm just gonna throw it in my backpack...You never know right!











You can see a weird bowl in my photos of eggshells and veggie trimmings - that's my compost stuff from the kitchen lol.

You cannot imagine how happy I was to find this kitchen compost pail for only $7. Supposedly they are upwards of $50. All I know is 7 bucks sounded good to me haha.






I know how gross. i don't care - We like them and they were on sale this week for 99 cents - I had Wally World price match Fresh and Easy - I picked all the ones that expire dec 23 2011 and I'm still gonna freeze them.

I bought 20 pkgs - 10 for my house and 10 for my sisters house. I figure that's enough.




Got some new hair lotion for Mr. Man...2 containers of buttermilk (over $3) not on sale and a 4 pack of the pint jars the fancy ones I like for butter. I don't know why I like the butter in the odd looking containers.

jar lids - 99 cents price match

It was so weird they only had these 4 boxes of lids left in that whole store - super strange.


Pineapple was still 97 cents - so I picked up another 7. That should make at least 15 more pints. That should be good - it will bring our total amount of canned pineapple to 2.5 cases.











Finally I picked up ground lean (93%) for $2.49 a lb that is still expensive to me 5 wks ago ground lean was only $1.69. I also found this Italian Sausage 5for5 but it had an instant $2 off coupon - so 24 oz of Italian sausage for only $3 pretty good. The pork chops are a request from a friend who did us a favor so I'll be making his favorite dish - Pork Adobo!

That's it - that's my kick start - Everyone please go out and do something - do anything. Prices are going up 20-40% every single time I go to the store and I don't care if I do have the money I do not wanna waste it. Vitamins and basic body lotions are horrendously expensive. Please look around and see the silent anger and mortification in peoples faces with only 3-4 things in their cart because they simply cannot afford the things they once ate. Sad.

ps) I have been watching this one dude make excuses why he can't do as many preps as other people because he doesn't have the money and blah blah blah - M****f**** please. I'm just sayin - if you've been doing this for almost 2 years why have your preps decreased? We're on a very tight budget and we make it. Goodness gracious - if you don't have the stomach to be a winner just lay down and take it from the powers that be - HAHA.

October Preps 2011 Recap

This is just a link for any of you who might have missed a few blogs and didn't see what kind of deals I picked up.

Click here for link to video!

I must say October was a very lean month for preps, not just because we had unexpected expenses but also because I was extraordinarily busy with school and some changes in our home.

I'm glad we made it through October!

Everything starts with Effort?

So today they posted the final grade for Lit...I tell you what - I was late ONCE and she gave me an 88 for attendance LOL and most of my papers were 95s and 97s but for the last 2 papers she gave me 90s. Funny thing is I like her - she's been teaching for 30 years and still loves it and has a positive attitude - but I even told her you grade me much harder than you do the other children and she whispered,"because you are more talented." I mean seriously - I would turn in 6-8 page papers with full citations to everyone else's 3 page double spaced babble. HAHA. Nonetheless - I still got my A...I'm just disappointed that it was such a LOW A. It's almost like there's some luck involved.

Then I went to Criticism class this morning and he gave us back our tests and I got another 90. I was like What the Heck? He then said if anyone would like to stay and check their class standing I can review scores. I was really worried after that 90 - but my overall grade is 97% . Goodness Gracious - you see those are the types of scores that I am accustomed to. jeez. As my brother would say an A is an A whether it is a 90 or a 99.

I went to Ace Hardware between classes (I'll put that in the next blog) and picked some stuff up and then took off to Math class. I was on time but everyone was already in there...and grouchy as Mondays usually are grouchy. I got my both parts of my extra credit together to submit it and one of my study buddy's said,"Shhh, how did you do number 15?" I flat out said I'm not gonna do your work for you...so I told the instructor I"m going to give her the formula okay but I'm going to make her do the work. The instructor nodded. After I got all that sorted out I submitted the extra credit for the 1% raise in final grade which was to find advanced polynomials and show formula examples and define applications - meaning what it can be used for. I think I found like 5 types plus 25 subtypes and defined them. The instructor told me NEVER had anyone been that thorough in their research - most students couldn't even find them because it's not something you can google. I laughed and said,"then you should give me 2-3% for my effort." She laughed and said she may just do that. haha.

What amazed me was that only 5 or 6 people submitted the extra credit for plus 5 on your exam and only 2 or 3 people submitted advanced polynomials and even their submissions were a 1 sentence submission with no examples. The ones who couldn't find anything were referred to me on how to do the research. LOL.

It just amazes me how little effort people really put in. I don't get it.

I put that photo up top because that was from our last trip to Vegas the other February. Prior to our prepping life we took 4 weeks off a year to go on trips and vacations. YES a month vacation a year broken into parts. But now that we prepare ourselves and are more socially aware giving up that vacation is part of our effort to thrive. Jeez.