I did make my run to Super Target, my closest grocery store. I spent $54.72, which I am pleased with.

This is the meal plan for the guests:

Breakfast will be steel cut oats with apples and cinnamon made in the crock pot overnight. Bought two apples for $0.99.

Lunch, turkey sandwiches with carrots and apple slices. I purchased an oatmeal bread, turkey, mustard, cheese, and a tomato. I have mayo, onion, and lettuce. Leftovers can be used in the following days. My purchase here was $11.49.

Dinner, pasta and marinara sauce, roasted brussel sprouts and red potatoes. My mother is bringing pesto sauce, and I have one box and part of a used jar of sauce. I bought a box of pasta, ground beef, one jar of sauce, parmesan cheese, brussel sprouts and 3 lbs of red potatoes for this meal. These cost me $13.52. I expect there will be left over meat, pasta, cheese, and potatoes for future use.

Breakfast on Sunday, will be bagels purchased by my parents. I will donate peanut butter and butter as needed, as well as coffee. I have those on hand.

Lunch on Sunday I am making a Greek Quinoa salad. I have the quinoa, dressing items, and onions. My mom is bringing the olives. I picked up feta cheese, and grape tomatoes. These two items alone cost $6.98. This salad is very tasty and filling. I will put out leftover sandwich fixings as well.

I went to the store with a list. I purchased 4 things that were not on the list. One of them was a bag of almonds that will be a good snack to set out for our guests. I picked up our preferred spreadable butter on clearance. I know I will need this before the two weeks are up. I also picked up to large containers of yogurt. These are normally $3.29, marked down to $2.23 each and I had two $1 coupons, bringing them each to $1.23. The yogurt was reaching its expiration, but we will have it eaten in plenty of time.

I also picked up other things not listed here that will be part of our dinner tonight, and a meal or two through Monday or even Tuesday. I hope to only need to go to the store one more time before the two week low spend is over.

I almost always go with a list, it is sticking to it that I need to work on. Do you shop with a list? Do you shop your cupboards before you go shopping?

I think today is going to be the hardest spending day over the next two weeks. I need to go to the store in preparation for company. I want to make wise choices without going over board. It's my sister, brother in law and my parents. If we need something, or decide we want something I don't have, we'll just swing by the store. I tend to buy extra snacks, just in case, someone is hungry. I'm going to try not to do that.

My sister is coming primarily to run a 1/2 marathon. Her tradition is pasta the evening before, so that's cheap. A jar sauce and pasta. I may add ground beef to my list for my brother in law, my parents are vegan so they won't eat it. I should look at the grocery ads to see if anyone has a deal on that. I need a vegetable, too. Roasted asparagus sounds really good, but it is a bit expensive.

Sandwiches for lunch. So a loaf of bread, and one kind of lunch meat. I may pick up cheese as well. My daughter will eat the leftovers for her lunch next week. I will put out some carrots, and apple slices, too.

Clearly I'm back wards planning here, because breakfast is actually the first thing I will feed them. They arrive late this evening. The easiest thing to make is an egg casserole, but I usually add sausage, which increases the price. I could just do scrambled eggs, or steel cut oatmeal in the crockpot. I'm starting to lean towards the latter option since I have the ingredients.

I'll let you know the results of my grocery shopping and meal plan once it is complete. Before I even get to that I've got some bathrooms to clean and laundry to start.

I'm still open to inexpensive ideas for Mother's Day. What are you getting your Mom? Or do you get to skip giving a gift? I'm sure I could if needed.

Something has definitely gotten out of hand around here. I think we are doing some spontaneous spending that is adding up faster than we realize. Since my husband is going to be gone for over two weeks, I'm going to take the time to not spend...as much as possible.

Last pay period we were over budget by $477. Yikes. I did have to call for furnace repair which was $117. We signed our daughter up for some summer classes for $155. We bought some clothes, which was at least $65. The rest? Not so sure.

My goal is to spend less than $450 through May 15. I'm pretty sure I can do this, but I do see a few events that could make this difficult.

First, I have guests this weekend. However, they often bring some food with them, so it is not all on me. We will go to a band concert which will cost me $6 to get in. I expect they will pay their own way. I will have additional gas to get to a race my sister is running in a town south of us. The biggest expense is food, but I think I can do simple eggs in the morning, sandwiches at lunch, pasta for dinner, and have someone buy bagels for Sunday morning.

The following weekend is Mother's Day. I have the cards, but now need to think of inexpensive, yet thoughtful gifts. I thought of sewing something, but I would still have to mail the items to both my mom and my husband's mother. We have done gift cards for my mother in law so that is a possibility. I'd appreciate any ideas!

I returned some batteries to the store today. My husband purchased them for $19.99. Later I realized I could probably get them cheaper with my Amazon Prime membership. I was right. Amazon offered them for $12.71 shipped to our house. Love that!

We earned $24.73 in interest on our money market account for the month of April. I just save this money...adds to increasing the down payment money even if just a very little bit.

My eBay buyer's eCheck cleared today. I will net $8.99 on the sale. It will be added in as a snowflake, of course!

Anyone else on any kind of spending freeze, or is it just that time of year where the money flows out quickly?

I filled out and printed the transfer request to move my husbands Roth IRA at Fidelity to Vanguard. He signed the form and I will get it mailed tomorrow.

He has decided to invest most of it in the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund. The rest will go in the 500 Index Fund. I tried to tempt him with the Vanguard REIT Index Fund, but he wasn't interested.

My husband still has a Traditional IRA account with Fidelity. It has a bit over $5,500 in it. This is his only Traditional IRA. I need to look into which fund would be right. The amount does meet the minimum investment, but not enough to put it into Admiral Shares. These shares usually have $10,000 minimums. I'm thinking the Total Stock Market Index or go a little more specialized with a Mid Cap Fund, which we currently do not have in our portfolio. I have time to look into it. I won't get this one started until later in the month.

The consolidation of investments has begun, and what is even better is that my husband thanked me for working on this. Isn't he nice to thank me for doing something I like to do?

April was a very nice month for little bits of money flowing in. It's hard to call them snowflakes in spring! The cash was from Swagbucks, a credit card bonus reward, refund of ATM fees, an eBay sale, and a Pinecone survey. The total for the month was $98.96!



I will have a jump start on May because I see this morning that another deposit was made from Swagbucks in my PayPal account. I also am waiting for my latest eBay purchase to clear since the buyer sent an eCheck.

The total for Snowflakes since the beginning of the year is $517.98. The goal is $750, which at this rate will be no problem by the time Christmas rolls around. Snowflake really do add up!!

Anyone have a new source of snowflakes? What would you say is your primary source of snowflakes? Right now mine seems to be Swagbucks, but in the past I would have said eBay sales.