Eating on the cheap : Chicken tacos

A few months ago, I said I was going to share a few of my frugal tips. I've been slacking on sharing my tips, but here's a small one.

One of my favorite thrifty meals is one that everyone knows - chicken tacos. Very basic, easy, and tastes good to boot.

I ALWAYS cook more than I know we can eat in one meal so that we have enough left over for lunches the next day or two. This helps to save even more money because I don't have to buy separate lunch items!

Price breakdown:

$3.00 --  2lbs of fresh boneless, skinless chicken breast  (I always purchase my meat on sale - this chicken was $1.49/lb)
$0.99 --box of 12 hard taco shells
$0.99 -- head of lettuce
$0.99 -- tomatoes
$1.00 - estimated cost for taco seasonings and shredded cheese (I didn't use the entire package of cheese and it's hard to figure the exact cost for the seasonings I used - the price is nominal)
$1.50 -- half a jar of salsa

For just $8.47, I have enough food for one supper and two days worth of lunches.  That comes out to $2.82 per meal for TWO people (Piper doesn't eat enough to count as a third person yet, ha).   I also have enough tomatoes and lettuce left over to serve a salad with supper or tonight's meal which stretches our dollar even further!

Of course, not every  meal can be done quite this cheap, but strategically planning your menu based on what you have in the freezer (based on what you stock up on while it's on sale) can help drastically reduce your grocery bill.

We're homeowners!

Melissa, a fellow blogger from back home, left a comment a few days ago nudging me to update my blog. I totally forgot all about it - I sort of left everyone hanging. My apologies! I am hoping since we are here in our house and getting settled in, I will find time to start blogging again. I miss it. :)

So, the big news for the month is that we're now homeowners!! I don't have a ton of pictures yet because I forgot to take pictures BEFORE we moved in and I hate to share pictures of the house in it's current state - no pictures on the wall, half unpacked boxes in every room, etc. We closed on our home a little over two weeks ago and moved in that following weekend. It was an EXHAUSTING weekend but it was so worth it! We couldn't have done it without the help of our parents - it was a whirlwind weekend but they made it a lot more manageable.

Here are a couple of pictures from the original listing that I CAN share, though!

The back yard and covered porch are both  bigger than this picture gives them credit for, but I LOVE the covered porch - we have our grill and a patio table with four chairs on it right now and there's still room to spare!    :

I am SO glad we found the perfect house for us with NO STAIRS! Mitchell has a hard time getting up/down stairs anymore because his hip joints hurt so bad from the radiation. Truthfully, he can barely manage to put his socks on, so stairs would have been a disaster at the end of a long work day.

The specs for the house: 4 bed, 2 bath (I  have a master bath, ahhhh!!!!), all new appliances and new granite counter tops in the kitchen, brand new HVAC & A/C unit, brand new roof, all new carpet/tile/laminate throughout, totally remodeled master bath, wood burning fire place, walk in closets, double car garage, in a NICE, quiet little neighborhood. Mitchell's commute is only ten minutes and we're within walking distance of TWO grocery stores and  a pharmacy (literally - a sixty second drive).

I just keep saying "Someone pinch me! This can't be real!". We are blissfully happy here. These past two weeks have been, hands down, the two best weeks of our entire last year. We've had a less than stellar year and it finally feels like things are starting to fall in to place and it is such a good feeling.

Piper absolutely loves her little neighborhood friends. There are a whole bunch of kids in the neighborhood which just makes it even MORE perfect for our little family. The little girls adore her and really dote on her. We've been spending every evening in the front yard, visiting with our neighbors and watching the kids run around like maniacs, laughing and playing until it's too dark to see anymore. They have been wearing Piper right out and that's a-okay with me! We even found our first babysitter next door - she is a little older and she babysits all the neighborhood kids.

We aren't completely finished unpacking just yet but we are getting closer and closer! We were VERY motivated the first week but now it's starting to catch up with us and we're slowing down with it just a bit. We have our bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and living room pretty well unpacked - the trick now is figuring out where to put everything in the boxes that are still unpacked in the two spare bedrooms and the other half of the garage! I'm not sure how on Earth we accumulated so much stuff but we sure have tons of it! :)

All in all, we absolutely love our house and we are so happy here. God certainly opened up the perfect home for us and we are so grateful. The day we found this house was the LAST day we were going to look for homes. After 2 months of aggravation, frustration, and too many tears to count, I was ready to throw in the towel and rent an apartment for a while. We told ourselves the morning we set out to view our last batch of homes that if we didn't find THE house that day, that it was a sign that we just needed to find a rental and purchase a home later. When we walked in this house, we were both GIDDY and loved it. I had that feeling that everyone talks about when they find 'THE' home. I could see myself raising my babies here, preparing our meals in the kitchen, and picture our children running through the back yard.

I'm rambling but I just thought I'd share my exciting news! We are very, very happy here and can't wait to make this house our home. We've been displaced for an entire year now and it feels so good to be surrounded by all of our things and get back to the normal swing of things with just the three of us. :)