Can I stick with a 30 day challenge?

This is my first blog post, ever.  Who am I?  How do I identify myself?  Well, some facts about my life are thus; I am a wife, my husband is in the military so I am often referred to as a "Military Spouse," the most important thing I will ever do in life is be a good mother to my two little boys, I am in the Reserves, so sometimes people call me a "Reservist," I like to think of myself as a student even though I haven't taken a college course in almost 4 years, I love reading and watching a few select shows on TV and hugging my giant four-legged fur baby who in reality is not actually my child but our adopted Dalmatian.  But if I had only one word to describe myself, hands down I would choose Mother.  I believe that the greatest thing I can do is help guide my children, ensuring that they have the tools and opportunities to grow into kind and good men.

Last Thursday I found out I was going to be out of work...starting on Friday.  So now that I am out of work for a little while I have two concurrent thoughts that keep running through my head.  The first being that I am going to get to spend so much time with my boys and be there for all those great little moments.  The second thought is that we could really use my paycheck right now and we are going to have to cut out what we don't need.  So I have decided to try to live as cheaply as possible for the next 30 days, mainly by grocery shopping smarter and cooking at home so we can be prepared with meals ready to go, and get rid of the excuses to eat out.

So my plan, what there is of one, is to shop at the "cheap" grocery store, use coupons, and try to figure out what meals I will be making for the week.  One complication is that I like buying organic when I can and using a lot of produce not packaged foods.  It isn't often you come across coupons for organic foods and produce. Now I'm not bashing the greatness of packaged foods, I too love the convenience of opening one box pouring in some water and viola, dinner!  But the reality is that preparing your own meals, in general, is healthier and can be cheaper if you play your cards right.  So I am going to let this blog hold me accountable by keeping track of what I spend on groceries, the recipes I use, and how much we end up spending eating out.

If anyone is reading along with me I'm glad you are here.  I hope that maybe we can learn something together.  Thanks for stopping bye,
Love, Katie