Ok... Friday didn't turn out exactly the way I had hoped

In last Thursday's post, I mentioned that I had my Friday lunch all ready to go and that I may join the guys for lunch.  Well I joined the guys for lunch but they had decided on going to a sit-down restaurant, rather that the food court, so I couldn't bring my lunch and I didn't have time to eat lunch at my desk before we left for lunch.  I ended up spending $12.  What's worse?  The lunch wasn't even that good.  A side salad and a chicken club sandwich.  Because I'm focused on eating healthier, I ate the salad and just the chicken breast on 1/4 of the bun.  As I sat there eating my lunch, I kept thinking how much better my packed lunch would've been.  I had my moment of weakness :(

Yesterday the family and I decided to redeem a gift certificate we had at a chinese-inspired restaurant.  Even with the $25 gift cert, we ended up spending $32!!  Crazy!  I can't imagine paying the full bill for what we had.  This meal out was also my "cheat" meal for the week.  Although it was better than last week's chinese food cheat meal, it still wasn't very good.  Second cheat meal = fail!  Even worse it cost us $32!  That was the allowance this week for eating out with the kids.

I went grocery shopping today at Costco and Walmart.  I actually spend our entire 2-week $180 food budget today.  I suspect we'll have an extra $60 from our gas budget, so we'll have to make sure we use that for grocery shopping next week.  The reason for the high grocery bill?  Every year, DH send a huge care package to his parents.  We're talking about over 100lbs in food/clothing/personal hygiene items.  Our plan this year is to have the care package (box) filled and shipped by March.  This means we're buying a lot of extra canned goods as well as things like multivitamins, toothpaste, you name it, we're buying it.  Truth is, the cost of filling the care package shouldn't come out of our regular grocery budget, so next payday, I'll have to tweak the budget to ensure we have a separate line item for the care package.

Although reason the budget is tight?  DH's two week shut down at work without pay, resulted in a smaller paycheque for him.  He did use up some of his vacation days to make up for the days off, but he wasn't able to cover all the days.  So the next two weeks are going to be tough.

Good news?  I'm loving the new Tassimo pods that I purchased - Gevalia Dark House Blend, so delicious!!