Our new retaining wall has been poured and is curing as we speak — complete with handprints of The Daughter, The Son, and myself.  Today’s labor cost me $100 plus a few slices of pie and two glasses of milk ;-)

After all the cement was mixed and the wall poured, we ended up with three extra bags of Quikrete which I’ve already returned — for an $11.65 credit at The Home Depot.

The Daughter went with me on my errand-run.  After the quick return to The Home Depot, we stopped in Old Navy to see if she could exchange her Gap gift cards or use them at Old Navy.  I was surprised and disappointed to hear that Gap gift cards cannot be used at Old Navy.  [We also checked at Gap and they said the same thing.  I told The Daughter that I’d buy the cards from her — either flat out for cash or in the form of an Old Navy gift card.]

I had printed out my 25% coupon for Barnes & Noble that expired today only to find out that my local store didn’t have the book I wanted in stock.  I gave the coupon to The Daughter who bought herself a book using a gift card.  My cost: $0.00.  But I did make a purchase, though.  I bought a $25 gift card to be used for the unwrapping game we play during the family Christmas party.

Our next destination was the Qwest kiosk but we first stopped into a kitchen store where I spent $9.16 on a new slotted metal spatula (our old one completely fell apart a few weeks ago) and a set of two tiny whisks (great for mixing my oil & vinegar salad dressing).  A few stores down we popped into Crabtree & Evelyn for some soap.  I spent $25.95 and bought 6 bars of soap — three each of Aloe and La Source triple milled boxed bars.

We did make our stop at the Qwest kiosk but there was no charge — I had them swap our third cell phone account from a little Kyocera phone we had for the kids to a Motorola flip-phone that I’d gotten from a friend.  The Husband hates the Kyocera and can’t figure out how to use it.  I have a Motorola almost identical to the free one and mine is a work-horse if there ever was one.  I’ve dropped it and sat on it and carried it every day for what must be close to 6 years and it’s still going strong.  I’m hoping that The Husband will adapt better to the Motorola and therefore carry with him.  Our schedules are too busy and complicated to have him running around without a cell phone.  My cost:  $0.00.

Our final stop was Target.  I returned a picture frame for a $19.34 credit.  Then we did a little grocery shopping — a few essentials we needed for tonight’s dinner and breakfast, etc.  We spent $29.39 on:

• a gallon of 2% Horizon milk — $5.99
• 1/2 gallon of Horizon chocolate milk — $3.99
• 2 boxes of Kashi Cinnamon Harvest cereal — $3.39 (this is an excellent non-sale price)
• package of english muffins — $1.87
• Digiorno pizza — $4.99
• Digiorno “ultimate” pizza — $5.99
• Advil “pocket pack” — $1.99 (at The Daughter’s request, perfect size for her backpack, she’ll have to refill it from my über Advil bottle when it’s empty)

My final purchase of the day was a “Cyber Monday” sale item.  Best Buy’s Cyber Monday actually started today.  I found the sale quite by accident — I was curious about what kind of sales I might find on-line tomorrow so I thought I’d look for previews tonight.  I knew that one of the Christmas gifts we’d be giving The Daughter was a digital camera and I knew which model I wanted — a Canon Powershot Digital ELPH SD1000.  For the past few weeks I’ve just been watching prices and waiting.  When I visited Best Buy’s site tonight and saw that camera on sale for $179.99 plus a free 2GB PNY memory card, I showed it to The Husband and we took the plunge.  I made the purchase on-line but will pick the camera up from the store locally tomorrow.  This saves me from having to pay shipping charges.  Until tonight, the best price I’d seen was $199.99.  I paid $179.99 but after I applied $65 worth of gift cards I’d purchased from The Son, my final price was $114.99.

In the past two months that I’ve been blogging, I’ve also been reading a lot of PF blogs.  I’ve noticed that the grocery bill is almost universally the first budget category targeted by people wanting to tighten the budget belt.  The Husband and I have discussed this observation and his take is that in situations of deep consumer debt, the grocery bill is one of the very few monthly bills that has any wiggle room at all.  This has lead to more than one conversation about our own food consumption and grocery bill.  The consensus is that we’re both very happy with our current food consumption and see no need to make any significant changes although we agreed that I could be a little more conscious of sales and/or coupons — I have definitely gotten a bit lax in those areas.

So, we’re comfortable with how much we spend and satisfied with the types and quantities of food that comes into the house.  The one area, however, in which I see room for significant improvement is the number of home-cooked, from-scratch meals I prepare in the course of the week.  As much as I hate to admit it, I only cook one or two meals a week.  We always eat dinner together as a family but more often than not than not those meals are “smorgashboard” affairs — each person finds and prepares their own individual meal choices.

There are two main reasons behind our lack of home-cooked meals.  First, my health.  Whatever the reasons — whether the lingering results of the TIAs or a side-effect of the Fibromyalgia or the hypothyroidism — I still struggle with a low energy level.  By the time evening rolls around, it’s often everything I can do just to sit at the table with my family and feed myself.  And second, we represent a modern twist on the Jack Sprat tale-of-two-conflicting-diets idea.  Except in our case there are two conflicting diets plus a third restricted diet to consider.

I have extensive food allergies.  I’m allergic to all legumes (all beans & peas).  I’m also allergic to most oils (I can eat canola and olive oil only).  I’m allergic to corn; most nuts; most seeds.  I can’t have any form of soy.  I’m allergic to all yeast (baker’s and brewer’s).  And I’m allergic to mustard.  And mushrooms (actually, everything fermented or containing fungi).  And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head.  And we’re not talking about not being able to have a full serving of something; I can’t ingest even the tiniest amount of any of these items.

This means that I can’t have sushi rolled in sesame seeds nor any wasabi nor anything that has come in contact with soy sauce or wasabi; I can’t eat any solidified chocolate products; I can’t eat anything containing soup stock nor anything labeled as containing “spices.”  Almost without exception, I cannot eat anything packaged or pre-prepared.  I once ate one bite of a cookie from Whole Foods.  I’d carefully checked the ingredients and confirmed that the oil used was canola and the rest of the ingredients were okay.  I got unbearably sick.  It turned out that the oil used to grease the pans so the cookies wouldn’t stick was something other than canola. 

Eating out is simply not possible.  Traveling is very difficult.  At home, in a fully-stocked kitchen, there’s actually quite a bit that I can eat.  But all of my protein has to come from meat.  And here’s where the Jack Sprat thing comes in — The Daughter is a vegetarian.   Her diet is almost directly in conflict with mine.  Add to this diet issue the fact that The Husband is supposed to restrict his salt, cholesterol, and sugar intake.

Cooking is often just more hassle than it’s worth.

But we’re learning how to compensate.  Sometimes I prepare meals that the kids and The Husband can eat.  Sometimes I prepare a meal that everyone but The Daughter can eat.  I’d really like to put more thought and effort into building a collection of recipes that will meet the needs and tastes of three out of four.  But, for now, most of our meals are smorgasboard affairs with each person fixing a sandwich or some eggs or a bowl of cereal or a quesadilla or a salad to meet the desires of their own taste buds.

I’m just grateful that our budget is such that tightening our grocery bill belt isn’t necessary.

Wow, things are popping at Wagglepop!  I’ve had 6 sales in November alone — two of them were for multiple items.  I have no idea of why things have picked up in my Wagglepop store but I’m certainly not going to complain.  Of course, this month’s $300 worth of sales can’t even begin to compare to the $3,000 I was averaging every month on eBay back in ‘05 and early ‘06.  But it covers the Wagglepop fees.

I’ve had a few sales from my eCrater store, too, in the past month but nothing like I’ve experienced at WP.  Then again, my eCrater store inventory level is only 127 listings compared to 1,419 on WP.