Fruitful

I've been working hard to be more mindful.

This grew out of the desire to be debt-free once-and-for-all as soon as possible.

We're aiming for 3 years, though I'm hoping for 2.

We've budgeted the heck out of everything, accounting for every penny, and using the cash only system.  We refinanced our mortgage (saving us $600 a month!), refinanced our cars, transferred debt onto a fantastically low-rate card from our new credit union.

We don't have cable and haven't had it for several years.  But I had been using Amazon Video on Demand and purchasing episodes and series right and left.  Now, if it's not in the budget, I wait for the Netflix disk.  I get one disk at a time and instant watch.
I've put the cobosh on my Kindle habit.  Now I go to the library weekly and pay attention to those due dates!
I've always cooked from scratch, but I've succeeded in making all our breads from scratch for the past two months.  I've made artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, both white and whole wheat, raisin bread, sunflower millet bread, cinnamon rolls, coffee cakes, muffins, hamburger buns.  You name it.
My husband and I each get $100 a week - his needs to cover gas for the cars and mine covers groceries.  Our "fun" money is included in this amount, giving us an even greater incentive toward frugality.
And we're making incredible headway!
So far, since the first of the year, we have paid off three credit cards and socked away a nice sum in our savings account.
This week I decided not to grocery shop.  We have a ton of food in the house and it wasn't really necessary.  Except for fruit - we were almost out of fresh fruit.
What to do?
Well, I have lots of frozen fruit and we love smoothies.  So, every day, we've had a smoothie with one of our meals, usually lunch or supper.
These things are so chock-full of fruit that I'm sure each serving equals more than a single serving of fruit.

Here's what we do:
Add more than a quart of slightly thawed strawberries, two or more cups of either frozen blueberries or frozen mixed berries to the blender.  A splash or two of lime juice, enough orange juice to start the blending.  Stir in a spoonful or two of sugar.  Serve.
These things are so incredibly good, it's hard to believe.
We've also made them using frozen strawberries, mangoes, and pineapple.  Yum.

Oh, and those lovely glasses?
They are empty 12 ounce peanut butter jars.
Can't get much more economical than that.

It feel so good to be disciplined.
Um, I guess I should say self-disciplined.
Oh, um, well.
What I mean to say is being mindful of every expenditure is truly empowering.