Lots of new challenges, let chat over a drink

It's been a whirlwind with moving a family of 6 to a new town, new schools and starting new jobs, but we are finally settling in! Temporary anyway.  We have stumbled upon many challenges in our new town that has strained our budget a bit, but thankfully we are figuring it out and I figured it was time to start to share my challenges with my readers.  Thank you to all my loyal readers who keep messaging me saying they can't wait for me to come back and welcome to all my new readers!

Where to start off a new post?  How about with a drink?

 

Ahhh, nothing like a rich chocolate hot drink on a cold day.  And even better with frosty the snowman melting in it!  A few weeks ago I stopped at one of my favorite coffee shops because they had a great deal going on.  Ok a confession, I love Caribou Coffee's turtle mocha's.  I rarely get them because well at almost $5 a drink, I have better places to go with that money. But they were offering a buy one drink, get a second for $.20!  It was too good of a deal to pass up.  And I was even feeling in the giving mood so I got 2 sets of their special and decided to surprise Mr. Bacon and Brother Bacon with a morning break at their work.  With 4 turtle mocha's I set off.  Sometimes there are other's helping at the work site and I'd figure I'd come prepared with an extra drink to hand out, however that day it was just the 2 of them.  I dropped off their coffee and had a dilemma on my hands, there was no way I could handle the caffeine in 2 big cups of coffee like that.  I hate the though of dumping a treat like that so I did what any budget saving person would do, freeze it!

It was a great time to try out the cool ice cube tray Sister Bacon bought me for Christmas too. Coffee bean ice cubes! Perfect for freezing my coffee for my iced drinks. 

In went the turtle mocha and out came cute coffee bean shaped cubes!

 I tossed a few in a mug, and then added some hot water and a packet of hot cocoa mix I got in a gift basket for Christmas also. 

Mixed it all up but it was still missing something.  Melting frosty the snowman!  Nothing better than a scoop of whipped cream in your hot chocolate.  A few days before I had some left over whipped cream from a recipe. No wasting it here, (and good thing I got to it before the kids because they'd eat it by out of the bowl!) so I took out a mini cupcake pan and added a few spoonfuls to each spot.

 

And had some fun decorating them, a few with sprinkles, others with some mini chocolate chip eyes and orange sprinkle nose.  Then they went into the freeze. I popped one out and tossed it in my drink to melt away.  Delicious!  The Bacon kids love these in their hot chocolate too along with a few marshmallows!

So now that I have my warm drink, on to those challenges.  A few things we are figuring out is managing in a house half the size we used to have along with a much smaller kitchen and fridge.  This has put a challenge on how much we can keep on stock in our pantry and fridge. We are finding that we are shopping for 1 week only at a time now because there just isn't much room to fill up the fridge.

Where to shop is another challenge, Walmart here is not so great.  I have to say there are good Walmart stores out there, we were spoiled where we used to shop.  This one has many empty shelves and the produce is less than desirable.  So we are exploring other stores.  Thankfully I have found a great bread store!  I can get healthy whole wheat bread for $1-$1.25 a loaf.  So I stock up the freezer with it.  We'll keep exploring around town and working on our budget now that we shop weekly.

We're also working on adjusting to a 2 parent full time job family and we have also added to our family! A month before we moved we had a  kitty adopt our house, she was a stray and we decided to give her a home and welcomed Meow Bacon to our family.  And Brother Bacon's dog had a litter of puppies who needed a new home so we welcomed Woof Bacon to our family just last week.  It's a crazy new life and so many things have changed and challenged us the past 3 months but we continue on our path to save money!  I hope you all stick around, I will be having more recipes to come and I'm hoping to update the very popular and over a year old post  on how we budget our grocery money soon too.