June Book Picks

Emily’s Monthly Book Pick
Circe by Madeline Miller

This month was my turn to read Circe and I loved it as well! I rented it from the library and I was a bit worried that I wasn’t going to finish it before I had to return it but it was so good that I finished it with like 5 days to spare. Since finishing it I have been telling anyone who will listen to read it. Like Maddie my only experience with Greek mythology was in high school. I remember being kinda bored in high school when we read the Odyssey but not with this book! I love the girl power aspect and the ending is so sweet. It’s worth the hype!

Maddie’s Monthly Book Pick
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

This was a really fun, quick read and I highly recommend it. It centers around Eva Thorvald- the child of a chef and sommolier who grows up without her biological parents and becomes as food prodigy. The reader meets Eva as a child but each chapter thereafter centers around a different person who has touched her life in some way- some more peripherally than others. It is fun to meet each character and see the world from their perspective before moving onto the next and discovering how they fit into the narrative.

Everything comes together at the end for a satisfying conclusion.

Another Grocery Store Comparison

Emily here and I am back with another grocery store comparison! This week I decided to not buy our usual groceries because we have so much leftover food this week and to save $$$$! I did however want to get a few items I knew we would need. My hope was to spend like $20. I usually allocate $100 per week so if I only spent $20 this week that would be $80 that can go somewhere else. Now lets get on with it.

You can read about my last grocery store comparison here. This post I am comparing Grocery Outlet (bargain market) and my usual store Fred Meyers. I went in with a list of what I wanted and my only impulse buy was the Prego spaghetti sauce. I signed up for their store emails and got a $3 off coupon. My receipt told me that I saved $18 which I was like “yeah whatever okay”. BUT looking at this comparison I’m like. YEAH they aren’t wrong. I give all the credit to the Tilapia. That price difference it out of this world. Everything else was pretty close (and some items were not cheaper!).

Tips:
1. Go with a list (duh).
2. Extra discounts on almost expired products. The bananas I got were very ripe. Because of that I got a $1 off. I peeled them and froze them right when I got home for smoothies.
3. Use sales as a chance to stock up. They had a ton of dried beans and flour there. I didn’t get it this time but I will be going back to stock up on these items. So Cheap!

Easy Veggie Stir Fry

This meal has become a go-to in our household. It checks off all of our dinner requirements: cheap, healthy, easy to make!

Ingredients:

• 1 Small Bag of Sugar Snap Peas
• 1 Zucchini
• 1 Bell Pepper
• 1 Small Head of Broccoli
• 1 Cup of Matchstick Carrots
• 4 Green Onions
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 Cup Uncooked Brown Rice
• 1  8oz can of water chestnuts
• ½ Bottle of PF Chang’s Sesame Sauce

A note of the vegetables: use whatever is on sale! We used these vegetables because some were on sale and some were being used in other dishes that week.

Steps:

1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. We use a rice maker so we put in 2 cups of water along with the 1 cup of rice and set it to start.
2. Chop all of the vegetable and stir fry in one tablespoon of olive oil.
3. Once the vegetables are cooked through (around 5-7 minutes of sautéing), chop the water chestnuts and add them to the mixture.
4. Stir in PF Chang’s Sesame Sauce.
5. Serve the vegetable mixture over 2/3 cup of brown rice!

Ready for the rice!

May Fun Money Purchases

In my budget I have designated $60 as fun money that is just for me to do whatever I want with it. Maddie decided to add this to her budget too. Here is what we spent our May Fun Money on:

Emily:
These jeans from Target $24.99.
Pizza from Papa Murphy’s (for May my husband used our small eating out budget for something else. I wasn’t feeling well and I wanted some comfort food!) $15.50
McDonalds $5.00
Face Wash and Body Lotion $14.48
Total $59.97

I use the Cash App card for my fun money. Every months on the 7th $60 goes to my cash app account. That way I can better keep track of what I have spent instead of going through our main account. Also if I don’t spend all my fun money it rolls over. Like my 3 cents from May rolled over to June.

Maddie:
I designated a total of $65 for fun money for the month of May but I ended up going wayyyy over. I spent all of the money going out to eat with friends, which is not something that I typically do. This was my first month with personal spending money and I clearly need to do a better job of budgeting!

Buvette New York…$52 I had a petite burger (no bun), fries, one glass of white wine, and split a chocolate mousse dessert with my friend. We had to wait a long time for a seat at the bar…but the location was convenient for me to get home from the city.

Whos Gluten Free…$15.48 This is a delightful new gluten free café in Jersey City! I met up with my great friend Mari who has celiac disease and we chilled on the patio! I had GF waffles with a side of bacon and she had a bagel sandwich with a side of potatoes. We will definitely be going back!

Cara Mia…$52.82 My best friend Jenny was in town and we met up at this Italian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. We both got the pre-fixe meal which was a good deal for the amount of food we received and they had gluten-free noodles. The owner of the restaurant made sure that we got some free wine as well! I would go back here if I was looking for something in the area.

Total: $120.30 Total Over Budget: $55.30

Going to download the budgeting app that Emily mentioned because…dang…I need to be better with my budget!

May Book Picks

Emily’s Monthly Book Pick
Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
I have had this book on hold for a few weeks at the library and it came available during the month of May. I didn’t like it. Straight up. I think it’s the place that I am at in life. This book is for someone who really doesn’t like their job and feels like their world is spinning out of control (financially speaking). I really like my job and my work life balance. This book probably would have been more helpful a few years ago. I didn’t finished the whole book either. #real. I skipped ahead to the budget chapter to see if there were any helpful tips but I didn’t find anything. I think this would be a great book for someone starting out their financial journey and someone who feels stuck at their job and with their finances. That’s just not where I am at right now!

Maddie’s Monthly Book Pick
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
This book is hot hot hot on the best seller’s list and now I know why! It is a beautifully written novel about a broken family seeking a new life on the Alaskan frontier in the 1970’s. Even though I finished this book a few weeks ago, I have found that the characters and story have stayed with me as though I just finished it yesterday.

Just one warning for those interested in the book: it is much sadder throughout than I expected but it ends on a very hopefully note so if you think you are too sad to finish…keep going! This is one book that I do not think I could handle watching a movie adaptation of because the violence and suspense are a bit too much at times, but that is the great thing about reading! You can just skim over those details in your mind…

Work Outfits Week of 5/27

This was a short work-week for me because of Memorial Day on Monday, but you get to see some of my casual-wear. This is a shirt that Emily designed for our family’s company that reads, “Ice Cream, Ferris Wheel Lights, and Summer Nights”. With Memorial Day being the unofficial start of summer, I thought that it would be fun to wear! The rest of the week was pretty standard outfits.

Emily forgot to take photos of her outfits this week.

HAIR HACK PART DEUX: MY EXPERIENCE WITH A COSMETOLOGY SCHOOL HAIRCUT

Emily here to share my experience with cosmetology school haircut! True to the tag line of our blog we really are twinning (and winning by saving money). Like Maddie said in her post it is EXPENSIVE to get your hair did. I pay anywhere from $60-$80, depending on where I go, to get my hair cut. After Maddie got her hair cut in New York I figured it was my turn.

Let me just say I was very nervous. I scheduled my appointment out 2 weeks (so it fell on the day I got paid) and I was more stressed about this haircut then when I have an actual, like, doctors appointment. I have had a good handful of bad haircuts and with how thin my hair is a mistake or bad cut is VERY obvious. And I’m a Leo (if it even matters) and Leo’s love their hair. But here we go!

Unlike Maddie I didn’t have schools to pick from. My town only has one so that is where I went! Phagan’s Cosmotology College had pretty decent reviews on their Yelp page which made me feel better about not having a choice of schools. I arrived at my appointment about 15 minutes early because that’s just how I roll. I didn’t have to wait long and a girl who is in here second year of school greeted me and let me know she would be cutting my hair. I told her I wanted the ends cleaned up and some layers and framing around the face. She then brushed through my hair with a comb…it didn’t feel so great on my scalp but this seemed like the norm when I looked around.

She did a nice job with the initial cut then told me she wasn’t sure how to do the layers I asked for and walked away. She came back with an instructor and the instructor directed her on what to do. Then she went and got another one and that instructor demonstrated what to do.

The girl cutting my hair said “I’m not sure if this is right?” and “I don’t know how to do this” and “oops!” more times than I reeeeeally wanted to hear. She didn’t seem super confident but overall I feel like the cut was done well. I didn’t ask for anything drastic and since my hair was long it didn’t matter if she over cut the ends (which after looking at my before and after pictures might have happened). The actual cut of the hair probably took 45 minutes. I was expecting it to take awhile since Maddie said hers took a long time. But then it took her about 45 minutes to “style” my hair. When she washed my hair she used too much conditioner and put it on my roots with made my hair a grease ball. So the style wasn’t amazing. BUT there is literally no way she would have know that was going to happen. So I don’t fault her for that.

Now the real question…would I go back? $11.95 for a haircut? Hell yes. If I was going to do a drastic short bob or something crazy probably not. But a simple trim on long hair? Yeah! The ends of my hair felt so much better and I am excited to style it myself tomorrow. See below for before and after.
I thought about taking a shower when I get home and then style it cute. But I wanted the experience to be #real. Also my before picture was this morning with wet hair. So the greasy hair in the after just looks like it’s wet too.