Hosting a Dinner Party

Hosting a Dinner Party – October 18, 11

So, a couple of Saturdays ago I hosted a dinner party at our house.   Now, I am not going to write that it is the cheapest thing to host but there are some ways to keep costs lower.  Here is what I did.

The weekend before the party was Thanksgiving and even though I did not have the menu, etc planned at that time there were certain things that I knew I would need for the party regardless and they were on sale for Thanksgiving.  This was items like sparkling grape juice, pop and juices to make punch, and fancy pickles and olives.

When I planned the party it was a fall themed party so accordingly the menu followed suit.  This helped me save costs by being able to purchase some in season menu items.   I planned a boneless skinless chicken breast main course.  Expensive, yes, but less expensive that some other cuts of meat.

Also, when I went shopping for the menu items I wrote a list of the items that I would need to buy and on certain of the specialty items I put quantities.  This helped me to buy the exact amount needed for the dish.

The best thing about a dinner party, of course, is the leftover food.  YUM. YUM.  Of course, that saves money as why would you want to eat out when you have this fancy, yummy food sitting at home that only needs to be reheated?

Wood Stove

Our house has natural gas heat as well as a wood stove.  We enjoy the wood heat very much and in the winter there are few things better than sitting in front of the nice warm heat on a cold day. 

It's not winter yet, only fall.  Let's not rush things here!  The reason for this post is that these days it is around 10'C so not to cold but definitely a chill in the air.  Now we could just turn our furnace up and have it come on occasionally but we have the wood stove.  So, we take advantage of the “free” heat and keep our house as warm as we want too!

However, there are other ways to take advantage of the wood heat.   You may tell me it's heating my house, saving me money on my heat bills; isn't that enough?  Maybe for you but I think there is at least a couple of other ways to take advantage of that heat.

The first is dry your clothes with it.  It's pretty cheap to buy a clothes rack or an indoor clothes line and put it up right next to your wood stove.  It's going to save you money in the long run and if you are like me you are used to hanging your clothes to dry on the line in the summer anyway.  The best part, no clothespins.

The second way is to cook your meals on it.  WHAT?!?!? Now I am not talking all your meals or anything like that, unless, of course, you want too.  However, in the winter with company we will often hang out in the wood stove room (downstairs in our house) as it is very warm there.  So, I bring my kettle down and heat up the tea there.  It's just as easy and we aren't in a hurry.   Also, if you are making turkey soup, chili or something else like that that has to sit on the stove for a long time on low heat and needs to be checked on every now and then.  You can do it on your wood stove.  You have to add fuel to your wood stove anyway every now and then so just check/stir your food while you are at it.

Holiday Update

We went on the driving holiday to Yellowstone National Park and it looks like it came in for costs right around the $2,000 mark so right on our budget in the end.  Not only did it come in on budget is also scored well on the fun holiday quota.  What could be better?

As to how the plan from above worked, one thing that really helped us was that whenever we spent something I would write it down in a notebook.   About every page of spending I added it up.  This helped us to know where our spending was and if we could afford to splurge or if we needed to cut back.  In our case, it enabled us to splurge and not feel like we couldn't afford it.

Specifics on the plan:

Meals:

For breakfasts we bought muffins from the grocery store when we purchased our dinner food.  

Lunch was a sandwich out or a sandwich from the grocery store.  

For snacks we often did items we had picked up from the grocery store; fruit, cheese strings, cookies or granola bars. 

Dinner was a frozen dinner that could be cooked in a frying pan, deli food (fried chicken, etc), or pre-seasoned meat and vegetables.  We had very little trouble finding reasonably healthy, yummy dinner food when we had a whole grocery store to pick from and a camp stove.  We also borrowed a cooler that had a fan to keep the food cool when you plugged it into a cigarette lighter.

We enjoyed the food and felt we had variety, etc. 

Pre-Trip Library Sign Outs:

We took Lonely Planet USA and Lonely Planet Yellowstone (both of which I signed out from the library).  Both of those helped us to plan our trip (since we didn't go on the trip with a detailed plan (just a destination)) to see the cities/towns we felt would be interesting, to find good value places for lunch, to know what we were seeing in Yellowstone, to know what to expect, etc.  In the end, those two books enhanced our trip and, therefore, saved us money.

We also signed out from the library several books on CD.  We only ended up listening to Charlotte's Web but in the end it helped to make some of the long hot drives more bearable and enjoyable.

Places to Sleep:

We had no problem finding campsites.  We did have a bit of a problem finding campsites that weren't next to train tracks or the highway or, yes, BOTH.  We also found some great campsites with swimming pools, free showers, or other amenities.  So, I guess we took the good with the bad. 

One thing that helped us to enjoy almost two weeks in a tent was that we bought a $75 air mattress that pumped up using the cigarette lighter in our car.  It paid for itself several times over. 

We also got one hotel before Yellowstone and one hotel on the way home.   Both were a nice break from the tent. 

For costs, our cheapest tent site was $10 and our most expensive campsite was $40 to give you an idea on actuals.  Also, one thing that helped us a bit was we stayed at a KOA campsite one night and there we got a free book on all the KOA campsites.  This helped us for peace of mind and finding a campsite one night.

Summary:

In the end our holiday was lots of fun, very relaxing, etc.  Exactly what a holiday should be.  Here's a couple of pictures to prove it.

The 6 man tent we borrowed for the trip.

 Me cooking dinner in Yellowstone. This dinner was pre-seasoned chicken, rice-a-roni, a package of prefrozen asparagus and milk to drink.

 The token picture of Old Faithful.  Yellowstone is so much more...

Blender and Stove Update

I mentioned a while ago that we bought a new part for our blender rather than buying a new blender.  Well, the part did not work and it looks like we have to buy a new blender.  It was a $20 part including shipping so not that bad for something that did not end up working.

Also, our new stove has arrived and it works great.

Holiday Costs

So, I know this post is probably a little late in the year as most of you have probably gone on holidays but as we have not yet, here is how I expect the money to work on our holidays.

I wanted to go a big holiday this year but not too major and not too expensive.  My husband was more on the not too expensive side but he also definitely wanted to go on a holiday. 

The first possibility that  both my husband and I wanted to do was a 7 night cruise out of New York, to Halifax, NS, and St. Johns, NB and a couple other stops.  Sounds fun.  I thought so, but here are the costs.

$1,300 – Cruise

$1,100 – Flights out of Seattle

$80 – 2 tanks of gas to get us to Seattle and back

$50 – Hotel in Seattle (which would have included parking for the car)

$100 – Meals not on the cruise (2 days worth)

$75 – Dog Sitting for our dog

$300 – Estimated for trip insurance

$3,005 TOTAL

Now that was very close to our total budget for the trip and did not include any optional excursions or spending.  So, we went back to the drawing board.

Our second idea was to go to Yellowstone National Park for two weeks.  It would be a driving holiday where we tented.  It is quite a long drive for us but being that we are taking two weeks it is doable.  Here are the costs.

$450 – 9 tanks of gas

$350 – 14 nights of camping

$70 – 14 days of Breakfasts

$140 – 14 days of Lunches

$210 – 14 days of dinners

(Our plan to keep the cost of meals down is to pack granola bars, etc for breakfasts, stop at grocery stores for sandwiches for lunches and while we are there get food to put in our cooler that can be cooked on a campstove for dinner.)

$140 – 14 days of dog sitting

$1,360 TOTAL

Now that cost does not include spending or admission into attractions but since our budget was less than $3,000 and ideally less than $2,000, that still gives us lots of room to stay in a hotel a night or two if we get tired of sleeping in the tent, do fun excursions, etc... 

So, since this holiday better matched the budget this is the holiday we have picked to go on and we are leaving in less than two weeks,

So, there is our holiday plans, hopefully yours were/are going to be just as fun and within budget.

Appliances

Remember that post about the unexpected bills.  Well, we are having one of those take place.  In the last month our stove has started coming up with an error message.  When we looked it up on the internet it meant that the control panel was going.  This error message isn't that bad except that it makes the stove beep and that you can't turn on the oven when the error message is up.  OK, so maybe it is bad... 

According to the internet a replacement control panel would cost about $150.  When we took off the back of the stove to check things out, we discovered we would also need to hire a repair person to replace the control panel.  Considering the fact that our stove is six years old and appliances are expected to have a 7 – 10 year life these days, we decided to replace our stove.

So, two weeks ago we went looking at new stoves.  We found one we like in town at a price that was decent but decided not to buy it yet and see how often the error message was actually going to happen.

Well, last week we decided the stove was not going to get better on its own so we went back to that store to buy the stove, they were having an even better sale and when it actually came down to ordering the one we wanted we saved about $90 off the original sale price.  Happy for us. 

So, our new stove is on order and yesterday I made gingersnaps in the toaster oven...

More on Renovations

Today I was getting quotes on a renovation project that we are probably going to do and I was thinking that when I was working that we wouldn't have a time to do this.  So, in this short little post, my advice is do your internet research and get your quotes.  You could save a lot of money.

Ex: $20 for a new blender part vs. $50plus for a new blender....  or getting a $200 cheaper quote for a nicer front door....

Yes, those are two recent examples that I have been looking up.