Spending Freeze–Valentines and Chocolates

February 14, 2010

Spending Freeze–Valentines and Chocolates

Spending freeze day three (we started this plan on Feb. 12th) and Lance wanted to throw the whole thing under the bus. He got distracted today at Safeway by all the pretty pink and red cellophane-wrapped chocolates and giant bags of M&M's. He was all ready to throw in the towel and give into the temptation of Valentine's candy, insisting that we needed to buy chocolate to celebrate the day. He pointed out lots of great options that were very inexpensive and he made a fairly convincing argument. But chocolate and candy were not on the "essential items" list so he lost. No store-bought, Valentine-decorated, cheesy chocolates today. But what would the day be without chocolate? I mean, if there is ever a good excuse to eat your weight in chocolate, Valentine's Day is it. Lucky for us I have a couple of boxes of Baker's unsweetened chocolates so I googled a recipe and made brownies from scratch. I always make brownies from a box so these are actually a special treat, topped off with some homemade chocolate icing. Thus proving that it is always good to have cocoa, sugar and butter a plenty on hand.

But damn it if we didn't spend $98.00 today with our "essentials". Diapers and formula are expensive. Throw in some prescriptions and BAM, its a $100 day. I'm not so good at this limited spending just yet. But I did make some homemade valentines while snowed in. That was fun and free.