Austerity January (Annette, do you get residuals for the title?)

Do you ever look back at your bank account post the holidays and wonder what the hell happened?

We're doing quite a lot of that right now -- hoooboy!  Good thing I'm driving a new Lexus and enjoyed that trip to Paris.  Oh...wait...

We can be pretty responsible with the green stuff but apparently from October on we just decided to set fire to our money.  Which leads us to...stolen from my smart sister-in-law ....

Austerity January!

It still counts if we didn't really start until January 10th, right? This weekend, and for the foreseeable future (because really Austerity 2014 should be our goal) we are sticking close to home. 

We spent the day listening to (and watching) the rain pour from the skies.  Nothing like a good rainy day with nowhere to be!

And because I am morally obligated to bake if the weather is inclement I decided to take a crack at a new recipe. 

This is one of the recipe books I added to my collection when we cleaned out my grandparents' house almost eleven (wow) years ago.  I almost never pull these books out because I just go straight to Google for recipes anymore...but I think 2014 will be the year of the cookbook throwback.

I contemplated an aggressive recipe like a cake but opted for the Chocolate Shortbread Cookies.  I used my new beater again!  Love this thing ... love it!  If you bake and you have a Kitchen Aid, get one.  You can thank me later.

The finished product.  They say use a square cookie cutter but I went wild and made chocolate shortbread people.  

Delicious recipe - a bit time intensive but hey, what else did I have to do today? Not finish putting away Christmas decorations...nope, not me....

Obviously home is the safest place to be to ensure we're not spending all of the money, but we'll plan some budget friendly adventures too.  With the kid's new found - and my renewed - love of college sports I see much of that in our future.  Tickets are practically free for the women's games and if we have dinner there we can do it for less than $20.

We're also buckling down on the random supermarket trips.  No food shopping until the fridge is empty.  If we're out of produce just swing by for produce, etcetera.  For example - tomorrow will bring the end of the coffee and if we want to survive beyond tomorrow I must remedy that.  But that does not mean buy everything else in the supermarket.  Like a $5 papaya.  Yep, that happened last week.  I don't even know if I like papaya.

So there we are.  I'm pretty sure we'll be millionaires by December.