Our Homemade Lives

No-Spend February went pretty well. We only bought one thing that was not food or an absolute necessity, and when I say "we," I mean Jared. He bought an ice-cream maker and tried to sell me on the idea that it was a Valentine's Day present for me. This was funny because A) we don't EVER do anything for Valentine's Day because I think it's a stupid holiday and 2) he has been telling me for a few months how much he wants one. Of course it's funny that he finally broke down and bought one during no-spend month, but what's done is done. It has turned out to be a really great thing to have, especially if you like ice cream but always feel bad buying it because it's expensive and has a lot of unnecessary ingredients in it. Now we have delicious ice cream that isn't chalk full of fillers!

No-Spend February turned out to be an eye-opener, not because we realized how much money we spend on extraneous things (because really, we only saved probably $50 last month) but because of how much money we already save making things at home instead of buying them. Because of this, there wasn't that much we could do to save more money last month. The one thing I did make this month for the first time was yogurt. I got a recipe about a month ago from a friend's blog and finally tried it. I will never buy yogurt again!

Here is a list of things that we make at home:

Yogurt
Bread, including bagels and rolls (using a bread machine)
Granola
Granola bars
Ice Cream (using an ice cream maker)
Sweets (I don't buy cake or cookies or anything of that nature. If we want something sweet, we make it)
Sweet Tea (using a tea maker)
Beer (thanks to Jared!)
Hard Cider (again, thanks to Jared!)
Popcorn (this one is cheating a bit, but what I mean is, we buy kernels and pop it in our own popper which is not only cheaper, but healthier than buying microwave popcorn)
Laundry Detergent

On my list of other things to start making is all other household cleaners, deodorant, soap, lotion and baking mix (like bisquick).

While I am sad that we didn't save hundreds of dollars last month, I guess it's good to know that we really do live pretty frugally already and that we are already doing (mostly) everything we can to limit our spending to things we truly need.

If anyone has any suggestions of things we can make ourselves to save even more money (or to just have something that's more natural and healthy), please comment below and tell me about it!

And for those who are interested, we are still living happily without a microwave :)