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One Hundred Dollars a Month

I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.


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Video | Bartering with Mavis – Is Anybody Home?

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Before I headed over to Francisco’s house the other day to barter, I stopped by my neighbor Mrs. Active Wear’s house.  Now the one thing you have to remember about living in high maintenance suburbia is, not everyone wants to barter with you {with or without the camera video present}.

My neighbor Mrs. Active Wear is pretty awesome.  I can call her at 6 am and ask her to drive my kids to school because I’m too lazy to get dressed, and she’s usually willing to bake 750 cupcakes with me any day of the week.  In exchange I let her borrow random crap and she spies on my kids for me whenever she sees them talking to someone new.

It’s what I would call a win-win relationship.

But I don’t think bartering is her thing.  LOL.

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Mavis Garden Blog – Pumpkin Patch Update

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This morning I headed out to the pumpkin patch and pulled all the remaining pumpkins.  We’ve had so much rain up here in the Seattle/Tacoma area lately, I was worried the pumpkins would start to rot before the kids could harvest them this weekend with their friends.

A little later today I’ll have Monkey Boy and The Girl bring them around to the front porch and weigh them.

I’m hoping for around 150 pounds.  There would have been more larger pumpkins to show you, but Girly Girl’s kids came over to last night and picked the giant ones {and YES, there is a story coming about that}.

So what do you think?

If you had to guess, how many pounds of pumpkins do I have in the top photo?

~Mavis

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How to Get Free Food Week #24 – Reclaimed Food Show and Tell

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It’s been over 6 months now since I got up the nerve to ask my local produce market for their scraps.  What a life changer.  I wish I could go back in time to when the Handsome Husband and I were first married, and didn’t have an extra dime in our pockets.

If I had known it was possible to come home with boxes and boxes of FREE produce every week, I would have done it a heck of a lot sooner that’s for sure.

Before we started picking up “chicken scraps” each week, I would rarely buy things like watermelon and grapes out of season at the grocery store.  Now we get it all for free.  What a luxury!

Here is what we were able to salvage:

The chickens were pretty happy with their scraps as well.  This is a picture of our 6 week old australorp chicken enjoying her first watermelon.  Life is good.

Have YOU been able to convince your local grocery store {big or small} to let you collect fruit and vegetable scraps?  If so, do you have any tips to pass along so we can help others to get their start in this HUGE money saver?

Let us know in the comment section below.

Peace Out Girl Scouts, have a great day.

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past 6 months?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

Waste-Less Bags Variety Pack {Pack of 6} ~ Amazon

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Video | Bartering with Mavis – Is it Hard to Barter with a Vegan?

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My goal this week is not to spend a dime at the grocery store.  This of course means I’ll be doing a lot of bartering with my neighbors.

Last night I showed up on my neighbor Francisco’s doorstep and asked if he wanted to barter with me. Francisco is a vegan, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to go home with.

Looking for more of my super awesome videos?

You can see them all HERE.

Bartering Rules!

~Mavis

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The Art of Barter: How to Trade for Almost Anything ~ Amazon

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Mavis Butterfield Etsy