Sabbath and Subscriptions, Frugal February Day 5!

Happy Sabbath to you!

Hopefully today has been the most deliciously relaxing day for you.

With Emma still concussed and Nick only having one full day home before leaving again we decided to skip church (well skip going to a physical church) and instead opt for online and relaxing.

Do you ever have those times when it feels like the Lord is in the kitchen with you? Not in a “God is in this Chilis” kind of way but in a a real way. This morning I warmed up cinnamon rolls in the oven for my family. Btw, if you write that sentence “i warmed up cinnamon rolls for my family in the oven” as I did initially it appears that your family rests in the oven. But I digress….

As I made cinnamon rolls I sipped immensely dark, hot coffee. I kneaded bread to make sandwich loaves for this week, I seared a beef roast and put it in the oven with rich stock and thyme sprigs for tonights beef and noodles. And it was in those mundane, every day tasks that, with the sun streaming through the window and the warmth of the oven creating an intoxicating aroma of beef and cinnamon, I absorbed myself into the presence of God. And right there I stood on the linoleum that is meant to look like hard wood and worshipped the Lord and thanked him for all of his goodness and mercy. Church happens in our hearts when we have gratitude for the life we live, and fully live.

This afternoon I made a chocolate peanut butter pie. And that darn thing had better be good because I burnt the living day lights out of my right pointer finger knuckle trying to stir piping hot chocolate pudding while it boiled. There are some things I do well. And there are some things I do that make me question the intelligence amount that I possess.

Today I realized that I have a Panera Sip Club Subscription that I have not been using. The sip club is a monthly subscription that offers free drinks for a one time fee. Our subscription currently is $12.83 a month.

There was a time that Nick and I were at Panera every single day. Sometimes more than once as we would pop in to wait for a kiddo to finish up therapy or a study session. Nick would go to meet friends or work on a job search. We were there a lot. When that was the case the $10 Panera subscription (at the time!) was a good deal with one coffee drink costing about $3.00.

Now the fact that it is almost $13.00 and we aren’t even using it is not worth it for us at all. We’re just throwing money away at this point. In normal months I am usually so busy I wouldn’t even think about the subscription but because we are in the Frugal February challenge I am now thinking more about my transactions and purchases that we don’t need.

I cancelled the subscription so this month I won’t be charged for Panera coffee anymore. I am saving $12.83 this month by cancelling that. The good/bad news is that we had already had it come out towards the end of January so I will be able to enjoy the benefit of our subscription until February 27th. Score!

This will be helpful when Emma is at ballet. With my commitment to no longer go shopping or to stores to just browse, I will be looking for somewhere to go or something to do to pass the time. One of the things I love to do when Emma is at ballet is to go to the library to get work done but I’ll also be able to go to Panera for a treat for free (well not free, but you know what I mean!) and make the most of the cost we paid in January.

Subscriptions are a funny business and one that I have such a love/loathing relationship with. On the one hand they are easy, you do not have to think of them and have instant gratification. On the other hand you can now obtain so many things on subscriptions that it becomes so mainstream and common that we are no longer for those things. They are paid for mindlessly, being charged to our credit cards or taken out of our bank accounts without us even thinking about them. Sometimes we don’t even budget for them or account for them because they are some transaction that happens in the backdrop of our life speeding by.

When I was a little girl I was taught to never have a subscription. Of course when I was a little girl things that wanted us to subscribe were the likes of Highlights magazine, Columbia Records, Jelly of the month clubs, and Disney books. Do you remember all of those? And now here I am, subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Disney Plus, XBox Live, Apple TV, and on and on. It’s embarrassing.

I think subscriptions are okay if we are thoughtful of them. I subscribed to BritBox last weekend to watch Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. I love that series. I watched it for 7 days while Nick was out of town but made sure to cancel it. It was a difficult move but as I am having this frugal month here, I decided to cancel extras. Without it though I realize I miss it. Which I think may be a surefire sign that something is worth the money if it adds benefit to your life. To be clear, it wasn’t consuming my time, I enjoyed watching it during chores or having it on as I fell to sleep as a comforting companion. And I am not purchasing the subscription this month (though it certainly sounds like I am trying to justify it, doesn’t it). But perhaps if I continue to miss it this month then I will subscribe next month, after taking the time to think about it and weigh the cost vs. the benefit (it is $7.99 a month, certainly feasible). So there you have it, some thoughts on subscriptions.

Tonights dinner is beef and noodles. We are having it over mashed potatoes for a real carb overload here.

I set the table with our china and lit candles. I pulled out a bottle of wine we’ve had for a long time. While our dinner was basic fare, I felt like being special so I used what I had. Pulling out candles to burn and wine to savor made the evening feel sacred.

While I had monster cookie ice cream sandwiches marked down for our snack/dessert tonight, I have some monsters in this house that ate all of the said cookies to make ice cream sandwiches with. I found a graham cracker crust in our pantry, did some googling and found this easy recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Mud Pie.

And who doesn’t love a good pie? I loved that this was so easy to make but was a homemade pudding pie. I will say a note of caution to wear an oven glove or something when stirring the pudding lest you don’t burn the ever living crap out of your hand. Here I am mentioning it again.

Here are our spending numbers. They are the same as we ended up with yesterday because we didn’t go anywhere to spend anything:

• Gas

  $533.16 remaining

• Groceries

  $499.70 remaining

I hope you had a lovely weekend and have a great week ahead.

Loves.