grocery haul: getting tight

I was a little disappointed this weekend because I went over budget again.  AGAIN.  It's so frustrating because we're trying to eat healthy with a few splurges on a budget.  There's only two of us...  let's face it, one of us eats twice as much (and DON'T look at me!) as the other, but still.

So I did a little math..  and it's NOT the food that's blowing our budget.  It's things like my hair creme and shampoo and my husband's cute little snore strips (and thank GOD for snore strips!).  There's not much of a way for us to reduce costs there, unfortunately.  The hair creme is the only thing that tames my hair...  I have eczema so I can't buy cheap body washes/detergents/lotions/soaps/etc. 

Therefore, we have to live with it and work with it.  We've decided to allow a little bit of extra money each week for these expenses.

Anyway, I feel validated and all better and such so we can move on to the good stuff.

Wal-Mart:
Food Items:  $23.26
Non-Food Items:  $70.41 (eep!)

Sunflower Markets:
Food Items:  $79.72

Here, I bought ahead on some things...  chicken tenders were on sale for half off, so I got a big pack of those.  Also, they had our favorite gelato on sale for half off, so we decided to buy two of those containers in our absolute favorite flavors.  You can see I have 53 boxes of eggs there...  actually, there's three.  Uz needs 10 eggs for his breakfast crescent roll ring that he taking for work breakfast on Friday, plus eggs were on sale for almost half off, so we bought two boxes for us and one for his work breakfast.  We eat 3-4 eggs a day at breakfast, so we go through them FAST. 

Oh, and, I bought the wrong kind of pork for our carnitas tonight...  It should have been the $6 or $7 pork shoulder blade roast, but I grabbed the package next to it and it was $15 boneless pork loin roast or something.  Whoops.  I'm sure it'll be fine...  twice as tasty, since it's twice as expensive, hmmm?

Farmer's Market: not pictured: $18.50 for a big watermelon, cantaloupe, and a ton of peaches.  I realize that this is more expensive than buying at a grocery store, but we have a few reasons for using the farmer's market:
1.  Support local farmers.  Normally I would buy more produce from the farmer's market, but with my own garden giving off lots of tomatoes and peppers and herbs, I'm "shopping" from my backyard instead of the market.
2.  No pesticides.  The farmer's I buy from don't use any pesticides.
3.  Taste difference.  With things like peaches, watermelons, cantaloupes, squash/zucchini, tomatoes, peppers...  you can really taste the difference and it's totally worth it.
4.  Peach tarts.  The first stand at the door is a baker who has the best peach tarts.  We get one every week.  :)

Totals:
Food Items:  $121.48
Non-Food Items:  $70.41

Next week I'm going to try to plan budget recipes, but also allow myself a little extra cash to cover for the non-food items that seem to really push us over the line.  We'll see how it all works out...  I really hate going over and having to use my debit card (we pull out cash at the beginning of every month, Dave Ramsey-style).  I hope I can do better next week.

What do you do to keep yourself on budget...  or do you really care?