Monthly Shopping

Nick, kids, and I live in a city.  One of the biggest cities in our state...yeah I'm not saying where we are :)  And we live downtown...like down, down town.  No suburbia here.  Anyway, we may live in the city but a very short drive from us puts us in the thick of the amish, and farmers growing fresh, local food. 

And I absolutely love that about where we live.  I can have the city feel and be in the country in 15 minutes.  It's kind of heavenly. 

Anyway, Nick and I have been doing something that we call our "monthly shopping jaunt"...we try at the beginning of each month to go out to small, local shops and get our food. 

We get our meat from a butcher shop where they raise their own grass fed cattle. 

We get our cheese from an amish shop where we can get cheddar for $1.49 a pound!!!  On a sidenote here, when Kraft GOES ON SALE it is $4.00 a pound. See the savings, here? 

We then go to an Amish General Store for most of our groceries. 

We stopped at a side room of an amish family's house and put money in a basket for eggs (a dozen amish, free range, organic eggs for $1.90 is cheap) hahaha, cheep, cheep!

Anyway, one of the places we went was to the hardware store for a ravioli cutter.  They have the cutest things in the world...it makes me feel like I am home! 

Look at the seed center...how cute is this?  Tons of seeds in antique glass jars. 

While we were there Nick was all too excited to find a pink red-rider bb gun...oh lord.  The guy is already excited about buying it for Emma...we are in for a world of hurt (probably quite literally) when someone gives that girl a gun!

Here is their display of soap...don't you just love this?  There is something so comforting about bringing your children to a place like this, where previous generations have bought things like this...this is they type of place where Laura Ingalls shopped...adorable! 

So I will now get off my soap box regarding where we live and how great it is.  I am just so thankful that we have these places by us.  We are trying to shop as locally as possible.  It really is what is best for our environment and believe it or not, but our kids are going to have to live here for a while so we need to take care of it.  And aside from that, it doesn't hurt us at all that the prices are crazy cheap...so much lower than regular grocery store prices. 

I encourage you to shop locally.  Expand your search and you might just be amazed at the shopping options you find around you.