2014 Year in Review

Each year I post my top 10 books that I read and my coupon savings for that year.  I also post our garden harvest totals.  So here is the year in review for 2014 at our house:

Top 10 Books of 2014

Fiction

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
The Bees by Laline Paull
Stella Bain by Anita Shreve
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Non-Fiction

The Mushroom Hunters by Langdon Cook
Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn
A Wolf Called Romeo by Nick Jans
The Meat Racket by Christopher Leonard
Pandora's Lunchbox by Melanie Warner

I read 85 books and 32 cookbooks in 2014.


Coupon Savings

In 2014 I saved $2127.55 with coupons.  It was $143 less than 2013, but in my defense when we were in Hawaii for two weeks I didn't use any coupons and I didn't get any coupons.  That's my excuse for not saving more.  I did average over $40 per week in savings.


Garden Harvest 

This year because we took some trees down we had a LOT better garden production.  But, we were also gone for 2 weeks on vacation during peak garden time.  Chad's sister took care of our garden while we were gone, but I really missed being there during peak season.  Here are our harvest totals:

Zucchini - 32
Squash - 44
Cucumbers - 117 --> 18 pints of pickles made
Tomatoes - 123
Okra - 863 --> 40 bags of processed frozen okra
Pie Pumpkins - 9 --> 8 1/3 cups pumpkin puree

We also bought 2 boxes of tomatoes from the farmer's market to can.  From the 2 boxes we canned 14 quarts of tomatoes and 18 pints of tomato sauce.

This year with our garden I was most happy about the successful pumpkins and making homemade tomato sauce.  The sauce was so simple and easy to make, but tastes SO much better than any store bought sauce!  I can't wait to see what 2015 holds for our garden.