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One of my favorite breakfast foods is pancakes. Since going gluten free, I’ve had pancakes less often than usual. For awhile, we were buying Pamela’s Ultimate Baking and Pancake Mix but it got to be too expensive. I just couldn’t justify adding that into our food budget. I had to come up with some recipes that would be gluten free using items we normally had on hand. I have an awesome gluten free pancake recipe that has been tested and endorsed by those who are not even gluten free!

Gluten Free Pancake Recipe

(serves at least 2 people)

-2 cups ground oats (you can use Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Oats for gluten free oats)
-2 cups plain yogurt or full fat milk
-2 eggs
-2 Tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil
-1/2 teaspoon of salt
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 Tablespoon of sugar

1.  Mix the ground oats and yogurt or milk.

2. Add the eggs, butter, salt, baking soda, and sugar.  I make sure to let this mixture sit for about 20 minutes so the baking soda will make the pancakes fluffier.

3. Add butter to your cast iron skillet or griddle and cook the pancakes over medium heat.  You don’t want to have the heat too high- these pancakes take a little longer to cook than regular pancakes and are a little thicker.  I check the bottoms of mine to see when they are ready to flip.

4. Enjoy!

Notes: If you have Celiac Disease or are serving someone that has it, please use gluten free oats.  Oats are naturally gluten free but generally have gluten cross contamination during processing.  I grind my oats in the coffee grinder.

For 2012, I wanted to come up with a more accurate budget, seeing that our baby would be born this year and hopefully we’ll be able to control our spending without worrying too much about it. I figured if I budget better, then I’ll hopefully be less stressed about where our money is going. Of course, I’ve also decided I’m not going to be so darn hard on myself because I’ll have a baby and have no clue how that’s going to impact our budget. If it costs us more money than I anticipated, then it does, and I’ll adjust our budget accordingly.

Here’s our 2012 budget:

• Mortgage- $793.19
• Escrow- $215.00
• Energy- $150.00
• Car insurance- $88.00
• Verizon- $40.00
• Cable, phone, internet- $125.00
• Food- $350.00
• Retirement- $100.00
• House Stuff- $50.00
• Gas- $200.00

Some notes:

The mortgage is just principal and interest.  I used to round the payment up to $800 or so, until I found out that the extra money that I was paying was being applied to the next month’s payment!  Talk about annoying.  To make additional principal payments, I have to mail a separate check to a certain address.  What a pain.

We escrow our taxes and insurance ourselves.  We refinanced our mortgage to a home equity loan a few years ago, and the bank will not escrow for us.  We have a separate escrow account with ING.

The reason our energy category is a flat $150 each month is because we budget for irregular expenses by transferring that amount into a separate account each month.

The Verizon bill includes just my cell phone, as Mr. Money has a phone paid by work.

The car insurance went down a little since last year because the cars are older and so are we!

The cable, phone, and internet may get changed this year.  It seems like that’s a high amount for that.  I’m thinking about switching our phone to something like a Magic Jack since I really like having a home phone, and maybe dropping the cable.

I don’t know if the food budget is a reasonable amount our not.  Guess we’ll see after a few months!

We’ll have to really start saving for retirement ourselves, as I won’t be participating in my 401k plan at work, and Mr. Money’s employer doesn’t offer any retirement savings plan.  I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

The house stuff we’ll have to play it by ear with. We’ve done a lot of work to the house over the past five years, so we’re not anticipating any huge expenses like new flooring, etc.  I would like new counter tops and flooring in my kitchen, but that’s not a necessity so we’ll have to see about that.

Gas will go down from our monthly expenses since I won’t be commuting to work and back every day. Yay!  This might be too much budgeted, but who knows at this point!

Of course, I won’t know how this budget works for us until I’m actually staying at home with the baby.  I’m just glad we’ve got a general idea of where we’d like our money to go.  I feel like there are a few categories I’ve forgotten, but it’s a flexible budget, so that’s okay!

Have you budgeted for 2012?

2012 is already here, and I’m a little behind on our financial and life goals.  I’m a little uncertain about what I should aim for, as we’re going to have a brand new baby and will have to adjust to the new expenses and life with a child.  My goals this year will be attainable (I hope!) and I am crossing my fingers for the best year ever.  It certainly will be interesting and a lot different than past years!  Here are some of the goals I’d like for us to accomplish:

1. Set up a savings account for the baby. The baby has not even been born yet and already has a stash of money.  I’m going to open a custodian savings account for the benefit of the baby.  I will also have to research 529 plans in case that’s the way we want to go.  I’m thinking it would be easier just to open the UTMA (Uniform Transfer to Minors) account and wait until the money accumulates and then go from there.  We’ll see.

2.  Figure out life insurance. I had life insurance through my employer, but I’m not too sure what’s happening with it since I’m leaving the bank.  That’s something that we really need to address, especially with the new baby coming.

3. Change beneficiaries. I’ve got various family members listed as beneficiaries on our retirement plans and life insurance, but I would like to change it to the baby.

4. Make more money blogging/working from home.  I’d like to be able to contribute financially to our household as much as I can.  In addition to blogging and writing, I can shoot photography if I have time.  Of course, this all depends on the baby, as that’s my first priority.  I’d like to stay at home for at least the first three years of the baby’s life, and it would be awesome if I could make enough money freelancing to do so.

5. Stay debt free.  This was on last year’s goals as well, but I think it’s important enough to stay on this year’s.  I will have to say, if there was a good reason that we needed to borrow money, I probably would do it.  I don’t think debt is the worst thing in the world as long as you’re responsible and borrow money for the right reasons.  Mr. Money’s not going to get the 2012 Mustang he wanted for instance, but if we needed to take out a loan, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  I’m going to do my best to avoid it, though!

6. Finish up all house projects that need to be done.  We need to repaint the cement on our porches, paint the shed, figure out what to do with the dining room flooring, and redo our master bath.  I’m going to do as much as I can to make the house look really good this year.  We’ve done a lot, but I feel like there’s still so much more to do.  These projects shouldn’t cost a ton of money.

7. Learn to relax and not worry so darn much.  One of my best friends gave me some great advice when it comes to money.  What’s the point of having a ton of cash in the bank if you are miserable?  I’m not going to worry about saving every penny where I can like I used to.  I want to be happy.

What are your 2012 goals?