Pantry Purge: This is the post that will show ya'll exactly how cheap I am

I am cheap. Extremely so.
If I can make something instead of buying it, so much the better.

Like, taking pictures. I think I paid for professional pictures ONE time and I didn't like the way they turned out. So, I take my own.

And then there's food. I like for my family to eat healthy, and we are on a budget so tight it screams when stretched. However, I don't think we are "too poor to eat healthy" like this lady . For the record, I know people receiving food stamps who eat very well.

Enough of that, though.

I discovered, through trying to organize the bottom shelf in my pantry that I have all of these cans of an off-brand of spaghetti sauce called Vine-Ripe. How did they get there? It's a mystery. But they expire in 2016 and are clearly still good...

I threw in a bunch of spices (salt, sugar, garlic powder, oregano) and mixed it around until Gabe and Ella blind-taste-tested the sauce and thought it was store bought pizza sauce in a jar. Awesome.

and GUESS WHAT? Two cans of that Vine-Ripe sauce (after it's been doctored up according to my family's likes) fit perfectly in a rinsed-out jar from some marinara sauce I had used on Sunday. (yes, I re-use my glass jars. Told you....cheeeeeeap)

Oh! And...as promised. Updated shelf pic is coming. But first, let me show you how far it's come!

This was August...when I first realized I needed a major pantry overhaul. Yikes.

This is today. The pieces of paper in my cookbook rack are: an antique postcard hubby bought me, a picture of Snoopy and one of Ella's "architectural" drawings. They're going to stay, as well as the pyramid Ella made in church (it's sitting on my radio). It's come a long way, yay!