January Challenge update ~ phew, this is getting tight!

I did my grocery shopping last night and it wasn't pretty.  Two of the items I had on my list ALDI did not have in stock.  The one item was frozen meatballs.  I know, I know, that is essentially a convenience food, but it is one I hesitate to give up.  I have never really found a recipe that I truly love for meatballs.  However, frozen meatballs were not in the budget and I do have ground beef, so I will be searching for a recipe and making them from scratch this time!
The other item was turkey kielbasa and I had to go to Giant Eagle to get it.  Thankfully it was on sale.  While I was there though, I discovered that they had a bunch of meat (mainly pork) on sale for buy one get one free!  Although there is definitely not room in the January Challenge budget for it, I decided that it would be foolish of me to pass up such a rare and great deal!  I went ahead and purchased some of the meat, but I didn't go crazy with it either.  I did not count it towards my January Challenge budget (is that cheating?).
I also struggled with what to do for prayer meeting this week.  I already have the ingredients for the muffins, but I don't know what to put with them.  I was originally thinking some fresh fruit and there was some on sale at ALDI, but if I purchased enough for everyone it was going to add $7.00.  At that point I knew that I was already pushing my budget limit with the basics for my family.  I nixed the idea of fruit, but I'm still searching for what to put with the muffins.  It may be simply muffins and nothing else.  We shall see.
All in all I ended up spending $44.04.  Seven dollars over budget for the week and I'm already running low for the month.  Thankfully, this is the majority of the food needed for the next two weeks.  I only have a few perishable items to purchase for next week, so hopefully it all works out.  I am thinking that the last three days of January will be a lot of cheap-o meals.  Things like breakfast foods (eggs, pancakes, etc.), spaghetti with meat sauce (unless I find that I really like the meatballs I make for next Tuesday) and such things.  It is certainly TBA!
Well, back to school.  The kiddos are finishing up their Bible lessons and it's time to move onto Spelling!