Last Week's Frugal Accomplishments, Blessings and This Week's Menu

On Tuesday, our internet provider had an outage.  I called the library, reserved the study room, and we packed up Daughter's school books.  She used my laptop to do her school work and I borrowed a library laptop and worked on a project.  We both got a lot done - we are so happy to have such a great library district here!

When we went to the library, we found a couple of book in the free bin that I was very happy to get - Fences for Pasture and Garden by Gail Damerow and How to Write Fast While Writing Well by David Fryxell.  The first is a comprehensive book about all sorts of fencing for livestock, garden, landscaping and more, and Daughter thinks the second one will help her be a more effective writer.  We also borrowed additional books and media for the week.

This is Tallulah Mae, our very fussy cat.  She only really likes Daughter, but tolerates Husband and I....and is starting to accept that we got a puppy.  She is beginning to come upstairs during the day (when Taffy is not crated), but just now and then.  This week, I got her a set of dishes on a local Freecycle page.  I really like them!

What is really cool is that I had gone to pick them up, and the house next door to the house with the cat dishes had a smoker on the curb with a sign, "Free Smoker".  I called my dear friend and made sure they were still looking for one, then I put it in my trunk and took it to her house.  It is one of those vertical dome-shaped ones and is in very good shape.  We live in an area with a lot of military families....it seems like a lot of people 'need this gone' fairly often.

On the local buy-sell-trade page I purchased two complete sets of queen size sheets for $15.  One is cotton sateen and the other is a cotton percale, and both are colors that we have in our bedroom.  The lady said one set came from Costco and the other from Kohl's.  We were down to one sheet set and some odds and ends, so this was a good purchase for me.

We ended up doing a little more work on the washing machine this week, and now it's working fine, and still zero cost.  Meanwhile, I started looking at the space a little differently.  We have a cubby for the washer and dryer, and we had them both centered in that cubby.  We moved them both over to one side, and that made a space along the other side, about one foot wide.  It is perfect for storing the mops, broom and dusters.  When we had a small space on either side, it was not as manageable as this space is.  I think of this as frugal because it is a zero-cost improvement in the way our home works.

I washed with homemade laundry soap and dried clothes on drying racks in the basement.

We heated with wood to save on propane.

Husband used swagbucks to earn some credit at Amazon and Domino's Pizza, and I took a survey with Pinecone Research.

I signed up for various, random free samples (tea, soy sauce, lotion) on the internet, and when we were in Walgreens, I got a free sample of lotion that is a nice purse/pocket size tube.

Husband's MP3 player stopped working a couple weeks ago, and just never came back to life.  He has been using an old one we had, but it doesn't hold a long enough charge.  This week, we found one for him on a local buy-sell-trade page on Facebook - $10 for an Ipod Nano.  It's 2Gb...he said that is plenty.  I hope it works great for him!

I have been going through the fridge freezer, looking for things that need to be used and things that are past their prime.  For example, there was some yogurt I got, free with coupons, that we didn't much care for.  I had put it into ice cube trays and frozen it so that we could use it in smoothies....except we don't much care for dairy in our smoothies.  When I came across a bag of yogurt cubes, I took them to the chickens.  I did the same thing with the container of gooseberries dated 2009 - oops!  This stuff is fine for the chickens and cuts down on the amount of chicken feed they consume.  I also found 2 hot dog buns that were really dry and some bread ends, which I pulsed in the food processor, then dried in the oven for bread crumbs.

I saw this post on Facebook that said you could get all the oogy baked on stuff off of glass baking pans using one of those magic eraser type sponges.  I had some that I bought at K-mart with a free gift card, so I decided to give it a try.  What do you think?

before

after

I feel like I have new bread pans!

I sewed a button onto a pair of Daughter's pants, and I cut the buttons off of an old shirt that went to the rag bag.

before

after

I polished my black loafers.  A little polish, an old rag and a shoe brush, and they look much better.

I went out with a friend one afternoon, and we went to town.  I took my coupon to Penzey's Spices and got a free jar of roasted garlic that I will use in cooking.  On the way home, we stopped at Starbucks and I got Husband's free drink that he was offered for registering a gift card on their website.  He and Daughter shared the vanilla bean frappuccino....which she said tasted just like snow cream!  :)  Later in the week, we had snow cream again.  It snowed all day long, so I just put a container out to collect snow.

I forget to mention it, but whenever I prepare fresh produce, I put the peels, cores, etc. into the 'chicken bucket', and I give all that to the hens, so that it's not wasted. For them, it's a real treat!  I also rinse the eggshells and give those back to them, so that they have adequate calcium.

I cleaned out the closet in the master bath...and took a picture (because I'm goofy).  There is no 'before' picture.  I'm glad about that, because you won't have proof of what I slob I can be, but you don't get the full 'wow' effect that you would get if I'd taken one.  Frugal?  I think so, because things are easier to find, so we don't go buy vapor-rub when we already have a jar.  Not that I've ever done that.  Besides, I returned it, since it hadn't been opened yet.  Ahem.

I got almonds for $4.99 a pound at Walgreens by combining a sale and a coupon.  A supermarket in town was remodeled and had a grand re-opening.  One of the special sales was 93% lean ground beef for $2.99 a pound - I purchased five pounds.  I also got a gallon of milk for $1.49 and two tubes of Colgate toothpaste free after sales and coupons.  We got free yogurt (a free digital download offer) as well.  I did some price matching to save on travel time and fuel, and got avocados for .50 each, Roma tomatoes for .50/lb. and zucchini for .99/lb.

Thanks to a helpful tip that Lana shared with me a couple months ago, I was able to get four 12-packs of Coca-Cola for $1.33 after sale and coupons - that's less than 35 cents per 12-pack!  (three cents per can!)  It was buy 2, get 2 free, and I had two coupons, each good for a free 12-pack...but the price at Safeway was a little higher than the maximum value of the coupon, so I paid that difference and the sugar tax.

Mom's (my mother-in-law) lo mein recipe

I did quite a bit of scratch cooking this past week, from enchiladas to lo mein, chicken noodle soup to calzones.  I popped popcorn a few times too, and made blueberry muffins and banana-nut muffins (with bananas from the freezer).  Yum!

Here is the dinner menu for this coming week:

S - spaghetti w/meat sauce, zucchini w/herbs and Parmesan, pears
M - roast turkey breast, stuffing, carrots, apples
T - ham, baked sweet potatoes, steamed mixed vegetables, oranges
W - vegetable-beef soup, corn bread, apples
R - tamales, refried beans,shredded lettuce & chopped tomato, chips with guacamole and salsa
F - omelets w/diced ham, vegetables and cheese, hash browns, green beans, oranges
S - leftovers/meal out
S - (I think there's a football game?) pizza, raw vegetables w/ranch, possibly buffalo chicken dip, oranges

I will also pop popcorn, make muffins or scones, and since the granola jar is running low, I'll probably make some granola too...bake bread if needed, and keep plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables prepped for snacking.

How was your week?  What have you been up to, and how have you been blessed?  I'd love to read all about it! :)