Saturday, March 18, 2017

Weekly Frugal


We borrowed books and media from the library, and I downloaded 5 free songs through Freegal - a service our library offers to its patrons.  I'm reading a novel, Husband and I are watching a tv series, and Daughter is reading all sorts of things.

We did a fair amount of scratch cooking this week - Husband made & prepped all the components for taco salad, as well as a pot of chili.  We also made barbecue chicken pizza.  It was a yummy week!  I made Irish Soda Bread (I can't believe I didn't take a photo!), and took some of it to work for our staff meeting.  I also made some pumpkin soup from a pumpkin that was given to me, home-canned chicken stock, honey that was given to me for harvesting for a gentleman who couldn't harvest his hives that season, a few herbs from my kitchen and some heavy cream I bought on markdown.  The soup was alright, but I'm still looking for a favorite recipe - please let me know if you have one.

I collected my final prize from the library's adult reading program - a coffee mug.  It's a nice one!


The weather was nice enough to hang laundry out on the clothes lines.

We went to the bread outlet and picked up three loaves of wheat bread and two packages of bagels for $5.75.

We supplemented dog food and chicken feed with scraps from our kitchen.

In preparation for finishing the basement, we are going through our stuff.  I listed groupings of childrens books - a lot of dinosaur books, a set of picturepedias, a lot of books on manners and morals, etc...and sold all but four books!  I plan to do some listings like this each week for a while, just to pare down the items we'll be storing in our garage.


The goal is that everything we're saving from the basement (which includes a couch, a large work table we use for sewing, crafts and other projects, books and bookshelves, canning supplies, etc.) will fit in our garage while we are doing the finish work.  We would rather store in the garage than rent a 'pod' or other space for storage.  This will save us some money, and I think it will keep us on track too, because it will be really annoying to have the garage taken up with these things, hee hee.

We signed up for some freebies that Safeway offered us on the loyalty card.  We've been picking some of our free items from the Monopoly game here and there - this week we got facial tissues and hummus.  He also combined sales and a discount to get some corned beef for $1.55/lb.  We were limited to two packages, both of which are in the freezer.  At that price, we would have liked to purchase more, but we're happy for what we were able to get!

We washed the dogs.  They were not enthused, but they got clean, and we did a bit of grooming as well.

Aw.  Poor girl...

I went for walks on my lunch break a couple times this week and listened to music on my phone.

I found a water bottle that I really love.  It was on clearance, which helped a bit with the cost.  I've been drinking more water ever since I started using it.  


8 comments:

  1. We had a mobile groomer come and shave, bathe, and trim the nails of our golden retriever this past week (we've been doing it ourselves but the trimmers broke a few months ago and desperately needed a spa day!) The look on her face was the same as your dog's! lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My poor doggie! She was much happier later. I took her out on the front step - it's concrete, so really warm, and in direct sun. She dried really fast and was super affectionate. So, she still loves me, despite the bath and grooming. :)

      Delete
  2. Thank you for the laugh this morning! That picture of your dog is priceless! =)
    Great job on all the frugal stuff you have been doing too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! We try to be aware and do what we can, and then share to help others get ideas that might help them too! :)

      Delete
  3. Nope! Your dog is not at all amused! We went to a friend's this week and her black lab met us at the car and walked us to the door where he barked for Mom to let us in. We are still chuckling about it.

    I cooked most meals at home this week which is a good thing. Our grocery budget was at $101 spent so far this month on Friday even though we switched to Celtic gray sea salt and spent $23 on a 5 pound bag. It is weirdly like a bag of wet sand. The NCAA Tournament is in our area this weekend so we have avoided restaurants and areas that are crowded due to the influx of 42K people for the games. That has saved us money!

    We have been watching I Love Lucy on Amazon Prime. The first two seasons are there and we had never seen them. It has been very enjoyable.

    There is nothing like a great coffee mug or water bottle!

    Have a good week!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have used the gray sea salt before too - it's really different, isn't it? We have a pretty big assortment of salts right now - I've gotten the Himalayan Pink Salt at Kohls with the $10 coupons they send me, we have some of the gray sea salt, though I think ours is supposed to be French?, some 'Real Salt' with all the minerals that we bought when we were on a trip, and then a couple different kosher salts and some Hawaiian red clay salt. It's kind of fun to play with, and lasts forever! Have a great week, Lana!

      Delete
  4. It will be exciting to have your basement finished! You will not be sorry you cleaned out, ever. Take it from one who moved last year after living in the house for only 10 years--there was a lot of accumulation!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Poor puppy's face says it all. 😂

    We have some things stored in our garage that we are working on paring down. Downsizing is never an easy task.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for commenting! I moderate all comments, so please be patient - I will get your comment posted just as soon as I can! (unless it's spam...then...sorry!)