I made a cake from scratch for Liberty’s birthday.
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| That is an Armenian cucumber. |
I harvested some Armenian cucumbers from the front garden, including one super large one. I canned 14 pints of dill pickles.
I also picked a few apples from the garden. I cut tarragon, basil, Swiss chard, and green onions from the garden.
I listened to music on Pandora and I watched a couple of shows on Hulu for free.
I used a free MP3 credit to download a song for free from Amazon.
I picked up a book that I had requested from the library for school
We enjoyed some more rain! I had the sprinklers and the drip system turned off for more than half of the week. The storms meant that we had some cooler days, so I opened the windows to cool down the house whenever possible.
I planted some seeds for my fall garden.
I cut zinnias from the white garden to put on our table.
We celebrated a simple birthday for Liberty at home with handmade gifts.
What did you do to save money last week?
Deb, I sympathize! Those town days when we have combined appointments and a bunch of errands are exhausting. Then you come home late in the day with a car full of stuff to be unloaded and put away, and need to fix supper. But it does save a lot of gas, and only messes up one day, instead of several.
Glad you got the free book. I keep buying eggo waffles and pop tarts to get more books. I love 2 deals in one! And definitely will pray for your friends dd!
Last year I picked all our green tomatoes & put them in an open top fruit box under the counter in the kitchen. Every other day, I sorted out the “ripe” ones, leaving those showing just a little color behind to ripen the others. Worked like a charm & let me use the table! Towards the end, enough ripened each day for me to put up more tomato sauce, too.
My frugal accomplishment was at the grocery store. I spent $30.92 and brought home the following:6# grd beef, 2 whole fryers, 5lbs rice, 8 avocados, 2+lbs. limes, 3 1lb bags of carrots, 2 l0lb bags potatoes, 6 3/4 lbs dry pinto beans, 5 bunches cilantro, l3/4 lbs roasted chiles and my splurge of DelMonte sweet pickle relish for my potato salad. Just got my ads for this week and see potatoes are even cheaper than last week. Yeah!The ground beef was $.99 lb! Harvested tomatoes and yellow wax peppers from my garden and made salsa. Made a huge pot of green chile chicken soup and divided it into 10 meals. Fried a whole chicken for the freezer but ended up giving it to a coworker who ran out of money and food a few days before payday. (Single guy, lives in one room, no kitchen, just a micro and mini fridge.) The single guys all know that if I’m around they won’t go hungry. Used some of my peppers for Hot Pepper Jelly, beautiful color! Made the Thai Sweet Pepper Jelly, really good! Canned more pickles. Canned 10 pints of tomatoes. Watched the neighbors house and fed his cats for a week and got to use his wireless internet. Still am! He surprised me with two $25.00 gift cards for local/chain restaurants. Nice guy!
thank you paula. It is a chore, but much savings in the long run!
ty kellie. I love those deals too. I hope they have some of them left next month when i go with my cousin again. Thanks for the prayers!
Yes cucurbit family. Did you trellis them or let them lay on ground?
I have ironed lots in my life. Was always my job growing up. My father needed dress shirts for work. My mother used to spray them first with water then put them in bread bags in the crisper drawer. My husband wears mostly wash and tumble shirts but he has white dress shirts for meetings etc. that I iron.This is my method.I am R handed so I have iron and cord on R and board pointing to my left. It works to have a well padded ironing board. 1) I lay the shirt over the bOard so that the whole front of shirt is on board with bottom of shirt to the right and tip of board up into shoulder area. Iron that whole side , 2)then shift over to the back and iron R side of back getting up into the yoke area by the collar and iron the tucks if there are any.3) shift over more and iron the L side of the back getting up into the shoulder and yoke area.4) next slide the rest of the way and the L front will be on board with COLLAR still on your L hand side. Iron the front and iron around buttons never over.5) iron the collar6) then iron one sleeve at a time folding so line up straight with nice sharp crease. Do cuff. Then other sleeve then other cuff.Should take you about two.minutes start to finish. I don’t chill the shirts as my mother did but I use a nice steam iron and let the steam do all the work. It goes so fast that the shirt does not get a chance to rewrinkle while you are working.
September 28 is Smithsonian museum day. You can go to http://www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/ and print one free ticket, good for one person and a guest. There is a list of over 1400 participating museums.I’ve already printed our ticket to the regional art museum in the city near here. Without a membership, it would cost us at least $25 to get in, so this will be a great chance to see the new museum. For many years, the city had an art center, and it was free to the public, except for charity fundraisers which required tickets. When they got a new building up to standards that would allow them to borrow exhibits from the Smithsonian, they started charging admission all the time.
I did this a couple of years ago. There is only one place here; it is the planetarium that is on a college campus. Since it is just for two people I took my oldest with me. We got to see a movie on the planetarium ceiling and then at the end we got to look through the telescopes (I made sure I went at night so that we could do that).I should probably go again with a different child this year; I wasn’t able to make it last year. Thank you for the reminder!
Thank you so much for letting me know about this. Just got a ticket to the Civil Rights Museum. I have been before but this is the 50th Anniversary and they have special exhibits. Can’t wait!
Yes, ugh we were out til 12 30 this afternoon. ugghhh. I used to really enjoy grocery shopping but now that I do everything in one go it’s exhausting.
Marivene, non use of the table hasn’t been a problem in the past because after Sept.11 and up until Nov. 10 there are no big get togethers I need to host so dining room is not used . But next year I will need a new plan…My daughter gets the big house and the big table but along with it comes the hostessing duties. I may have to take your idea of boxes, especially fruit boxes which have ventilated sides for next year. I had my homemakers group here Mon. night and piles of vegetables and canning stuff doesn’t even faze them as they are all in the same situation.
I’m having a busy week, so I am just getting a chance to post. My husband wanted a file cabinet, and luckily, my department at school was giving out a few. We were able to get the last one. That was a great find. I picked a few bell peppers, habaneros, and basil from the garden. I cooked with the bell peppers and the basil. We blanched and froze the habaneros. It was our first time blanching. The battery in the car died. Thankfully, dh got a warranty with it, so he was able to get a new one for free. I used my $30 amazon gift card that I received from applying for the amazon credit card to purchase a blender. I accidentally broke the old one, and we had been without a blender for a few months. I ended up paying a little over $5 for it. I got a few Morningstar products bogo. DH cut the grass and used the clippings in the garden. He also used a soap mixture with soap we had at home to deal with our ant problem. We hosted a potluck and got two bottles of juice and a few oranges because people didn’t want it. The biggest accomplishment of all, drum roll please…We didn’t eat out all week! I am very proud of myself for that one. Being on campus all day, I sometimes don’t make the best decisions. However, I prepared ahead of time and brought enough food for breakfast, lunch and snacks. I plan to keep it up.
This week we visited a museum on it’s free day, and I got a free chapstick which is good, saved about 5 dollars on that. I was wondering, if this isn’t intrusive, what do you do for health care on a budget? We have public and it’s still very expensive. I was just wondering if you’ve done a blog post on that.Huge and very cool cucumber by the way! 🙂
I wrote a bit about living without health insurance here: http://theprudenthomemaker.com/index.php/frugal-living/saving-moneyHowever, with the law changing, I am going to have to learn a lot. In 11 days there should be a health exchange website set up for your state and you can research the options that are out there. I have no idea what we’re going to do yet.
Thanks for the link! Oh that’s fantastic! Thanks! I had no idea!
Last week i spent $91 on groceries. Bought 25# of brown sugar $12.50, 2 L of grapeseed oil $8.99. I found 10# of potatoes for $1.97, gala apples , peaches, and pears 2# for $0.99. Cucumbers and corn 4 for $0.99, I got close to 100# of fruits and vegetables for $37.I cooked every meal from scratch including hummus, tomatoe sauce, bread, zucchini bread, banana chocolate bread, almond and peanut butter. My Vitamix makes making nut butters so easy. I made almond milk. I made peach jam using pectin. It came out a lot better than last time.Your black bean burgers are a hit with the family. They request it every week.I learned how to use baking soda and vinegar to remove stains from clothes. It works great.Used $30 off $100 purchase coupon to get my husband a birthday present. We spent the day at the beach. Brought snacks and lunch to the beach. Line dried clothes. I used to do this a lot when my kids were on diapers since we used cloth diaper. Glad I am doing it again. Bought daughter a book at the library for $0.50. I also used a gift card to purchase terry cloth fabric to make a changing poncho for her. The ones on sale are $58. Time to get the sewing machine out.
Brandy, how do you eat that cucumber? Do you slice it like a regular cuke? Are the seeds big, do you remove the seedy center?
I scraped out the seeds. I cut it like a regular cucumber. They can get quite large without getting bitter (unlike a smaller cucumber) but they can also be milked like a regular cucumber to reduce any possible bitterness.
Do you mind sharing where you ordered the TVP from?
Well, we had a very unwanted expense – my husband’s car finally died and we needed a replacement. Unfortunately, this meant taking on a second car payment. Fortunately, my husband calculated what he could pay and held firm with the dealer and got a very nice used car with a good warranty. Our frugal accomplishments include: transported our son to and from school to save on after care, got free burger coupons from Ruby Tuesday, returned a faulty breast pump and got one paid for by my insurance company, using my refund to buy: my middle son – new jacket, shoes, underwear, & socks, my oldest son – underwear, myself – pots and a candy thermometer (all for free since I paid for the pump with point earned gift cards), using coupons & point earned gift cards to buy: diapers, 5 Johnson’s Baby shampoos & bubble baths, pull ups, newspapers, and a new beard trimmer, cutting my husband’s and sons’ hair, making from scratch: bagels, tortillas, and BBQ baked beans, eating at home, breastfeeding, and my school aged son now gets free breakfast and lunch at school as our county qualified for free food for everybody regardless of income – we packed lunches prior to this.
Our family regularly kayaks and I have been able to find life jackets for $3 at the thrift store or at yard sales. 🙂
I’m a little late but I listed my accomplishments on my blog here: http://emersonfamily.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/frugal-things-i-did-last-week-33/
I love the pictures of Ezrom and Liberty. That is one HUGE cucumber. The boys got a kick out of that. 🙂