Frugal - Mid November

Pink Tobacco Flowers - non-smokable.  They made a beautiful border this year in my garden.

I'm convinced firmly that life just is busy at this stage, and that is okay.  I don't always enjoy it though, especially when John has seven-zillion things happening all at once and we don't spend as much time as a family as we'd all like.  It appears we're going to have a week or two of relative quiet (as much as we can during Advent).  Here's hoping!

I've been working hard at stretching our money and cleaning out the house, as well as keeping up with all the daily things.  Here are some of the frugal things we've done the last two weeks:

* Made homemade pizza, bread sticks, biscuits, waffles, applesauce spice cake, roasted chickpeas, chicken noodle soup, meatball soup, oatmeal muffins, banana-blueberry smoothies, and pancakes at home.

* Mended a necklace by replacing a broken jump ring.

* Borrowed a keyboard from work (I was able to sign it out for a few weeks) to aid some writing I need to do.  This eliminated the need to buy one.

* John brought home leftover chili and casserole from a funeral luncheon.  We ate those for lunch a couple of days.

* I ordered a birthday gift for my Mother online using a 60% off code.  I paid more for shipping than I did for the gift in the end!

* John hung Christmas lights on the outside of the house.  We already owned these.  They look lovely!  And I'm pretty excited about having them up.

* I spent quite a bit of "extra" time this week scrubbing the kitchen and living room from top to bottom.  I've also spent time cleaning out things we don't need.

* The children pulled out every single item of clothing that they own and tried them all on.  We cleaned out a LOT of items and bagged them for donation to our favorite thrift store.  I now have an updated list of items the children need and I can start looking for those.  We bought our daughter two pairs of leggings since she needed some immediately and was completely out - thankfully they were on clearance sale, costing us only $10 total for both.

* I also spent quite a bit of extra time working on embroidery for Christmas gifts.

* John and I sat down and spent quite a bit of time talking through our financial and family goals for next year (2018).  We have some plans in place and a tentative budget as well as plans that hopefully will make 2018 a very good year.

What have you done lately that is frugal?

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