Frugal Things I Did the Last Two Weeks
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| While my roses really don't have anything to do with "frugal" (except that they are very easy to care for!), they make me very happy. Enjoy! |
We're still working at cutting back our budget and ramping up our savings for Internship year and the following 6-12 months until Call. We're currently at 10% of what we need. John started clapping when I told him that and I realized that I was getting pretty down about the whole thing - we have 11 more months to get the other 90% and it seems very daunting at best to me. I'm so grateful that he shows me that we need to celebrate even the little victories!
We ate most of our meals at home with a few treats - two meals at my cousin's house, a lunch out with my in-laws (they paid) and two really yummy potluck dinners. We were also treated to snacks after two different church services last week - lemon poppy seed bread at one place and chocolate-covered crisp rice treats at another. Some of that cooking was at a campsite but we count that as "home" cooking anyway. We've continued to water our garden and brown bag lunches. All our "normal" stuff!
Here are some additional things we did in the last two weeks to help ramp up our frugal activities:
* Accepted a blouse for me from my cousin. She can't wear it anymore so she thought she'd pass it along.
* We were "paid" 5 quart jars of canned venison from the church John did pulpit supply at this last week.
* Took the children to the splash pad and the pool at the hotel my in-laws were staying at.
* Had my niece sleep over for a treat for my daughter.
* Worked from home 2 days to save on gas and distractions.
* Accepted free snacks (licorice, animal crackers, gummy candies, oyster crackers and Oreos) from my in-laws.
* Accepted a small bag of coffee beans from my mother-in-law - she had received them as a gift but doesn't have a coffee grinder and prefers to buy her coffee out rather than making it at home. I offered to grind the beans for her but she declined. So I have a 1/2 lb bag of lovely gourmet coffee beans!
* Celebrated the 4th of July at a friend's house: they have a potluck bar-b-que each year and sparklers for the children. We brought sliced watermelon. Their house is across the street from the park where the city fireworks display is, so we all line up our lawn chairs and watch from there! Wonderful evening!
* Started experimenting with using a drying rack for drying some of our clothes. We have an ordinance against a clothesline and I've never been fond of them anyway so a drying rack it is! We'll see how it goes. I'm trying to figure out if running the clothes through an extra spin cycle and rack drying is cheaper than using the dryer.
* Cleaned out the refrigerator and the pantry. Made up my weekly menu based on what we have to use up!
* Downloaded several free books for my Kindle for PC
* Checked books on CD out from the library for the children to listen to while we were driving all over in the car.
* Visited a local attraction with my cousins when we were at their place. We brought a picnic lunch and snacks and parking was free so we only had to pay admission. Well worth the price and we had a great time!
* Dried herbs for the year - basil and dill this week.
* Added several things to our compost pile and worked on moving the white rock from our front flowerbeds to the side yard, where we use it as the yard itself - it gets almost no sun and is a large mass of weeds. Since it's such a small space - 24ft by 1 1/2 ft - it works fine and it's free.
* Went for hikes at the park, played board games and on the playground, and blew a lot of bubbles these last two weeks!
What frugal things did you do this week?
Check out Frugal Friday at Life As Mom and The Prudent Homemaker's Blog and Web Site for more inspiration!
