Frugal Friday - The Sick Chidren and a Really Long Week Edition!
Good heavens, am I glad it's Friday! This week seemed to last forever and we all voted at work on Monday that it was such a Monday we should just all go home and take a nap. However, since we're all responsible adults, we decided we really couldn't do that. My colleague who was selling Girl Scout Cookies for her daughter's troop did donate a box to the "Monday of Monday's" and we all enjoyed a treat with our afternoon coffee!
Either way, I'm really glad it's the weekend!
Both children had horrible head colds this week and John and I both felt like we were coming down with head colds, so we decided to rest and not do much this week. I feel like our week wasn't very frugal but at least we didn't run all over and spend a ton of money either!
So what did we do this week?
* I made biscuits, pancakes (twice!), Hoppin' John, and soup from scratch this week. We used up some black-eyed-peas from the pantry and a ham bone from the freezer, both of which we've had for quite a while. I felt really good about that!
* I hemmed two pairs of pants for my daughter (one was part of her dance costume) and let down two pairs of pants for my son. I also sewed a button back on a suit coat for my husband.
* We napped a lot, took hot showers, drank lots of water and ate a lot of soup rather than spending money on medication that most of us can't take or doesn't work for us anyway. We did take extra vitamin C that we already owned.
* I printed off free online Valentine's for the children to take to their dance classes and to school. I sent oranges we already had in the house for a "healthy" treat for the class party - we were told not to send candy this year!
* My husband officiated at a funeral and was paid an "extra" $200 that we will put toward debt repayment.
* We watched movies from the library and that we already owned. I read a book aloud to the children that we already owned as well. We renewed library materials online to avoid late fees and an extra trip to the library.
* Our daughter had her dress rehearsal for dance competition this week and I did her hair and makeup myself rather than paying to have it done. No one could tell the difference! And, man, did she look grown up!
* The garlic clove at the top of the page is a SINGLE clove from a bulb that we received this summer through our CSA. The recipe I was making called for 3 cloves but in this case a single one did just fine! We all got a huge laugh out of that!
Frugal Fails this week:
* My son really, really wanted to make rock candy for his classmates for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, it didn't harden onto the sticks like it should have. We will try it again this next week and will send it at the end of their social studies unit on the pioneers if we can get it to work. (We've made it before and I have an idea of what happened so hopefully it will work!)
* Spending $10 on a take-and-bake pizza one night this week. We were all exhausted and both children were blowing and coughing a lot, so John surprised us by picking this up on the way home.
Heading forward:
We will be filing our tax return this weekend. I'm hoping we get a nice return we can put toward our debt repayment. We're seriously hoping to have that all paid back by the time my husband is done with residency in August. Plugging away little by little we'll get there!
My husband and I also have a date out that we've been planning for a while using the cheap babysitting through our local school district. Our church used to have a monthly date night for parents where we got three hours of free sitting each month in exchange for working one night a year. That has since ended, so we've been taking advantage of the $6/child three hours four times a year that the school district has. We have a gift card that we'll use for a dinner out and have a couple of other things planned as well.
What did you do this week that was frugal?
