Frugal Things First Part of November

A fairy house that our daughter and a friend built.
It has been a crazy couple of weeks.  John has a synod meeting for a couple of days, we celebrated Reformation Day with the Confirmation of 8 young people at our church, there were two events at our children's school and we've been trying to get Christmas gifts started and the fall cleaning done around the house.  Whew! I have been trying to take a minimum amount of work home in the evenings and on the weekend for the last two weeks and it's been going okay. That still needs some tweaking but I'm pleased with it so far.  We are doing some big time planning for 2018. Hopefully, I can share that with you when we're through - I'm pretty excited by it!

Here are some things we've done that may count as frugal in the last week:

*Made coffee cake, calzones, bread sticks, and French bread.

* Returned books from the library and picked up some new books and a movie, stopped by later and picked up an item on hold.

* Froze bananas that were going bad to later.

* Made up a plan for making Christmas gifts for my family and our church employees.

* I spent quite a bit of time working on embroidery. This will be used later for gifts.

* Ate most meals at home or brown bagged meals.

* Ate one meal at a Confirmation Party, one meal out on a date with a gift card, and brunch at a friend's house.

* Decorated for Halloween and fall using decorations we already had.

* Finished winterizing the yard ourselves.

* Hemmed a pair of pants for my son.

* Tightened a button on my husband’s shirt.

* John brought home a huge apple pie from a parishioner. Yum!

* Cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, including washing rugs and linens and cleaning light fixtures and vents.

* Used Amazon’s deal of the day and some gift cards to order an electronic item required for my job. Doing this saved me over $150!

* Attended a free concert.

* Attended a high school play today with super cheap tickets.

* Went to two craft fairs and bought a few Christmas presents. I'm more than halfway done with Christmas shopping. I just need to get sewing!

* Bought our son new tap shoes and jazz shoes using some store credit we had. His old pairs were too small.

* Stopped at Barnes and Noble to window shop and get updated Christmas lists. That's quite enjoyable and since we didn't buy anything, that was free.

* Updated the budget book and paid bills. Put together a spending plan for the rest of the year.

What did you do this past bit for frugal activities?


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