Frugal "Friday" - Week 47 of 52

Our Thanksgiving table this year - it was just the four of us this year.  Ham, corn, yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, and sparkling cider.  We had apple pie for dessert.

I guess the year is officially winding down now - the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving is over, Advent starts next weekend, and Christmas is just around the corner.  I am grateful that we have had a quiet weekend - John has had a terrible head cold and all of us were just ready for a bit of a real and true break.  We spent all of "Black Friday" watching movies in our pajamas (except for a Jazzercise class for me!).  Then we slept in on Saturday morning too.  Ahhh… bliss!   I think we are officially ready for the last bit of 2018.

Here are some of the frugal things we did this past week:

* Baked apple pie, jam thumbprint cookies, chili, chicken noodle soup, as well as Thanksgiving dinner at home this week.

* Took advantage of a non-Black Friday sale to purchase some stocking stuffers for family - spending $6 and change for several stocking stuffers.  They averaged about $0.37 each after the sale.

* We went to the library and checked out several books and a movie.  We also renewed a few books and returned a few books and another movie.

* Used our phone and Internet to communicate with relatives over the holiday rather than traveling to visit in person.  We will see both sets of relatives over the Christmas holidays and it is outside of our current budget to travel.

* I let out the side seams on a hand-me-down like-new dress that was only slightly too tight for our daughter.  It now fits perfectly!  She is very excited to have a new dress for the school Christmas concert this year. 

* We ordered two Christmas gifts using money we had set aside.  We have been picking up items for Christmas for most of the year or making them with items we already have on hand.  We are almost finished with Christmas shopping!  I am hoping to have everything done before our relatives arrive mid-December so we can all enjoy visiting rather than having to shop. 

* Our oven died while making pies for Thanksgiving dinner.  I rewrote our menu for this week using our cook top and the Crock-Pot.  We are pretty sure the problem is an internal fuse which will be rather inexpensive to fix - we will save up and pay cash for the fix sometime in the next week or two.

* We wrapped a gently used toy that we were going to donate for a young friend, who has a birthday next week.  The young friend is enthralled with this type of toy at the moment, and we are quite positive he will be very excited to receive it.  This friend's parents rarely buy new toys, opting for used instead, and we have checked that giving him a gently used toy is fine before gifting it.  In a complete fluke, it matches with the theme of his birthday party perfectly this year!

* I cleaned out a couple of file boxes of old papers this week, shredding and saving for kindling anything sensitive and recycling the rest.  It feels good to have a bit more space in the house at no cost!

What have you done this last week that might count as frugal?

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