Frugal Friday - The Beginning of October 2020

My entire 2020 Carrot harvest. Ha!

 We have had lovely, lovely weather this week!  It has been right about 70F (~21C) and sunny.  The fall colors on the tree leaves are amazing and I have been trying to spend as much time as I can outside.  We started the fall yard work for the year - raking leaves, cleaning up flower and vegetable beds and turning and adding compost and fresh dirt.  We have two beds completely done and the first round of leaves raked.  John and I and Buddy and I have taken several walks this week and John and Missy have been running regularly.  I have also enjoyed many a cup of coffee on my patio while doing email or reading.  It has been lovely.  I am hoping it lasts a few more weeks! 

This week I harvested the winter squash and my three lonely, tiny carrots you see above.  I planted an entire package of carrot seeds this year, thinking I would get enough to can.  Most never came up.  I was going to replant and then ran out of time.  I had what I thought was one carrot growing and left it just because. It turned out to be the three little carrots (about the size of my little finger for the two larger ones). We did get a good laugh from that!  The squash more than made up for it - we harvested 9 extremely large acorn squash, 5 normal sized acorn squash and 2 small acorn squash.  We typically eat 2 normal sized squash for one meal and the large ones will easily feed all four of us for one meal. We have at least 11 meals of squash from our plants this year!  Rodents ate three squash and two did not mature.  A pretty good harvest for two small-ish plants this year!

Here are the other things we did this week that were frugal:

* We made all meals at home. These meals included beef and bean chili, fish tacos, Jambalaya, homemade pizza and bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches with cut veggies.  We also ate numerous salads and soup from the freezer.

* I canned a small batch of tomato salsa using some of our garden tomatoes and peppers and tomatoes gifted to us by a friend.

* Missy altered a blouse she already owned but did not like. Now she likes it.  She removed the sleeves and added trim. 

* I replaced two missing buttons on two shirts.

* While cleaning out for our home remodel, I took three framed pieces of artwork that had been sitting in a closet at home to my office.  We have no artwork in our office at work and this will add quite a bit of color and visual enjoyment to our office.  These had hung in a previous office and had been in the closet since I left that office 5 years ago.

* I cut out and pieced together a patchwork tablecloth for our kitchen table using material I already owned.  This still needs to be hemmed. 

* John was gifted apples and sweet peppers by a parishioner.  We sliced and froze the peppers for later use and turned the apples into pie filling that we froze for later use as well.

* Buddy spread reduced price garden soil in our raised vegetable beds in preparation for next spring.

* The children attended a fall party outdoors at a friend's house.  They carved jack o lanterns and roasted wieners over a fire.  Everyone socially distanced and wore masks.  They had a great time!

* John and I started laying out our garden plans for next spring.  We will be planting more vegetables next year and more cutting flowers as well.  We will be adding an open pollinating peach tree to our yard in the spring as well.  Our neighbors have apple trees so open pollinating should work just fine.

* We continue to clean out, recycle and donate in preparation for the major part of our home remodel.  The interior portion will start in the next couple of weeks - we are so excited!  The exterior portion is already under way.  We need to remove everything from the main floor of our home, so it's time to clean out what we do not need.

What did you do this week that was frugal?