Purchasing bargains and choices I made this month: I bought iceberg lettuce for .89 instead of organic spinach that I usually buy. I stocked up on toothpaste when it went on sale for $1. I purchased apples at the store for .54 per pound to refill my empty fresh fruit drawer. I got a rain check for bacon at $1.99 per pound if you buy 5 packages. I bought 10 pound bags of potatoes for $2.49. I bought citric acid (for dishwasher detergent) on clearance at nearly $1 off per container. I turned in a rewards card and a kitty litter coupon to buy cat litter (also on sale) for only $4. I redeemed coupons and a partially used gift card to Old Navy and walked out with a sweatshirt ($4 on clearance), a long sleeved shirt and a pair of sweatpants for my growing 11 year old boy and a blouse for me all for $3 and change. The clothing for my son will be a gift for Christmas.
Some evenings at my house get a little complicated with scheduling but with a little planning they don't have to be expensive. I made a picnic dinner to bring in to my husband's classroom for our family to eat on a concert night. I had some deli ham in the freezer that I purchased on a great sale for $1 per pound and stuffed a few slices into pita halves (which were purchased on sale and with a coupon) along with some shredded cheddar (a bulk purchase), iceberg lettuce and some tomato slices from my garden. I brought a bag of chips my neighbor had given us from a leftover work event; a real treat! I packed a mason jar of pickle slices, a bag of the last of our fresh apples we picked in August, a pan of brownies, milk with enough plastic cups to go around and some cloth napkins. Into the cooler they went with some ice packs since the meal would be sitting in the car for nearly 2 hours before we would eat it. It was a great meal that we really enjoyed sitting around the classroom table together eating. Why did I go to this effort? We live 7 1/2 miles and 10 miles from our children's schools and do not have access to bus transportation. I had two children at the elementary school (on the way to my older kid's school) who needed to be picked up at 4:00 after school and 5:00 after running club. My younger children always play at the playground for that hour on days like this one. At the other school one daughter had a rehearsal until 5:30 and another until 6:00. My husband had a meeting until 5:15 in the school building as well. Call time for both girls in the concert was 6:30 with the concert starting at 7 p.m. Obviously going home was not an option for everyone and our gas budget has been especially tight since getting a newer car that has a V-6 instead of a V-4 engine so the fewer trips we make the better. A trip to McDonalds costs our family around $35. Yikes! I used to be able to plan for an occasional trip out for dinner but our grocery budget has dwindled too much for that at this point. So eating "out" this way produces a real savings! While taking into consideration that I had spent a little prep time making the brownies with my pre-schooler (how fun) and aside from the pickles I spent time preparing several months ago and time I've spent nursing the tomatoes since I planted the seeds, it took me 30 minutes before leaving the house to toss this meal together and get it packed. Looking at it from that standpoint comparing its cost to that of going out to a restaurant to eat it was like "earning" or saving over $1 per minute of my time plus we saved on gas money. Pretty awesome! And everyone got to play games or musical instruments making our "wait" for the concert zip by. And we even had some pickles and brownies to share with a friend.
I accepted some pasta salad and leftover Birthday cake from my next door neighbor's weekend party. She lives alone and gave us what she couldn't eat up by herself. I made chicken one night for dinner from the drumsticks that this same neighbor brought to me a while back. They had been in the freezer.
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| Our annual trip to the pumpkin patch |
Each member of our family got to pick a "little spooky" to grace our front porch for the autumn when we made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch and corn maze. Later these pumpkins will be roasted to restock our freezer becoming pies and muffins throughout the coming year.
I made yogurt from my last yogurt starter.
This is a simple process that perhaps I will go into at some future point.
My clothesline is still in use as much as possible. We have nearly exclusively used the sun to dry our laundry outdoors for over six months now at a savings of $40 + per month... partially that expensive because our old dryer had become so inefficient that it either ran forever or we had to turn it on three times to dry one load of laundry. But now that we are getting into the rainier, cloudier part of the year (we even had snow yesterday!!!) my husband and I have moved our old dryer out to the garage (trying to figure out what to do with it) and we moved my sister's extra dryer, which she and her husband kindly lent to us, down to our basement. It has really helped me to keep up with laundry during wet stretches of weather.
We utilized the extended warranty on our 5 1/2 year old, 65,000 mile Toyota Sienna when it needed a new transmission!!! That would have cost us almost $4,000 plus they gave us a lender van to use for the week which would have cost us anther $300. I'd say that the $1,600 we paid for the warranty was worth it, this time, although I know people who advise against extended warranties. We also utilized it a few months ago when the automatic door decided to quit working. That was a $1,500 job. All covered... Phew!
My oldest daughter attended homecoming wearing a borrowed Formal from one of my friend's older daughters.
I mended a cute black blouse that was handed down to my 14 year old. It needed only a single button to secure the inside of it which I got out of my button box. I was careful when sewing the button on not to go through the outside layer so the stitches I made don't show through to the front of the blouse. I also mended a grey skirt for my 6 year old that was also handed to us.
I made cheese crackers for the first time. I have learned that the trick to making really good crispy crackers is to roll the dough very thin.
My husband loved the smell of these as they were baking in the oven one evening.
The verdict???
My 11 year old said he liked them even better than it's boxed counterpart at the grocery store.
My 4 year old LOVED them as well and had two helpings with his lunch.
Two of my girls skipped eating this in their lunch. My boys thought they were crazy.
My first grader's snack week I made: Popcorn, 8 dozen mini muffins, granola bars and a sheet of sugar cookies made "festive" with crystalized sugar left over from a birthday party that I dyed orange. AFTER they were baked I cut the cookies out into Halloween cats and bats with some cutters I picked up in a package last year on clearance for .25. The teacher paid me a huge compliment on my cooking toward the end of the week when I showed up for parent-teacher conferences. She stated that it was a novelty to most of the children to have food that was NOT processed and they really, really liked it.
My son and I went "out" to eat lunch... on a picnic blanket overlooking a pond filled with ducks and geese on an amazing crisp autumn day with the most perfect bright blue sky. This was followed by a "crunchy leaf" hike through the woods.
I was able to purchase a few books I'd been wanting to get my younger children for Christmas. I looked and found them at Half Price Books using a 20% teacher's coupon.
I sold movies we no longer wanted to Half Price Books.
We attended pre-school story time and crafts at our Public Library.
I brought dinner to a friend who desperately needed it; homemade tomato soup with bow ties from home canned tomatoes, rosemary focaccia bread, home canned apple sauce and three loaves of half white/half wheat bread for her family to make sandwiches with during an especially stressful (expensive) week.
I got a flu shot! It made me sick... AGAIN! And this belongs here because I jump through hoops like this so they deposit money, in this case $50, into a Benefit Bank and it can be used next year to help defray medical costs like co-pays or medicine that my children (or I) will inevitably be in need of. This "game" was put into place at the same time that our copayments skyrocketed and our monthly premiums soared as well. So anything that helps keep grocery money where it belongs... I'm into it!
I have a rule in my house that we don’t turn on the furnace until November. Sometimes that’s really hard but we did it! We have a little house with lots of bodies and so it doesn’t have too much trouble staying warm enough but we do pull out the flannel at night! We did clean out the filters and give the furnace a test run just to make sure it will be ready for the inevitable. It sure was great to have a month off from heating or cooling the house.
And finally, just before our first hard freeze (and two days before our first "snow" as it turns out), my daughter and I went out for one last "green" harvest.
These vegies all came from plants I grew from seeds this past spring. My spring was BUSY and so I didn't get them planted in the ground as early as I should have. Once the plants took off I was really sorry that I hadn't gotten them in the ground earlier. It was hard for the kids to pick the small peppers and tomatoes because for months we've been leaving them on their plants so they could grow bigger or ripen. But big or little, ripe or not we picked them. The cherry tomatoes will ripen on the sunny kitchen window sill and the big tomatoes will become fried green tomatoes that will serve us for several dinners. The peppers will be chopped up and frozen for future pots of chili or pizza toppings. It is all still nutritious, filling and delicious. I guess the vines will go into the compost in the coming weeks as I get to all the leaves and other autumn yard work.
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