I purchased silver snowflake paper on holiday clearance for all of my January birthday wrapping needs. It was only .60 per role!
I purchased two gingerbread house kits at a clearance table to save for next year. Check the expirations; these kits are good for several years. I like that the kits are pre-cut so fitting them together is easy and they include the candy. We saved the non-edibles from this past years gingerbread house so we can re-use them again with the next. I bought a couple of Christmas molds at a huge percentage off for chocolates and other crafts as well.
During our “deep freeze” where we got down to something like –14 outside I sealed plastic over my drafty vented window in the basement. Our upstairs, which I’m sure has no insulation, had ice on our “energy efficient” windows and in fact there was ice on some of the inside walls. We loaded on the blankets at bedtime and one night I had three of my kids decide to get into one single size trundle together, packed sardine style. We also kept beds warm with rice socks which the kids heated in the microwave before warming their beds (and toes) with them. We kept warm enough.
I did turn the heat up before bedtime and vented heat into the basement. We were afraid the pipes would freeze otherwise. To help combat frozen pipes I ran the dishwasher after midnight and set the washing machine to wash and soak clothes about an hour after that starting at around 3:30 or 4 a.m. and finish just before the time the majority of the household would wake and start using water again anyway. We were lucky and had no trouble with freezing pipes.
I found that our water has been too cold to dissolve the soap in the washer. It is an “he” machine and so doesn’t use as much water in the first place. I decided to put the clothing in with the soak option to give the powdered soap a chance to dissolve, clean and rinse completely. It worked.
I made a batch of tub and tile cleaner which uses all ingredients normally found in my kitchen. The kids love helping me mix up a batch… it’s like making a volcano in a great big bowl. Once it settles it fits into a small bottle. And it smells great!
Another batch of dishwasher soap was made.
I used some “never ending fabric softener” in our dryer that I made with some fabric softener I had left on the shelf. I drop a sponge into the bottle of it and when I use it on the daily load or two of laundry I just take out a sponge, wring it out most of the way and toss it into the dryer. My vinegar fabric softener was not as effective as it had been in this winter weather.
I made turkey broth with turkey bones left over from earlier in the month that I had stored in the freezer as well as an onion, carrot peelings and celery leaves that I cut off the stalks. I added left over gravy and turkey pieces, vegies, mashed potatoes and rice that I had saved in small amounts in my freezer into the broth. This made a fantastic soup after simmering for several hours. It filled my big stock pot and will feed us for probably three dinners if not four.
“Free Friday Downloads” gave us a free Greek yogurt. I picked plain so I can use it as this coming month’s yogurt starter for homemade yogurt.
Pasta was on sale for .79. I am hoping that is not the new .49 cent price I look and wait for. At the same time another brand had certain varieties of pasta for buy one get one free which averaged to .50 per pound. We bought 28 pounds.
Toothpaste went on sale for $1.00 and we purchased 12 tubes.
With a gift card from Christmas, combined with a sale and a 20% off coupon for that store, I was able to buy 3 new cotton reversible bath mats and one new bath towel. These will replace a few of my very ratty bath mats and move a 20 year old hole ridden bath towel into the rag pile. Replacing these would have waited without the gift card but they were on my “list” of eventual purchases.
I made some home made brownie mix with a few ingredients from my pantry.
A clearance sale along with coupons bought my youngest son a new winter coat for $8 and change. This gives him a coat in the right size since the coat his older brother wore in that size was previously used before him and the zipper ended up broken. We gave it to Goodwill several years back.
Invitations for a birthday party coming up were made, mostly with things we already had around the house. I did purchase a few stickers that went with the theme and pulled that from our party budget. We also made some Thank You notes to grandparents who already sent gifts with the same idea. The snowflake paper cutter, a HUGE hit, was a new acquisition and I found it for 40% off. We will use it to make some fun Thank you notes after the party but it was terrific for making confetti for the invites. After Christmas is a great time to buy winter themed items. Some of my snowflake decorations were just .25! My daughter came up with these creative invitations herself… I just assisted. We put them in sandwich sized Ziplocs so it could be “snowing” snowflake confetti and sparkles inside the invitation. They are very fun and we spent a fun few hours over two days working together on these.
Repurposing a section of old sheet and using fabric from my stash I sewed two different birthday banners. One featured triangle flags in shades of blue. The other featured rectangles and cut out letters sewed on that spelled “Happy Birthday”.
Two large sections of flannel, one that I purchased on sale several years ago in hopes of making something for my littlest daughter and another one that I’ve had for ages were cut in 6 x 6 squares and made into a rag quilt for my good friend’s baby shower.
I made 3 birthday cakes from scratch… I had two daughters with birthdays and the third was to serve at the “friends” birthday party that we had at home.
I stuck to my birthday budgets for both girls, one of which included a party.
It’s not every day that you make a huge purchase but we did make a HUGE purchase this month… a violin for my daughter, Lindsay, who has been playing for almost 10 years now. We finally reached the point where it was cheaper to buy than to rent for another year because they put your rental fees into equity for an eventual purchase. The equity we had would allow us to keep the violin she’d been renting without paying another cent. Once we reminded them, they applied the equity for our older daughter’s past violin rental (we did not purchase a violin from them for her but instead bought an excellent violin from an “insider” for very little money and my husband did some music arranging for them in trade) and combined that with the equity for Lindsay’s rental we could walk out the door with a violin a step or two above the one she’d been playing on. Now it pays to keep your ear to the ground and do some leg work while asking questions. It was suggested by another music teacher in the know that another local shop would match our equity possibly and we’d get an even better instrument. How could that work? Have your “homework” done, toss out the right names during conversation, learn that there would be a 50% discount for a music teacher (which my husband is) and try out some instruments. At one point Lindsay had 7 violins to try out bringing our total to 10 violins in the house!!! After one final conversation we ended up purchasing the nicer violin from the first shop for free using equity from both rentals and trading it to the second shop who then sold us a fantastic used Strad model for just a few hundred dollars cash which we had already set aside to pay the annual rental for her and her brother. Putting money aside monthly as we have been for renting two instruments but putting it into one fund instead we will still have what we need to pay cash for the instruments we still rent when that bill comes due. We kept the very nice case from the first violin we bought and upgraded the bow paying only the difference. Upon returning home we happened to look up purchasing the same bow online and found it to be $20 cheaper so we called the first shop and they refunded us the 20+ dollars saying they hadn’t updated all of their prices for the new year yet. It pays to shop around and talk business.
I have been asked on occasion how we “afford” certain luxuries for things like instrument rentals/purchases and lessons. Simple! Priorities. We don’t have cable T.V. and my husband and I have very basic cell phone service compared to most. We don’t eat out much and our kids don’t have smart phones or their own computers. Most of the time they don’t even have new clothes. We simply set aside money for the things that are most important to us. We don’t miss the rest. Learning and music are important to us.
I purchased 3 books of “Forever” stamps before the price of postage jumped again. This should probably get me through most of the year since many things are done on-line now.
Finally, I spent a whole bunch of time working on homemade dishes and recipes that utilize food storage for a class that I was asked to teach. There are so many facets to “food storage” and I knew that the class had to be about more than just cooking. I talked about the economy of having and using long term and short term food storage together as well and I hope that it will help people in many ways, including maybe cutting grocery bills. Having and utilizing a food storage has cut my grocery bill by nearly 50% in recent years, even as food prices have been rising. While I shop without coupons with a few exceptions, I normally save 35% to 50% on my grocery bill by sticking to versatile, basic foods that are on special and meet my “willing to pay” price and I can make just about anything I want.
And talking about cutting the grocery bill, this was a good exercise in thinking for me because our grocery bill is going down yet again after this month due to rising medical costs AND it is almost time for my husband’s business trip to the same city as our nearest LDS cannery which means he will stop there for some bulk items right before he heads back home. Their prices have gone up considerably in the past year as well as changes in packaging so I have some homework to do on that front.
These are some of the things I did this month to keep our budget in line and to keep us from feeling "deprived".
