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| Simple Baby Gift Wrap |
My husband and I each earned a free book from the library by logging hours (which I hate doing because I just want to read) but I got a book that I'm excited to add to my collection. We earned free water bottles from the library as well. My kids did this too and in addition logged their hours with Half Price Books and earned $5 gift cards to their store... for more books of course!
We went to a Red's Game with four free tickets from two kids who got this for having straight A's all year and a code to buy the three extras we needed to go as an entire family at a great discount. We went for Family Night one week and had so much fun.
Three kids did 10 service hours each to get half of their summer camp fees paid. They did everything from assisting special needs children at a nearby park each Saturday, sweeping out animal stalls, weeding overgrown vegetable and flower gardens in the heat, babysitting and preparing meals while parents performed church service. This saved our family $162.50. My girls raised the other half of their camp fees with a fundraiser... which earned them another $100.00 to pay for camp entirely.
My husband got an unexpected check for "mentoring" his student teacher from this past second semester.
We have eaten many cucumber and lettuce salads from the garden and picked many strawberries in our garden. We've had cilantro from our garden a few times and zucchini look to be making their way nicely as well as a few tomatoes and peppers, as well. The cucumber salads taste great with homemade croutons and some homemade Greek dressing.
We picked strawberries at the farm and froze them for making jam and yogurt smoothies.
We grew strawberries at home too and watered them and the rest of our garden with water from the rain barrel. This variety above is called a "Tristan". It is a bush variety and features a red blossom bearing fruit through the entire season.
I made homemade yogurt, bread, rolls, granola and pizza.
My son REALLY wanted to see the LEGO Movie. We used a code for RedBox and got it for free to watch on our Friday Family Movie night.
I unpacked boxes of hand-me-down clothes for Kaitlyn from my older girls as well as her cousin, Sophie. Kaitlyn has the BIGGEST wardrobe now!
My older girls went to Goodwill and bought some clothes for just a few dollars. My oldest also received a few bags of clothes from a Mom cleaning out her older daughter's closet.
I made four complete Pioneer costumes for my two daughters to wear to Trek. While these were not necessarily "cheap" to make they did cost less than half of what I would have paid to purchase them ready made, the girls got the opportunity to learn about making clothes and sewing and Kaitlyn will also be able to wear the outfits when she attends trek in 8 years. Store coupons helped me to keep the cost down even further. Buttons for the project either came out of Grandma's button box, were purchased with a coupon for 50% off or were purchased on clearance for .50 a button card. Some of the fabrics were on clearance at half off and Muslin was purchased at $1 per yard. Lindsay used this sewing project as one of her value projects for Y.W.
And speaking of sewing, Kaitlyn has been sewing at my side and made matching hair barrettes for herself and her best friend as well as her friend's little sister when they moved back to our area after 3 years. Then she made herself a new scripture bag the next week and is now finally working on a gift for her newest baby cousin... a little girl named Charlotte. All materials for these projects were found in my supplies, some fabrics having been given to me and others left over from other projects.
I fixed my youngest daughter's baby doll stroller. The seat needed just a few stitches again to keep it attached to the stroller and I was sorry it had taken my so long to get to it because it was such a quick fix. Now she is happy to have this back for her dolly again.
I continue to make laundry detergent as it costs me about 2 cents per load and I have continued to use vinegar as a rinse agent. My clothes line is still in constant use six days a week for drying. Even on days it is expected to storm it is often due to afternoon heating so mornings still usually allow for plenty of drying time. Humidity doesn't seem to matter as long as it's hot.
Vinegar has also continued to be my primary ingredient for cleaning floors, bathroom and kitchen. Baking soda has been used in homemade cleansers as well.
I used a 25% off coupon code and free shipping to purchase my 5 year old his first backpack and lunch box for school, which is just 5 weeks away now. He is very excited to join the ranks of school children and feels grown up sporting his new purchase. The other kids are all using their back packs and lunch bags from last year or the year before. I expect this back pack to last quite a while.
We got the chance to take Kaitlyn out for parent-child time and she got a free pizza for having good grades and behavior in school. The kids also got to go to a local restaurant for free cheese coneys from the summer reading program.
Rick and I are spending every Tuesday night this summer coordinating Dave Ramsay's Financial Peace University. We were saying in May that we'd like to go over all that stuff from our class again and about a week after saying that we were asked to provide this service. This class did so much for us personally that if we can help someone else it will be worth it. As for reviewing? Wish granted... no excuses.
Some of our purchases have included .90 items of fruit juice, pasta, chicken patties, sausages, etc. I also traded my 1 lb. spinach purchase for leaf lettuce at .88 per pound which saves dollars. Our garden is helping us stretch out our milk money as well and provided all our fresh produce for last week. Home canned fruit helped round out diets as well when milk money was gone.
We used passes for parks, museums and the zoo and brought picnic lunches for free days of family fun.
Our main computer went dead back in April. There was nothing! It was absolutely and completely nothing there but a blank screen and an error code. My husband finally had enough time to deal with that catastrophe since we couldn't get to any of our files obviously... including pictures any longer! He bought a new hard drive and restoring disks and spent many hours and phone calls and got the thing up and working once again for around $90. We didn't loose our information and pictures and we didn't have to buy a new computer for all that lovely homework that my kids have on it during the school year.
My neighbor had her fourth baby and so I brought her family dinner and small gift for the baby. I had a cute board book set aside that I'd ended up with two of. I was fresh out of cute wrapping paper however and the gift wasn't that big. Pictured at the top, I decided to use a simple brown bag as packaging stamped with blue footprints. I had some baby footprint ribbon in my stash which I wrapped around the package once and then tied the package once more in rafia. After making a tag with the baby's name on it I attached it with a cute layered sticker of a boy with his dog. I think it turned out as a nice substitute to traditional wrapping paper.
As for the meal, I made Chicken Cheddar Chowder, homemade dinner rolls, a cucumber salad with fresh garden cucumbers and homemade Greek dressing drizzled over it, chocolate zucchini bread with garden zucchini and three layered raspberry jello. The family was surprised and grateful to have a meal to save for tomorrow; the husband's first day back at work. I like being able to give in seemingly small ways. I think everyone has some way to contribute and give. Making a meal here and there is a way I can help and give to others. Giving is usually a lot of fun.
And speaking of giving, we gave an elderly person who is taking our Financial Peace class a printer for her computer. It is brand new, never out of the box and has sat on our shelf for four years. When we bought our computer it came with a "free" printer... it was more expensive to get the computer without the printer but we really liked the printer/scanner we already had. So we cleaned off a space on the shelf in our basement and surprised this person by giving her the printer she was wishing for. This person is living solely on Social Security and buying a printer is simply not in the budget. Again, giving in a small way that we can give, was fun.
Peach Season... 3 baskets, about 25 lbs each, gave us fresh peaches to eat now and 23 1/2 quart jars for winter.
In preparation for back to school clothing, which my nearly 12 year old son will certainly need as he barely skated by last winter finishing in high waters I purchased three gift cards totaling $75 to Old Navy spending just $55 on them. Purchasing these gift cards gave us quadruple fuel points and gave us rewards on our Old Navy card as well. As we are nearly debt free, our Old Navy card is the one card we continue to use every so often for some purchases in order to get rewards that boost our nearly non-existent clothing budget. We of course plan the expense in our 0-based budget and pay it off immediately. It works with discipline.
My sister had her baby at the end of June as I mentioned. In preparing for a trip to meet her in August I have made her a baby gift entirely from what I had on hand. My teenagers LOVE it and I hope it will be something useful to Charlotte that will grow along with her through many years to come. But pics of that will come next month after the gift is given.
