Last Week's Thrifty Moves

I turned two brown speckled bananas into three loaves of banana walnut bread.  I used walnuts my father-in-law gave me from his tree at Christmas.  He had even shelled them.

I showed my oldest daughter how to polish a pair of leather shoes.  Mine!  She did an excellent job.

I watched the first episode of the new season of Downton Abbey on PBS using our Roku.

In the interest of rotating my freezer stock I substituted a small pork roast for the meat loaf I had originally planned for Sunday dinner.  After leftovers for lunches the next day I still had quite a bit of roast left and a dish of rice.  After clearing out the crisper I also had half a bell pepper, two stalks of celery, a handful of carrots and part of a large onion.  I cooked up another cup of rice, cut the roast into cubes and tossed it all together in my wok with some asian seasoning sauce and it turned out great.  What a way to transform a roast and use up some leftovers.

I served it with some asian condiments to garnish with too - Thai chile paste, sweet chile sauce and soy sauce.  Delicious!

On the way home from work I stopped at Walgreens and picked up some sugar free gum on sale for 69¢ a pack to put away for Easter.  I also used a 50¢ OFF and a 25¢ OFF coupon on some dish soap they had on sale for 99¢ each giving me a little jumpstart on next month's non food items.

I received another Customer Appreciation coupon booklet from Fred Meyer in the mail.  I plan to use several of these coupons as I used quite a few this month from the last batch they sent me.  One is for $2 OFF produce and another one is for $3 OFF meat.  I love that they do this!

I crocheted a lot this week.  Using more yarn from my stash I made two more scarf and ear warmer sets.  I think I'm going to work on making some inventory to restock my empty Etsy store either this summer or in the fall.  I have a ton of ideas swirling around in my head of items I would like to make and sell.  I also made myself an ear warmer to go with my coat from a leftover bit of soft gray I had from when I made my big afghan.  Now I have one to keep my ears warm when I'm out in the cold, which I definitely needed.

Saturday morning I scrubbed out my kitchen sinks and then filled them with hot water and bleach to remove stains and extra sanitize them.  I also soaked my drain stoppers, dish drainer and scouring pad in the bleach water as well as a tea stained coffee mug.

I finished up every last bit of a bottle of shower gel I had turned upside down in the shower the previous week.  I still have one upside down bottle of lotion I'm working on too. 

I printed off several more online grocery coupons.

How thrifty were you last week?