Last Week's Thrifty Moves

I bid on a set of eight envelopes of vintage Vogart embroidery transfers on eBay and won.  I was able to get them for a great price, far below what a same sized set of new ones would have cost.  These are so darling too and one of the envelopes is chickens.  They will make fabulous embroidered tea towels and what have you.

Love this one!

I had the girls walk up to the corner gas station and purchase a Sunday paper.  We need the newspaper to line the chick brooder.  I was happy that there were more than enough usable grocery coupons to easily compensate me for the cost of the paper.

Hanging out with Matilda - healthy & thriving

If you follow our facebook page then you already know this, but apparently we were sold some sickly peeps.  One became ill within an hour of our arriving home.  We took her back the next morning and the feed store gave us another one.  Unfortunately that one died less than twenty four hours later.  Sunday afternoon, yet another one became ill.  Despite our best efforts she passed away sometime during the night.  We were left with two little girls that seemed to be thriving and doing well and I am hopeful that they continue to do so.  These are the perils you face when raising hens.  It made for a rough weekend and quite a bit of heartache, but also a deeper appreciation God's little creatures.  They are so sweet and adorable.  I pray they continue to do well.

I saved two more juice bottles and cut the bottoms off to use for planting seeds.  I used potting soil from one of my big planters to fill the four containers I have so far and planted seeds I have leftover from last year.  I planted bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, sweet peppers (from seeds I saved from some peppers I was given last summer), and tomatoes.

I filled a little clay pot I already had with more soil out of the large planter and planted basil seeds.  The basil seeds were also leftover from ones purchased last year.

We found some peat pots in our garage left from planting seeds a few years ago.  The girls filled them with soil from the large planter and planted flower seeds - petunias and zinnias.

I made a list of seeds we don't have and want for our garden.  I'll be on the lookout for the best prices I can find as I am trying to put our garden in this year on an extremely tight budget.  I need to focus our dollars on getting a couple more garden tools and, of course, our chickens this year.

I read on facebook that peanut butter jar lids fit on canning jars.
Guess what?  It's true!

I baked a big loaf of French bread.  It didn't last long so I ended up baking another one a few days later.  I also baked chocolate chip cookies for my darling daughters.

Fred Meyer sent me another coupon booklet in the mail.  Hurraaaaay!

I finished the other hanging dish towel I cut out last week.  It is now ready to be given to my sweet friend that made me the crocheted lace snowflake ornaments.  I'm thinking of adding a pair of crocheted potholders to go with the towel.

I mended a seam and re-stitched a loose button on a pair of my work pants.

While online paying my bill I found that I had 880 rewards points for my credit card sitting unused and expired from 2010.  There was an option asking me if I wanted to reinstate them?  Sure??  So I selected it and my credit card company added the points to my current balance.  Cool!!

A co-worker let me have a cutting from the spider plant on her desk.  I brought it home and put it in water to root.

After work on Friday I used my Fred Meyer rewards points to save an extra 10¢ a gallon on gas and filled my tank.  I hate seeing that gas is going up by leaps and bounds again.  A 35¢ increase in just the past two weeks.  Not nice.

On the way to the gas station I stopped at ShopKo and purchased a 16# bag of Purina cat food on sale for $9.99 and used a $1 OFF coupon making it only $8.99.  Yippee!

Our flock.

After filling the gas tank we stopped at the feed store and talked to them about our sick peeps we got at their other location.  They encouraged us to try again so we ended up coming home with two more girls and now are back to the original four that we wanted.  So far they all seem healthy and happy.  Fingers are crossed.

I did not grocery shop last week.

Our neighbors went out of town for a couple days and asked us to collect their mail and newspaper.  They told us to keep the newspaper.  Yaay! Now I don't need to buy anymore for awhile to use to line the chick brooder.  Although, if I had thought to ask them, I'm sure they would have happily given me their already read newspapers.  Duh.

Last Sunday I dropped my iron on my tile floor in the laundry room.  Needless to say it broke.  Not a "thrifty move".  I don't iron that much except when I sew.  Right now I need my iron.  Fortunately I was able to find an economical and upgraded replacement on Amazon for under $10 and free two day shipping because of my Prime membership.  It's a closeout so I saved quite a bit.  The original price was $26.00.

I re-listed our RV washing machine for sale on Craigslist.  Hopefully it will find a new home soon.

Hoping for grass this spring.

Saturday the weather was gorgeous once again.  The girls and I went outside and finished raking up the leaves in the yard filling up our dumpster once again.  I pruned our apple tree while my girls were busy digging up some tulips that had relocated themselves in the lawn area.

We cleaned out all of the flower beds and reseeded the lawn.  We used some pine bedding that had gotten wet to mulch the grass seed.

How thrifty were you last week?