Last Week's Thrifty Moves

My oldest daughter had a guest come over Sunday afternoon.  I served them popcorn made with real butter and mixed up some lemonade.  Her friend was quite impressed by the "homemade" popcorn.  Honestly, you can't beat it.  So much better than microwave popcorn any day.

I watched last week's NASCAR race and an old western movie on YouTube.  Sam Elliot is so yummy.

I sent out Easter cards I purchased at the dollar store for 50¢ each and stamps I had purchased last year.

At Home Depot I spent $1.97 for some wasp & hornet spray because the hornets have moved into the inside of my retractable clotheslines and I don't want my kiddos to get stung, or myself either for that matter, when we hang our laundry up to dry.  I try not to kill insects but the hornets are pretty aggressive and plentiful around here.

I also spent $15.97 on a new hoe for our garden and to help me clean our chicken coop.  I used some of the money from the sale of the little washing machine to pay for this.

Gratuitous chicken shot.

I mended another pair of my work pants.

I filled out another online survey for Fred Meyer and earned and extra 50 fuel rewards points.

I baked M&M cookies with M&Ms I had bought both on sale and with a coupon.  My daughter took some to school to give to her band instructor.

Friday evening I ordered our ever bearing strawberry plants from eBay.  $10.95 for ten plants with free shipping and they are guaranteed.  I used my PayPal account to make the purchase so I don't have to pay for the plants until May, interest free.

I cleared out the crisper drawer in my refrigerator of all the older veggies that had collected in there.  I cut them all up and made a big pan of stir fried vegetables in my wok.  I cooked them up in a little bit of olive oil along with a couple cloves of fresh minced garlic, chopped onion, some Asian seasoning sauce and a good squirt of Sirachi.  It made a delicious side dish.  I added a little of my Thai Chile Sauce to my serving for some extra flavor and kick.

We started giving our chickies some veggie scraps.  They LOVE mushrooms.

Saturday afternoon we dyed Easter eggs with our homemade egg dye which uses white distilled vinegar and food coloring from the cupboard and some boiling water.  I reused our black plastic Halloween tablecloth to cover and protect the table while we dyed the eggs.

I tried a new method of cooking the eggs by baking them in the oven.  It really worked well and I'll probably do that from now on when I want to make up a big batch of hard boiled eggs.  I like too that there is no typical sulphur smell from the eggs and no odor from them in the refrigerator.  Nice.

Beautiful!

Aren't these cool?
I have some seriously talented daughters.

I made four pints of vanilla yogurt.

How thrifty were you last week?