Last Week's Thrifty Moves

As I told you on Friday much of our Sunday was spent bargain shopping for school clothes.  I spent very little money and about four hours total to get my kids outfitted for school this fall.  I am both thrilled and relieved not to have to worry about that.

I bought a vintage quart jar for 49¢ and a cute wooden basket with a metal handle for $2.99.

I baked two loaves of honey oatmeal bread.  I made chocolate syrup for ice cream.

I veered off our meal plan Monday.  I made some dough and used up some leftovers in the fridge to make two pizzas for our dinner that evening.  We had leftover pizza for lunch on Tuesday leftovers as leftovers, ha, ha.

My youngest is beginning to outgrow her most favorite coat ever.  It is a really cute Gymboree faux sheepskin that I bought at Goodwill for $8.  She has worn it a lot over the past two years so I feel we definitely got our money's worth out of it.  It is still in fabulous shape and while it fits her around the sleeves are too short.  I snipped the threads and let the cuffs down, re-stitched the seams and now they are the perfect length.  One more year and then she'll probably have to let it go.  That thought makes her very sad.

I also turned three pair of my youngest daughter's holey jeans into three pair of summer shorts.  She loves them.  I saved the legs I cut off for a little sewing/recycling project I have planned.

From holey...

...to summer shorts.

A couple weeks ago I found two "volunteer" tomato plants growing in one of our planters.  I imagine the seeds came from our compost bin so I'm not sure what type of tomatoes they are.  My youngest and I transplanted them to the garden replacing one of our plants that got smashed by something and adding another.  If all of these plants produce we should have quite a crop.  Oh, I hope so.

I harvested four more radishes from the garden, two strawberries (one for each of my girls) and some lettuce.  I fertilized the garden with some leftover fertilizer I had in the garage.  I also sprayed the fruit trees again, now that the rain has subsided a bit.  We pulled a ton of weeds.

I washed out a two gallon and two one gallon Ziploc bags to reuse.

The girls are getting bigger.

I went to the feed store and bought the chickies a bigger water feeder for $8.  Now I won't worry so much about them running out of water on a hot summer day.  Afterwards, I stopped next door at Fred Meyer and picked up two bottles of dish soap on sale for $1.99 each and a package of dishwasher detergent on sale for $2.69.  Since canning season is about to begin and I only had enough soap to run one more load it was perfect timing for that to go on sale.

I stuck a sliver of soap to a brand new bar so we can easily use it all up.

I watched several episodes of The French Chef with Julia Child on YouTube for free.  Now I'm hungry to try my hand at a little French cooking.  I went online and put one of her cookbooks on hold at the public library.  Once it is checked back in they will let me know and I'll go pick it up.

How thrifty were you last week?