Last Week's Thrifty Moves

Fruit salad for Memorial day brunch

While the week prior was relatively quiet last week, the final week of school, was much busier for us.  Some activities and several projects kept us hopping.

I went to the grocery store and made a huge produce haul.  I picked up a box of fresh blueberries on sale for $3.99.  We enjoyed some of them fresh and the rest I spread out on a tray and froze for yogurt and pancakes.  They are quite tasty.

My youngest and I worked on an inexpensive home improvement project together over the long Memorial Day weekend.  We rehabbed our mailbox.  I'll be sharing that post with you a little later on, but wow!  What a transformation! 

At the last minute my youngest was invited to attend a reception at her school on Tuesday.  In digging through her closet we discovered she'd pretty much outgrown all of her dress options except for a cute little sundress, which wasn't exactly right for what she needed.  Sunday afternoon we headed off to ShopKo to see what our options were.  While we didn't find any dresses she liked we did find her two pair of blue jeans on clearance for $5.99 a pair!  I snapped those babies up.

At Ross we didn't find any dresses either but we did find a cute little shrug that would work nicely.  It was only $5.99 as well!  When we got home she put on her sundress with the shrug.  It completely transformed the look and she was thrilled.  Her big sister lent her a pair of cute shoes too.  Phew!  Mission accomplished.

I took my little scrap pile I had leftover from making my scrappy nine patch quilt squares and started crazy quilting them together to make a pillow front.

I made two loaves of oat bran bread.  I also made a pint of salad dressing.

I had bought some beautiful and very fragrant lemons to slice up for our ice water.  Before slicing the first one I zested it first and put that in a jar to freeze.  Lovely lemon zest to add to baked goods.  The lemon slices have been wonderful in our ice water.

I used my rewards points to save 10¢ a gallon and filled up my gas tank at Fred Meyer.  I also did a survey so I could earn an extra 50 bonus points toward my next fill up.

After buying fuel I stopped in at the grocery store and picked up milk, juice, lettuce, bananas and another vegetable tray.  I had a two dollar coupon for the veggie tray so it was only $5.99 and a 55¢ coupon for the lettuce making it $1.35.  The juice and milk were 79¢ each with a store coupon.  That should hold us nicely for awhile.

While cleaning out my daughter's closet we found a forgotten bin that was full of scrap paper.  Quite a find, I think.  We'll put it to good use.

The last day of school was Thursday so I took off work early and all day Friday to spend with my girls.  We spent all of Thursday afternoon and well into the evening purging the girl's clothes and spring cleaning my youngest's bedroom.  We also emptied out the girl's backpacks and purged their school stuff.  We got rid of a ton of stuff and set a very full recycle bin at the curb.  It felt great.

Friday we made a quick trip to the orthodontist.  On the way home we stopped in at Goodwill and found several great items.  The girls are cooking more and have expressed an interest in some cookbooks.  We found four really nice ones for $1.99 each.  They are hardbound and appear to have never been used.  We also found two pair of gym shorts for my oldest (she is taking PE this summer at the high school) for $1.99 each, a box of bands in an organizer my youngest uses for crafts for $2.99, four Corelle bread plates and a saucer for $2.49, and five skeins of Red Heart yarn for 99¢ each! 

Great buy on that yarn.  The plates were also a great buy (one on sale at the store is the same price I paid for all of them) and will replace a couple we broke and give us a couple spares.  I don't need the saucer so I stuck it in one of our donate bags.

We had a credit at Jimmy Johns for three sandwiches so we stopped by and picked those up and headed to the park for a quick picnic lunch before heading home to work on spring cleaning the oldest's bedroom.

Saturday the girls and I went to lunch at a favorite restaurant.  My youngest was awarded a free meal certificate so we decided to go and use it.  Afterward we walked over to ShopKo to see what they had on their clearance racks.  After clearing out their clothing my oldest needed a swim suit (she handed hers down to her sister) and my youngest needed summer clothes.

We found my oldest a swimsuit on the clearance rack for $19.99 complete with swim shorts.  We also found her a pair of those $5.99 jeans like the ones I had bought my youngest the week before.  We also found two tops marked down 80% OFF for the youngest and a darling top and matching knit capris for her on sale for $7.99 each.  My oldest is completely set for summer and school in the fall.  My youngest is now set for summer and only needs a few things for school.  I'm feeling pretty good about that.

How was your thrifty week?