Last Week's Thrifty Moves

After reading about this on another blog (sorry, I forgot which one L) I saved the top from a jar of grated parmesan romano cheese.  It fits my regular mouth jars perfectly and I plan to save a few more.  I want to put one on my pint jar I keep my dried basil in.  They are pretty handy.

Sunday morning I made a triple batch of almond granola.  It turned out fabulous and we have really been enjoying it for breakfast.  I could easily eat a bowl of it in place of dessert.  On Saturday I made another triple batch since it appears more hot weather is on the horizon and I do not like to turn on the oven when it is really hot outside.

I found this rooster teapot at a thrift store

I made three bottles of homemade pancake syrup.  That should last us for quite some time.

My youngest made a batch of homemade vanilla ice cream.  We made floats with some leftover root beer we had in the refrigerator.

I rinsed out a bottle of laundry detergent and had just enough soap to run a load of clothes.

We had gone through a friend's stash of miscellaneous cables and wires and found the one we were missing to our old DVD/VCR.  My daughter was able to hook it up to our very old TV that she was using to play our very old Sega on and now she can watch movies and our very old VHS tapes.  She was pretty excited about that. J

The girls and I "splurged" on a movie night out at what they call the fancy theater.  We went on Tuesday because the tickets are discounted to $5.50 a piece and used a $10 gift card we'd been given at Christmas to offset some of that cost.  Our night out cost a mere $6.50 out of pocket to go see Finding Dory.  We had a really nice time too.

At the theater I found a dime in the parking lot and on the sidewalk a penny.  J

I did a Fred Meyer feedback survey and added 50 bonus points to my rewards card toward fuel.  Fred Meyer also sent me another packet of coupons in the mail.  Happy, happy!

I made four more pints of vanilla yogurt and a 1/2 pint reserved for starter to use on my next batch.  I still think it is the best yogurt ever!

A dear friend of mine, the one who has been going through her entire house and purging, gave us an extra TV they had and were not using.  For awhile I wrestled with keeping it as it would make us a three TV family once again.  When we moved back into the house I had every intention that the one in the living room would be it.  Then that first Christmas we hauled the super old one out of storage (I was going to donate it, but no one wanted it) so the girls could hook up their super old video games to it and that has been very nice for them.  After much thought I gave in and set it up in my bedroom (groan) as the girls convinced me I could watch my NASCAR races on it while I sewed instead of using my laptop in there like I do now.

I bought a little something for my vintage sewing box

I bought a refurbished Roku stick from Amazon for the new to us TV.  So far the girls have piled onto the bed with me three nights in a row to watch TV so my concern that having multiple TV would send us into separate directions seems to be moot.  And watching NASCAR while I sewed was also very nice.  J

Saturday the youngest and I went to Home Depot to pick up supplies to build a shelf in our garage.  I'd waffled back and forth on whether I should add more storage or get rid of more stuff.  We have gone through our things pretty thoroughly and tried to make do with the storage unit we had, but things kept piling up on the floor so adding a shelf one out.

We came home with a six foot long pine board that was twelve inches wide and three shelf brackets ($16).  In no time at all the girls and I had it put up on the wall over the freezer and trash bins.  Now it stores our camping gear, pet carrier and several other items.

This project spurned us to get busy and reorganize and spring clean the garage and it looks great and is much more functional.  I am very pleased with our latest mini home improvement.  I also thought the cost was more than reasonable as well.

I sold a dozen eggs to a co-worker.

How was your thrifty week?