Last Week's Thrifty Moves

After two weeks of clearing out the fridge and a week away on vacation I was more than ready to get back to cooking.  However, I have to say it is nice to have the refrigerator thinned out and all clean inside.

Sunday I baked bread, made a coconut cream pie (look for the recipe this week) and a pumpkin pie.  I was in the mood for some quality time spent in my kitchen!

I went to Winco to pick up produce and a couple of dairy items on my list.  I also went there to get bulk spices to refill my nearly empty jars in the cabinet.  I save so much on spices buying from the bulk section it's ridiculous.  I checked and found pasta I needed for Christmas dinner was on sale.  I bought jumbo shells and manicotti since both were on sale and I know they will definitely get uses.  Their cans of parmesan romano are always a great price so I grabbed two of those while I was at it.  I also have plans for the lids on those jars.  I seldom buy salad dressing, except for blue cheese, as I prefer to make my own.  I bought a bottle of ranch however, as I was working a lot of hours and decided to cut myself some slack.  Both bottles were on sale too.

While there I happened across these cookie cutters, also on sale.  We all agreed this is what we wanted for our Christmas treat this year.  I am so very much looking forward to decorating cookies with my girls this year.

Then I got this brainiac idea to cut the cute little images on the back of the cardboard out to use as gift tags for Christmas presents.  My darling daughter did the hard work and cut them out for me.  We put the rest of the cardboard in the recycle bin and the girls will be using these when they wrap their gifts.

In the kitchen I set out a bottle of peppermint scented holiday soap I had picked up for 99¢ while Christmas shopping.  A festive little touch for my kitchen.

I used items I already had on hand to complete two extra gifts for my girls.  I can hardly wait to show you all of the Christmas gifts I made this year.

I mended a floor pillow for a friend.  It had been placed too close to the fireplace and melted a corner.  Once I was done you can't even tell it ever happened.  Good thing too, because I know she spent a small fortune on those pillows.

I darned a hole I found in my sock while it was on my foot!  No procrastination in this case. Ha, ha!

I used granulated sugar and molasses to mix up some homemade brown sugar.

We shared our kitchen scraps with the chickens.  Two of our girls our going through a hard molt and look just awful.  The other two, however look beautiful with their new feathers.

We use the deep litter method in our coop so I cleaned out the nests and put that bedding under the roost.  I then refilled the nests with nice clean bedding.  I scrubbed the water feeders and raked out the lost feathers in the pen area.  The coop is winter ready and they seem pretty happy.

Coconut Cream

I worked several hours of overtime.  I was able to work from home after the girls went to bed which made it nice.  I plan to use the extra pay to pay off the JC Penney card I used for the girl's coats and make an extra payment on the viola I put on my PayPal account (no interest).

When we arrived home from vacation I had just under a quarter tank of fuel left in the car and I managed to make it last throughout the week.  On the way home from work Friday evening I stopped at Fred Meyer's gas station to fill the tank for $1.91 a gallon!

After buying gas I stopped in at Fred Meyer to pick up milk and lettuce.  I was happy to find bags of salad mix on markdown.  We didn’t need much so I just picked up a package of smoked sausages and some salami too while I was there.

Saturday we stopped into ShopKo and picked up a red Christmas storage bin on sale for $4.99.  I went through all of our Christmas décor and put the mini tree, lights and ornaments in it.  I plan to use this bin to hold the Christmas items and décor for my future retirement house.

The youngest and I spent some time mending a string of colored Christmas tree lights.  We were amazed when we were successful and all the lights worked.  This means no new lights are needed this year.

I washed out a couple of Ziploc bags to reuse.

How was your Thrifty week?