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?
Have you featured your salad dressing recipes before? Would love to know more.
ReplyDeleteI have! Put these in your browser:
Deletehttp://thriftymominboise.blogspot.com/2013/02/homemade-salad-dressings-and-veggie-dip.html
http://thriftymominboise.blogspot.com/2013/02/more-homemade-salad-dressings.html
Sounds like you had a very thrifty week! Love the gift tags you and your daughter cut out!
ReplyDeleteI thought they were too cute to throw away. :)
DeleteYou did really well on your buys and your mending and fixing. :) How did you mend the string of lights?
ReplyDeleteThank you Debbie. We had three dead lights that kept a third of the string from lighting and no bulbs so we pulled the bulbs out of some other lights I'd saved and then pulled out the burnt out ones. We switched them out with the sockets than fit in the strings and they worked!
Delete