Last Week's Thrifty Moves

After the craziness that was our week I slept in a bit Sunday morning and didn't crawl out of bed until 8:00, just as daylight was beginning.  I got up and started my day off by clearing everything out of our refrigerator and giving the inside a good scrub.  Then I put everything back and neatly organized the shelves.  I took some leftover salad and rice out to the chickens, collected an egg while I was at it and then took out the trash.  Once that was done I settled in with a hot cup of coffee to do some writing and even watched a few Youtube videos.  The sun was out and with the changing fall leaves my view out of my living room window was superb.  A great start to my week.  Around noon I got busy once again, clearing out and reorganizing our hall closet.  During our construction projects over the summer, this space ended up being a bit of a catch all for stuff that needed to be somewhere other than its usual spot.

All spiffy clean & organized

Monday is always such a tease.  We usually don't have anything scheduled that day so I just come home, fix dinner and spend some time with my kids.  But then Tuesday arrives and we are off to the races.  After meeting my oldest at band practice it was teacher conference time.  Same on Wednesday with my youngest only I picked her up at home and then off to teacher conferences we went. 

My oldest got her senior yearbook picture email prompt so we could go online and order some.  I was super excited and all set to place an order.  Oh my gosh they are expensive!!  Too far out of our budget I'm afraid.  So I did what they hope you won't and snipped the picture and printed them off on photo paper using our inkjet printer.  Not perfect, but not bad either and since I already had the paper and the ink it didn't cost us anything extra.  I printed off two 5" X 7"s and 9 wallet size that would have cost $169 had I purchased them from the studio!  I personally don't know how most families can even begin to afford that.

Oh my gosh, my sweet baby all grown up

After cleaning and reorganizing the refrigerator the week before I made it my mission to use up all the little odds and ends I had found in there so nothing would go to waste.  Lunchmeat, cheese, soup, salsa, juice and some condiments got all used up in lunches I made throughout the week.  I pulled stuffed bell peppers, sirloin steaks and a lasagna from the freezer for supper.  The girls had a canned soup night while I had scrambled eggs one evening.  The freezer lasagna saved the day both teacher conference nights as the youngest was home Tuesday and put it in the oven for us and then we reheated the leftovers on Wednesday in the microwave.  Bagged salad both nights with cherry tomatoes from our garden.  Easy peasy!  We also did quesadillas one evening and finished up the leftover lasagna for lunches.  Quick and easy meals to get on the table last week.  Pretty darn tasty too.

Friday's Fred Meyer grocery haul

I cleared out the bread drawer in the refrigerator and took out stale hotdog and hamburger buns to the chickens.  They also enjoyed all of our kitchen scraps from me making salads.

I picked up our Christmas dinner too! NY Strip steaks

Even better than the sale price, I had a $3 OFF coupon for their meat dept
so five NY Strip steaks for only $13.15!!  Yaaay!

Friday there was no school, but there still was band practice.  I picked up the oldest and one of her band mates from marching band practice (last one!-sniff, sniff) after work.  We dropped off the band mate and then we stopped at Fred Meyer on the way home to pick up a few groceries.

Found some markdowns

  

Saturday was all about the BIG high school marching band competition as Boise State.  We are all about supporting those kids so off we went to drop the girl off at the high school to join her band and then the youngest and I were headed to the stadium to watch and cheer everyone on.  I absolutely love marching band competitions.  I cheer on my old high school (Go Braves!) and my daughter's, plus everyone else for that matter.  It just makes my heart soar.

That's my girl on the left making her mama so proud

I washed out several Ziploc bags to reuse.  I put anything and everything recyclable into our big blue bin and dumped another collection container full of stuff into our compost bin outside.  My daughter added rabbit litter to the compost as well.

I mixed up some more Fabulosa and water (1 part Fabulosa to 3 parts water) in my spray bottle to use as our all purpose cleaner.  I use it on just about everything, including my tile floors.  I also used my Mean Green degreaser to give the new range hood a good cleaning as well as our stove top.

Fall in Boise, Idaho is pretty gorgeous

I mended a couple small holes in one of my favorite NFL T-shirts.  Awhile back one of our kitties had gotten startled and leaped off of me tearing my shirt and scratching up my tummy pretty good.  I don't even remember what had scared him.  Scratches have long healed by my shirt hadn't so I was glad to finally make that repair.

How was your thrifty week?