Last Week's Thrifty Moves

Sunday I awoke to rain which put a damper on our plans for an outdoor family photo shoot, but it did allow us to be able to stay home all day.  I trimmed my bangs and gave the youngest a haircut, ran a large load of laundry and did my Sunday chores of dusting and vacuuming the downstairs section of our home.  The girls did their chores, practiced instruments and finished up homework.  I helped the oldest with some more college application stuff too.  I'll be really happy when all of that is behind us.

For a few weeks now I noticed the sink in the downstairs bathroom was draining slowly so I decided it was time to pull the drain and clear the clog.  Be happy I didn't feel compelled to take a picture.  It was gross.  But the trap is clear and the sink drains normally again.

I did a little bit of online Christmas shopping at Amazon.  I happened across a killer deal on something I was planning to get my youngest for a third of the price I was expecting to spend.  Score!  That allowed me to use the difference to get a few more items for her birthday gift bag I'm putting together.  I also got my oldest a Christmas gift so now I'm feeling much better about where I'm at with gifts so far.  And everything arrived via free shipping too.

Wednesday I left work early and took my oldest daughter to the DMV and guess what?  She has her learners permit and three driving lessons under her belt so far.  I am super excited that she has finally taken the plunge and I'm having a lot of fun teaching her.  I think she is having fun too.  There for a while I was beginning to think she was never going to do it.

I did a bit of grocery shopping on Tuesday at Albertson's and Friday at Fred Meyer.  I picked up only loss leader sales items and a couple markdown items spending only a total of $37 for four bags of groceries.  I was pretty happy about that.  We are now well stocked with boxed macaroni & cheese (most of that is going to the school food pantry), apple juice, pasta sauce, bread for sandwiches for the girl's lunches, cheese (99¢ each) and PopTarts (99¢ each, some of these will go to the school food pantry also).  Grapes were 88¢ a pound and they were so good.  Didn't last long either.  At Albertson's I used a $5 OFF coupon I downloaded to my store card which made my total there only $27 (I walked out with three bags of groceries) and I used some rewards points I had earned to score a free jar of peanut butter.

Markdown items

I had some leftover frosting from the marching band bake sale so I whipped up a batch of vanilla cupcakes and used it up.  I took the cupcakes into work for my co-workers to enjoy.  I saved six of them for the girls to have in their lunches.  I rinsed out the frosting containers and put them in our recycle bin along with the cake mix box.  We recycle so much packaging we hardly put anything into the trash.

I took a bowl of ripe cherry tomatoes as well as a cucumber from our garden into work to share with my co-workers.  The tomatoes are ripening faster than we can eat them and they are so good.  Nothing compares to homegrown tomatoes, especially the cherries.

I added water to the fabric softener bottle and gave it a good shake to get all that was left out of the bottle.  I had enough stuff for one more load of laundry and then I put the bottle into our recycle bin.

Thursday the outside temperature dropped down into the 20s at night.  Needless to say we needed to turn on our main heating system.  I'm impressed we made it into November before that was a necessity.

All stretched out next to my recliner.  I just love this little critter!

Friday and Saturday were our craziest days of the week.  I left work and took an early and longer lunch so I could pick up my oldest and run her down to the band room at Boise State.  She was invited to march with the Blue Thunder Marching Band at the football game that night.  I didn't go back to pick her up until after midnight when it was all over.

Since I knew I had to stay up late I decided to use that time to get some stuff done.  First a quick trip to Fred Meyer on my way home from work for some more loss leader items that were on sale. Then, once I got home, I changed into my grubbies and got to work with my youngest daughter raking leaves.  We got two huge piles raked up just as the sun was setting and got them all mulched by the porch light.  I dumped two bags of mulch in the chicken coop for the hens to mess around in and the rest were used to cover the garden boxes in the backyard.  I am so happy I invested in that mulcher last year.  We ate a dinner of leftovers, played with the bunny and watched Footloose until it was time for me to go get the oldest.

My quick trip into Fred Meyer

Saturday we were up early as my youngest had Orchestra Festival.  Unfortunately she woke up with a head cold and wasn't feeling well and I had woken up with a horrible stomach ache, but we persevered.  She played in a quintet and it was really nice.  I always get goosebumps when she performs and they did an excellent job.  Once we got home she went to bed as did my oldest who was exhausted from her late night and I curled up in my recliner.  Nothing I had planned to do that day ended up getting done, except for the laundry.  Some days are just that way though.

I went into work early three of the five days last week in order to not have to use any of my stored time off on the day I left early for the DMV or the longer lunch I took on Friday to run my oldest to the university for marching band.  I'm super thrifty with my time off too.  I like to use it for fun!

Mulching leaves

We added coffee grounds, tea bags, banana peels, egg shells and onion skins to our compost bin.  We fed our kitchen scraps to the chickens and they provided us with about a dozen eggs.  With the colder weather production has slowed a bit.

How was your thrifty week?