Last Week's Thrifty Moves

The last full week of 2018 has come to a close and today is New Years Eve.  A new year begins tomorrow and I am super excited about it.  How about you?

The girls are were on winter break last week and are again this week as well.  We have had nowhere to be and nothing scheduled except for me going to work on Monday for a partial day and then Wednesday thru Friday.  I'm off today!  Hurray!

We enjoyed a lovely Christmas Eve.  I left work at 3:00 and came straight home to my darling girls.  I prepared a delightful supper of clam chowder, garlic cheddar biscuits and a fresh green salad.  After supper we climbed into the truck and toured our fair city.  We admired all of the pretty Christmas lights people had put up and decorated their homes with.  We sang along to Christmas music on the radio and had a really nice time.

Christmas morning we got up to a pot of fresh brewed coffee and opened the gifts we had for each other.  Santa had filled the girl's stockings with loads of good things like toothbrushes and toothpaste, candy, gum, hair bands, peanuts, pencils & notepads, pens and cookies.  We had a great breakfast of sausage links and scrambled eggs with mandarin oranges.  The girls also had cinnamon rolls.

Santa brought us a 5# box of mandarin oranges and some movies on DVD to enjoy.  Now You See Me, Now You See Me 2 and The Greatest Showman.  The girls were very happy about that and we had a little movie marathon after breakfast.

The aftermath

While we watched movies I went through all of the gift wrap on the floor and collected any re-usable tissue wrap, gift bags, gift boxes and bows.  I added this to my gift wrap bin to use for next year.

My oldest daughter gave me the Christmas gift paper she had used to decorate one of her teacher's desks.  I used an empty cardboard gift wrap tube and rolled the paper onto it to keep it nice.  I secured it with a rubber band I had save from a bunch of green onions I'd bought.  Now we have a nice roll of very pretty shiny foil gift wrap to use next year and it didn't cost me a thing.

This is what I saved

Our refrigerator was stuffed to capacity which made for delicious and easy meals to prepare as we reheated loads of leftovers throughout the week.  We had leftover sausage and pepperoni pizza, ham & scalloped potatoes, steak & Yorkshire puddings, spaghetti with meat sauce, clam chowder and garlic cheddar biscuits to finish up.  I made a fresh green salad and we also enjoyed sautéed green beans with sliced mushrooms left from Christmas dinner.

We took the bulk of the leftover ham in the refrigerator and trimmed off what remained.  Then we ground it all up to make a big bowl of ham salad.  It was really tasty and good to have on hand for quick snacks and lunches while the girls were home all day from school.  I wrapped up the ham bone and tucked it into the freezer.  I plan to use it to make a big pot of bean soup fairly soon.

I made two greeting cards I needed to send to friends rather than to purchase them at the store.

We gave the chickens stale bread and our kitchen scraps.  We also composted orange peels, coffee grounds, egg shells, tea bags and onion skins.

I washed out some ziploc bags and a plastic food storage container that we were given a food gift in to reuse.  I filled the food container with the last of the Christmas fudge we made and took it into work.

We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Christmas.  How was your thrifty week?