Last Week's Thrifty Moves

 

I seriously missed you guys!  I really did and while it was nice to take a break and focus my attention on other things it is also very good to be back in the swing of things.  Needless to say we've been a little busy around here and I will be sharing some of what has been going on in a few upcoming posts.  But the most important thing is that you all know how appreciative I am for your kind words and how much you all mean to me.  With that in mind, let's get back to this blogging thing!  Shall we?

 

Last week on Sunday morning we awoke to our first hard freeze.  So far we have been keeping up just fine with our infrared heater that resides in our downstairs hallway during the winter and the fireplace in the living room to heat our house.  I've been hoping to be able to wait until November to turn on our main electric baseboard heating.  One thing I can say about our little house is that it is very well insulated.  And that little electric fireplace does an amazing job heating up our main floor.

 

I got myself dressed and out the door with a hot cup of coffee in hand.  I hadn't done much in the way of grocery shopping so far this past month but the sales were good and I had a list as well as some coupons to use so I headed off first to Winco to pick up produce, Keto bread (best price) and a couple pantry items.  I then went to Albertsons where I was able to pick up some beautiful New York Strip steaks on sale for only $4.99 a pound!  Best price I've seen so far this year.  Now our Christmas dinner is in the freezer.  Yay!

 

Holiday dinners!

The youngest and I enjoyed breakfast for dinner Sunday night with sausage links and French toast.  Absolutely delicious.  I'm always so pleased with how wonderful the simple meals we prepare taste.  And I am so grateful they make Keto bread now so I can still enjoy French toast on occasion.  After we ate our dinner we cleaned up the kitchen and then I gave my darling daughter a haircut.

 

Monday I did some Christmas shopping.  I spent $20 from my Christmas Fund and everything I purchased was on sale.  I am almost finished with my holiday gift shopping which is pretty exciting.  I've never been this far along this early before.

 

I did one of my $10 preps.  All of this was on sale + I had coupons.
Surprisingly, I ended up not spending the entire $10! Yay!

The rest of our week was the usual go to work, go to school and try to keep up on it all as we went along.  I had cooked quite a bit over the weekend so we were able to fix ourselves a lot of quick meals by simply reheating leftovers most of the week.  There was plenty for lunches too and I made a nice big green salad to have along with our meals.  Sliced leftover chicken on top of leftover salad became one of our meals as well.  It was a very good week for food at our house.

 

Banana Bread

We made sure to get all of our bins filled up with yard debris and set at the curb for collection on Thursday morning.  With our big yard cleanup project this year we are trying to get it all done without needing to take a trip to the dump.  So far, so good.  With the good hard freeze we had all of our trees are really dumping their leaves right now too so we'll be pretty busy for a while.

 

I think I've made a few cards

Thursday evening I photographed all of the greeting cards I have made so far since I got the die cutting machine for my birthday in September and put them all up for sale in my Etsy Shoppe.  If you are at all interested in any of them you can click here.

 

My photos don't do them justice.  These are so pretty.

Friday was a vacation day for me so I could enjoy a nice three day weekend.  I am planning to have more of those in the future and I'm quite excited about it.  While my daughter was in school that day I worked out in the yard some more before moving inside to work on the crafting projects I have going.  Same thing again on Saturday, while she worked I went outside and got quite a bit more done.  I still have a long way to go, but it feels really good to be outside in the sunshine and fresh air while making progress on yard work.

 

The girl and I spent our Halloween evening watching movies.  We watched the new Terminator -Dark Fate movie for free using our Amazon Prime membership and then the original 1984 movie The Terminator from our own DVD collection.

 

I was gifted a bag of apples at work.  Because they were a little soft they weren't much good for snacking, however just fine to make up a batch of apple butter in my slow cooker.  And the chickens loved the cores and little bits I'd cut off.

 

We have dug out all of our winter gear - coats, gloves, hats, scarves, boots, fuzzy socks, winter pajamas and begun to use it as our temperatures have dipped dramatically this past week.  Our beds are made up with flannel sheets and warm blankets and there are plenty of cozy throw blankets about the house.  As the week progressed it did warm back up quite a bit, but for how long is hard to tell.  I do know the cold weather season is on its way and we are ready.

 

It is so good to be back after my little break.  How was your thrifty week?  Anything exciting happen while I was away?