Last Week's Thrifty Moves

Sunday morning found me pretty stiff and sore when I got up.  The day before the girls and I expanded our chicken coop and built a new compost bin.  I was beginning to wonder about myself because of just stiff and uncomfortable I was when my oldest daughter limped down the stairs and told me she was stiff and sore too.  Okay, so we might have overdone it a bit.

So what did we do?  We went right outside and tackled the scrap wood pile and got all the leftover wood remaining cut into lengths for the backyard fire pot.  Because it was full of staples and nails I used my reciprocating saw and we had that chore knocked out in about ten minutes.  When we were done we looked at each other and decided we'd stack it later and limped back into the house.

Later that evening I fired up the rocket stove on the back deck and cooked some chicken out there in the old cast iron skillet for our supper.  I used up a pile of sticks we had gathered up from the lawn that had fallen after a good wind blew in the week before.  If you've never used a rocket stove before, let me tell you, they work great.

After a week off from shopping I made a carefully crafted list for Albertson's, sales items and loss leaders, downloaded some digital coupons (including $5 OFF $25 purchase) onto my rewards card and printed out some coupons from Coupons.com. Two of the coupons were for yogurt that happened to be one of the loss leaders.  I got 12 Yoplait yogurts for $3!

I pulled a small chunk of leftover pot roast, a container of split pea soup and one of the containers of refried beans out of the freezer.  I used the roast to make shredded beef tacos Tuesday night, the girls used the beans to make burritos for their lunches and we had the soup for lunches too.  We used up more leftovers in the fridge to make pizza for supper on Friday night.

I set up our portable convection/toaster oven in the garage so we can bake even when it is hot outside.  I'm actually thinking I might set it up permanently since it is far more efficient to use it instead of the one in the kitchen.

Early Saturday morning I gathered up my coupons and a carefully crafted grocery list to do a big shop at Fred Meyer.  On the way we stopped at ShopKo to see if they had put their bedding plants on clearance yet and I found that they had.  I spent ten dollars on flowers to fill my flower pot on the front porch and another one I moved into one of our flower beds.

At Fred Meyer I found a lot of good markdown items.  I was able to pick up everything on my grocery list and several more items to put away for next month, including bread and buns.  It was a very good day for bargains.  I also used several digital coupons I had downloaded and a few I had received in the mail to lower the cost of items on sale taking an additional $10 off my total.

While at Fred Meyer I picked up my three Friday Freebies I had downloaded to my rewards card.  The girls are most excited about the beef jerky.

I composted coffee grounds, egg shells, lettuce cores, onion skins, as well as banana and orange peels.

I cut a big pile of dandelion greens for the chickens and gave them our kitchen scraps.  

When I got home from grocery shopping there was another coupon booklet in the mail.

How was your thrifty week?