Last Week's Thrifty Moves

Can you believe we are officially halfway through the year already?!  Boggles the mind.

We had company come and stay the weekend and first part of the week and I was able to keep the entertainment costs at a minimum by taking advantage of a lot of the free things to do around town including a visit our beautiful State Capitol and the Boise Depot with the Platt Gardens, koi ponds and water features.

Boise Depot - Platt Gardens

Monday we made use of our State Parks Pass and drove up to Lucky Peak for a swim.  After a drive around to show off the reservoir we headed back to town and enjoyed dinner out at Pizza Pie Cafe.  I used a digital offer sent to me that morning via text so we all ate for $6.98 each, drinks included.  I love receiving those offers, especially when you want to treat your guests to dinner out and don't want to blow your budget.  Plus, the restaurant here is really quite nice.

Lucky Peak State Park - Sandy Point

Our refrigerator and pantry were so well stocked I was able to make plenty of good meals and snacks to keep all of us well fed.  We had so many leftovers, as I do tend to overdo it a bit when company comes, that we pretty much managed meals the rest of the week by reheating leftovers and fixing some fresh salads.

Summer has arrived and so far we have managed quite nicely without using the A/C yet.  I'm holding out as long as I can.  Once the sun goes down it cools off quite nicely and we open up the doors and windows.  In the mornings I've been setting our box fan by the back door and blowing cool air in.  We set box fans in the upstairs windows too.  With the house nice and cool we close everything up and it stays quite nice, especially downstairs.  Then we do it all over again.

Want to hear something funny?  Ever since we expanded the coop the hens have been extra generous to us.  Three times this week all four girls laid.  We normally average three eggs a day so it is rare for all four to lay.  I think they are quite pleased.  Thank you ladies!  Your appreciation has been dually noted.

Saturday we worked on tidying up the garage and loading all of the glass we have collected during the past six months into the truck.  We dropped it off at the big green recycling bin located in the Albertson's parking lot. 

I used items I already had on hand to build a handrail for our front porch.  While the girls and I can hop, skip and jump off of our porch some of my friends struggle due to various health issues.  Making our home more accessible became top priority to us this weekend.

We went to dollar tree to pick up some cleaning supplies, toiletries and greeting cards.  While there I found jars of marinated roasted artichoke hearts which I was very happy to find.  I picked up quite a few other items as well.  I re-supplied my pedicurist (my youngest) with nail polish too.

Dollar Tree haul

I did not do my usual grocery shopping last week as we are still quite well supplied from our trip the week before.

I had my breakfast out in the motorhome Saturday morning

I composted coffee grounds, tea bags, onion skins and banana peels.  We gave or kitchen scraps to the chickens.  I washed out a gallon sized Ziploc bag to reuse.  I put several cardboard boxes into our recycle bin.

How was your thrifty week?