Life Happenings and Frugal Shenanigans

It has been a year so far.

Alvah has been in an awful mood since the beginning of the year.  We aren't sure why completely, but it has not been fun around here (we suspect that part of his problem is hormones, part of his problem is allergies and the rest?  No idea).  Not fun at all.  Top it with my mom went back into the hospital in March and got diagnosed with stage 4 dementia.  She's fighting everything that is there to help her, which isn't helping anything.  Honestly between Alvah, my mom, the cost of everything and the never ending list that continually gets longer of things that need to get done or need to be replaced around here...I've been in survival mode and just taking it one day at a time.  It is all you can do sometimes.

We did find that part of Alvah's mood problem was definitely his allergies giving him a time when his mood went even FURTHER downhill a few weeks back and he started doing some weird, new, and concerning behaviors.  So, we got him into the doctor and she ran some tests.  Tests came back with strep and a sinus infection.  Not good news.  So, for the first time since he was like three, we ended up with him on antibiotics.  Liquid since he doesn't do pills, which is rough when you have a kid who hates strong flavors and really has problems with textures (like gritty antibiotic liquid for instance).  He was on them for two weeks because he's allergic to penicillin so we had to make sure the other antibiotics got his sinus infection.  He finished the antibiotics with only the first day thrown back up on us, which was good for him.  He got through that and then his allergies are going bonkers again because we are having a raging allergy season this year (of course).  

We have an appointment with the dentist next week to talk about putting him under sedation to get his wisdom teeth checked, get teeth x-rays accomplished (for the first time) and any work done with that and any other work doctors need to get done on him (like his mental health doctor really wants to do bloodwork to make sure his meds aren't messing up his blood sugar and things...we are pretty sure they aren't, but it is good to check).  His doctor wants to check his wisdom teeth to make sure he doesn't have an impacted tooth that is impacting his sinuses.  I get it all, truly, but if I could, I'd find a way around it.  I'm utterly terrified of putting him under.  It would be terrifying if he reacted well to medicines, but his body reacts so weird to drugs, that I'm...well...I'm trying to remain calm and not panic about it.  Any prayers would be appreciated as this is going to be a rough go here.

Armina got her grades finalized and graduated from high school this week.  It is crazy.  It seems like yesterday she was in preschool and now she's a high school grad.  Still trying to figure out where the time went there.  She is going to work as an assistant swimming instructor starting this summer, so that is exciting for her as she wants to work toward getting her swimming instructor license.

There's a depressing list of pressing items around here.  I'd go into them all, but honestly I'd probably just depress myself again, so I'm going to instead focus on a few things that I've been doing around here to save money.

1.  My son has been not nice to my house this year.  He went bonkers one day and kept slamming his chair into the wall and managed to put said chair nearly through the drywall.  I patched the huge hole/massive dent and used some food storage to make a improvised chair rail on the wall so he couldn't do the same thing again (hopefully).  Doing that also just tore the heck out of his chair, which has been trying to fall apart on the upholstery end for a bit here.  The back cushion split at the top and side and was spilling the inner cushion out everywhere.  I knew I had to fix that before I could figure out how to make some kind of new slip cover/upholstery for the chair.  I didn't have anything resembling upholstery tacks that would be big enough to hold the fake leather together, so I went looking through what I had and found, of all things, some crappy nails I got with a picture hanging kit I bought a while ago.  I used the nails, since they were decently long and had a nice big head on them, to secure the double folded fabric to the wooden back of the chair.  It is NOT even close to the nicest upholstery work I've even done in my life, but using what fabric I had with the chair that was in decent shape still, I got the job done.  It is actually holding up pretty well so far, which is good.  I've got some ideas on what I might be able to use to reupholster the top portion of the recliner here and am hoping to get time this weekend to work on it.  

2.  My grocery budget has exploded the last bit, along with so many others, but I worked really hard to get it down.  I have been working to get it down from over 400.00 every two weeks (eek!) to around 250.00 every two weeks.  I have been using the extra money in the budget from doing that the last month and using the other 150.00 to buy bulk meat when it was on sale at my local butcher (I have found with the limits at the grocery store on sale items, it just doesn't lead me to being able to stock up on anything, really).  I got hamburger (20 lbs), breakfast sausages (10 pounds), 10 lbs of steaks (a nice Mother's Day sale I was able to jump on) and 40 lbs of chicken thighs (those were from Costco as it was much cheaper there)...not all at once, but just one item at a time.  Like tomorrow I'm picking up some bratwurst and chicken sausage I got on sale cheap with a Memorial Day special my local butcher was putting on.  Not tons, but enough to see us through for a while.  Once meat is out of the week to week grocery budget for a bit, it will allow me to get my grocery bill down to the 250.00 every two weeks and hopefully keep it there and I can start to put the extra money into other bills I need to pay.

I have gotten a few freebie coupons of late through my grocery app and was actually able to GET said freebie products, mainly due to the timing of my grocery pick ups the way they have gone the last bit, which was super nice as I haven't had freebie coupons that lasted more than a day the last like three years and the freebies were always like energy drinks, which weren't even worth clipping to me.  I got a few that I'll share with my grocery haul post, but one that I got this week was a 4 pack of Haagen Dazs waffle cones.  I got the berry flavor, which worked out in my favor as they have been consistently out of the salted caramel ones (the husband and daughter wanted the berry flavored ones).  They were pretty good, but not 10.00 good which is around the price point they are normally.  Seriously, the price on stuff.  Geez.

3.  My daughter's favorite shirt tore (it is basically worn out, but she still loves it), so I mended the tear for her (I have a few more tears I noticed this week that I have to mend as well now).  

I also mended a few pairs of my son's sweat pants as the seams on new clothing seem to just suck.  I had to sew the elastic back into a few pairs of pants, sew up the crotch on a few pairs as well where the seam just came undone.  I noticed about three other pairs in the wash that I need to mend as well.  Hopefully I can get more mending done this weekend as well.

4.  I've been incorporating more and more food storage items that need to be used up into our day to day meals.  We actually sat down and had an MRE night the other night (military rations) for dinner as my mother-in-law had gifted us some a few Christmases in a row and the MRE's reached their use by date in 2024.  It was actually really fun to see what we got with the meals and I made sure to put everything aside in the accessory packets to use up as well.  We still have enough MRE's for at least one more dinner night and a few lunches for my husband and I, but we'll get them eaten up.

5.  I've worked on decluttering my den.  It is free for me to do it, needed to be done and I'm hoping I can get it cleaned out to the point that we can move the bookcases from upstairs downstairs and get more of a library set up going in the den (which was our original plan for the space when we moved in over a decade ago).  It is slow going with everything going on, but slow and steady win the race.

6.  I've been making sure to use up fresh groceries to avoid things going bad.  For instance, I found that buying a bag of carrots that they would go slimy before I could really use them.  So, I switched to using canned carrots or frozen carrots for soups and cooked dishes and then I've just been spending a bit more and buying baby carrots to use for fresh things like coleslaw in smaller bags.  It saves me fridge space (at a definite premium with this new fridge) and also stops me from wasting food (which upsets me more and more the more expensive life gets).  It also keeps me accountable to use the carrots IN a certain dish when I buy them, to keep me more on task for meal planning.  I'm not really doing a day to day meal plan anymore as I find I just can't keep to it in this stage of life, but I buy with the intent to use veggies and things in certain meals over the next two weeks when I buy them.  For instance, I bought asparagus to make with some poached chicken and rice pilaf one night in the next couple of weeks.  When I will make it, I'm not sure, but I will make it.

I am going to start sharing my meal plan ideas with the blog again.  They aren't the most popular posts in the world, but it will hopefully illustrate how I'm consciously grocery shopping so nothing goes to waste, if possible.  Every cent counts and I don't want to throw those cents away.

7.  Side tangent here.  I just wanted to take this opportunity to say "thank you" to those who order through my Amazon associate links.  Google Adsense has become harder and harder to make any money from (honestly I'm seriously thinking of just taking it off the blog entirely just to save everyone the aggravation of seeing ads) and to be 100% transparent I never made much from them to begin with (like maybe 100.00 per year on really great, "I'm blogging four times a week" years).  The Amazon associate fees have really helped me to be able to buy food for my pantry to stock up on ingredients, or other things we need around the house (like I used this month's fees to get Alvah some socks since he grew out of regular sock sizes, is now in size 12+ socks and goes through roughly five pairs of socks a day as he changes them out constantly).  I don't make much commission from the Associate link, but it does add up and DOES help out.  So, to those who have done it and wondered if it helped us at all (since I get that question from time to time), I can answer you with a definite YES and thanks again for supporting the blog (and all of its irregular posting schedule and very flawed and human content).

8.  I had purchased a small, boneless ham for New Years last year (sales on ham just weren't there and we don't really eat much ham at one sitting anyway) and when we went to pick up the groceries the manager in charge of the Pick Up and Go orders asked if we'd just like to get our ham, and an additonal small ham, for free, as they were expiring the day we picked them up and they were the last two they had.  We really appreciated that they did that for us and I made sure to put them both in the freezer as soon as my husband got home with the groceries.  One we ate for New Years and then made into soup for later (baked potato soup, but instead of bacon I use up any left over ham, or a canned ham, in it) and the second one we ate part of with Easter Dinner and then I froze the other part to use for later.  Turned out "later" was last night and I made another big pot of soup, which will last us through lunches over the weekend (husband, daughter and I all love the soup, so it is one soup that actually gets eaten by all of us, not just me, for left overs :).  I was able to use up some wrinkly potatoes that were not looking their best and the left over ham, so it was a win-win for me.

I'm going to call it good there as I'm very tired (son is sleeping about once every other day at the moment) and my brain is about to go on break, I fear.  

Enjoy!

Life Update and Craziness

Man it has been a hot minute hasn't it?  

It has been so crazy around here I've felt like I haven't had a chance to breathe, let alone do anything else.  I know that is an over exaggeration, but it sure does feel that way.

December, after my last blog post, was busy and not in a good way.  Alvah came down with a nasty cold-like virus that had him congested and not being able to breathe out his nose for a while and he'd run a fever on and off.  We finally broke down and made an appointment at the doctor's and, of course, the day of the appointment, he woke up feeling fine and got a clean bill of health from the doctor.  Sometimes you just need to make the appointment to motivate a kid, you know?

Luckily, he got better right before the Christmas holidays, so we were able to have a nice, peaceful, Christmas at home for the most part.  My husband took a week off and this year, for the first time in it seems forever, no one got sick through the holidays and we were able to have a good time without nursing ourselves back from the flu or something.  Definitely an improvement over the year before.  I was even able to adapt a recipe to make it sourdough and I was able to gift some loaves of 7-Grain-Maple-Honey-Whole-Wheat-Sourdough-Bread to some people (the recipe turned out really good and I am proud of it...a couple of the loaves are up top there...I forgot to put the split in them before baking and that's why the one went crazy on the side).  We celebrated New Years and my birthday without incident, which was also a nice change of pace.

Then the new Year rolls around and yeah.  First our garage door opener broke its gears which had stripped out from age, it looked like, so we had to order a replacement kit of those and my husband was able to install them.  The garage door acts a bit clunkier than it used to, but it does work (new garage doors are definitely becoming a more and more urgent need, though).  

Then Alvah's mood has just been...ugh.  I was warned years ago from people that autistic kids and puberty are just a bad combo.  I always hoped that Alvah would go through it okay, but nope...it's been a heck of a struggle the last few years.  His mood this winter has been awful and he's had a couple of severe meltdowns that really worried my husband and I.  I have started to up his meds and give them to him at regular intervals throughout the day, and that helps, but it still is not easy by any stretch.

We got the schedule and details on high school graduation for Armina at the beginning of the year (I'm still in shock that I have a graduating senior this year) and so excitement kicked in for the daughter.  We got her cap and gown in the mail (it fits!) and we ordered her class ring and got it in the mail.  We had budgeted for it, but not enough it turns out, but I got it sorted and we paid off the difference this month (I'd go on a rant about how everything costs and arm and a leg, but I'd be preaching to the choir so what is the point?).  She loves her ring and it will be a keepsake for her, so I'm glad we were able to do that for her.  

And then the bigger costs kicked in as first my phone decided to not hold a charge anymore and I had to purchase a new one.  I got the cheapest phone that would meet my needs for a smartphone and was able to just pay for it out of the bank account, which was way better than having to finance one.  Not a super fancy phone by any means, but it works fine for what I need a phone for.  Still expensive (over double the price of what I paid for my last phone), but at least it was doable.

And then the fridge decided to die.  Luckily, I was able to catch that it was running warm first thing in the morning and I had gone to bed late (for once Alvah's not sleeping schedule had worked out in our favor).  I turned the fridge to it's coldest setting and put a remote probe thermometer in it to watch the temperature and we were able to keep the fridge at about 39 degrees for a few days until we could find a new fridge.  I looked online and found one that was in stock that would meet our space needs.  It is an interesting design for a fridge.  The bottom two cabinets that left is a freezer compartment that is fixed, but the right hand lower compartment can be set to different temperatures...anything from a wine fridge, to a regular fridge, to a freezer compartment.  We decided to go with the smaller freezer and use our other freezers to make up for the lack of space and use the flexible compartment as a fridge compartment.  

I really wanted to get the fridge delivered, but no one could deliver right away (we were looking at four days at least before we could get one), so we found that Lowes had it in stock and we could pick it up that night.  So, I signed up for a Lowes card to get the 12 month interest free payments (so I can pay it off without the 30+ percent interest on a credit card hitting me every month) and we went to pick it up that night.  The fridge ended up being a multiple day affair.  The first night we got it out of the truck and into the garage (thank God my husband didn't get hurt during this entire ordeal as I was scared to death for his safety).  The second night my husband and I worked together to get the fridge up the front door steps and up the stairs and into the kitchen.  There my husband put the doors back on the fridge (it was to heavy to get up the stairs with the doors on) and we set it to cool for the 24 hour period they told you to do in the instructions.  The third day we got the food into the new fridge, forced the old fridge out the deck door and onto the deck until Spring (my husband is going to try and fix it to sell it for cheap) and started the process to get the ice maker cycled and working properly.  So, the fourth day we had ice.  

I ended up taking the middle shelf out of the fridge so we'd have room for more than one gallon of milk as it just made life too difficult.  It was a "flex shelf" where you could move a panel back or forward to open up space for larger items, but it just didn't let us have a good set up that way.  So, after removing one shelf and using the flexible compartment we got it working good for our needs (we just got groceries last week and was able to fit everything in the fridge, so I'm happy with that).  The fridge was too tall when I measured it originally and I was panicking that we'd have to cut the shelf above the fridge, but my husband looked at me like I'd lost my mind when he got home from work and simply screwed the fridge feet in a bit and it slid right into place (oops on my part for not thinking of that lol).  The new fridge is actually slimmer (less deep) than our old one so we gained some floor space with the replacement, which was a nice find and with the lack of handles on this one we can actually open the fridge when the dishwasher is open and still be able to remove things from the bottom compartment of the fridge.

Some things to top off the craziness that has happened of late.  I opened my door one day to find lynx prints EVERYWHERE.  They were all over our driveway, all over our front and back yard, side yard, you name it.  The part that blew my mind, though, was the sun was just rising when I found them and there were paw prints on my front porch and around my front windows, right up against the house.  And the paw prints on the porch were still WET!  I was cautiously looking around when I went to dump the garbage in the can for sure.  I took a picture of a paw print that was kind of jammed together (normally they are more spread out since the lynx have built in snow shoes) but was super duper clean in the snow.  I know it doesn't translate on the camera how big these paw prints were, but trust me...they are impressive.  We have a lynx that has come around every year for years and stays through the mating season and has its cubs.  I've only seen it rolling around on top of my storage van once and seen its cubs running across the road really early in the morning one day when we had a really late Spring, it was icy, and the cub slid a bit as it was trying to cross on some glare ice.  I slowed down to be sure it would be safe, but it got out of the way and disappeared into the ditch QUICK.  Other than those two sightings, all we ever see are paw prints.  Not so many at one time, though.

Then one day last week I got to dial 911...not something you really ever have to do.  I heard a crashing sound while I was inside the house and it sounded like a car crash (we live near a major road, so we do get them in by the house every once in a while).  I looked out at the major road, though, and the traffic was running smoothly, so I thought maybe the building next door just got its dumpster picked up (it was like -13F out, so  sound travels different in those temps).  Then, suddenly, I saw a garbage truck that had turned down our road backing up it and turning around.  That confused me as they pick up the garbage on this road that day, so I thought maybe the truck had issues.  Then I saw the smoke.  I put my jacket super quick to go and see what was going on as the fire was right near my house (like RIGHT near it) and I was worried about something being wrong.  I walked outside to get a better look and realized that what I was looking at was a vehicle on fire! 

I ran back inside and called 911, reported what was going on and once the call was over ran back outside with my fire extinguisher worried someone might be in the car.  By the time I got to the end of my driveway (total I was in the house like 3 minutes) the car was completely engulfed in flames and I realized that my fire extinguisher was going to do nothing.  Luckily my nearest neighbors were there and saw the accident right after it happened and watched the three, well-known, drug addicts, grab as many small propane tanks as they could from the car and run for their lives toward the neighborhood drug house (this seems so common for people to talk about the neighborhood drug house in their selective neighborhoods anymore anytime I bring ours up to people).  The fact that they ran off of a straight road, that wasn't super slick, at high speed, on a bright and sunny day, on a low speed road, kind of tells you something in itself, but fleeing from the accident is another layer of bad all together.  As we waited for first responders a bunch of small camp propane tanks exploded and zoomed off into the woods in either direction, which was loud and scary I gotta say.  It wasn't long (thank you first responders) and the fire department had the fire under control in record time.  My neighbors and I were asked to stick around to give statements on what we'd seen and we waited, in the cold, for quite a while, as the cops checked out the scene with the firemen.  I kept running into the house to check on Alvah, but did stick around until the cold really started to get to me and my elderly neighbor.  We told a fireman where we'd be and went into our heated dwellings.  My driveway became home base for the first responders and they left just enough room at the end so people could turn around and go the other way if they needed to turn around.  Finally after a few hours, once they were sure everything was out, the cops got a tow truck in and hauled the car away under police escort.  

Anyway, it was an interesting afternoon to be sure.  

I nearly posted up a picture of what happened, but I was worried it might be traumatic to some who might have experienced a vehicle fire or had a loved one be involved in one, so I decided to just not show it.  I know no one was hurt in this incident, but either way...I decided to not include the photo.

When it comes to the year in review and other frugal things, I haven't had a chance to work on all of that.  Alvah picked up a stomach bug when we were out running around all over the place and I've been taking care of him this week.  Lately it just seems like one thing or another happens all the time.  I have plans to work on a pantry challenge if I can ever get things started around here and got a few blog posts I want to do as well, but I'll see if God has any other curve balls to chuck my way in the meantime.

I hope you are all having a relaxing, not stressful at all, start to the year and I'll hopefully talk at you soon.

Frugal Frolics and Life Happenings: Money Saving Recap

Well, hello again everyone!

It has been a time around here and I have to say having energy to do much other than day to day activities has been really hard to find. 

For one thing, we are just busy (like so many others) this time of year and it has been hectic getting the tree up, making Christmas cookies and all the things.  And then we had a couple of curve balls as well.

For one, my daughter is going through lifeguarding recertification, so she had a complete course she had to do online for her written portion of the test.  And, of course, her laptop decided to die in the worst possible moment.  I haven't had much of a chance to figure out why it is stuck on the blue screen of death, but I'll get to it.  So, to get her course done, I gave her my laptop to use.  Since it is newer it is WAY more reliable and easier to use.  It took her a few weeks to get that done, but she completed the course and I thought I could get back to blogging again.

And then my mom happened.  She took a bad spill in Wal-Mart back East and ended up with bleeding on the brain from the incident.  So, the last week and a half or so has been nerve wracking for me to say the least.  She's up and moving around now, grumpy and frustrated, and waiting on insurance to give the go ahead to move her to a rehab facility as she's still shaky and has blurry vision.  They ran a bunch of tests and they think the fall was due to really high blood sugar, although my mom remembers none of the incident, so it is kind of hard to tell if there was another issue going on.  

Then my mother-in-law took Armina out to the movies (which was fun and I'm glad she did it), but that night my mother-in-law started getting sick.  Turned out she caught Covid.  With Armina having to go through her physical testing for lifeguarding the next couple of weeks I've been watching her like a hawk and praying she doesn't get sick (so far, so good...knock on wood).

Top it all off with Alvah deciding to give up sleep with the exception of like a few hours a night and being really grumpy about it and dude...my brain has been shot the last bit.  I thank the good Lord that I started writing things down that I needed to remember YEARS ago or I doubt I'd remember to do essential stuff.  Phone calendars with reminder alarms are the best invention EVER!  

So, when it comes to money saving things, I did get a couple of them done and wrote down, so let's recap those really fast.

1.  I made sure we ate at home despite being stressed out and really tired because I knew we didn't have the money to go out to eat all the time (I get grey hair every time we eat out anymore...I mean it's nearly 80.00 to eat out now!).  Luckily, my husband is okay with eating left overs and I ended up punting and making tacos and things some nights, but we are doing okay overall.  I made a beef roast a few days back and I'm going to use some of the left overs (we've already had French dip sandwiches with the leftovers as well) to make beef fajitas for dinner tonight (if I have tortillas...I've got to check the freezer).

2.   I did end up taking advantage of the Amazon black Friday week long deal sale and was able to order some bras for the daughter and I at a significant discount.  I was even able to add them to Subscribe and Save for January, so I saved 5% off of the sale price and also put off having to pay for them for a little bit.

3.  I used some of my Amazon associate fees to order some things to fill in holes in my pantry (thanks again to those who order through my associate links.  I appreciate it!).  I was going to use said associate fees toward Christmas gifts, but I decided to stick with my original budget that I had saved and bought gifts through that instead of using the associate fees as well.

4.  My kitchen sink broke.  The sewer line was slipping and anytime I poured a pot of water down the drain it was surging up and over the pipe and into my sink cabinet.  It was a mess when I caught it.  My husband looked at it and this weekend got the parts and fixed it, which was a relief (I had a bucket jammed under the pipe to catch the water in the meantime) and while I had everything out from underneath the sink he put in the new kitchen faucet!  I had bought the faucet ages ago and the old faucet was leaking, creating water hammer problems (vibrated the pipes with a gong type sound when you'd turn off the tap) and would just randomly vapor lock and not work for a few moments until it decided to work again, so to say I'm thrilled to have a working kitchen sink again that is SO much less frustrating is no exaggeration!

5.  My husband changed out his headlight bulbs as one had burned out on him.  Always grateful to have a man with skills that can do the work himself and save us time and money.

6.  I got a check from our mortgage company because we had overpaid on our escrow (a lot of that was probably from changing insurance companies).  I ended up having enough from that check to pay off a credit card (it didn't have a huge balance), which was an upper to say the least.  I even had enough left over to buy a beef roast for Christmas dinner, which was great as it freed up some money in my grocery budget by doing that.

7.  I cut my husband's and my son's hair.

8.  While having a ladder out to hang up Christmas decorations, I took advantage of having the ladder to deep clean the high (and pretty big) celing fan in our living room.  I was glad I did that as it needed to be deep cleaned.  I regularly dust the fans around here, but they still build up dust in areas you can't reacn and get gross, which I'm always worried about how that will effect the motor in the fans.  So, it was good to get that fan deep cleaned for sure.

9.  I was able to get a free turkey for Thanksgiving dinner by spending more than 150.00 in one shopping trip (since I shop every two weeks, that's really easy to do).  I used the free turkey for Thanksgiving and then took inventory to see what else I might need.  I already had cranberry relish in the freezer from when I put together all of those freezer preparations a while back, so I didn't need to buy cranberries or oranges for that.  I already had potatoes that I could use for dinner as well and frozen green beans.  I even decided to go cheap and use dried herbs instead of fresh in Thanksgiving dinner this year (I just pre-cooked the apple and onion I stuff the turkey with some dried herbs and then for the potatoes au gratin dish I prepare I just used a bunch of dried herbs to season the cream with before straining and adding to the potatoes...it worked great actually!).  I found that the free turkey I had was a 20 lb bird and I couldn't fit anything but the turkey into my oven when I went to bake it, so I ended up baking the potato au gratin dish in the toaster oven...and actually that worked really well and was WAY easier to clean up when it overflowed a tiny bit into the oven than it would have been had it done that in my big oven, so I might just do that again next year.

10.  I started taking everything out of bathroom drawers and cabinets, going through everything and getting rid of stuff that was really expired and things to make things more functional.  I finished the upstairs bathroom this weekend and was super happy with the results, but still have some stuff to do down in the master bathroom downstairs.  I'm hoping to get things as organized as I can before the end of the year this year, since I failed to make it happen last year.  Here's hoping!

And I'm going to stop there as my son is super grumpy today (lack of sleep anyone?) and I need to take care of him.  I hope you all are having a great holiday season and are able to find an opportunity to relax a bit.

Frugal Frolics: Money Saving Recap

 Hey, I'm back!  And it hasn't been a month!  Lol!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween.  We spent a good portion of that evening worrying about my husband getting home from Anchorage in one piece as the roads weren't great, but once he got home we all had home made pizza and breadsticks for dinner, watched some Halloween movies, had some candy and were not surprised when trick or treaters did not show up again this year (roads were not great and we might get a surprise trick or treater once in a blue moon, but for the most part they don't come this way).  

We enjoyed Halloween treats and I made some popcorn (my son ended up eating it all, but hey, I tried *laugh*).  

I even made some Halloween themed chocolates, which was fun.  I've had the same candy molds for years and years and we try to make some chocolates every year as part of the holiday.  With the son's peanut allergy, buying Halloween themed chocolate doesn't work as everything is cross contaminated with peanut.  So, we make our own :).

It was a long, hard week last week.   The weather went to "nasty garbage winter" really fast for the first foray this winter and it was terrible out.  My husband had made an appointment to get new winter tires on his car the week before (the garages get backed up HARD up here during the first part of winter as everyone runs to get their winter tires on their car, so schedules get backed up fast), but he had to make it to the weekend to get them.  We ended up with a 200.00 tow bill to tow my husband up a hill in Anchorage on Monday evening as Anchorage roads ended up being polished ice between the weather and Anchorage road maintenance services (they are notoriously bad).  It was not a cheap bill (especially to get towed 8 feet or so), but we would have paid more as it was the only way my husband was going to get home safe without sliding sideways down that hill.  We made it through the rest of the week with him getting home in one piece (thank goodness) and he now has new studded tires on his car, so I feel a lot better about him having to commute now, especially with the temperatures hovering around freezing a lot.

Last week for me was also super busy, so let's get to what I was up to all week long.

1.  Lots of canning!

Well, okay, not lots.  But, I did get a bunch done around here when it came to that.

I canned up the big bags of strawberries I had in the standing freezer downstairs to help work toward getting it emptied and defrosted.  I then moved on and canned up the mixed berries as well and I ended up throwing random bags of raspberries that I had found buried in the freezer as well as some blackberries and a half empty bag of blueberries.  The mix turned out really yummy tasting!  The raspberries kind of disintegrated in the process, but I really don't care as my plan is to thicken the mixture when I open the jars to make either a syrup for pancakes and things or to make into a pie filling to fill a tart or other dessert with later in the winter.  The same with the strawberries.  I don't care that they get kind of mushy and don't hold up to canning well as we just use them to spoon over cake to make strawberry shortcake during the winter months.

2.  I ended up deciding to can up some beans.  I took stock of our food storage the last bit and realized that we have a TON of beans around here.  We ended up with a ton of beans over the years from when people have moved and by figuring out the weights of the cans of beans we had and the bulk bags we also were given...I'm drowning in beans.  So, it is time to start working our way through them slowly but surely.  I stuck to small batches of canning as I wanted to make sure that we would use what I canned before I can more.  I don't want to be drowning in cans of beans for years until I finally throw some away or something.  I'd rather just can them as we need them and that way nothing goes to waste.

So, in no particular order (I'll link to the recipes I used in case you are interested)...

• 4 Pints of Black Beans.  I canned these without salt (which was a mistake on my part), and am planning on using these to make home made refried beans (I prefer black beans to pinto beans in refried beans) later on.
• 5 Pints of Chili Con Carne. (I split this recipe in half as I didn't want 9 pints.  I also added some other seasonings to the mix, like more chili powder, some Cayenne pepper and a few other seasonings to make it taste the way we like it.  Overall, though, I"m happy with the results.

• 4 Pints baked beans with bacon.  I also halved this recipe as, once again, I didn't want 9 pints of baked beans.  I baked them in my bigger dutch oven in the oven for the recommended four hours before canning them up and had to add water a couple of times.  They don't say what consistency to shoot for when you go to can them, so I aired on the "soupy" side of the equation.  Worse comes to worse I'll cook them a bit on the stovetop when we go to eat them to thicken them up a bit, but I suspect they'll be fine.

Experienced canners might bring up the headspace on the above pictures to me and say my headspace was wrong, but the headspace was checked (and double checked honestly) as I am paranoid about those things.  The headspace was fine when they came out of the canner as well, but the beans absorbed liquid as they cooled.  So long as the liquid comes up at least 1/2 way in a jar the jars are safe to eat, in case inexperienced canners are wondering, so they are fine :).  

Now I just need to find room for the jars I filled.  Currently they are sitting in boxes on my kitchen floor until I can get the pantry rearranged a bit.  

3.  Once I had the freezer sufficiently reduced down, I transferred everything to my other two freezers, left the door open after I had cracked and removed the worst of the ice and just turned it off.  I left it for 24 hours before refilling it.  So far it is working fine after doing that and it has been over a week, so I'm hopeful I fixed the icing up problem for now.

I'll take a picture of the restocked freezer on a later post.

4.  A side benefit of the canning and getting the freezer emptied out was that when I put everything back in, I realized that I had enough room in other freezers to completely empty the small block freezer in the kitchen.  I emptied it, defrosted it and then, after talking to my husband, moved it outside onto the deck under the protection of the roof line and just left it out there, empty and unplugged.  We'll keep it like that until we need it as a back up freezer/an overfill freezer and save some money off of the electricity bill.  My husband wants to put a lock on the freezer for security's sake, but we'll wait until we need it for something to do that.

5.  I took inventory and realized that I didn't need to make cranberry relish this year as I still had some left in the freezer from when I made it last, so I don't need to worry about tracking down fresh cranberries and paying current prices for produce to make it (which is expensive).  So, yay for some pennies saved!

6.  Special Olympics changed their requirements this year so a physical exam isn't necessary unless you are traveling to participate in the Nationals.  I was thrilled as we were due to have a physical done on Alvah this year and those are always a lot of work to get him to sit still through it all.  I filled out the athlete paperwork and got it in so it will be logged in before swimming starts up again next year.  

7.  I was able to do a virtual check up instead of having to use up gas and time to go in person.

8.  I took the money I had budgeted for Christmas gifts this year and was able to carefully stick to that budget for my family (I started adding things to a "secret list" on Amazon and that way I could keep track of the amount of money I would need as time went on).  I placed the order and am getting gifts in early so I don't have to worry about waiting in line at the post office around Christmas time (lines get ridiculous up here around Christmas with how many people order their gifts and the amount of people who send and receive gifts in the mail period).  I am glad I was able to get shopping done without having to put it on credit card with how tight money has gotten since my husband's pay cut.  Luckily, most of the money I had set aside I did so when we were making more money then we are now, so that helped a LOT.  I start making Christmas lists for the kids and husband as soon as Christmas is over pretty much, so honestly I feel that helps as it gives you a lot of time to figure out what to do.

And, yeah, I think I will call it good there as I have to get stuff done around here.  I hope your guys week went well.  Enjoy!

Frugal Frolics: Money Saving Recap

It has been busy around here, I don't know about you guys!

1.  I have been working hard trying to clean up the freezers so that I can empty out my upright freezer and figure out why it is icing up so bad.  I manage to get the ice out of the bottom and then more just starts to flow in.  The freezer is supposed to have an auto defrost function on it, so I need to figure out if there is a blockage or something that is causing it.  So, step one is defrosting it completely so I need to be able to empty it into my other freezers.  

So, step one is doing projects I’ve been putting off that we’re sitting in my freezers.  I made vegetable stock a few weeks ago and had frozen it to deal with later, and had chicken carcasses I had been saving to process into stock too.  

So, it was time to pull out the pressure canner.  I made chicken stock, put it in the fridge overnight, removed the fat after it had solidified, heated it back up and got it canning (seen above after getting out of the canner).  While the canner was naturally depressurizing, I got the vegetable stock defrosted and heated up so as soon as the chicken stock was done, I could get it out of the canner and get the vegetable stock in.  It worked well, but that was a long day of canning in between everything else I’ve been working on.  I canned the chicken stock in pints for a more convenient size to work with later and the vegetable stock I canned in quarts because those are slated for brine at Thanksgiving so canning in quarts was fine.

2.  Next up is a project I’m hoping to finish this weekend and that is canning a bunch of the berries I have frozen in the freezer.  I got two big bags of blueberries processed earlier this week (the big jars behind are the vegetable stock that I was keeping on the counter until I could open up a spot in the pantry for them, in case you were wondering) and then it is on to mixed berries and strawberries.  I’ve found over the years I really like having canned berries in the pantry for ease of use, so that is what I’m working on currently.  I’m still going to keep some small bags of fruit frozen for use in muffins and things, but I’m going to can the majority of them.

I am really scaling down canning projects to make what I know we will eat.  Things are getting too expensive to do otherwise.  Some things I have to buy (which I have scaled that variety back as well) but things like chicken stock are so cheap to can myself, that I’m definitely going to do that for the foreseeable future.

3.  I fixed my son’s closet door to close properly.  He got overly enthusiastic and ran into his closet (all 180+ pounds of him) and managed to knock the cheapy hollow core door all askew in its frame so the door wasn’t stopping when closed.  I hammered it all into place as best I could (cheap doors move so much and just suck) and got it to close right.  Hopefully the fix works for a while because I don’t want to have to buy new interior doors anytime soon.

4.  I got the cast iron Dutch oven rack in the mail.  I got it put together and got the Dutch ovens on it.  

Opinions and experience since some people asked for my feedback.  The shelf works.  It is heavy duty (so it is heavy to move around).  An absolute pain in the keester to put together as it flares in and out to hold different sized pots.  I got some bruises, some scrapes and back in touch with my ability to cuss like a sailor as I was working on it.  It does not fit into small spaces as well as I hoped as it twists slightly as an artsy type of flare in design.  Once it was up and in the kitchen, it just did not work in the space.  It just took up too much space and I wasn’t really gaining anything from taking down the kitchen cart to add that in.  If you have a decently big kitchen and like the look of the shelf, I would say it is worth the money (I would suggest having help to get it together though).  For a small kitchen where space is precious, was it worth saving up 10 months for?  No, no it wasn’t, unfortunately.

Luckily, my mother-in-law had come to visit and had really liked the shelf (and her kitchen is more modern and bigger than mine so the shelf would look better there), so I offered it to her.  She even offered to pay me what I had bought it for.  So the only thing I was out was my physical labor putting it together.  I’m calling it a wash on the frugal front.  Not a win, but not a fail.  It was, however, a disappointment.

5.  I ended up getting creative and found this spot to stack my Dutch ovens on my counter.  I hated to lose the counter space, but it made Alvah happy to have more floor space opened up, so I’ll deal with it.  I put pieces of cardboard in between the Dutch ovens to stack them so that the one on top doesn't scratch up the one above it.  

6.  To try and make the rack work, I had hoped I could rearrange my hallway closet and put it in there.  It didn’t work in the end, but I eliminated the need for one of the grey shelves I had on the floor and got the school supply boxes out of my hallway and tucked into the closet instead, which freed up a bit more floor space for Speed Racer (the son unit) and eliminated more visual clutter.  So that, in the end, was a win to me.

7.  My daughter really wanted to dress up like the 10th Doctor (Dr. Who) for the Trunk-or-Treat to pass out Halloween candy to kids.  Costumes that we could find were really expensive for cosplayers (like 200.00 expensive) and I found nothing else, so my husband took Armina last weekend to the used stores to see what they could find.  They found enough clothing to make the costume work for less than 30.00.  And the trench coat is lined and can be used for day to day life later on.

8.  My husband really wanted Mongolian BBQ.  I had some chicken I could use so I decided to make some at home.  But I  was missing some of the veggies that normally went in it.  Instead of buying things special I just made do with the veggies I had fresh and in the freezer and just padded things out a bit more with spaghetti noodles.  It turned out really well and the husband was very happy with the results.

9.  I got work samples done and in for both kids and a bit early even.  I’m always relieved to get that job done as it is time consuming.

10.  I turned two pork roasts that had been sitting in the freezer for too long into different meals for later.  I partially defrosted them, removed the meat from the bones and managed to get enough meat to make German marinated pork, Korean fried pork (just pork in ginger to make into fried pork later) and some sweet and sour pork ready for dinners later.  Feel good getting cuts of pork I really don’t use too often (but were super cheap when I bought them) in the freezer and ready to rock for dinners later on.

11.  I finally uncovered the last ham hock that I KNEW was in the freezer somewhere and could never find.  It had been in the freezer a few years so I knew it needed to be used up.  I cooked it, removed what meat I could get off of it and made a ham and cheese quiche for dinner one night.  It was delicious!  

And there you go folks.  Some of the frugal stuff I’ve been doing around here.  Hope all is going well with you.

Enjoy!

Food Preparation Day Recap

Last weekend I had a pretty big food prep day so I thought I’d share what I made with you all to hopefully maybe give you some ideas or inspiration.

Let’s start with chocolate syrup.  Our supply ran out and we have found that Hershey syrup does not keep anymore.  We’ve had it mold twice and that was enough for us (used to keep indefinitely in the fridge…no longer).  We used up the other stuff we found on Amazon but the price on that stuff went through the roof, so I made my own this time around.

I used this recipe.  I ended up having to add more sugar and water than was called for to stop it from tasting grainy and getting the cocoa powder to incorporate completely.  But, it is tasty.  Richer and less sweet than Hershey syrup (not a bad thing to me), but good.  Hopefully it keeps well.

I then made a pot of Japanese style curry one night and froze the left overs in individual portions this day.  I love Japanese curry, the family doesn’t mind it but they don’t adore it like me.  So, I froze the left overs for easy and yummy lunches for me.  Note:  I just follow the directions on the curry roux box for portions of onions, carrots and such, but I do like to double up the curry roux to make a really nice, thick curry :).

I also made a big pot of cabbage roll soup and froze the left overs that day as well.  My husband loves Erbswurst pea soup when he isn’t feeling well…I love cabbage roll soup. I ran out of it in the freezer so I was thrilled to add it back for easy meals later :).

I made two types of no cook ice cream as ice cream is ridiculously expensive anymore.   I made chocolate and vanilla.  My daughter is delighted with the chocolate ice cream as it is her absolute favorite (a nice, rich, chocolate ice cream).

Side note:  I wanted to thank the kind soul who sent me this ice cream maker off of my wish list a few years ago (they didn’t include their name when they sent it).  It has a compressor in it so you can freeze the ice cream on the spot and not waste freezer space with a bowl that has to freeze beforehand.  Unfortunately (true to form) Amazon doesn't ship this to Alaska anymore, so I didn't do an associate link to the ice cream maker (just a regular link to share for anyone who might be interested).  I had wanted one and found one that actually shipped to Alaska but it was so expensive that I just figured it would sit on my wish list forever.  I got two uses out of my new bowl style ice cream maker before the bowl started leaking white stuff around the seal, so I was very grateful to get it! 

I then made up a batch of breakfast sausage and the next day made up a batch of pancakes (I make sourdough pancakes so they ferment overnight) to make pancake wraps to go with the husband’s breakfast options.  This time I only got three wraps because the sausage was local sausage I wanted to try and it came with less links than the store bought sausage (good stuff though), as each wrap takes two sausages to put together.  My husband raided a few links for breakfast that morning which helped to reduce the amount of wraps possible too lol. 

I cut up what was left of a loaf of bread and made French toast that morning as well and my husband ate some for breakfast with the sausage.  The other 3 pieces went in the freezer for breakfast for someone later on.

I had been putting off breakfast bowls because I’ve been very tired (Alvah not sleeping the last month) and didn’t want to cut up and cook potatoes, but when I was cleaning out my little veggie scrap bags out of the freezer to make some stock I found a bag of hash brown diced potatoes that I had made and had gotten buried.  So, I pulled out some ground sausage, a dozen eggs and some cheese and made the husband some more breakfast bowls.  Glad to get those back in the freezer because my husband loves them so much.

Then I pulled out the thing of bacon I had defrosted and made some Erbswurst.  My husband loves it when he has a cold (tons of protein in it), so I was glad to restock it as he was nearly out.

Next up I took some fresh Granny Smith apples that no one but me would eat, cut them up and used them to make a double batch of apple cinnamon crumble muffins as they were starting to go soft and needed to be used.  I made a double batch because that was exactly how much cut up apple I had.  I skipped the glaze for the sake of less mess.  These are yummy and come out super soft!  I kept out six to eat and put the rest in the freezer for easy breakfast fare some weekends.

Lastly I took some strawberries I had bought fresh at a good price but were not holding up well, at all, and macerated them in sugar so they would keep better for desserts or to eat on yogurt or something.  They are now in a quart jar in my fridge and I’m going to use the rest of them to make strawberry panna cotta with tomorrow.  Great way to hold fruit over (macerating with sugar) just a bit longer if you need a hack for that.

And there you go folks.  One full day of meal prep.  But, it stopped food from going bad and put a bunch more options in our fridge and freezer.  I call that a win!