Frugal Friday (Money Saving Weekly Recap): Week ending 2/27/15

Man!  What a week!  It's been super busy around here between taking my kids to school and my son to therapy and doing meetings and dentist appointments and trying to juggle regular stuff as well.

But, I did it!  And I got some other things done that desperately needed TO BE done, even if I had a hard time finding energy to do them all.

1.  I processed a LOT of apples (seen above was part of the work in progress).  Nearly two bushels in fact.  I had planned on keeping the apples I got from our local bulk store super cheap (thanks again for the tip, Megan!) for a while in the pantry in cold storage (my pantry area is unheated), and normally during the winter it does get decently cold in there.  Unfortunately for me, however, we have had a warm spell (not complaining as my heating bill will love it *laugh*) and the area just got too warm to hold the apples from rotting.  When I went and took some out and they were getting wrinkly I knew it was time to process them before they went bad.  I was even able to give some apples to a friend who could use some and I have some left in the fridge for my daughter to eat.

And with what was left over I was still able to make:

Some of my processed apple haul

• 7 quarts of apple pie filling (I just froze everything for the sake of not having to pull out my canner this late in the year)
• 2 Whole and ready to go apple pies (I froze them both to bake later)
  
• 20 pints of applesauce (yes, 20 pints!)
• 2 9x13 baking dishes of Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal (I cut them into squares once I had cooled them, wrapped the pieces in plastic wrap and froze in freezer bags.  Now I have super fast meals at the ready and delicious at that)

2.  My husband and I found that my daughter likes oranges from time to time now, so we've been picking up more oranges than we should really (trying to get my kids to pick up new foods is hard).  We got a great price on a bag of mandarin oranges from Carrs in the middle of getting the daughter to try different types of oranges, too, so yeah...we ended up with a lot of oranges that were going soft.  So, I made orange juice out of them.  It seemed the best way to use them up.  It wasn't hard, but I was ever so grateful I didn't give myself any cuts when processing the apples when I was squeezing the juice out of those things (I have nothing even close to resembling a juicer or citrus juicing thing).  Tastes good if nothing else :).

3.  I made meals at home instead of getting take out, which trust me, when you are processing two bushels of apples?  It's not easy to resist the idea of take out.

4.  I baked a chicken  when I was processing the apples and we not only used it for left overs for sandwiches during the week, but we also made dinner out of it and now I have the carcass sitting in a pot on my stove being made into stock.  Nothing from the chicken went to waste.

5.  We watched things for free on You Tube and other places online instead of buying videos at the used store or buying new movies.

6.  I managed to save a BUNCH of money when it comes to gas and time by calling the local office of the business where we get our speech therapy and asking if they had any openings.  I've been driving my son for a 40 minute commute for speech (one way), which was a trek and took my son away from school about 2/3 of one school day a week, which was not an ideal situation.  I'd been on a waiting list for the local office for nearly 4 years and FINALLY got an opening.  It is wonderful and this was the first week we had speech locally.  So far so good :).

And there you have a few things I did to save money this week.  Hope your money saving endeavors went well this week as well!