Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Wow, hard to believe it's Friday.  The passage of time this week has gone weird due to the end of the school year that started Wednesday.  So I keep thinking it's a different day as of yet *laugh*.  Thank goodness for alarms on cell phones to let me know about therapies, or I would have been in trouble this week.

Anyway, since it's Friday it's time for another Frugal Friday.  As weeks go, this was a good one to score some free stuff.

1.  The first free thing I got I just foraged from my yard.  I've been doing this for the last couple of years, but due to the relatively mild winter we had up here I was able to start foraging for dandelion greens earlier than normal, which was great because I could pick the young leaves when they started to come up and process them and everything while the kids were still at school.  It allowed me to be able to concentrate a bit on what I was doing.

I was able to get 3 bags of dandelion greens so far to store away for winter.  Young dandelion leaves, by the way, taste pretty much like spinach (at least to me) and aren't the least bit bitter.  Now if you don't get them when they are young, they do get bitter, so pick early.

2. 

I was able to score free milk this week.  I had gotten a Catalina (store register print out) coupon for 5.00 off my next shopping order from Kimberly Clark one day last week.  I'm assuming this was for me buying diapers for my son, but I'm not really sure what triggered the coupon print out.

I was able to find half gallons of milk on 50% off so I was able to score 2 gallons of milk for free with the coupon and still have a little bit left over.

3. 

I was able to get some free Jello with a coupon as well.  I had a 1.00/2 Jello coupon (store print out) as well as a .50/1 E-Coupon loaded onto my Carrs card.  They had mango flavored jello for 50% off and the original price was only .79 per box.  So, after coupons I was able to score 3 for free (I bought six and the register didn't even hiccup about it).  Only two are seen because my son was nice enough to steal one to shake and I finally gave up trying to get all three in the picture ;).  How mango jello actually tastes, I have no idea.  But, for free, I'll make jello salad out of it if nothing else.

4. 

I got a free thing of V8 Juice from an E-Coupon Carrs offered me.  It was for the new juice blends and the Golden Goodness flavor was the least...well gross sounding to me.  So, we'll see how it tastes.  Worse comes to worse, I know that I can probably turn it into a good brine for chicken as chicken doesn't care if something tastes like ground up sweet potatoes does it?

5. 

I was able to get some other free stuff from different areas.  The popcorn was a cool find.  Jolly Time sent us the history book on their company and my husband was reading it and pulled out two more coupons for free microwave popcorn (have I noted how much I love this company yet ;).  So, I went and got the free popcorn.

I had a defective box of Dream Whip come with my Amazon order last month and I wrote the company to tell them about it.  I was expecting them to just send me a coupon for a free box of Dream Whip to replace the one that was defective, but instead they sent me 3 coupons for 2.00 off Dream Whip or Cool Whip.  Dream Whip is normally at LEAST 5.00 a box and Cool Whip isn't cheap either, so I was kind of disgusted that was how they handled the situation.  But, I found when going through the Carrs ad for the week that they had Cool Whip on sale this week for 2.00.  So, I went and used my coupons to get 3 things of Cool Whip for free.

The candy on the bottom was the last couple of weeks of Freebie Friday deals at Fred Meyer (this week is the Hershey's caramels by the way).  We stopped in to grab a couple of containers of Pringles for my son and I grabbed my freebies while I was there.

Overall it was a good week on the free grocery front anyway.

6.  I was also able to score a free Christmas gift for my husband through, of all things, a Mother's Day promotion that a  printing company sent out over e-mail.  I sat down with my daughter and had her pick out what she wanted to give him (there were like 5 different gifts to choose from) and then we designed the item as she told me to.  It came out looking really cute (not pictured as my husband reads this blog from time to time).  Cost me 5.00 to ship, but was worth it.  Now to stop my daughter from telling my husband what she got for him until Christmas...ahhh challenges ;).

7.  We went to the end of the year picnic for my daughter's school last weekend, which was not only a lot of fun, but we got a free fried chicken dinner out of the deal.  They had a system where if your last name began with... you had to bring the item listed after it on a sheet of paper and ours was salad.  So, I opened up a couple of cans of fruit cocktail out of the pantry and brought it up for the dinner (I figured it was KIND of like fruit salad).  People actually really liked it and we didn't have any leftovers to bring home.  We did, however, bring a frisbee home as my daughter won one in the free drawing at the cookout.  I was impressed as neither my husband or I don't really win anything.

8.  The rest of our meals I made at home this week, which saved us money.

9. 

The last day of school at my daughter's school they had a cart of books that the school library was giving away for free.  I looked and looked for Fancy Nancy books, but didn't find any (much to my daughter's disappointment), but I was able to score some cool books.  Two holiday craft books, a book on the history surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence and "The Secret Garden", which was a great find for me as that was on my summer reading list to read to my daughter.

10.  My son brought home, on his last day of school, a houseplant that they'd grown in class, so I got a free plant.  I am trying really hard to keep it growing well as my luck with house plants has been minimal, but so far so good.

11.  We've been spending as much time outside playing as possible, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine (a HUGE thing to appreciate in Alaska during the summers) and the double benefit is that while we're outside the TV's in the house are OFF, which really helps cut down energy consumption.

12.  I've also actively been trying to do Swagbucks right.  I'm nearly up to enough bucks to get a gift card.  Mainly by taking surveys from time to time I've been doing alright so far with Swagbucks.  We'll see if I can keep it up.

So, how did your money saving endeavors go this week?  Well I hope?