Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

This was a good week on the saving money front.  So, let's just jump right in shall we?

1.  I harvested LOADS of lettuce and kale from the garden this week, as well as parsley, oregano, chives, sage and rosemary.  I was also able to harvest two more pieces of rhubarb from my yard, which I cut into pieces and froze in the same bag as the last two pieces of rhubarb I harvested went.

I actually harvested so much lettuce that I was able to give some to a friend of mine, who is also a therapist for my son, so it's always nice to be able to give her some lettuce during the summer to say, "I appreciate what you are doing for my son."

I did an inventory of the rest of the things in the yard that I want to harvest this year.  The raspberries aren't looking too promising this year.  Between a winter that was all over the map for weather, but not a lot of snowfall, the raspberries would already be kind of sparse, but than we had really young and obnoxious moose that was in my yard through a good part of the winter and ate every single raspberry bush he could find down to nothing.  So, I'm down about five raspberry bushes this year as they just plain died.  I have managed to find four remaining, but they are fighting with massive amounts of underbrush for nutrients and what little rain we're getting, so I'm not sure how great they are going to do this year.

The fireweed (a local wild growing flower) is kind of late getting started in my yard this year and doesn't seem half as prolific as normal, but I'm still hoping to get enough blossoms harvested this summer for a decent amount of jelly.

The wild rosebushes in my yard, however, are going absolutely insane this year, so at least, if nothing else, I'll be able to harvest rose hips to make jelly out of.

The garden is doing well.  The lettuce is ready to be harvested again (thank goodness we love salad with dinner *laugh*) and the kale is nearly ready to have some more harvested off of it too.  The tomatoes are getting bigger, so I'm really optimistic that I'll be able to get some decent sized tomatoes this year and both plants are still flowering like mad, so we'll see how many tomatoes I can get during our short growing season.

2.  Other than my son's therapy sessions, we kind of stayed home and chilled this week.  Both kids are still fighting off the last effects of the cold we had and I've been busy with at-home things like pantry organization and such, so it was probably for the best that we stayed put.

3.  Our local car dealership sent out another mailer in which we "won" a 5.00 Wal-Mart giftcard (they have promotions where every mailer is a winner, which is the 5.00 gift card, which is what we always get *laugh*).  I went in while the family stayed in the car as you have to sit through the, "So, are you considering buying a new car anytime soon" speech, which was actually kind of nice as the salesman I got was not only funny, but also really nice about getting me out of there.

4.  I cashed in some Swagbucks, got some Amazon giftcards and went and got my daughter a couple "Fancy Nancy" books.  I'm not big on doing schoolwork obsessively over the summer, but these books have been wonderful to encourage her to read, so even though it's taking up Swagbucks and Amazon giftcards by association to do it, I find getting the books more than worth it.

5.  I made all of our meals at home, which saved us money and I've been, as usual, careful to make sure that I use up our leftovers so things don't go to waste.

6. 

I scored free mayonnaise today!  Just as an FYI this works without a coupon for the local peeps.

Carrs, our local Safeway affiliate has mayonnaise on sale buy one get one free for certain brands, so I was figuring I'd at least get some of that to get cheap mayonnaise.  I ran into the squeeze bottles of Canola type on clearance for 50% off (they have lots of others on sale for the 50% off down the condiment isle.  This was at Palmer Carrs, FYI).  I grabbed two, figuring at 50% off at least I'd get two things of mayonnaise for like .90 a piece after the 50% off and the B1G1 promotion were taken.  BUT, the computer takes off the original price on the free item, so you end up with two 50% off coupons being applied on top of that, so you get two things of mayonnaise for free plus overage just with the store coupons and the sale!  If I had known it was going to work that way I would have bought a couple more containers of mayonnaise, but that's okay, I don't need tons or anything and this way I save the deal for others too.

I was also at our local bulk store earlier in the week where they had a container of mayonnaise for .99.  I had a 1.00/1 coupon from a thing my mom sent me, so I was able to get a container of mayonnaise for free.  I also had a personalized price of 2.99 for Miracle Whip this week at Carrs, found a container for 50% off so once the 50% off got taken off my personalized price it came down to 1.50, about.  I then had a 1.00/1 coupon I'd gotten printed off at the register a while back that was about to expire, so I got a container of Miracle Whip for .50!

The Crest I got for .25 after a 1.00/1 Catalina/Store print out coupon that I had that was about to expire.

So, yeah, as store freebies and sales went I felt pretty good about today.  Can't beat free when you are trying to make shopping goals for the month :).

7.  I sewed two dish towels, some handkerchiefs and two table runners this week, one of which is seen above.  There will be more on that in my Monthly Goal Update as I'm hoping to get a few more things done before Sunday, but I feel good about what I got accomplished so far.

So, that's what I accomplished on the money saving front this week.  How did you do?