Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

As weeks go, last week was a mix of good and bad.  The good was we got paid, I was able to stock up on groceries (including fresh produce! Woot!) and get all of the bills paid that ware due for this paycheck and we still have a bit of money left over, which is definitely a nice feeling (here's hoping we can actually keep the money that is left over this time...fingers crossed). 

We went to the bank and put in the paperwork for the home equity loan.  We're only applying for a small loan, so we're hoping everything goes through alright.  Here's hoping!  It'd be nice to be able to have the cash flow to get home maintenance projects done around here and be able to get a new to us vehicle. 

The daughter was home all week pretty much with her stomach cycling and her just feeling miserable.  She's finally starting to feel better today, so I'm praying she's on the mend.  Between her being home sick and the son not doing great still...I think he's tired and just in a bad mood because he's not feeling 100% yet, it's been a long week.  Friday he and my husband went on the yearly ski trip with my son's class and even THEN the son didn't have fun, was grumpy and not wanting to be there, and my husband had to call the trip short (thank goodness he drove the son this time so they had that option).  At least Alvah enjoyed the ride and spending time with his dad while NOT skiing, so that's something I suppose.

And so, let's get to the money saving things that happened this week, shall we?

1.  At the beginning of the week when the fridge was really empty, I started to clean it.  I figured it was a good time to do it when not a lot was in it, and it worked really well!  I still need to pull everything out of the door and wash down the basket type shelves, but overall, I am happy with how it has come along this week (seen up top after shopping was done for this pay period because I completely forgot to take a pic when it was empty...it would have been depressing to look at that way anyway *laugh*).

2.  Trying to get a better idea on how best to maximize freezer space (KIND of hoping to get things organized so I only have to run two freezers and can have one in reserve should something die on me), I started looking up vintage fridge and freezer ads from like the 50's.  Things like freezers were a lot smaller back then, at least on the fridge freezer and things, so I started taking inspiration on those on how to organize things a bit better.  Wish I could find more frozen vegetables in boxes versus plastic bags (they stack a LOT better that way), but I'm getting there on getting better organized :).

3.  I found that Amazon has a much better price for my husband's acid reflux meds than what we pay at the box stores, so I put some on subscribe and save for this month.  I always stalk Amazon after I do something like that to see if the item will go down in price after I put it on Subscribe and Save so I have the opportunity to cancel my subscribe and save order and reorder at the lower price (thus locking me in at that lower price for that month) and I saw an option for a 4.00/1 coupon on the item (I just added it to my cart so I could monitor the price better since they give you notifications on it that way), so I quickly went and made sure the coupon would work on the subscribe and save price, cancelled my order and reordered it with the coupon applied.  4.00 saved for about a minute worth or work!  Totally worth it :).  By doing this I'm saving a total of about 10.00 off of what I would pay for the GENERIC form of the meds at the regular box stores.

4.  I found Carrs had Tilamook cheese go on sale for 5.99 this weekend for the 2 lb blocks.  I had been contemplating getting the 5 lb block of cheese from the bulk store for twenty plus dollars, so I jumped at the chance to get the cheese cheaper through the sale.  I got two blocks to add to the one block I already have in the fridge.  Overall, with sales and things, I managed to get 6 lbs of cheese for less than a 5 lb block would have cost me regular price and with the smaller blocks I can actually fit all the blocks in my deli drawer, thus saving me regular shelf space in my fridge.  Total win!

5.  I ended up rearranging the days on the menu plan this week because of sick kids and stuff like that and so the other night I ended up making the coconut fried fish and chicken that I had planned on making later in the week (you can actually see the chicken marinating in some buttermilk I had to use up in the fridge in the pic up top if you look for it).  I pan fried the pieces instead of deep frying them, thus saving a ton of oil, and I didn't have sweetened shredded coconut (what the recipe called for), but I had unsweetened grated coconut (which was much bigger pieces).  To make it work, I mixed the coconut in with the actual batter, so the pieces of coconut would kind of glue onto the fish, and then breaded the pieces with just bread crumbs.  It worked well and everyone enjoyed the dinner.  And I got to use up some coconut that had been in the freezer for quite a while :).

6.  My husband glued my little bamboo cutting board that I had (it's actually an old plastic bowl lid I had, but I found it was the perfect size for a small cutting board).  I had chopped some veggies on the board and not immediately cleaned it afterwards, so the juices seeped into the cracks and made the board crack apart where the seams were.  My husband took some glue and some clamps and got the board back together, which I was thrilled he did that as I've found with my small amount of counter space (that half the time is taken up by tons of things like loaves of bread, baking dishes that I need to use later on, flours and so forth) that I reach for the small cutting board more and more to do quick cutting jobs.  Next time I get an Amazon gift card from family or through Swagbucks I am so going to go and see what I can find for small cutting boards and pick up a few for the kitchen.  They really are super handy and SO much easier to clean than one big cutting board.

7.  Instead of spending about 3.00 on some orange rolls at the store (I wanted to get us something inexpensive as a treat when we got paid), I decided to make my own with a leftover orange I had in the fridge.  I used the 1 hour bread recipe that I like and split the recipe in half.  One half became a loaf of bread and then I quickly worked with the other 1/2 of the dough and rolled it out to make into orange rolls.  I used a recipe in my Betty Crocker cookbook (I have an early 80's edition) to make the orange roll filling/icing.  I ended up having to add a bunch of powdered sugar as the icing came out runny enough that when I rolled the rolls up the icing kept trying to leak out everywhere, so I thickened it up a bunch to put on top of the rolls.  Everyone liked them and the nicest part about it was that normally with the Pillsbury rolls in a tube, we normally consume about three rolls each as they are small and not very filling, but with the home made rolls one roll is enough to fill us all up, so we have about three meals worth of orange rolls for everyone versus one breakfast with the Pillsbury rolls.  And the home made ones cost about 1.00 to make a pan of them, versus 3.00 for the tube at the store.  Definitely on the "make again" list.

8.  I used up odds and ends in the freezer and fridge this week to help make meals, so reduced waste.

9.  As appliance purchases go, I have to say that I have been loving the electric pressure cooker and my electric kettle.  The electric pressure cooker has been a God send when I'm super tight on time or the son is in a bad mood and making it so I can't spend a lot of time cooking at the stove.  Normally that would be the time where I'd just finally give in and go and get fast food or a frozen pizza or something, but now I can just throw the materials into the pressure cooker, set it and walk away without worrying about things scorching or something.  It's great.  And the electric kettle, since I got it I've found that I'm using my ginormous microwave like 99% less than I used to, which has led to a reduction in our electric bill, which is great.

10.  I went to Three Bears, our locally owned bulk store, to see what their prices were when shopping this week and found, to my amazement, that their prices were actually higher on about 90% of the goods I was looking to comp shop compared to Carrs or Fred Meyer.  I did, however, find that they had a 5 lb bag of chicken strips for about the same price that I would have paid for 2 lbs worth at the local stores, so I bought the big bag to use in the daughter's lunches (and potentially for her birthday dinner later in the month as she's still torn between hot dogs and chicken strips for her birthday dinner, luckily now I have both items to choose from :).

And there you have it folks.  Some of my adventures this week.  I'm nearly done with the shopping goals and the monthly goals here, so stay tuned for those here in the next few days.

So, how did your week go?  Save some money this week?