Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

This week went down in history as one of the worst we've had with my son.  His moods have deteriorated the last few weeks, BAD, but this week took the cake.  We finally broke down and made an appointment to put him under at the hospital so his dentist can do any dental work that needs to be done (X-rays, teeth filling, etc) and potentially taking out wisdom teeth that might be impacted that might be causing his problems.  My husband and I are so torn about everything.  Half of us wants there to be wisdom teeth to take out and that would explain a lot of his moods and maybe he'll be BETTER after they are out, but the other half of us is dreading recovery from surgery so badly that we are hoping he doesn't have any wisdom teeth at all.   Either way, neither one of us are eating much and we are just sick with anxiety and stress right now.  Any prayers you guys could send our way that everything goes WELL with him getting knocked out and everything...man I'd appreciate it so much.  I'm a big ball of not good right now.  I am praying that they can zonk him good pre-IV and that Alvah is just not freaking out during the experience.  Praying HARD.  I want this to go well.  Please God, watch over us during this entire mess.  Amen.

After that is done we are going to switch the son's meds to put him on a medicine that he doesn't sleep on, but makes him really happy, in the hopes we can get his system detoxed off of the HORRIFIC amounts of meds I've been forced to give him and get him back to baseline.  Then we can figure out if we need to try switching his meds completely (I had an emergency pow wow with his mental health doctor a few days ago) or just being able to use his old meds once he's been off of them for a little bit.  Everything is an unknown commodity right now, and man I hate it so much.  I am one of those people that tries to make myself useful and being completely helpless like this is really hard on me.

My husband and I somehow managed to get some frugal stuff done this week, despite just living in a not great situation, so let's get to that and off of anxiety inducing, depressing matters.

1.  Alvah normally takes Zyrtec everyday for his allergies, but the store didn't have a coupon for the Zyrtec this week, while Amazon had a good coupon and a good deal overall for the pills.  So, I ordered Zyrtec from Amazon, saving 12.00 off the normal store price by doing so.

2.  I fixed a clogged bathroom sink.  The upstairs sink has driven me nuts for years because it gets clogged really easily and I could not figure out how to really clean out the drain with the drain we had in it.  I finally, quite accidentally, while trying to clear a hair clog from it, pulled part of the drain out with a paperclip and realized that you could remove that part of the drain to clean it.  It also made it MUCH easier to scour the drain pipe to clear soap scum if you did that as well.  So, next time I have to clean the drain it will be MUCH easier to do, which is nice.

3.  I fixed cracks in drywall.  Luckily we had picked up light joint compound a few weeks ago, because, unfortunately, it's come in handy.  I still have more patching to do, but at the moment, I just found it better to barricade the walls with stuff so they aren't so easily bounced off of and I'll worry about fixing everything when the son is in a better headspace.

4.  Husband fixed his MP3 player by soldering in a new battery (the old one bulged).

5.  Husband fixed a broken push broom with a electrical conduit strap and some ingenuity.  The handle had broken on said broom, but he got it up and working again, which is good as now that Spring is finally coming here, it'll come in handy to sweep the crud off of the driveway.

6.  Used up leftovers to make sure there was no food waste.  My daughter was out of the house this week to avoid the craziness here, so it was just my husband and I.  Neither of us has eaten much, so a big bunch of leftovers I had from earlier in the week just saw us through the week.

7.  Fixed a hole in a comforter.  Our washing machine isn't spinning things right and comforters get caught in it and end up getting holes torn in them by accident when I'm trying to switch between the washer and the dryer.  I managed to find one that had happened before it next went into the washer and I fixed it and then quilted through the inside when I did so to help hold the stuffing in place where I had accidentally ripped it.

8.  Daughter’s sneakers started to die and the top of her shoes was starting to disintegrate.  I, luckily, didn't have to order new shoes (man sneakers are spendy anymore) and was able to pul out a pair of sneakers I had in reserve that I had gotten for 25.00 on a pre-Christmas sale earlier.  I had actually stored them under my bed for myself, but my daughter is in between and 7 and a 7 and a half, so she finds she can wear either size, so she just took my 7 1/2 sneakers I bought and is very happy with them.  

9.  I par-baked some pizza crusts and put them in the freezer.  I was planning a pizza day a few weeks ago, but it didn't work out, so I had a bunch of sourdough starter to use.   So, I made up three pizza crusts with it and put them in the freezer.  This way all I have to do is defrost the pizza crust for a few hours, put on toppings and bake pizza normally in oven.  We are actually trying one out tonight so we'll see how they bake up.  I'm hoping they bake up better than freezing the entire pizza with the toppings and everything, because I find the crust gets too crispy while you are waiting for the cheese to melt in the middle of the pizza.

10.  The menu plan went flying out the window this week because my son’s behaviors went REALLY bad, but I still managed to make food at home, which is an accomplishment as take out was such a temptation this week to just not have to worry about one more thing.

And there you go folks.  Our frugal accomplishments for this week.  Sure hope your week went better than ours.

Enjoy.

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

The son is in a terrible state right now, so this week is a really "tentative" menu plan until grocery pick up at the end of the week (I broke down and am buying a few items to make some new dishes with the fish we got).  But, at this point in my budget, I need some type of plan or we are going to be getting take out near constantly, which we can't afford.

So, let's get to the menu for this week (after Friday, the menu will probably change, so I might update it later).

Menu for the Week 5/3 - 5/9

Monday:  Leftovers 

Tuesday:  Smothered Pork Chops (crock pot), rice, green beans 

Wednesday:  Baked chicken (balsamic honey, from freezer), rice, corn 

Thursday:  Oven fried breaded chicken (home made “Shake and Bake”), mashed potatoes, hot honey carrots 

Friday:  Pizza Night (already have par baked pizza crusts in the freezer for an easy dinner) 

Saturday:  Asian Glazed Salmon, leftover rice (we always have some), salad.

Sunday:  Crock pot pork roast with potatoes and carrots.  Home made bread.

 And there you go folks.  My menu plan for this week (even more tentative than normal).

Enjoy!

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

The son is doing better the last few days, thank goodness, so let's get to the few money saving things I was able to do this week!  I'm not going to be very wordy today, sorry to say, as I'm battling a nasty migraine the last few days...love hormonal shifts *blech*.

1.  Carrs has been hitting the "hey, order through delivery or pick-up and get good deals or sometimes free stuff" and one of last week's coupons (the ad shifts over on Wednesday) was 1.99 per (near) pint of frozen yogurt and there was a coupon for 1.00 off two on the yogurt as well.  So, I was able to get them for about 1.49 per "pint" ("pints" are now about 12 oz from what I have been seeing...the 1.00/2 coupon could be used like up to four times too, which was nice).  One pint is a good size for the husband, me and the daughter to all have a serving of something and the yogurt didn't have the peanut cross contamination of tons of other stuff, so it was safe to keep around the son.  So, I ordered 2 of each flavor that sounded good to us.  This is enough to give us a decent amount of desserts this summer and didn't cost me a ton (a container of ice cream that is safe from peanut cross contamination is like 6.00 for a not half a gallon of ice cream, so this was a good deal to me).

2.  The daughter ordered herself a paint by number with one of her favorite anime characters from "Full Metal Alchemist".  She finished the painting, which was on a canvas, but wasn't sure what to do about a frame.  With life the way it is right now and all of us watching our money (daughter is saving hers as much as she can), I looked at the Monet print I had hanging above the towel cabinet in the hallway and told her I had a plan.  I took apart the frame and flipped the Monet poster print over so it was solid white to surround her painting.  We then cleaned up the edges of her painting, stuck a few pieces of tape to the back of the canvas to help hold it in place as we put the frame together (I've found poster frames are actually pretty good at holding things still in them because they pinch together pretty tight, but we added it for extra security) and got it all back together.  For nothing out of pocket, I felt pretty good that my daughter could now hang up her painting without issue.

3.  I helped my daughter hang up her painting and while I was in her room she pointed at the painting of an English cottage that she'd had hanging up in her room for years and asked me to take it down as she wanted more room on her walls for things she was currently interested in.  There was no way I was getting rid of the painting as I really fell in love with it when I bought it years ago (it really has a Beatrix Potter cottage feel to it, which I love...it was a steal at like 5.00 when I bought it and it is numbered and everything on the back.  

So, I looked at the wall where the Monet print had once hung and thought, "Hey, I bet it will look good there" and hung it up.  And voila!  I have a really cute spot in my hallway now :).

4.  We redeemed our rewards with Red Robin to get 10.00 off my son's french fry obsession when we took him to the doctor, which was a welcome savings as it was money I had not planned on spending this week.

5.  We were gifted some fish!!!  

I am so thrilled with this that I can't really express here how happy I am about this!  Fish has been HARD to put in the budget since, geez around Covid, as it went up in price and just didn't go back down.  So, I took out the occasional meal of fish and chips or other fish dish and just added in more chicken to the menu and we have just dealt with it.

One of my husband's friends at work gave us a bunch of fish that was in his freezer to free up room for other stuff (probably hunting seasons opening up soon enough).  We were blessed with a gift of salmon and halibut!  The only place we have halibut is on the rare occasion we get fish and chips on a take out order (which we'll get french fries for the son but we eat out VERY seldom...usually when we have a gift card for a birthday or something, as eating out is horribly expensive).  Halibut up here is like 24.99 a lb, so I was shocked and thrilled to receive some of it and my husband has been told to work salmon into his diet as he's supposed to eat more fatty fish, so that was a nice windfall as well :).  

I don't have much experience with salmon and how to make it not taste fishy, but I will definitely use it.  Anyone got any recommends on recipes that makes good salmon?

6.  I finished up a container of yogurt in the fridge by adding it to a container of, nearly empty, sour cream that I then made into beef stroganoff one night this week (menu plan went flying off a cliff this week).  

7.  I used an online shopping discount code combined with a gift card I had to get a Rifftrax movie for free.  My husband and I really enjoy watching things together when we can, and I LOVE comedies while my husband loves bad movies and comedies, so Rifftrax is the perfect thing for us to watch together *laugh*.

8.  I've been enjoying listening to new vintage music playlists on Jake Westbrook's Chanel on YouTube.  I like to put them on my laptop, so I don't have to worry about ads (I use the Brave browser) and then I bluetooth the music to a little radio bluetooth speaker in my kitchen so I can listen while I cook or do dishes :).

I've also been listening to The Legend of Uh audiobooks that the author was nice enough to post up when I can.  So far I'm enjoying them (I'm still early into the first book :).

And there you go folks.  I'm calling it good there as my ability to think is greatly reduced at the moment.

Enjoy!

When Money is Tight: Meal Prep Time!

 With how tight our budget is right now (and getting worse), I thought I'd share what I'm doing to help mitigate against meals getting too boring or too unhealthy.  For a short while there, I was buying a lot of frozen (and as minimally processed as I could find) food, but those items quickly went up in price and it got to the point that Alvah in a horrible mood or not, I had to come up with other alternatives around here to make sure we had snacks (or the husband develops a nasty vending machine habit at work), easy breakfasts and the like.  So, I thought I'd go through the meal prep I managed to do for this week (before Alvah went into meltdown mode).

1.  Recently, I was offered a really good personalized price on a new product that has cottage cheese on the bottom compartment and fruit on the top and you add the fruit to the bottom and then you have a high protein snack.  Traditionally, I'm not really a fan of cottage cheese...remember eating it a lot as a teen as my mom liked it and it would be in the house, but I've never been like, "Yay!!!  Let's go and eat some cottage cheese!" type of person.  But, I did find I was the only one who was eating the cottage cheese snacks because I didn't want to waste them, whether I was thrilled with cottage cheese or not.  Oddly, I found that while the texture wasn't something I would actively seek out, the protein in the snack did help to keep me satisfied in the afternoons and was making it so I wasn't falling asleep on my feet by 3 pm.  When I looked at the normal price on the cottage cheese snacks, however, there was NO WAY I was going to pay like 2.50 each for teeny little snack packs.  

So, instead this week, I bought a container of cottage cheese, separated it out into containers and then added a can of diced mangoes I had in the pantry to the top of the cottage cheese so I could just pull them out and have a high protein snack.  It works well, although I doubt I'm going to purchase diced mango again anytime soon as there was a LOT of pulpy mango in the can I had.  I'm going to try canned peaches next time as that is a favorite around here.

And yes, I'm doing my grandma's habit of recycling plastic containers from the store to store food in.  I'm using a dry erase marker to keep what is in them straight.  I find the small sour cream containers I buy are the perfect size for snacks.  The glass bowl was actually the last portion that I ended up eating for a light lunch.

2.  I bought fresh strawberries on sale on our last shopping trip, but the strawberries this season haven't been very good and these were really sour tasting.  So, I ended up cutting them up, added in a bag of nearly empty frozen strawberries, macerated them in sugar and turned them into a jug of smoothy mix to drink over the coming week.  I like to add greek yogurt for the probiotics (for the sake of the daughter's gut health), a bit of milk and the fruit with the syrup included and blend it all together.  I also added some collagen peptides I bought on a good deal a while back to help with my husband's and my health (and heck, the daughter will benefit too).

We have all been drinking a small glass of smoothy with our breakfasts all week and it's been a nice change of pace.

3.  I took some of the various things of sausage I had found in the freezer and made a big pot of sausage gravy (if you look at the menu for the week photo from a few posts down you'll see a half gallon of milk in the photo...I bought that on sale for cheap with the express purpose of using it in baking and meal prep and it worked FABULOUSLY!).

I then separated out the sausage gravy into four, individual servings for my husband for breakfast for the week.  It worked great and kept him from grabbing things from the vending machines at work.

4.  With the gravy, of course, I had to make biscuits.  I made plain ones for the husband for his breakfasts and the daughter as well (she loves biscuits).  I used the food processor to mix the dough to make life easier and made the plain ones first and then the cheese ones, so I didn't have to clean it between recipes.  I decided to make them square this time to just make my life easier as that way there was no wasted dough and no re-rolling the dough.  Worked great.   I did make them super huge by accident as it had been a while since I had made biscuits, but ah well.  I also made a big batch of cheese biscuits and we had some with dinner that night and I put the rest in the freezer to turn into cheddar bay biscuits with future meals.

5.  I make all my own bread now a days for the most part (I do buy the son hamburger buns to destroy as he's less likely to choke on the all air store bread), and I love making the dutch oven style sourdough bread that I've made for a long time now, but the daughter asked me to make some loaf bread so the bread would fit in the toaster better and sandwiches would turn out more uniform.  I found that Farmhouse On Boone's Sourdough Sandwich Bread was a great recipe to use.  I make it exactly as written, but I end up adding about 1/2 cup extra flour to make the dough into a soft, workable bread dough and also add 1 TBS of SAF instant yeast.  The dough only takes about 1 hour to rise in the first rise, and then I found you need to separate the dough into 3 loaf pans, not two, or you end up with super huge loaves that might nor might not get jammed into the top of your oven (ask me how I know).  I then let the dough rise for about 1/2 an hour longer, split the top to let the steam escape in a controlled way, add the egg wash the recipe calls for and bake at 375 degrees F for 35 minutes.  The loaves turn out perfect every time, the sourdough adds the best flexibility to the bread so you can cut it into really slim slices without any crumbling and it is wonderful stuff.  I end up freezing the third loaf most weeks to pull out when bread is getting short, which works great when you end up with a few loaves in the freezer that way from different weeks and don't have the time to bake bread for a few days one week.

On weeks where I don't want to look up a recipe or have time to soften butter and stuff, I do just make my go-to dutch oven sourdough recipe, but it is nice to have a good sourdough sandwich loaf as well.

I had other plans for meal prep, but life got in the way this week.  So, that's all I got done.  

Enjoy!

Weekly Goals Update

Man guys and gals, it has been a week.  Not a great one, but a week.

First off, the court interview/visitation went well on Saturday.  Luckily she had experience with kids like Alvah so knew what to watch for before things would escalate with him.  After some rearranging of the seating, he was fine through the interview and I got some helpful information on stuff, which was good.  Next step is our court date in June and the court will do all the document collecting and stuff on their end, so hopefully we won't have anything else to worry about.  My husband can even call into the court instead of us having to show up in person with Alvah in tow, which will definitely make things a lot less stressful.

The rest of the weekend, Alvah started acting weird and by Monday he was not doing well and not stable.  After a few days of more medication than I wanted to give him, a lot of outbursts and more walls to fix, yesterday he woke up and started trying to shove entire blankets and clothing down his throat.  I was scared to death he was going to inhale that crap into his airway and we were concerned that maybe he had strep again (since the last time he tried shoving things down his throat was when he had it), so we took him to the doctor's yesterday.  The test came back negative, but my husband thought maybe Alvah had a sore throat either way (I mean your tonsils can be swollen without strep, of course), so we decided to ride it out as much as we could.  He didn't sleep last night and started doing the same thing at 3:00 in the morning, but after a lot of struggling to stop him from hurting himself and a bunch of medication, he finally settled down.  He woke up this morning in a much more stable condition and has been eating and drinking like normal so far, so hopefully whatever the heck was going on is past.  

During one his outbursts, I threw my hand up between his head and the wall to stop him from hurting himself on a wall that had no hollow spot behind the drywall, but all 2x4 structural stuff and I ended up bruising the crap out of my hand as a result.  Typing hasn't really been in the cards this week (thank goodness I didn't have any new paperwork to fill out).  My fingers are turning wonderful shades of technicolor purple now, but I'm way more mobile, so I'm glad I can finally get some stuff done in the way of typing and such.  

So yeah, carpeting Alvah's closets was DEFINITELY out this week with everything going on, but I did manage to get the desk cleaned off (still need to dust it, though...yeah it ain't perfect, but TRUST me it is a vast improvement over where it was...it had become a catch all for everything and you could barely fit a laptop on it...sure the shingle sample is still on there, but we'll need that) and I got a bunch of old paperwork cleaned out of our file cabinets that we didn't need anymore and put those into the "to be burned" pile of paperwork.  I got a bunch of stuff printed out and organized for Alvah's new stage in life so I can better keep track of records and such and know where to go to take guardianship classes and things online (husband has to take them too, so doubly nice to have it in an easy to find location).  

As for the locating of the panelling, that certainly didn't even get started.  I'll have to see if we can find it this weekend or something.

It's definitely been a mixed bag of a week.  But, hopefully, looking up.  Be prepared for more than one post today as I'm going to be doing a bunch of catch up today since the son is in an okay mood.

Enjoy!

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

I was hoping to share some frugal things I did this week, but my week got derailed by the court scheduling to do a guardianship interview this weekend with us,  So, instead of doing mending and things, I've been working on deep cleaning the whole house from top to bottom so that we can, hopefully, put a good foot forward.  Alvah's kind of unstable the last few days, so it won't be our best foot...but hopefully we'll do alright.  My anxiety is eating my stomach lining, so I hope it goes well.  

So, instead of sharing frugal things that happened (I'll, once again, save that for Monday), I figured I'd instead share our menu for this week.  

It was grocery shopping week this week.  We went and got groceries yesterday, so I have a good idea of what I have in the house now (I tend to wait on grocery week until I know if I'm going to get what I ordered or not before I think on things too hard) and that makes it easier.

So, let's get to it, shall we?

Menu Plan for Week of 4/23/26 -- 4/29/26

Thursday:  Home made chicken strips with honey mustard dressing (I just do equal parts honey and mustard and do it that way), salad.

Friday:  Teriyaki chicken burgers (from freezer that I have made up) on home made bread, chips (bought a bag of plain potato chips on sale).

Saturday:  Ham, cheese and spinach quiche (from freezer).  Salad.

Sunday:  Chicken fried steak (using cube steaks from the freezer), mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans.

Monday:  Pizza night (daughter works that day, so it's always nice to give her something she really enjoys for dinner)

Tuesday:  Chimichurri Chicken (I just mixed up the sauce, poured it over chicken thighs and froze the chicken to bake later.  It comes out really good...great way to use up cilantro that I have left over from like Pad Thai night or something without anything going to waste), corn (from freezer), bread/rolls/something starchy.

Wednesday:  Creamy sausage, gnocchi and spinach soup.  This is using up a big bag of frozen spinach that the store subbed for frozen onions one day...no idea...and some of the sausage I found in the freezer that needs to be used up. 

And there you go folks.  Our basic dinner menu for this week.  I am hoping to get some stuff done on Sunday that I can share (I am cutting my grocery budget by 1/3, basically, this pay period and next to make a 500.00+ radiology bill that came in the mail, so meal planning and meal prep is a must right now), but this is the start for my weekly plan.

You all planning on anything good for dinner this week?  I'm always looking for inspiration, so feel free to share!

Enjoy!

Last Week's Goals Update and This Week's Goals

I have to say, when it comes to last week's goals, I feel rather proud of myself.  No, I haven't completely finished Alvah's carpet yet.  I still have the closets to empty, remove the old carpet from, and lay carpet in them.  Which also means I have to remove the track from his mirrored closet (scary since those things are heavy) to get under it.  Then I also have to have my husband's help in getting the transition strip for the doorway between Alvah's room and the hallway to get everything so you won't trip on a loose carpet edge.

We did not get to cleaning the shingles from the yard last week as we are still getting snow and/or rain here *cue horror movie scream* and it made working outside just not a pleasant, viable experience.  We'll get to all of that soon enough, I'm sure.

But, let me show some pictures of what I DID manage to get done around here.

Doing the carpet was a daunting task with doing it around furniture and a grumpy teenager, but I decided to tackle it in two parts.  I just did the half that needed the most carpet put down (the half of the room on the same side as his door) and I decided (smart or not) that I was going to do it in one day so that the doorway was done (didn't want to glue myself into a corner if possible so worked my way toward the door).  That was a long day and man it took a toll on my sciatica that night...talk about no sleep to be had.  

The next day was a bit easier as I just started cleaning up the carpet on the next section of his floor so that the edges were as "puffed up" and evened out as much as possible to line up the new carpet squares with.  Man, with the carpet squares, boiling water is SO much easier to use as a cleaner than trying to use actual carpet cleaner on to get ground in gunk (Alvah is very good at ground in gunk) out...it worked well and got the carpet nice and clean to work with for later on.  I waited for the carpet to dry out (basically took a day) and the next day I cleaned up the floor and scrubbed it with soap and Borax like I did the other half of his floor.  I then used the floor leveler I had to fill in some gouges in the floor that might have made the carpet dip in weird ways and waited another day for that to dry and set.  And then, finally, on day three (which ended up being Sunday instead of Friday as we had errands to run and frustration to feel on the garage roof), I put down the rest of the carpet in the main section of his room.

I have been LOVING having a full floor of carpet in the room.  You don't have to worry about your footsteps echoing as you are doing something in his room when he's sleeping and being scared to death you are going to wake him up.  It looks SO much better.  And it is so much easier to vacuum a room when all of the flooring is the same level.  We can use one vacuum now instead of worrying about switching between the broom (we end up sweeping the carpets before vacuuming because son throws food everywhere when he eats), the small shop vac we have and the Kirby (Kirby to remove dust and deep clean things, Shop Vac to get under the edges of the room to get anything that might be hiding, etc).  Definitely saves time cleaning the room now.  

Oh and note:  If you are wondering about the mattress against the wall...that's to protect both the son and the wall.  He tends to get frustrated and beat on walls (as you can probably tell) and recently has been running full tilt at a wall and can put his knee through it.  So, I put the mattress there for now to protect the wall and his knees from damage.  I think, once we get the panelling up, my plan is going to be putting in a wall of bookcases that I can affix to the wall for safety (of courses).  He doesn't run into bookcases as they aren't a level surface to go after, and it will give me space to put out a bunch of his toys and things that he could use better access too...and protect his head and other body parts from getting potentially harmed when he's in a state.  Just need time, and money, to get to that point...story of life, really.

The color of the old carpet vs the new definitely does not match due to its age, but his bed covers like 90% of said carpet anyway and it is clean (even though it looks aged really badly now next to the new stuff), so I am just going to leave it for now.  If and when a certain tile gets too bad, we can scrape it up and put a new carpet tile down (why we went with this system to begin with) and it'll all start to blend in time soon enough.

So, yeah, now that the update on last week's goals is done, let's get to this week's goals.

Goals for the Week 4/19 -- 4/25

1.  Clean out downstairs desk of old paperwork that is no longer needed.  Put into a box to burn later on.

2.  Print out all paperwork received from the courts so far on Alvah's guardianship hearing coming up and get it organized (we just got a court date for June and then suddenly are getting court officials e-mailing us paperwork and stuff, so I have GOT to get organized for the sake of my anxiety).

3.  Work on carpeting closets in Alvah's room (if I can find time and Alvah's not too grumpy).

4.  Figure out where husband put the paneling for the son's room in the garage so that I can start pulling it out and getting it installed as soon as the weather permits (am going to need to cut it outside due to the size).  

And there you go folks.  My goals for this coming week.  What about you?  Got anything exciting planned?

Money Saving Money: Recent Frugal Accomplishments

 On the frugal front, it's been kind of basic around here, as saving money with the cost of everything has been...well it just hasn't happened.  A bunch of medical bills and some expensive prescriptions have gone onto credit card, which isn't ideal, and have to be addressed.  I also have to start calling around and seeing if I can get a quote on our garage roof.  Turns out that no one has three tab shingles anymore up here because they fell out of popularity (and yes, we went beyond Lowes and Home Depot and looked into local businesses as well).  Everyone has switched to architectural shingles instead (whatever those are), which will NOT look good with our old roof shingles from what we have found, so we are trying to see if a roofing company will have means to get ahold of our old style shingles when we can't.  While we are at it, I'm just going to get a quote on a new metal roof for the garage just to see.  At this point, it's going to be an option (woohoo for more loans *ugh*) if we can't get shingles to repair the roof right or if there is more damage than we are seeing at face value here.  At least we got a roll of tar paper while we were out over the weekend, so we can flame it onto the roof (hopefully the weather dries out here) and help to seal it from the rain instead of having exposed wood.  After a bunch of research into our home owner's insurance and such, I decided doing a claim wasn't going to happen.  We could not get a roofing contractor, anywhere, to come out and give us a quote on repairs or replacement before Spring (which was step one to doing an insurance claim) and looking at our policy and the age of the roof...we weren't going to get much in the way of a payout from insurance for the repairs and then we'd lose any discount we have on our monthly insurance for putting in a claim.  So, yeah, we are on our own for this one.

The joys of current year, huh?

Anyway, onto the frugal stuff that has been going on around here.

1.  We've gotten a few freebies from the grocery store (seen above there).  The breakfast bowl seems to be a part of Carrs efforts to get people to do pick up or delivery instead of shopping in store so every once in a while they'll have a freebie for pick up and delivery only.  Nice thing about these freebies is we've actually been getting them, which is nice as trying to get in-store freebies is near impossible anymore....they disappear FAST!  I got the flavor my husband picked out of the available options and we just picked it up with our regular grocery order.  

The coffee freebie was actually just coincidently being in the right place at the right time.  We ended up going to the pharmacy to pick up various prescriptions and there was a digital coupon for one of these free coffee drinks that was only good for a few days.  Since I was at the store anyway to hit the pharmacy, I went and found one of the few flavors of the coffee they had left and got it.  I'm hoping the cold brew coffee won't be too acidic as my stomach is VERY picky when it comes to coffee and my husband hates flavored coffee, so I'm going to be the one drinking it.  My plan is to save it and then drink it as maybe iced coffee a bit later in the season, but we shall see how it all goes.

2.  I got minimal materials to finish up the carpeting in my son's room to cut down on costs.  I had to get new carpet glue, as when I went and opened the old bucket of glue we had, it was a big science experiment of various molds (I had no idea that an adhesive could mold, but learn something new every day).  It was really old, so not sure if that had anything to do with it.  

Originally I was going to do an online order with Lowes and then just go and pick it up, but decided to run into the store after swimming one day instead when my husband could sit and keep the son company in the car.  I used the site to figure out where the glue was supposed to be shelved and then went into the store, went directly back to that spot, grabbed the glue and was able to check out within a few minutes, instead of wandering around and potentially spending more money.  I also found out that doing pick ups at Lowes has a RIDICULOUS mark up!  By picking up in store, I saved myself a nearly 100% mark up on the carpet glue (online price for pick up, 39.99 per bucket; in store it was like 24.00 per bucket).

3.  I made sure to use up leftovers as we had them, or I made sure to freeze them, so nothing went to waste.  We had chicken Chow Mein last night and for the cabbage I actually used up several coleslaw kits I had bought in the past few months that I had not had an opportunity to use before I was worried they were going to go bad, so I just threw them (bag and all) into the freezer.  These kits took the place of the cabbage and carrots in the recipe I was making last night and I picked the meat off of a rotisserie chicken carcass I had in the freezer (that I defrosted, of course) to use for the meat (there was actually a nice bit of meat on there).  The recipe turned out fine, nothing went to waste and I was able to clear out some room in my freezer where the kits and the carcass used to be, so wins all the way around.

4.  My husband has been wearing Lee jeans for years now, but the last like three years, the quality of the jeans has just gone downhill significantly.  He's actually had more than a few, near brand new, pairs of jeans rip out by the back pocket straight down the back of the jeans.  He was worried he was gaining weight and that is what was causing it, but looking at the reviews online a TON of people, small to large sized, complained about the same problem and were blaming the quality of the fabric.  I looked around for better work jeans for him as he does have to do things like crawl over bag lines and stuff at work from time to time, and found Rustler jeans were about 1/2 the price, fit him decent and have been holding up much better.  I'm slowly replacing his Lee's as they rip out with the Rustler jeans.  I've got a pile of mending to work on (including more than a few pairs of Lees), but haven't had a chance to really work on it with Alvah, so this will have to do for now.

5.  I redeemed credit card rewards for a statement credit as I found that getting gift cards (even E-gift cards) had changed and would actually (essentially) cost you money to "buy" them with your points.  So, statement credit it is.  A few bucks is a few bucks.  

6.  I gave my husband and my son haircuts.  I've still got a bunch of clean up work to do on Alvah the next week as he fought tooth and nail getting the haircut done, but we'll get there.

7.  I redid my menu plan a bit and did a quick meal of tacos instead of doing a more elaborate meal one night because Alvah hasn't been sleeping and I just plain wasn't up to doing much (transitioning of the seasons is always so rough on his already crappy sleep schedule).  We thought about going out to eat, but I put my foot down and said simply, "We can't afford to" and went home and just cooked some taco meat and defrosted some tortillas we had in the freezer.  Dinner was done quickly and with no added expense of spending way too much money eating out (I mean, dude, even a take out pizza is insanely priced anymore!  How bigger families afford to eat out is beyond me!).

8.  I put some new elastic into the waistband of a pair of yoga pants I've had for years  and years (I bought them at Target back before I moved to Alaska and that was over 20 years ago...so, yeah they've held up ridiculously well).  While doing so the tie string snapped in two and I saw it was not going to be fixed as it was fraying all over the place.  I actually ended up taking some shoe lace material I had in my sewing stores that I had bought for another project I never got to years ago and used it to make new ties for the pants.  Just tied some knots into the shoe lace material so the ties wouldn't get sucked out of the waistband, used a lighter to seal up the ends (you melt the ends of the laces to stop them from just fraying apart) and voila!  Fixed.  Nice part about that project was that I was able to do it all by hand instead of trying to figure out how to pull out my sewing machine to do it (which I need to do desperately to get some stuff done in the next bit around here).

9.  I was able to get quarts of Pacific Organic Beef Broth on sale on Amazon one day.  They had a coupon for 20% off when you bought three and they were cheap on top of that, so I did two orders of three and was able to get six cartons for $10.66.  For beef broth period that was cheap, but for organic on top of it that was insanely cheap!  I would have shared it when I got it, but the sale went away super duper quick, so I wasn't able to share it in time before the prices went back up.  

10.  I have continued to work on Spring cleaning and organizing and am slowly getting my home streamlined to work as efficiently as possible.  This week I was able to get my den freezer organized, which is where I store my meat.  By doing that I was able to find a bunch of sausage that had fallen into cracks and/or gotten buried in with other meat (probably because I was in a hurry at the time when I put it away, which is typical).  So, I now I know to start working more sausage into the meal plan in the coming months to get that inventory back under control.

And there you go folks.  Some of the frugal things I've done around here lately.  Hope money saving endeavors, big or small, are working out for you all.

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

Well, it is Thursday, but I don't have anything to post for Thrifty Thursday, so I decided to wait a day to post up our menu for this week.  I started implementing shopping every two weeks a few years back and it has served us really well in trying to keep within our budget (and saving shoppers from my son's unpredictable moods), so if you are looking at the picture above and thinking the fridge looks kind of bare, that's because we are one week into our two week shopping cycle :).

One nice thing about shopping online and doing pick up orders is that I can plan my menus a bit more carefully (and creatively) than before, which honestly has helped to stretch the dollar because I am a lot less likely to impulse buy when there are no clearance sales to shop.

So, let's get to it, shall we?

What's for Dinner this Week:

Thursday (today):  Eggs Benedict, tropical fruit 

Friday:  Pork Wellington, spinach salad, bread.    

This is a treat for my husband as beef Wellington is probably his favorite meal of all time and he's been under a lot of pressure at work and home of late.  I'm trying out pork instead of beef, because well...beef is out of budget pretty much unless it is hamburger unless there is a super sale.   I'm going to be messing with the recipe a bit...I'm using dehydrated and rehydrated mushrooms instead of fresh, using onions instead of shallots, etc. 

Saturday:  Chicken Chow Mein , using leftover rotisserie chicken and spaghetti noodles instead of the called for noodles in recipe.  Comes out really good!  This is one of my "saved and look up as soon as we want that dish" type of recipes.

Sunday:  Japanese Curry with chicken (just using Japanese curry roux blocks to make the recipe super easy to make), carrots and potatoes, rice 

Monday:  Chicken Lyonnaise (to use up some fresh onions I got as a surprise in a grocery order last week), fruit, salad, bread 

Tuesday:  Chicken Alfredo Tortellini (making recipe up as I go along with some frozen stuffed tortellini I have), garlic bread, salad or steamed broccoli 

Wednesday:  Cheeseburgers and fries

Leftovers will be eaten for lunch (including getting sent with my husband for lunch at work), or, if need be, I'll shuffle things around and not make something one night and we'll have a leftover night instead.  Vegetables like carrots are frozen, potatoes are stored in the fridge for longer shelf life.  I'll pull meat the day before to defrost in time for dinner the next day, so that lends me a bit of freedom in figuring things out on the fly.

And there you go folks.  Our dinner menu for this week.  

Enjoy!

Goals for the Week (4/12 -- 4/18)

It's Spring Cleaning time around here...okay well Spring Cleaning and the start of Spring and Summer projects.  The weather is finally into the 40's during the day, so you can open up the house to air in the afternoon, so kicking up stuff in the house isn't as much of an issue as if you'd do it in the winter.  So, I've been working on getting cleaning and other projects done that desperately need to be tackled and this week is no different.  So, let's get into what is going on around here for projects.

Goals for the Week of 4/12

1.  Get chandelier glass in the kitchen cleaned well and hung back up.  Dust the light fixture pieces as well.    DONE!

This thing was FILTHY from all the dust and residual grease that had accumulated over the winter from cooking and stuff.  It looks so much better now!

Note:  Please ignore the state of the walls in the picture above.  Alvah's been rough the last few years to himself and other things.  Step two in his room redo is we are going to put up paneling to hopefully help alleviate this situation and protect him and his room a bit better.

2.  Biggest project of this week is to get my son's floor done.

We started carpeting his floor a few years ago, but my husband never finished it because life got in the way (and Alvah burned out on people being in his room and didn't want anything else messed with).  I am tired of tripping over carpet square boxes and looking at an unfinished room, so it is finally getting done one way or the other this week.  Nice part about having a wife with near clinical OCD is when I finally start a project, it gets done.  So far I got the part of the floor where the carpet will be going down scrubbed well with a mixture of Borax and soapy water (Borax will kill anything weird that might be on the floor and help get grease off the wood that might stop the carpet glue from adhering right).  I then filled in a spot on the floor that my son chopped up pretty good by rocking a chair back and forth over the wood that wasn't meant to move that way a few years ago.  I bought floor leveler that was made specifically for this task and was approved for the materials I'm using, so no one comment worried I did the wrong thing here *laugh*.  

Then I scraped up a few carpet tiles that the son had just fouled up too badly and would just look nasty even after cleaning them (by the way scraping up carpet REALLY sucks...just wanted to share) and then poured boiling water over the carpet tiles I felt could be saved.  I sucked up the water as soon as it started cooling off a bit with the carpet cleaner.  After doing that a few times I poured vinegar on the spots with the worst stains, sucked that up, and then went over it one more time with water.  It actually worked really well and stopped me from having to go over the carpet squares with a bunch of different chemicals (that Alvah is really sensitive too right now...his eczema is just awful this Break Up, even for him).  The shot above is in the middle of the process.  Now that the carpet has dried it lightened up a bunch and looks pretty good!

After a ridiculous amount of prep work I'm finally going to start laying the carpet squares today.  Here's hoping it goes well *fingers crossed*.  I've never laid carpet before, but I've watched a bunch of people put down flooring on YouTube and things, so I'm hoping I'll do a decent job.

Wish me luck on this one.

3.  The last task on my list for this week (trying to make things doable), is to get out this weekend and start to clean up some of the MANY shingles and roof materials that are currently over the whole of my back yard, so we'll be better able to mow when green grass starts to make an appearance.  Between the shingles and just general wind debris, this is not going to be a small job.  I'm hoping we can start to source shingles for the garage roof this weekend as well (I got and bagged up a sample to match color).  We very well might have to order the shingles as regular 3 tab shingles are sold out everywhere around here (go figure), but I want to get this rolling before too much time has passed.

And there you go folks.  My goals for this week.  Hope your goals for the week are going well.

Enjoy!

Thrifty Thursday: Thrift Store Finds

Thrifty Thursday!  Here's a topic we haven't had in quite a while around here.

Before I get down to what I have bought at the used stores lately, can I just go on a rant about the price of used items at thrift stores anymore?  I mean, holy cow, are they expensive!   A used pair of pants should not cost 10 to 12 dollars!?!  Seriously, and this is sad, I was able to get my daughter a new skirt (on sale) for less than a used one costs at the used stores right now.  I know that resellers (do not get me started on that topic as they are wrecking the entire POINT of used stores) are driving prices up, but dang man!

Anyway, it has been a LONG time since I have found anything at the used stores that I was willing to spend my money on.  Part of it is the prices, but there is also the fact that people are holding onto their items more, so there is less inventory.  And the last reason I haven't bought much is that I'm really working on streamlining my home to function at the highest efficiency possible to just keep my sanity trucking along in tact.  At this stage in my life, I need that.  So, my rule of thumb is I will buy something if I need it (which I always have a short list going) and/or I have a space to put it in my home.  Period.  I'm just not into buying something because it is cool and then I'll find some place to put it later when I get home.  Nope, that ain't how my home is functioning for me anymore.  I just find that clutter gives me anxiety and I don't need more of that in my life, so I'm avoiding adding to it.

So, what have I actually run into at the used stores lately that was worth buying?  Some baking dishes!

I've been searching for a particular size of Pyrex dishes for a long time.  I have a few small like 4.5 x 7 dishes that I use all the time for, of all things, defrosting meat.  They are the perfect size to put meat into to defrost in my small fridge spaces and, if needed, fit in the microwave beautifully.  And the ones I have have either a nice lip on them to use for handles or they have handles.  But they were a bit small for longer pieces of meat like pork steaks and I'd end up with water (or worse, meat juice) that I'd have to clean up after defrosting the meat in them.  

And lo, and behold, I was able to find, not one, but TWO longer baking dishes that would fit my needs within a few weeks of each other.  One is an Anchor Hocking Brand and the other, with the nice handles on it, is an old PYREX (all caps, baby!) baking dish.  They are, if I'd have to guess, like 5 x 8 in size...an odd size now a days to get, but they fit right in the space where the other dishes sat in my cupboard and I can stack the other dishes right on top of them.  I've already used them several times now and am loving having more variety in my sizes of meat defrosting containers :).

They were three and four dollars respectfully, which I had me kind of undecided on getting them, but I am glad I finally decided to get them both as they come in handy (and if I ever make jello dishes they'd be the perfect size for that, I think).

Next up is a pyrex (lower case, so newer and not as good) lasagna pan.  I actually bought this to roast chickens in so I can fit vegetables in with the chicken when I roast it.  A regular 9x13 pan is just a bit too shallow to fit any vegetables in with the chicken and expect it to bake well.  I bought a small metal roasting pan, but it is way too deep on the sides so anything you want to bake in it takes twice as long to bake as it should as it reflects the heat too much.  So that one is going away and this one is sitting in it's place in my cabinet.

I put a quart jar of marinara sauce in the pan so you can see how deep the pan is.  I'd measure it, but honestly with my life at the moment, finding a ruler to measure is just going to take a bit too long.  So, enjoy the jar for scale.  I like how deep the pan is.  It is also just a teeny bit smaller width and length-wise then my older 9x13 pans, so it stacks in them alright.  I have my pans stacked in a kind of weird upper shelf in my lower cabinets in my kitchen, so I have to be careful getting it in and out of the cupboard, but it DOES fit, which is all that matters to me.

The pan cost me seven dollars, which made me consider leaving it at first, but my husband convinced me to buy it as I'd been looking for something like it for a long time.  Hopefully it comes in handy.

And there you go folks.  My finds at our local used stores the last bit.  I hope your thrift shopping has gone better than mine the last few years.

Enjoy!

December Wind Storms of 2025 and Life Update

Ugh.  What a year it has been so far.  And it's only April.  Seriously...ugh.

Delays in blogging were actually really easy to explain (not fun, but easy).  I had a ton of paperwork and stuff to do this year as I am trying to get everything in the works to get adult guardianship of Alvah sorted before he turns 18.  Seriously when did my kids grow up?  Anyway, that paperwork got submitted and now we wait from word from the court to start investigation proceedings to make sure Alvah is disabled enough to warrant needing an adult guardian and then we have the court date to get through.  They kind of want a neuro-psych eval for adult guardianship cases, from what my pediatrician was telling me, but we are on about four different waiting lists now and haven't gotten anything from any of them, so we are doing what we can with what we have.  I at least got a letter from his psychiatrist submitted with his paperwork to the court to hopefully make them happier about the situation.  Then there was IEP paperwork for the year, his 5 year review meetings and paperwork for that to get done and stuff.   Finally got that all done...it was a lot, honestly.  

And then March rolled around and we all got horribly sick.  It was like a flu that would not end.  My husband got it first and was over it within two weeks or so, which was definitely a good thing.  Meanwhile the kids and I went down like the Titanic.  Armina kept taking steps backward, so I finally took her to the doctor and we found out the reason for the duration of the thing, why it had different symptoms that effected us and such.  We caught a Covid variant.  We were down, no joke, all of March with it.  We are still trying to get over the residual fatigue and congestion, but I was so happy to get my sense of taste back completely (well, nearly...some things still taste weird to me) last week that I kind of don't mind fighting the cough on and off.  Somehow I managed to keep on top of housework (to a point...clean clothes stacked up and I had a huge folding day when it was all said and done and the downstairs needed to be deep cleaned when I was feeling somewhat human) and got the paperwork submitted to the court for Alvah, but boy howdy it hasn't been fun.  

Combine that with a record breaking cold spell in March (my electric and gas bill definitely reflect that...ouch), high winds (though not as bad as December) in the first three months of the year, and our tax return being a little over 100.00 this year (losing the daughter as a dependent and Alvah getting old enough to nearly lose the child tax credit...that creamed us...at least we didn't owe anything)...it's been a depressing year on a lot of fronts.  

So, anyway, now that you are up to speed on the last three months (more or less), let's get onto the last of our year in review from last year.  The winds of December.

I remember some of the quotes people were using during those wind storms...

"Whoever is holding onto December's beer, please pour it out.  They are already drunk."

"Who hurt you, December?"

"Man, not again!!!"

The last one was the most commonly repeated.  

We had winds, high high winds, for 19 days out of 31 in December.  Over 80 MPH winds on a lot of days.  My husband spent his Christmas vacation watching as things flew apart around here.  It was not fun.  At least Christmas Day was relatively calm, which was nice as we were all eating Cortisol like crazy and we desperately needed a break.

Damage on our end part one is that we are going to have to repair our garage roof as it lost about 1/3 of it's shingles.  No joke, you drive around the Valley and look at roofs 9 out of 10 roofs have damage to them.  It's nuts.  We have homes built to withstand wind out here as wind is a regular occurrence around these parts, but the wind was horrible because it blew in EVERY direction for way too long.  No joke.  You'd look out the window and you could watch it change direction three times as you watched it.  It was crazy.  We, along with everyone else, lost trees (luckily none of ours fell on anything important).  People were without power for days, some for weeks, on end.  Thank goodness Alaskans tend to be prepared, as pretty much everyone had to use their wood stoves/alternative heat source and generators this winter.  We were lucky in that we are right off the main power line, so we never lost power for too long compared to everyone else.  My sister-in-law down the road from us wasn't so lucky and was without power a lot.

Other than the roof, our biggest loss was our barn.  It is done for.  The roof finally gave up the ghost, split in half and is now sitting inside the building (RIP old friend).  

We lost part of the side of the building too, but at least that got lodged in some trees and didn't go too far.  Honestly, I'm just amazed it's still standing at this point.

The roof on the shed lifted up in a few places and really wanted to come off, but by some miracle it held.  But, yeah, my husband's plan at this point is to buy material to put in a new floor for a new shed, use the wood from the barn as much as he can to help reduce costs, and just make us one building to replace the shed and the barn as they need to be replaced with something we can actually use reliably (the shed is not in great shape by any means, but at least still has a roof).  We desperately. need to reduce costs and save money as much as we can.  The lack of a tax return (I used the 160.00 we got to buy the daughter a much needed new mattress), medical bills for my husband (MRI on his shoulder to test for a need for a shoulder surgery, heart tests to make sure he was okay as his blood pressure was really high, etc), licensing fees for my husband and other bills just have been put on credit card because with the cost of everything else going up...well I am wracking my brain on ways to save money little bit by little bit to get things paid down as quick as possible.

Back to damage on a lesser scale.  We lost the bottoms to two of our downspouts.  I found one jammed under our camper, but the other one flew to OZ, I think.  We'll have to figure that one out later.  No picture as the picture got corrupted.

Our well cover/wishing well, flew off during the wind storms and is currently sitting at the front of our yard until we can figure out how best to rebuild it.  It is in a lot better shape in the photo I'm showing than it actually is after all the wind storms.  It's pretty flattened at this point and in pieces for sure.  At least the wood for it stayed in the yard (I hope...we'll see when we rebuild it if we are missing some).

Honestly, I am depressed about the damage, but try to count my blessings.  Everyone, it seems, has some type of damage they suffered in the Valley.  We got creamed pretty good, no doubt.  So many others got it worse, though.  I found out that at least 1/2 of the Valley with the wind and just record cold we were having all winter (wind would blow away snow when we'd get it, so not enough insulation on the ground for the consistent below zero temps), had sewer lines that were completely frozen up.  This was as of last week when we found out a friend of ours was having that problem.  Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with that.  I had to climb up on the roof to secure a chimney cap that was going to bend and fly off because it lost some bolts in the wind and my husband had to climb up on the roof to break some ice on our sewer vent pipe as the wind had blown too much ice and crap down it and it was plugged (weird having your toilets not flush, but the sinks still work when that happens...it was a first).  But, at least our sewer still worked.  We didn't have a fence to blow down (a LOT of people did) and we didn't have sheds that blew completely apart and hit things on our neighbor's property (also a thing that happened)...at least our barn roof stayed with the building for the most part, so at least we can use the wood to rebuild something in it's place.  We didn't completely lose the roof to our house and have to go and live in a hotel until insurance could help to replace it (also a thing that happened to poor people).  It's a bright side to our personal dilemma and I'll take any bright side I can get.

So, yeah, house repairs and projects are in our future, so I'll try to take you all along for that.  Hopefully it all works out.

Enjoy.