Monthly Goals: June 2017

June is a month where it's always busy around here and this year it's going to be even more hectic.

For one, I signed my son up for summer school this year so he'll have at least some therapy going on this summer no matter what, so we will have that going on.  I'm hoping that the one speech therapist I found is able to get him in here soon (she said it was going to be at LEAST the second week of June before she could start with him) so we might be running to speech therapy again, hopefully soon.  And then there's just a ton to get done around here as well. 

For instance, I went to Fred Meyer yesterday to redeem a coupon for a free container of ketchup I had loaded onto my card (it was the last day for said coupon...and it didn't even work, so I had to go to customer service to get my free ketchup coupon applied) and while there I picked up an ad since the online one is just MIA this week for some reason so far.  And I never even opened the ad (no seriously I didn't...and I left it in my basket at the U-Scan by accident so I have no idea what is on sale this week *laugh*) once I saw that they were having a three day sale and it was on various produce items.  The big one that I saw that I KNEW I had to find money for one way or the other was peaches were on sale for .99 lb!!!  I ran and got ten pounds (if we'd had money I would have honestly gotten 20 lbs as my daughter LOVES home canned peaches and we barely had enough to last through winter last year) and used a gift card I'd been gifted with five bucks left on it to help pay for it.  So, canning peaches is on my list this week.

I did a quick inventory of home canned goods and decided this year my canning list is going to be a lot shorter than last year.  We still have plenty of strawberry preserves left (and the strawberries I bought earlier in the freezer to make a few more jars later in the winter if needed) and I have things like mint jelly, fig jam and other canned goods still left.  Although I will hopefully hit up  my mother-in-law to grab some more of her raspberries come fall (if they grow this year with how wet it is turning out to be...they might just rot on the bush the way the weather is going) and can some raspberry jam.  Mainly with the logic that going over and gleaning some of my mother-in-law's raspberries won't cost me anything but time and effort vs. actually spending money at the store and we do blow through the raspberry jam as I put it as a filling in cakes and things.  I actually got some frozen cherries from the food bank (so, so grateful for the extra food), so I'm hoping to use those to make cherry pie filling at some point in the future (not too worried about doing it immediately since the cherries are already frozen).

Applesauce and peaches were on my "hopeful" list as we do use that stuff during the winter, which so far I'm super happy about how well that's turning out as I already have 10 pints of applesauce put up and now I'll be able to add peaches to our stores too (IF I can stop my daughter from eating them all before winter *laugh*).  I'm going to ATTEMPT to make peach pit jelly out of the remains of the peaches as I've heard it's really good and will use some of the home made pectin I made when I made applesauce to help it set (don't want to waste ANYTHING at this point).  Rose hips will be harvested this year again to make jelly and rose hip fruit leather (as my daughter actually really liked taking it to school as a treat in her lunch) and I'm hoping to get some fireweed jelly out of the yard as well this year.  The rhubarb is already bolting due to the weird weather patterns we're having and getting eaten alive by various bugs (of which I CAN'T find on the plants, but the leaves are getting big holes eaten in them), so we'll see how well that does this year.  But, I'm down to one other thing to put up for winter in the way of fruit, which is pears, so we'll see if some great sale comes up for that.  If not, oh well, I'll buy canned, but I'm hopeful at this point I'll be able to find some at the store to can as so far I've gotten lucky :).

So, let's get to all the various goals I have this month shall we?

Sewing Goals:

Make reusable shopping bags.  Design and embroider them.
Mend comforters (again *sigh*)
Mend daughter's pants (time to dig up some patches)
Mend husband's pants and a few shirts
Work on figuring out material to reupholster loveseat (it needs it)

Canning/preserving goals:

Can peaches
Can peach pit jelly
Dehydrate chives (the only thing that's growing really good right now)

Cleaning/Organizing Goals:

Gut pantry and reorganize (it's really a mess right now)
Make inventory list of pantry and emergency food storage
Make "food storage space" in den (I'm trying to figure out a good way to keep track of the #10 cans of food storage I have so I know EXACTLY how much food I have to use.  Now is the time to use up what I have left and hopefully add to food storage as I can, but if ever there was time to supplement food with emergency food storage now is the time.  I don't have much left on the emergency food storage as I've used up so much over the last three years, but I'm hoping I have more than I think I do hidden around here in different places).
Clean windows and mirrors

Gardening Goals:

Dig up small garden bed in yard
Plant potatoes
Plant onions
Plant more beans
Plant more peas, chard and anything else that looks viable to grow out of the seed stores I have
Make trellis for peas and pole beans

 Baking/To Make Goals:

Make flour tortillas for the first time (this is hopefully happening today...tortillas are expensive so we'll see how home made ones go over).  Freeze some to use later.
Make crepes.  Freeze.
Make waffles (blueberry, chocolate chip and regular).  Freeze.
Make sausage pancake bites.  Freeze.

General Goals:

Get recycling taken to the recycling center.
Take donations to the used store and get them out of the den.
Take inventory of school supplies and figure out what I will definitely need to get for the kids for school next year.
Celebrate anniversary at end of the month (it's going to be a really simple affair, but I'll probably make cake if nothing else)

So, yeah, that's a summary of things I want to get done around here.  How about you?  Up to anything? 

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

Wow, it's been a busy week.  The internet got updated (we now have internet five times as fast as we used to have), we went to the psychologist and got a new prescription to try on Alvah, which tastes so terrible that I felt proud of him for getting a quarter of a dose down him (which the full dose is 1/5 of a teaspoon which shows you something right there).  I tasted it and gagged and had to gargle with about five different things to get the taste out of my mouth.  The pharmacy that was compounding it was supposed to at least add sweetener to it to make it more palatable, but they didn't even do that and the mixture is so thick that it already killed a syringe and it's really grainy from undissolved bits of pill.  I'm not sure if the mixture is supposed to be like that or if the pharmacy REALLY screwed up the compounding of the medication, but either way...eeeeewwwwwwww!!!  And that's coming from someone who managed to get oral steroid solutions down her son once or twice.  Either way I'm calling the pharmacy on Monday and asking about the meds and if they say that's the way it is, I'm going to call the doctor and say, "No, this isn't going to work" and see if there is something else we can do.  I can't get Alvah to swallow pills to save my life without him chewing them up first, which severely limits my options.  I don't know what to do on that front.  All I find myself doing is kind of complaining to God that at LEAST he could have least made it so Alvah would swallow pills for me.

Shani has decided to move to California to seek treatment down there, so instead of renting her house up here like she had been planning on, suddenly everything is getting sold including her house and she's leaving at the end of the month.  I'm not sure what news she's gotten from doctors, but it sounds like all they can really do is cut out the tumors and then treat the cancer with chemo and things, which she doesn't want to do, so she's talking about going to Mexico for alternative treatment.  She texted me earlier in the week out of the blue and asked me to give back her dog crate that was being used as the chicken hauler so she could sell it.  I have NO IDEA how I'm going to transport the chickens when it comes to slaughtering time now, but I guess I'll figure it out when we get there, but yeah that ended up being a side job the last couple of days.  I cleaned the cage, drug it up by the back door to our garage for my husband and he took it over to Shani's today.

Anyway despite it being REALLY busy around here this week, let's get to the money saving aspects of the week shall we?

1.  I visited one of the local food pantries this week to see about getting some help with the food budget by hopefully padding out what was in the fridge and things.  I got a decent variety of stuff, which was great, including a couple of gallons of milk (which I'm hurriedly trying to use as they are over a week past their expiration date, so I'm not trying to use up a gallon or more of sour milk), a nice loaf of artisan type bread (which stuff like that I haven't bought in years), some potatoes (yay potatoes!) some biscuits and even some lettuce seedlings (yes, lettuce seedlings!).  I was thrilled with the seedlings and found room in the garden for them today.  I also got some cat food.  I will probably go back until my husband's pay starts getting better as at this point, every little bit helps.  My husband felt weird about it when I told him, but when I told him I was not going to turn away free food right now, he got it, even if he wasn't thrilled with the idea.

So, yeah, other than the food pantry, I spent 20.00 on groceries this week just buying "boy food" and some milk and that was it.  My husband picked up a few hours on the side on his off time which gave us a small check, so we went and put that into the bank today and I'll use part of that to go and get a couple more gallons of milk and some wet wipes (need them for my son).

2.  The menu plan this week so far has been...well really slapped together.  Wednesday I cleaned all day and was just plain not wanting to cook anything the least bit hard, so we ended up having hot dogs for dinner with left over coleslaw  (which I made from a kit that my mother-in-law had given us with the box of food last weekend).  Monday, I took out a gigantic value pack of chicken drumsticks that I'd gotten for like 3.00 on reduced over a year ago and knew I needed to use up, split the package in half and made one half up as BBQ chicken and the other half up as baked chicken legs with just some seasoning on them.  The BBQ chicken turned out to work out well for my husband for work lunches during the week and the baked chicken we had for dinner Thursday night and my husband had Erbswurst instead since he's got either allergies or a cold going on right now and wasn't feeling good.

Last night, I took some of the milk I was trying to use up, a package of sausage I had in the freezer that I'd gotten on reduced cheap over a year ago (by the "use by" date anyway) and some of the biscuits I got at the food pantry and I made sausage biscuits and gravy for dinner (one of my husband's favorite "comfort" type of meals).  It made enough to last probably three meals for us, which definitely makes it a frugal choice to make for dinner.

3.   My husband used up the last of the A-1 Sauce one night, so I snuck the "empty" bottle back into the fridge and when I went to pack a leftover burger for my husband's lunch the next day I added a bit of water and shook the bottle really well and voila!  Enough sauce for my husband's burger with lunch.

4.  I  found, while digging in my pantry, a Pillsbury quick bread mix that I'd gotten on clearance (you know, I should probably start stating the opposite of that, like saying, "Hey, I paid full price for this" as it'd be way less redundant since I buy stuff on reduced all the time.  Har) and pulled it out to make for breakfast fodder for my husband for work.  He and I have both been enjoying it (anything cinnamon involved and I tend to be all in and eat too much of it *laugh*).

5.  I took a little cross stitch ornament kit I had kept for...man, it's gotta be seven or more years now as I kind of stopped doing those kind of little projects right about the time my son was born, and used it as a way to start to teach my daughter how to do cross stitch.  I remember back when I was 13, I was with my grandma while she got her hair washed and set and ended up striking up a conversation with a woman named Janet who was sitting there getting her hair done as well, but was also working on a really intricate looking embroidery kit.  I just kept asking questions here and there about what she was doing and she got all excited talking to me and realizing that I was really interested in the same things she was.  Janet, even though she was my grandma's age, and I became quick friends and the next time I went with grandma to get her hair washed and set, Janet made sure she'd be there too and this time was loaded up with a bag of stuff for me.  In the bag was some tools of the trade (aida fabric, embroidery needles, a magnifying bar) and some kits for me to work on, including a cross stitch kit with "Footprints" on it.  I'd always loved "Footprints" so that was all I needed to work on the actually pretty detailed ocean scene in cross stitch that entire summer.  Janet would be at the hair dressers to help me with any issues I had and she was a wonderful source of encouragement for me.

Janet and I remained friends for four more years until she passed away from a stroke.  To this day I credit her with getting me started with hand sewing and embroidery and things.  She was a very cool lady.

Side note is that my mom loves "Footprints" too and to this day my work hangs on her wall in all of it's "knots on top of knots and tangles in the back" glory ;).

I'm hoping Armina can find enjoyment in these types of projects too, so we'll see where she goes with the kit :).

6.  I added a huge amount of things to my Amazon account in the way of food storage types of items (no joke, like 80 or more items of various types) and I was able to make my Associate fees for last month go further since it took Amazon so long to ship my stuff.  I found that the breakfast kit I had bought bottomed out CHEAP in price one day, so I cancelled my order and reordered it for like 1/2 the price I had originally paid.  Coming back on a few days later I found that the dinner kit the same company had was suddenly about the same price as the breakfast kit had been (the breakfast kit had since gone WAY up in price), so I ordered it too.  So, I got 12 big cans of food storage for the same price I might have gotten six!  Woohoo! 

7.  I mended four items this week (yay for getting something like that done with all the cleaning I did this week).

8.  I saved my coffee grounds every morning and spread them on the garden today.  I'm hoping that the ground will not only help fertilize the garden, but might also repel nasty garden pests of different types.  Here's hoping.

And now onto a garden update!

The lettuce seedlings I planted from seeds and then transplanted had about a 50% failure rate this year, which since the 6 that died were looking really bad when I planted them in the garden, I shouldn't have been too surprised (although I was sad).  I took the seedlings I got from the food pantry (eight of them total) and planted them in the garden today.  I got a combo of red and green lettuce, which will definitely be welcome if and when they grow big enough to harvest (the seedlings are as big or bigger than the seedlings I planted in the garden, so they are least off to a good start).

The cabbages have so far all survived and seem to be really starting to take off (seen up top next to one of the new lettuce seedlings).

 The turnips are up in a big way in the far bed (seen above in the back there) and the rat tailed radishes are starting to pop out of the soil too (one of which is seen closer to the front there).  The carrots JUST started sprouting up today, which yay as I was starting to worry they'd be a loss.  The beets are no where to be found yet, but they have a really long germination period, so we'll see how that goes.

Now the corn...that one is vexing me.  I have seen nothing in the way of sprouts from it, but did dig carefully around in the soil a few days ago and found a couple of seeds that had sprouted roots, but some that hadn't done anything, so I'm not sure how much of a failure rate I'm going to have with the corn.  We'll see how it goes.  The middle bed might end up being an interesting mis-match of things.  I already planted spinach in the hole created by one of the lettuce seedlings dying in that bed, so yay...we'll see.

I also planted Barese chard today (a quick growing variety of chard that is meant to be picked when it's smaller, so it takes up less space and will hopefully allow me to get a couple of crops out of it this summer so I'll have plenty of chard for the freezer :), spinach in various places (a quick growing dwarf variety of Spinach I grew successfully last year) and bush beans at both ends of the garden.  I heard from a couple of people that bush beans grow well up here and other gardeners had planted beans this week, so I figured "Well, here goes nothing" and planted them.  The weather has turned sunny and warm this week, which the garden is loving, so here's hoping the sun keeps the soil above 65 and we see some progress there!

The peas are up!  Time to start building some trellis out of...something or other so that they have somewhere to climb to.  So excited as peas did so awesome last year I'm hoping to see a repeat this year (I still have some bags of peas left in the freezer from last year and we actually ate them quite a bit over the winter.  Love it!!!).

So, yeah, now I just need a few potatoes to sprout to stick into the ground and dig up a bit of yard for that and to plant my onions and some more beans and stuff.  I'm should not be this excited, I really shouldn't, but I'm going to be excited anyway *laugh*.  Here's hoping for a good, prosperous garden this year :).

So, yeah, there's some of my frugal adventures this week.  How did you do.

Monthly Goals Update: May, a Month in Review

Since I didn't get to doing monthly goal updates last month due to life being hectic, I figured I'd try to look far away and visionary and post up a review post of the last month (since I'm terrible at selfies and wouldn't know how to look far away and visionary, please enjoy Price looking like it instead above ;).

So, let's review May shall we?

When it comes to goals last month, I did get some of them accomplished, but I veered off at some point and got a bunch of other stuff done instead (life does that).

I did work on the garden and planted seeds and then planted THOSE seedlings in the garden along with more seeds.  I'll save the progress on that end for the update tomorrow, but other than losing some lettuce seedlings (not quite sure why, honestly...I don't think it was the cold, but more like I just waited too long to plant them), the garden is coming together so far :).

I finished up the lettuce in the hydroponics garden and started some herbs (which came with the garden originally, so I wasn't out any money to plant them).  So far all three herbs have sprouted (the parsley worried me there, but it finally popped up a couple of days ago *thumbs up*) and I'm letting the little garden do it's thing.

I mended some things last month, but not as much as I would have liked.  The last few days I've been cleaning like a mad woman and reorganizing everything in the den and such so that when the phone company guys came today they could get to everything and I didn't have to feel bad that my house was a mess.  So, I scrambled and found places for all of the sewing things that were scattered to the four winds, pulled out a couple of different types of fabric to make shopping bags out of and wrote down some measurements.  Overall, I feel great about the progress I've made the last few days on the "getting embroidery projects started" front :).

By the way to those who inquired about special orders for embroidery...at this point I don't want to commit to those types of projects because time is so scattered around here.  For now I just want to make things with materials I have on hand, finish said projects and then sell them.  Sorry, but maybe in the future I'll feel more confident doing special orders.

I conserved pennies I didn't even know I had this month and am working on conserving them as they come in as well.  As for egg recipes...well eggs were kind of scarce this month due to broody chickens (which I THINK we might be on the other side of it completely now as the last one seems to be breaking out of it, but at least I'm up to two eggs a day right now), but I'm planning on getting some baking done tomorrow and over the weekend to use up some eggs and more importantly get some different things into the freezer.

So, yeah, our little rendition of "Breaking Broody" this month took up some of my time.  And then there was finding apples on reduced cheap, so I also made applesauce, a pic of which is above there.  Out of 6.00 worth of apples I got ten pints of applesauce.  None too shabby if I do say so myself!

I worked my tail off trying to get some Spring cleaning accomplished, but suddenly with the son having behavioral issues, we instead ended up going to a psychologist and have spent the entire month working on finding the right type of medication for him to take (which he's starting on a new one tomorrow as soon as it comes in...they had to compound a pill into a liquid for him).

I did, somehow manage to squeak out some cleaning, though, especially the last few days.  The downstairs looks okay now (need to get recycling out of there, though) and I managed to get the rest of the Christmas decorations into storage (yes, Christmas decorations.  Don't judge *laugh*) and got the mattress that was in the den drug across the lawn and put into storage as well.  My arm is more mobile then it has been in months and isn't hurting as badly, by far, so I'm kind of hoping I'm on the mend there, as well.

So some of the cleaning I got done on the Spring cleaning front.  I got my daughter's room dusted down really well (she helped) and my daughter started to organize it again.  My son kept messing with his fan and trying to unscrew the fan motor from it's casing (which my husband was even impressed by), so I ended up moving his bed a few days ago and rearranging his room so there was NO WAY he could reach his fan anymore before he hurt himself or wrecked the fan...or both.  I got the master bedroom mucked out and organized a bit better, which was nice to get done. 

I also took the top of my stove apart and cleaned all of the openings and things and scrubbed the burner covers really well and things.  I finally tried an H2O at Home product I didn't really like, which was the cleaning clay.  SUPPOSEDLY it was awesome.  I had heard all of these stories of seven year neglected ovens being scrubbed by a seven year old with the clay and how it worked wonders to clean the oven sparkling clean and such.  So much for testimonials.  I found it messy (as it foamed up TERRIBLY whenever you grabbed some with the scrubber it came with, so it went everywhere) and it just plain didn't work at all well that I could see.  I finally just washed down the entire stove top in frustration with water (and the counter where the stuff had foamed up all over it) after scrubbing it for what seemed hours and just used some white vinegar to wash the top down as well. Which between that, soap and good old elbow grease at least I'm CLOSE to getting the old grease and the burned on sugar (canning last year...son distracted me at wrong time throwing a fit...results were pure awesome burned on sugar mess) off the top of the stove.  I had gotten the cleaning clay for free with the party I gave, which was good because I would have felt really ripped off if I'd paid for it.  I'll probably use it to scrub out the sinks after I do the dishes or something as it is mildly abrasive, thus it SHOULD polish okay until it's gone.

So, overall, my month I'd say was pretty productive, just not in the way I had planned, but such is life :).  So, how did you all do last month?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

 Geez, what a week.  I'm exhausted because the son isn't sleeping but two hours of sleep a night right now.  I'm panicking because we got our first official paycheck on the husband's new job and it is lower than we'd hoped after his first partial paycheck.  So, after doing the math, I figured out that I have about 150.00 a month for food and gas after the husband's minimum gas for his commute is taken out of what is left of the paycheck.  Can I hyperventilate now?  I keep trying to remain calm as he's getting a 7% pay increase when he switches from "training" hours to his regular shift, but man...this first year of this job is going to be REALLY hard to get through.  I honestly don't know if we'll make it at this point on his pay, but he loves the job so much I'm determined to at least give it my all, and by God my all isn't anything to sneeze at!

If we can tough it out for this first year he'll get a wage increase and the benefits are really good at this job, so I really WANT it to work.  I just don't know if I can make it work.  Once the kids start school, since my husband will be working the late shift, I might be able to at least get a day job and leave him home to man the phones if one of the kids needs to get picked up early from school or something, but for the summer...I am really determined to get my den mucked out (the nice sewing cabinet we set up down there?  Yeah, the main middle shelf collapsed and we found that the only thing holding up what should have been a microwave cabinet was little plastic tabs for adjustable shelves...so I have sewing stuff ALL OVER the place down there) and get to work making some reusable shopping bags of different types and embroidering pretty things on them.  I think they'll sell decently well and they are at least useful.  I'll go from there on expanding product lines.

I also have some leads on different things that might make me some money at home, so we'll see how that pans out as I look into the different companies.  This kind of ties into some of the frugal things that happened this week, so let's get to that shall we?

1.  I called and paid my phone bill this week right after we got paid and the gal who was running the payment for me skimmed my account and told me that our internet was costing us too much.  I was like, "Huh?" and she said they'd just switched their plans on their internet and their basic plan now was 5.00 less per month than what we were paying now and the internet was actually FASTER and had more bandwidth available than we had now.  She asked if we'd like to switch and I nearly jumped through the phone and hugged her after saying "of course!"  So appointments are set with the phone company for them to come in and upgrade some cable and things on our end (free for us) next week.  So, yay for a utility company that cares!  Thanks Matanuska Telephone!

Double benefit is that if I find a job where I have to take calls over the internet and things for customer service positions and things the faster internet and better data will definitely help with that.

2.  I was blessed to receive gifts of food this week.  My friend contacted me and asked me if I'd like some bags of rice and things that were in her food storage that she wasn't using and I said, "Yes, please!"  She gave me a big bag of rice, oats and beans.   I am really grateful for the gift as it is all things we will definitely use.  Thank you, Davina!

My mother-in-law also met up with us today and gave me a box of food she bought for us knowing how tight it is for us right now.  All of it will be used and with a grateful heart.  Thanks, Stacey!

My friend also gave me her freebies for Fred Meyer for the free almond creamer and the free Ritz Crisps, so I picked those up along with my free creamer today as well (thanks, Stephanie!).

3.  Grocery shopping was as minimal as I could get it this week, which is why the food gifts were so appreciated.  I ended up winning 5.00 through the Monopoly game, so I stopped off at Carrs and got my 5.00 cash before I went shopping and used that toward my total.  At Carrs I got the bare essentials for the son to eat this week.  We still have Doritos and Cheetos (which I placed in some sandwich bags and put into a big bowl so I only get him small amounts at one time...hoping to cut down on him wasting so much food this way, as seen in the photo there...it's working...kind of.  The son doesn't like the fact that the chips aren't in their normal "big bags" but I think he's getting used to it as he was used to seeing them that way at school).  At Carrs I got Goldfish crackers for him (1.50 per small bag this week), hot dog buns (.88 with in-ad coupon this week), Coke (1.49 per two liter bottle with in-ad coupon this week, limit of 4) and a few things I'm forgetting.  Total spent was 15.00 after the 5.00 cash was taken off.

At Fred Meyer I got cat food (as their normal price on canned cat food is only .57 compared to .80 at Carrs), cat litter (because we were completely out...I honestly contemplated digging up some dirt and just using that for the litter, but it would have wrecked what was left of the scoopable cat litter in the box and I just couldn't bring myself to do it), lettuce (1.87 for a large head of it), hamburger (3 lb tube for 5.97), the free creamers and free crackers, Pringles (as a "please stop hitting yourself" reinforcer for the son) and a few other things that my daughter and I are spacing (so much for two minds being better than one *laugh*).

Total cost for groceries this week was 35.00, which is honestly more than I WANTED to spend, but with cat litter on the list I knew it wasn't going to be super cheap as no one had cat litter on sale cheap this week.

I'm going to be really tweaking the grocery shopping here in the coming weeks to see how low I can go on the budget without my son flipping out from his favorite foods not being around when he wants them.  Here's hoping I can get it down LOW as I need it to get as low as possible right now.

4.  Amazon Associate fees came in (I usually get some about once every six months, so it was a pleasant surprise) and I quickly used them to buy a food storage kit of breakfast foods (way cheaper than buying individual #10 cans of the things I wanted to get).  I got things like cream of wheat cereal (a personal fave of the husband's), freeze dried scrambled eggs (not using those unless I have to as I remember well what powdered eggs tasted like as a kid...shudder), bacon bits, shredded potatoes (basically freeze dried hash browns), pancake mix and freeze dried strawberries.  I was especially happy to add the freeze dried strawberries to the pantry as the way things are going around here, buying fresh produce to can is going to be iffy this year with the way the budget is shaping up (an understatement, that).

5.   The lettuce died off in the aerogarden (no joke, it literally just like died and rotted at the base after it wilted and the pieces just fell off...I was expecting it to bolt...weirdest thing I'd ever seen) so I cleaned it up and planted herbs in it.  So far the dill and basil have popped up like they are supposed to, but the parsley is definitely not up yet.  I'm going to give it another couple of days and if it doesn't pop up, I'm going to plant some thyme seeds in the pod and see if try two works better than try one.

6.  I'm finally getting an egg a day again (knock on wood) with two hens being back to normal.  I think they are both laying every other day, but managing to rotate it so that I get one egg a day.  I'm still trying to break the last broody who is determined to sit on air, or ice cubes, or whatever, but at least she's gotten less evil so I can push her off the nest without getting pecked and she's at least eating and things, so she's not losing weight (broody hens can really tear themselves up refusing to move from the nest).  So, here's hoping she snaps out of it here sometime soon.  The eggs are definitely coming in handy with the amount of baking and things I've started doing around here.  I've been using up straw that I had left over from when I chicken sat the chickens last year to help pad out their bedding in the coop and nesting boxes and they seem happy with it, so I yay for saving money that way.

7.  I managed to pad out three pounds of hamburger into a lot of different meals.  I split the package in half and used one half to make taco meat, which we had tacos for dinner two nights, my husband had tacos for lunch at work one day and we had taco salad for lunches today to use up the rest of the taco meat.  The other half I made into hamburgers for dinner one night with a left over hamburger (which I made with the others and withheld from dinner) for my husband to bring for lunch the next day.  I still had about 1/4 of a lb of hamburger left, so I used that with some little odds and ends of left over beef roast to make beef stroganoff one night.  Using pasta to REALLY pad out the dish a lot we were able to get enough to all have a good sized portion for dinner and then my husband and I had the rest for lunches the next day.  Not bad for a 10.00 sale value pack of 80% lean hamburger I'd say.

8.  While I was sweating profusely worriedly shopping today, my husband took my son for a drive and stopped off at one of our local used stores where the owners are really nice and know that I collect vintage Tupperware.  My husband was juggling my son and stopped and talked to the owners for a little bit and explained why we hadn't been in in a long time, and they smiled and said they had a present for me.  They handed my husband a bag with a set of vintage picnic Tupperware salt and pepper shakers.  I couldn't believe they would give me something like that for free and was really touched they thought of me :).

9.  I used some organic yogurt I had in the fridge and a quart of discounted milk I bought (it was a dollar and some change) to make home made yogurt (photo seen up top).  I found years ago that yogurt can be used for a lot of different things.  One of my favorite uses is straining it and using it as a replacement for sour cream on baked potatoes and things.  We almost prefer it to sour cream and it has probiotic goodness that way :).

10.  What do you do when you find a sprouting onion in with your onions?  You stick it in your kitchen window and let it get good and healthy so you can split up the bulb later into different plants and plant them in the yard to get more onions in the fall.  Yup, that's how I get onion starts.  When you are broke you find interesting ways to get stuff done (please ignore the pollen on the screen and the nasty window behind it...I still need to get that window done on my Spring cleaning list).

And now for a quick garden update...

What do you do when you can't afford a green house, but the weather is being pure evil to anything you are wanting to grow?  I had that happen this week.  Our temps plummeted to below freezing at night, cold rain pelted down and I had lettuce seedlings that were already dying in their pots indoors just because they weren't happy being in pots anymore.  So, I planted the lettuce seedlings LITERALLY the day they put out the notice of the plummeting temps.  So, I quickly dug up mason jars to cover the lettuce seedlings, but after the first night where the temps went down to around 35 the cabbages were starting to show a lot of displeasure with the weather as well and I was worried about just losing the garden as a whole.  So, I scrambled to figure out what to do as the cabbage seedlings are too big for mason jars to fit over them and what about the seeds I planted and am trying to sprout?

So, I drafted my husband's help and we went and dug up some tarps from the garage to cover the garden, mason jars covering the lettuces and all, the first night.  Then I went looking around hoping I had some plastic from when we got new mattresses or something to cover the seedlings as much as I could so they could get light and things when covered up (think REALLY poor man's green house) and I found the plastic that I had saved from when I got my son's new mattress and used that and the old little kids chairs that I've used on the garden more and more over the years to make a quicky green house.  The lettuces are also protected under the tarps and things by a second layer of protection with the mason jars just to be safe from any cold air seeping through the plastic (since it's not exactly air tight or anything).  I think I might lose a couple of the lettuce seedlings that were kind of sick looking when I put them in a ground, but I have about six of them, at least, that are looking good so far and I THINK I have some seeds starting to pop up.  I am going to use the containers that I just emptied putting the seedlings in the ground to plant more lettuce seedlings and things in the garage.  Hopefully this system will keep everything safe and healthy (I take off the tarps during the day to get them air and light and water them and such) and growing and stop the cold from killing things off (this summer so far is looking pretty cold and miserable, so we'll see how it goes).  We are supposed to have nasty wind tomorrow on top of everything, so the garden is looking like more and more of a fight this year.  So far, at least, I'm holding my own against the weather.

I am hoping to be able to afford a nice big roll of thick plastic here and then if I can do that I'll tear apart some old box springs and things to get the wood I need to make some mini-greenhouse frames...actually I wish I had disposable income to spare since I finally found a greenhouse that will ship to Alaska from Amazon that is actually decently affordable, but if wishes were fishes we'd all eat for a lifetime :).

And yeah, so there you are folks.  Some of the frugal events of the past week with me.  How did you all do?

What's For Dinner: This Week's Menu

So, Monthly Goals...yeah this is definitely a month where the term "goal" comes home to roost.  The son's new medicine is working okay, I think, although he's getting so little sleep that he's definitely having mood problems and I'm getting about 2 hours of sleep a night, so no sleep make Erika no think too good.  I'm honestly not sure if the lack of sleep is from the new medicine or the increasing sunlight as it's not like having problems sleeping isn't normal for him or anything and with his eczema flared and bugging him and the increased humidity (we've had a solid week of rainy weather with highs in the upper 40's...I'm planting lettuce seedlings today come Hell or high water though as I've already lost a couple just due to them being in pots too long).  So, finding energy to get ANYTHING done on my goals list has been...well hard to come by.  I've gotten things done, but kind of in a scatterbrained fashion.

Bright side, broody hens...that situation is improving.  We're down to one hen who has been REALLY determined to be broody, but today she actually popped her head out of the nesting boxes to get treats on her own, so I'm hoping all three hens will be back to normal soon.  Right now I'm only getting one egg about every other day, so I'm hoping laying will improve her soon.  Bright side at least I'm getting SOME eggs again, so it's been helping with cooking and baking this week.

Right, so the menu plan for this week.  I'm really trying hard to make meals that are creative with what we have in the pantry and freezer as my husband has to take leftovers for work lunches.  Saddest part is as I'm packing his lunch at like 11:00 at night (first opportunity I get to do it as that is when my son finally goes back to his room and will stay there for a while) I REALLY have to resist the urge to pack a PB&J for him and call it good (he loves peanut butter, so my son's allergy really makes him miserable sometimes).

But, yeah, onto this week's menu!  Bright side I've already got one decently "gourmet" and yet "cheap" meal to share with you all here, hopefully today :).  It turned out so good my husband actually was looking forward to having the left overs for lunch today *laugh*.

There's going to be some hold overs on the menu plan from the last couple of weeks.  I had the menu for last week all planned out, but my husband was really craving red meat this last week, so I ended up pulling out a container of hamburger and making tacos one night and then hamburgers the next on home made bread.  I'm using up what is left over the hamburger from the package (somewhere between a quarter and a half a pound of burger) and some sliced up leftover beef roast to make beef stroganoff tonight for dinner.

Menu Plan for Week of 5/25/17

Wednesday:  Fish Almondine, rice, salad

Thursday:  Beef Stroganoff (use leftover beef roast, leftover hamburger and yogurt to make)

Friday:  Leftover tacos (pad out meat with beans)

Saturday:  Home made Pizza

Sunday:  Fish and Chips

Monday:  Chicken Kiev, rice pilaf (home made), fruit coctail

Tuesday:  Pork Croquettes (use leftover bits and pieces of pork from freezer), apple sauce, rice

Breakfasts:  Oatmeal, English Muffins with plain yogurt and orange marmalade topping (don't knock it till you try it, believe me!  Graham Kerr turned me onto that combo and it is yummy!), toast

Desserts:  Grapes with custard (use leftover grapes in fridge!), home made ice cream, oatmeal raisin cookies

Snacks:  Cheese sticks, grapes, apples, yogurt with jam or granola topping, popcorn

To make:  Granola, custard, ice cream

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

This post is definitely late, mainly because I've been super busy around here. 

Money is stretching so tight we're starting to feel like we're choking on worry as we're trying to figure out how to dig ourselves out of the hole we ended up having to start out in with the way the new pay schedule has shaped up like.  It's definitely stressful, but I'm determined to have faith and know that God will give me ideas on how to make it all work.  It's going to take some creativity and probably a few calls to banks to explain about what is going on and seeing if we can just work something out so that we don't fall behind on anything.  Sucks, but life works out that way sometimes.

I've been hitting Swagbucks hard trying to get up Amazon gift cards because I FINALLY found a brand of food storage on Amazon that I can get decently cheap that seems to be good with my son's allergies.  I'm not like going insane about wanting to get up a year of emergency food at this point (seriously can't afford that and really if we end up moving what is the point?), but being able to get big cans of things like hot breakfast cereal and things for this winter?  Would be INVALUABLE to help the budget stretch this year (they even have chocolate powdered milk that people say is really good...can't tell I'm overly enthusiastic about this stuff can you?).  So, I'm hoping that I can get up some gift cards to help with that.  So far Swagbucks has hated me this week (a lot of that is just plain not having time to deal with it I know), but I shall keep trying :).  At least it's free to work the Swagbucks angle :).  My mother-in-law also found a consultant type of outfit that sells food storage that is safe for my son's peanut allergy too, so I'm hoping to try some of those products sometime soon (I started thinking about it and freeze dried fruits and veggies might be my best bet in getting my son to try  new things as they aren't as chewy as dehydrated and got the crunchy thing going on).  Downside to the outfit my mother-in-law found was that they are good quality products, but are also expensive.  So, I might be getting a few TINY sample packets and calling it good with them for a while.

Another thing that drove me nuts this week was the chickens.  All three hens decided they wanted to be mamas this week, or they "went broody" as the term goes, which unfortunately when hens go broody they stop laying eggs.  People online told me to put them in a wire cage to get air under them to cool off their under body and that would help to break them of their broody ways, but I don't HAVE anything like that and the price on something like that made me flinch.  So, I've been going down to the coup every two hours all week long and unceremoniously throwing hens out of the one nesting box they were determined to share.  So far one hen seems to have snapped out of it and is running around the coop again and one of them randomly laid a medium sized egg, but so far the last two days I have one hen up and moving, one hen that will go off the nest without me pushing her out of the coop and into the run anymore and then another that is just plain EVIL about wanting to move.  Luckily I'm meaner than she is and more determined, so she's getting up and walking around whether she likes it or not.  So, hopefully I'll start to see eggs again sometime soon.

So, let's get to the week of saving money shall we?

1.  I had a pretty good week on the grocery shopping front.

2.  We're down to not wanting to spend money, at all, the next couple of weeks (charges that we had forgotten about that should have been cleared months ago suddenly cleared this week and gave us heart palpitations), so I'm trying to make milk stretch as far as humanly possible.  I pulled out some powdered milk to make for baking, but then thought about cookies to make for the husband for lunches and thought I had a recipe for oatmeal cookies that called for shortening vs. butter (thus cheaper to make) and didn't call for milk at all.  And I found it!  So, oatmeal raisin cookie bars just came out of the oven :).

3.  A friend of mine called me earlier in the week and asked if I could possibly come to her place on Thursday as she's moving and could use some help.  Since it was during the school day I said sure and stopped by to help her pack up last minute things (kitchen dishes and the like) and we had a good visit.  Her husband just finished up his degree, so they are moving back to a remote part of Alaska.  I'm going to miss her.

I helped for a few hours and then told her I had to get going to get my own stuff done, and she insisted on paying me.  She shoved 10.00 into my protesting hand, hugged me, and pushed me unceremoniously out the door.  Hard to argue with a woman like that, especially since she could bench press me if she wanted to *laugh*.

I took the 10.00 and stopped off at Fred Meyer to get milk on the way home and was amazed when I wandered by the reduced produce section.  The guy putting out the apples normally puts out bags with three apples per bag and the bags are 1.00 each.  This guy was shoving way more than 3 apples per bag, so I stopped and asked him what was up.  He said that the apples needed to go today or were probably going to be pitched as in each bag there was at least one apple that might just be beyond hope, so he was putting out the apples in the hopes people would buy them and use them for something.  I looked through the bags and grabbed six of them and he was indeed right...some of them had apples in them when I got home that were just about 1/2 rotten, so I ended up throwing a few away and cutting up some small pieces off of a few to feed to the chickens for a treat.  The majority of the apples, though, were definitely worth getting.  This will be a real boon for me as my list for winter is short of things I want to can this year with items I'll have to buy, and applesauce is DEFINITELY on that list.  So, tomorrow is apple sauce making day :).  I am going to try something different and save the peels and cores to make my own pectin (thus save myself having to buy it later if I need it).  I used the other 4.00 left from the 10.00 to buy milk.

4.  Shani stopped by and dropped off a big bottle of hand soap to me as a gift as it was a bottle she wasn't going to be able to use before she left for treatment.  She really does love Alvah and wanted to drop off the soap because she knew the H2O at Home products don't irritate his skin.  Great and now I'm teary eyed again.  Ahem.

She is leaving at the end of June to go to California for semi-permanent treatment and is liquidating pretty much everything she owns and is having an estate sale all of June in preparation of leaving.   So, if anyone local would like to stop by and see if they can use anything (all monies raised will be used toward her treatment, of course), message me and I'll give you the information on the sale as I find out details.  She also wants to make soap before she leaves, so I'm hoping to do that in the next couple of weeks as well.  Glad I picked up materials earlier to do that and kept that thrift store crock pot.

5.   What does one do when they need to start seeds and doesn't have any dirt to do it?  Well, instead of buying potting soil I couldn't afford, I decided to forgo planting herbs in the white wooden planters this year (too cold outside right now and honestly I am not good growing herbs from seed and herb seedlings are out of the budget this year), so I dumped the dirt out, mixed in some dirt from the yard and am going to prep it to become potting soil (thanks for the gardening advice, Jeannie!).

6.  The chickens have been getting any dandelions I pull from the garden, cursing all the way as I yank and they have been quite happily consuming them. Yay for free treats.

7.  Leftovers were consumed for lunches this week and both rotisserie chickens are now gone.  The daughter wanted to make home made pizza last night, but had pizza parties at school the two days prior to that, so there was no way I was going to let her have pizza three days in a row.  So, we had pasta (I made a whole pound to use in lunch rotation for the son this week and also for a side for lunches for my husband), rotisserie chicken and some of the free salad that I picked up this week.  The carcass from the rotisserie chicken was turned into chicken broth and stuck into the freezer for future use. 

8.  I mended some items this week and quite suddenly my daughter pulled out her sewing kit and showed real interest in learning to hand sew.  So, I showed her a few basic stitches since she wanted to learn to mend things and she's been going to town mending her doll dresses and things this week.  I'm quite proud of her for that :).  She's still got a ways to go on securing her thread before she starts and things, but darned if she isn't on her way.  She's growing so fast!

And yeah, onto a quick garden update!

Well, I planted some stuff in the garden this week.  So far, I planted cabbages (in the bed closest to the camera) and will disperse lettuce or spinach around the cabbages to grow as they are a quicker growing crop then the cabbages.    The cabbages will be used to make sauerkraut this fall after they are harvested and the tougher outer leaves and things will be used to make freezer slaw.

In the second bed I have peas planted in the back that is a really fast growing variety and in front of them I planted corn, which is a type that is specifically designed to grow in Alaska and only reaches like two to three feet high (it's mini corn!).  This is my "man I hope this grows as I'd be REALLY nice to be able to put it up for winter" gamble, but we shall see how it goes.  At least they'll be protected from the wind on that side of the house and are planted close together to support one another.  At the very front of the bed I will plant lettuce, but only after I'm decently confident that frost dangers are over and putting mason jars over the seedlings I have growing in the garage will be enough to keep them safe until they can take off.

In the far bed I planted what I'm liking to call "the root crop bed" as I planted a long row of turnips in the back, a couple of rows of beets and a couple of rows of carrots (both carrots and beets are short rows).  I planted some rat tailed radish seeds in the middle and I'll just push them where they need to go as they grow around the other plants.  I still have room at the far end and in the front of that bed, which is where I think I'll plant a dwarf quick growing variety of Swiss Chard I found and spinach as I can get more than a few rotations of spinach out of the garden by the time summer is over (if all goes well anyway).

Out in the yard somewhere I'm hoping to plant potatoes, onions and maybe some more seeds.  When summer crops are done I have parsnip, turnip and salsify seeds to plant for Spring harvests next year.  Here's hoping it all works out well.  So far I'm already worried about root maggots as I've run into enough in the garden beds to be worried about them, caterpillars are already out and about in places, which has me concerned, but so far *fingers crossed and knock on wood* the spider mites are surprisingly absent so far this year, so hopefully I'm not having to battle them again this year.

So, there you are folks.  Some of my frugal adventures this week.  How did you do?

What's For Dinner: This Week's Menu

I'm totally winging the menu plan as I'm writing this, I'll admit it.  It's been super busy around here this week and things are just hectic.

So, here we go.  Some of the menu revolves around things I bought on sale this week, so yay for cheap meals!

Wednesday:  Rotisserie chicken, rice pilaf (Rice a Roni), canned peaches

Thursday:  Home made chicken noodle soup with easy home made noodles (used the rotisserie chicken carcass and what meat was left on it and the teeny tiny package of organic chicken thighs I got yesterday to make it).

Friday:  Pork pot pie (use leftover pork from freezer)

Saturday:  Home made pizza (daughter's choice of dinner to celebrate first day of summer break)

Sunday:  Beef roast and roasted veggies

Monday:  Fish and chips

Tuesday:  Waffles with bacon and eggs (make extra bacon for bacon sandwiches for husband for lunch on Wednesday)

Desserts:  Triple berry pie (pie filling from pantry) with home made ice cream, pudding, cookies and milk (cookies to be made this weekend, I hope)

For snacks:  Grapes, apples, carrot sticks (made in fridge as I had extra after the soup tonight), cheese sticks, yogurt.

To bake:  Cookies (Saturday), bread (Sunday so we have it for sandwiches after breakfast for dinner night on Tuesday).

And there you are folks.  Our menu plan, tentatively for this week.  How about you?  Got anything cool planned for dinner this week?