Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

This week I spent next to no money, mainly because we had none.  It helps to motivate you not to spend money when that happens.

What did I do to save money this week?  Well...

1. I got a great price on strawberries at Carrs (2.88 for a 2 lb package Just 4 U price), so I picked up a container.

The strawberries were very ripe, so I sliced up a bunch for a snack for us and then put the rest through the dehydrator.  I'm glad to have them as buying dried strawberries is terribly expensive.  This way I have some strawberries for different recipes later on.  I need to dig out my vacuum sealer for mason jars to seal the lid, which I've added to my to-do list for the weekend.

2.  I harvested kale, lettuce, oregano, rosemary, parsley (lots of parsley) and rhubarb from the garden.  I also harvested some raspberries today as well.  And I even harvested some rose hips from different areas of my yard.  Not sure how much there is going to be once dehydrated, but it's a start anyway.

The garden is continuing to produce.  The kale loved the rain we finally got this last week and it seemed to revitalize the lettuce a bit as well.  The garlic on the other hand, I fear, is a lost cause.  The stalks are starting to succumb to some type of rot and they never got very big to begin with.  I'm thinking I'm just going to let them die off and I'll see if I can get garlic out of the plants next year.

The tomatoes are trying to take over the world, I swear.  Tying them up is becoming near impossible, so I might be letting them fall over soon and just trying to keep the slugs off of them.  The turnips are growing well so far.  At this point it's a race to see what happens first when it comes to Alaska:   Will I get turnips or snow first.

I did lose one parsley plant that bolted and I'm going to be pulling another lettuce plant as soon as I can harvest the remaining lettuce from it (I do use bolted lettuce. It gets very bitter, but if mixed in with other lettuce it kind of acts like a bitter green in a salad.  It works for me).  I am also going to have to harvest the remaining oregano out of the front raised bed as it is starting to flower and go to seed.

I have decided, after seeing how well the parsley has done planting it in the ground that I'm going to skip planting parsley in the planter next year and plant it in the ground instead.  Basil, on the other hand, is definitely going to be a planter only plant from now on as it did terrible when planted in the ground.

3.  I was at the store today, picking up bare essentials and found out that Carrs was passing out cards to the kids. These "fruit cards" entitled the kids to a free banana every time they went in the store.  I was thrilled as I tend to buy JUST two bananas every time I get fruit as my husband and I reserve them for my daughter (son won't touch them yet).  In the event she won't eat the bananas two bananas is the perfect amount to make a loaf of banana bread, so I tend to stick with two.  Getting the bananas for free was awesome and I look forward to getting more free bananas in the future.

4.  Also seen in the photo above, I received our free bowl from Jolly Time Popcorn today.  If you send in 5 UPC's from Jolly Time products (I THINK it's five) you can send away for a free popcorn bowl to celebrate their 100th anniversary.  I buy their poly bags of popcorn from Fred Meyer to get bulk popcorn, so getting 5 UPC's with my popcorn loving kids was no problem.

I sent away for the popcorn bowl a while ago and completely spaced that it was coming.  So it was cool to open the box today to find the bowl.  And the best part?  The bowl is metal!  I haven't seen an enamel coated metal bowl in a long time, so I'm really loving this bowl.  It's going to make a GREAT popcorn bowl.

5.  I mended a bath towel, a dish towel and a pair of jeans.

6.  We limited outings as much as possible and when we did go out we kept the outings as cheap as possible.  We went to our local sports store.  My husband had saved up a couple of years worth of gift cards from birthdays and other holidays and used the gift cards to get some ammunition that he'd been needing.  We still have some left on the giftcards as well.

My husband also needed some motor oil so he used the Wal-Mart giftcards we'd gotten from the car dealer flyer giveaways to pay for most of the oil.  He ended up paying 5.00 for 5 quarts of oil.

We went to the playground with the kids where they got to meet some other kids and play.  It was a lot of fun and it was an end to a really busy day.

We went out for ice cream and used some stickers my husband had gotten from a McDonald's contest to get the sundaes for free.

7.  I cooked our meals at home, which saved us money.

And there you are folks.  Ways I saved money this week.  How did you do?