Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

 Before I do anything else I have to share awesome news!  The new meds Alvah is on are working!  And not just working but REALLY working!!!  Like, "I'm in love with Risperidone" type of working!

The first night he slept six hours straight.  The next night it was NINE glorious hours!  I actually woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at five thirty wondering what to do with myself for a few hours until he got up.  Last night he slept for another nine hours.  I am actually getting SLEEP!  Wonderful, glorious, awe inspiring sleep!!!

On top of the normal sleep patterns his mood has improved a TON.  He only starts getting cranky and things when his pill is starting to wear off, so the last hour or so starts to get a TEENY bit rough, but not even close to how he was with the self-abusive behaviors.  He's even running around in clothes.  Willingly!  That's huge for him as clothing usually bugs him really bad. 

I found that the autism is also just exasperating the eczema something fierce as well.  When he has his pill down him and it's working good, he doesn't itch much and the eczema starts to tone itself down a bunch, but when the meds aren't at full strength he starts to itch his skin off again. 

I'm really excited about going back to speech this next week to start doing some serious work with him now that he's not so "turned up to 11" like he used to be.  I'm thinking we might start to see some serious progress with him in the coming months if his mood and concentration hold out here and he continues to improve.  I'm beyond thrilled!

My mother-in-law came over today and kept an eye on the son while I cleaned the chicken coop and put down new bedding (boy did it need it!).  While she was waiting she cleaned my den, which I appreciated, was embarrassed by, but appreciated all the same.  Thanks, Stacey!

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

1.  Thank the Good Lord my husband got paid yesterday.  We were scary low in the bank, so it was a relief to have that come in.  With the holiday pay on the check and the back tool allowance that we'd had to complain to a few people to finally get, we were able to get the kids gym shoes (no luck finding anything at the used stores) and I was able to get my daughter a new pair of Sketchers (which she loves as there is TONS of pink on them) for 22.00.  She's been wearing her old gym shoes the last month because they were a bit longer in the foot than her other sneakers were, but her toes were JUST at the point of me wanting to get her shoes that fit her better, so it felt good getting her shoes that fit her well again. 

Also after a couple of months of stalking my poor insurance agent and her stalking the home owners insurance people the insurance score was finally applied to my policy and we got a refund check in the mail today.  This will be used to get my husband a new muffler for his truck and to get the last part of the one dental bill we have to pay by August 20th or face penalties.  Luckily, Care Credit had been applying payments to the promotional balance that was due first the last four months (which surprised me as they haven't done that before), so the amount is down below 100.00 that is left.  Once the payment for the month is applied (since I pay all of the non-mortgage bills out of the first paycheck of the month right now I'm waiting for the payment to go through completely) than I'll pay the rest of the bill off.  We still have, what, four dental "chunks" to pay by April of next year, a couple of them pretty substantial, so we'll see if we can make it all work. 

I'm also taking 25.00 from the check and ordered my daughter a decent scientific calculator from Amazon (calculator was one of the things on her school supply list this year), an oil filter for my husband's truck and then some Christmas gifts from the kids (doing an order of just add on items on Amazon can really pay off if you keep track of your 2 to 3.00 items.  I managed to get my daughter like three things for Christmas and my son one out of the order AND I got a Method dish soap refill to fill up my dish soap bottle when it's empty that SHOULD refill the dish soap like twice). 

2.  Shopping went well this week.  I spent a bit more than I have been to get the kids the rest of their school supplies for the year.  Some items I just reduced the amount that the kids are going to take into school with them and I'll pick up more later in the year.  Like my daughter was supposed to bring in 48 pencils.  I had 32.  It'll do.  She was supposed to bring in two reams of college ruled paper.  I am sending in composition notebooks instead because that's what I have, it's paper and it'll be fine.  After going through everything that I had from saving from previous years and from things people have gifted me in the past (thank you!) I only had three items to get for my daughter, the calculator included and the son I'm just going to send in the supplies I know his class will use (glue sticks, blunt tipped scissors, crayons, etc) and calling it good, even though his teacher wanted me to send in a full school supply list last year.  I just know some of that stuff they aren't going to use, so I don't see the point in buying it.

Highlights of shopping this week included getting leggings for the daughter for 3.75 a pair (they were on sale for 4.99 and I had a "Best Customer" coupon for so much off of children's clothes so it came out to 3.75 a pair.  I got three pairs as she's definitely getting into the wanting trendier clothes phase of her life...my baby is growing up *sniff*), getting grapes on sale for 1.87 lb (Carrs actually HAD them when I went shopping on Friday.  I was thrilled!) and getting apples for .99 lb (personalized price).  I also got a dozen eggs for 1.29 (a coupon you can load on your card this week), since I'm not getting eggs yet from the two chickens that aren't broody anymore and I'm starting to wonder if they are done for the year as I keep finding feathers in the coop.  Either the broody hen is really plucking her feathers out or the chickens are starting their hard molt for the winter.  We shall see.  I also got a four pound bag of sugar with an electronic coupon you could load onto your card this week and it ended up being 1.00 and some change (I WANT to say 1.18 or something, but I don't have my receipt in front of me and I don't feel like looking up the ad online and freezing up my ancient laptop right now *laugh*).  Sugar will definitely come in handy with canning jelly and things in the coming months, so yay for getting it cheap!

Then there was Fred Meyer freebies.  My friend Stephanie contacted me and told me that Fred Meyer was doing freebies this week was part of the Kroger summertime event they are doing and so I went online all week and collected my freebie coupons (thanks, Stephanie!).  Unfortunately, Fred Meyer didn't have some of the freebies I had loaded onto my card (Kraft snack trios, etc), but I did manage to get a free container of Quaker Overnight Oats, a Stur water flavor thingie (those little containers are normally 6.00 and some change!  I was appalled when I looked at my receipt to make sure everything free had come off *laugh*) and a free Calypso lemonade. 

3.  We went to the library to return a book Armina had taken out last week and when she was crossing the street (not a busy street and I park right in front of the library...Alvah hates the library and would throw a fit if you dared to try to take him near the building so we had to wait in the car while she ran to drop the book in the return) I realized something.  My little girl wasn't so little anymore and well...it was time to start worrying about more bigger girl issues (there...that was nice and neutrally put right?).  I always hated the "beginner big girl clothes" and wanted to make something actually comfortable for Armina to wear (I mean let's face facts once that process starts you never get rid of it, do you?), so I went online and looked for a pattern to make her some female under armor.  I found the pattern up top on Etsy for 1.26 with cheap shipping, so I ordered it (all of the free online patterns I could find were for more elaborate things and I wanted basically a little kid's sports bra type of thing).  It's a bathing suit pattern from the 60's and hasn't even been cut!  I was impressed.  So, yeah...I'm going to be expanding my sewing expertise here...wish me luck.

4.  I made angel food cake and with the left over egg yolks I made lemon curd to use as a filling in beignets for tomorrow's breakfast :).

5.  I went and checked my e-mail today and found a message from Tiny Prints, who got bought out by Shutterfly (who hasn't been really?).  In the message they had a code for a free welcome gift to Shutterfly from Tiny Prints for 10 free thank you cards and the part that caught my attention was 10 free cards with FREE SHIPPING!  I was dubious, but went onto the site, picked a thank you card with four spots and found pics from my Shutterfly account I already had and made up the card.  And, surprisingly enough, once I stacked the codes I got 10 free cards WITH envelopes and free shipping even to Alaska!  I'm seeing the daughter sending out thank you cards for Christmas gifts in her future this year :).

6.  I opened my Jo-Ann Fabrics ad today and found another free code from Shutterfly for a free notebook.  No free shipping, but at the same time I thought about it and I'm hoping to be able to save a few dollars in the next month to cover the shipping.  I am going to scan one of my daughter's drawings that she's really proud of, put a nice little inspirational message onto the notebook and give it to her for Christmas as a journal.  I think she'll really like it.

7.  I talked to my husband about the old Firestone fridge we brought over from storage last year and instead of trying to get it actually running I asked if he could perhaps just put it out in the shed over winter so I could just use it as a cold, insulated storage container for vegetables.  He thought it was a great idea as that would allow him to work on the fridge on and off to get it working as well, so hopefully he'll get to clean the shed before winter like he wants so we can do that.  It'd be nice to have a place to store some carrots, potatoes and things in cold storage into the winter months.  If we can make it work putting in a big garden next year would definitely be more viable!

8.  I collected the material that was left over from making unpaper towels to use on another project.   IF I do it well, I think I can get by with very little to not waste of fabric.  I'll share more if it actually works *laugh*.

I know there was more, but I can't find my list right now, so let's get to the garden update!

Well, first up, the slugs are back.  BLAHHHHH!!!!  I've just been plucking them off the plants, placing them in a glass and feeding them to the chickens.  Circle of life and all of that.  Honestly I don't see anything like beer traps and things working on a year like this as we're just getting too much rain for it to be effective, so I'm just going to pray that my plants are in good enough shape to survive the onslaught and killing them with extreme prejudice when I find them.

So, what do you do when you want to plant new seeds and slugs are around?  I mean last year I had an entire bed destroyed by slugs and birds, so I have to admit I panicked a bit when I first saw our sluggy wuggy evil nemesis.  This year, I decided I'm being smart, or smarter anyway, when it comes to how I'm doing plant rotation and using natural camouflage to my advantage.  I took Jeanie's advice (Get Me To the Country) and planted my peas in between where my other peas were already growing so they could climb up the existing peas.  This not only saved me from having to tie the peas initially to the trellis, but it also kind of masked the growing peas from the slugs and birds so they didn't know new seedlings were growing.  I planted lettuce and spinach again this week in the rain so I knew the birds weren't watching (me, paranoid after last year?  Oh you betcha!) and I planted them around where existing plants were growing (or going to bolt in the case of the lettuce), so that the bugs would be, hopefully, more drawn to the nice sugary juices of the older plants, the birds wouldn't see the seedlings growing as well so they wouldn't pluck them out of the soil.  So far, they're sprouting, so we'll see if I've gotten smarter or I'm just wasting my time *laugh*.  The very out of focus pic above is of the TEENY WEENY little lettuce seedlings sprouting.

I also ended up fertilizing the garden, once again in the rain.  We've just had SO much rain this summer that the nutrients in the soil are getting washed out, so when I saw the peas turning yellow and the cabbages JUST starting to develop heads I was like, "Yeah, fertilizing is going to happen despite the rain".  So far it is helping, so I'll be doing that regularly for sure.

My bush beans are still pretty tiny, but it looks like they are sprouting flowers, so I'm hoping that means the beginnings of beans.  I've never grown beans before, so I'm like, "Huh?  Is that as tall as they get or am I confused here?"

The rat tailed radishes have gotten decently tall, but I have to say so far the production is kind of sad this year.  I think it's just too cold and wet for them to do super like they did last year.  Sad as I was hoping they'd do well, but at least I'm getting enough to snack on so far, so hey that's something :).

The turnips are actually starting to develop turnip roots!!!  I was so thrilled when I parted the mass of green leaves and found some nice beginning turnips bumping up out of the soil.  I might be able to avoid buying turnips this year!  That'd be awesome :).

And yeah, that's my week in a nutshell (well unless you want to read about the disaster that was the first part of my week...then you'd have to read here, but it's doing better, thank goodness!).