Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

It's been a busy and kind of challenging week. 

Alvah's eczema is flared something awful right now and it's been hard to keep him from scratching himself raw everywhere he can reach.  His hands and feet are particularly bad right now.  This year has been an awful year for allergies.  My husband's asthma, something that normally doesn't bug him unless he's got a bad cold, has been driving him a bit bonkers, the daughter has little patches of eczema and she hasn't had that going on in a LONG time and she's got the hay fever thing going on.  Right now poor Alvah is a mass of Band-Aids on his hands and feet to just lock in as much moisture into his skin as possible and give him a bit of relief.

On top of that there was the Prozac.  It just seems like the longer he was on the full dose of Prozac the worse things were getting.  His sleep patterns the last week went downhill hard, he started hitting himself and others more (although legitimately it seemed when he was actually truly frustrated), his moods were more maniac and then Thursday things just went to a head with him.  I picked him up crying from school at the end of the day.  Not mad crying, but just, "I'm miserable, mom" type of crying.  He cried from the time I picked him up until he crawled into bed with my husband around dinnertime.  Luckily, he picked a good night to need his dad because my husband had to go in for a hearing test for work Friday morning so he went in on a later shift than he's been working while doing programming training.  Alvah crashed at six PM, a definite oddity for him, and he slept until I woke him up at 7am Friday morning.  Luckily between the sleep and me knocking him back down to a half tab of Prozac, he seemed to be feeling a lot better and had a decent day at school.

Earlier in the week I was just feeling really tired and not good feeling and couldn't figure out what was going on, worried I was getting sick again.  A person who worked at the front office of the kids' school then mentioned to me that she had felt like that and had started taking Vitamin D and was feeling a lot better.  I decided I REALLY needed to try it at that point as my blood test last year showed I was too low on Vitamin D but my doctor had never told me how much to take to make it better and with the lack of sunlight this summer...yeah I figured I needed it.  I actually ended up talking to a friend of mine who used to sell Vitamins and she gave me some recommends on minimum amounts of Vitamin D I should start out on and I went to the store and picked some up to try it out.  And BOY do I notice a difference!  Definitely happy I decided to try it :).

But yeah, between that and just being busy with appointments and things this week, it's been a full week.

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

1.  I finally had time today to move the freezer my sister-in-law gave us into the kitchen today and gave it a hard core cleaning.  It had spent time in, I think, their shop and over time the freezer had gotten splattered with paint and just had some general wear and tear marks on it.  Since it was going to be going inside, I scrubbed it over about fifteen times to get all the marks I could off of it and made it look as spiffy as I could.  I think it came out pretty good overall (seen up top).

2.  I realized, about halfway through the week, that I still had the 3/4 of a pint of cherry pie filling in the fridge that I had left from canning cherry pie filling...I'd meant to throw it into the freezer, but just plain kept forgetting.  I figured I'd make pie out of it using some pie crust mix that my sister-in-law had given me, but there really wasn't enough pie filling to make a really big pie.  So instead of pulling out another can of pie filling or something, I made a half recipe for pie crust from the box and just folded the extra pie crust over the pie filling (basically I made a regular bottom crust for the pie and took the extra that hangs over the sides and made a top out of it by folding it over the filling), basically making a half sized fruit pie.  And you know what?  It worked out great!  We like fruit pies around here and all, but we never really finish one before we get tired of it.  With the half sized pie we all got to get a few decent sized pie pieces and we didn't get tired of eating pie before it was gone.  I'm definitely going to do this again in the future.

3.  I got a check for a survey project I worked on dealing with eczema and used it to take advantage of a sale that Carrs was running last week.  They had my daughter's favorite flavored water on sale for 1.25 per six pack, so I went and got twelve.  This will hopefully be enough flavored water to last us through January for school, which will make her happy for sure. 

4.  I managed to buy myself a new Kindle on Amazon this week, which is good because the old one I traded with my daughter keeps freezing up anytime I try to go to sites that I NEED to access (bill paying, etc) and I'd have to borrow an I-Pad off of the son to get things done.  I found that they had a "slightly used" Kindle on their warehouse deals for 22.00 after a 25% discount was taken off, so I ordered it as it was still guaranteed to work well.  I ordered the previous generation Kindle because it would match my husband's Kindle.  I figured this way we could split the cost of "extras" without breaking the bank.  I ordered a pack of screen protectors (my husband's Kindle has needed one since we bought it for him) and we were both able to put screen protectors on our Kindles for the price of getting one package of them. 

I ordered a cheap case for my "new to me" Kindle (my husband found another case by converting our old user manual case from a previous vehicle to a Kindle carrier), but until it comes in I borrowed the case from our really old Kindle to use.  The new Kindle kind of floats in it, but it works (you need a case for things around here with the son).

I did notice when I fired it up after charging it that the Kindle is also "without special offers" on it, so I actually got an even more expensive Kindle than I even figured I was getting.  So far it's working well and is pulling up what I need it to pull up, so I am happy with it.  I was even able to buy it with a gift card, so yay for that!

5.  I found a bunch of white chocolate chips that I had bought to try on Alvah a couple of years ago (I try a couple of new foods a couple of times a year with him to see if we can get him to try new flavors of things or just new things period) and he didn't go for them so they got stuck in the back of the cabinet and sat there.  I then looked around and saw the evaporated milk I'm working on going through and a can of pumpkin that was past its used by date by just enough that I wanted to use it up and a bag of mini marshmallows that I just couldn't drink in cocoa enough to use them up.  And an idea was born!

I've never made fudge from scratch before, so I figured I'd try my hand at making pumpkin fudge.  I found this recipe and figured I'd give it a shot, using mini-marshmallows to replace the marshmallow creme.  It worked!  I was so proud that I managed to actually make fudge :).  It tastes good, but is rich, so I cut it into small cubes, wrapped them in plastic wrap individually and put them into a freezer bag.  I put it all into the freezer and will pull out cubes for treats in the coming months, especially come Halloween.  One Halloween treat down for this year and it used up a bunch of stuff that needed to be used up.  Score!

6.  I had a whisk just finally rust out on me this week...it was so rusty that I just didn't trust it not getting rust into whatever I was going to be stirring with it.  I then had my silicone pastry brush lose it's head as I went to use it on the cherry pie (I used a paper towel instead...it worked...kinda) and I've been having issues with my spatulas (I guess the proper term is "turner" as a friend corrected me recently *laugh*) that keeps shedding melted plastic every time I use it.  I finally gave in and actively searched for replacements at the used store this week.  And surprisingly I found some.  The whisk is a ball type of whisk, versus a wire woven whisk like I'm used to, but I am going to bend the tongs and make a whisk shape that I'm more used to (more bunched up versus less paddle like).  The spatula is nearly brand new and the silicone brush is actually WAY better quality than the one I had...the one I had came free with something or other that I bought (a spoon I think) and I have to say for a freebie it's lasted for quite a while, so I can't really complain.

All were at the thrift store for .50 a piece.  I even found a motorized meat slicer for 5.00!  I was definitely happy with the price and now I can slice up roast beef for sandwiches and get "deli thin" cuts.

7.  Overall, grocery shopping went well this week.  The highlights were milk being on sale for 2.99 per gallon this week (the ad runs from Wednesday till Tuesday next week for local folks) and they had ground beef and beef roasts for 2.88 lb!  This is unheard of cheap for beef, so I ran to the store and got three beef roasts and four pounds of hamburger (all they had on the hamburger front).  I also had a personalized price of 2.99 lb on corned beef brisket.  Since my husband had some holiday pay on this paycheck, I used part of it to get a corned beef to make for my husband tomorrow.  He will gladly take the potatoes, corned beef and cabbage to work for lunches for a few days straight without complaints, so I figured it was worth the cost to get it.

I was even able to take advantage of a buy one get one free sale on vitamins to get vitamin D caplets, so I got double for the price.  I price compared the vitamins and strength and got the strength I needed at the same pill count as a lesser strength bottle that I would have had to take two tablets to get the proper strength I needed and managed to get them for a few dollars more.  Which worked out to be about 1/2 the price I would have ended up paying had I bought the lesser strength tablets (since they were 1/2 the strength, but the same pill count).  I was happy with that and it made the pain of shelling out money for vitamins a bit easier to take.

I was so busy I just plain haven't made a menu plan yet for this week.  I am hoping to sit down tomorrow or Monday (next week has a bunch of appointments to get through as well, again, so I am trying to find time when I can) and get the menu worked out for the next couple of weeks.  I've been really sitting down and working out a "minimum amount to get" for a month menu plan.  Ideally I'd like to get it dialed in where I could go and get the bare essentials for menus for the month all at once and then supplement with minor things throughout the month as needed, so I can keep grocery shopping down some.  I'm getting SLOWLY closer to figuring out "the system", but am still working on the fine details.

8.  One more thrift store find I got this week was a new comforter for my son's bed.  I have been trying to "save" his favorite comforters around here, but darned if I have been successful with a lot of them as the fabric just starts to go and then the batting just dies a hard death and starts to just ball into a big ball inside the comforter.  I'm working on making a new comforter out of the remains of the old (so so slowly), but it was getting kind of scarce when it came to comforters in decent shape around here.  I figured I'd try to find some for Alvah for Christmas, but when I saw one for 5.00 at the used store in brand new shape, I threw that idea out the window.  I am hoping to get a few more as Christmas approaches, but for now I ended up washing the comforter and throwing it onto his bed when he was feeling so awful on Thursday.  It's nice being able to pull a comforter out of the dryer without it being tied into a spiraled up ball of mess between the fabric and the batting and it being dry instead of about 90% wet due to the knot ball. 

9.  I mended a torn seam in the armpit of one of my shirts this week. 

I also, through lots of work with dish soap and a sponge underneath to get a nasty stain out of one of my husband's shirts (a trick a dry cleaner friend taught me once.  Take a sponge and place it under the stain you want to remove.  Squirt dish soap onto stain and rub into stain well and then start dipping a toothbrush into water and scrubbing it over the soap saturated fabric.  Keep doing that, adding more soap as needed and moving the sponge to get clean sponge under the stain, until the stain is gone.  It works as the stain goes through the fabric into the sponge underneath.  I've gotten motor oil out of his shirts and things this way over the years.  Sometimes it takes a lot of time and patience though).

And I'm going to call it good there as it's getting late and I still have laundry to get done and my bed yet to make before I can turn in for the evening.  So, how did you do this week?  Frugal ways go well or not so well?