Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Ugh!  Late for two weeks straight!  A part of me who yearns to be organized is hanging its head in shame right about now.

Ah well.  I'll get over it.

I'd go into the ins and outs of last week but it would take a novel to explain it all.  Appointments that didn't happen, even though they were supposed to.  Things getting changed at a moment's notice.  Working on insurance paperwork.  Trying to get laundry and housework done once the husband went to work so as not to wake him up while doing it.  Standing in line at the postal annex for an hour at a time (the holiday rush is starting early this year due to Amazon not shipping much via UPS or Fed Ex anymore up here, so the sheer volume of mail going through the regular post offices was already increased big time.  Normally this time of year the lines start to get longer.  About the week before Thanksgiving the lines start to get ridiculous and by Christmas...you've got at LEAST an hour wait for a package if you are lucky).  A sick son home today.  It was an eventful week...a lot of it stressful, honestly, but everything worked out, for better or worse, in the end.

Bright side, though, is that stuff did get done despite the setbacks so let's get to that!

Just as an aside my Amazon order came in and it did, indeed, actually all get here in one piece.  I was so relieved when I opened the boxes to find everything had survived believe me!

1.  I got sauerkraut canned this week.  All totaled I got..well a lot.  A shot of it can be seen up top there.

Bright side, I should be good on sauerkraut for a while now.

2.  I finally fixed my daughter's pants that had numerous holes in the knees and one in the thigh.  I have NO idea what that child did to her pants, but boy I pretty much had to rebuild the knee of her yoga pants.  I then took a couple of patches and placed over the middle of the mended areas so they didn't look weird.  My daughter thinks they look cute but the patch on the knee of her pants, "feels weird" when she bends her knee, so I'm thinking after all of my hard work she won't even wear the pants anymore. Being a parent is fun sometimes *laugh*.

The patches I have had in my stores for years, so I'm not exactly sure where I got them originally, but the repairs on the pants cost me nothing out of pocket, so that was the most important part :).

3.  Shopping went minimal this week.  I went to Carrs and got a few items that were on sale this week and called it good, as we didn't have much money to spend.  I got bare essentials to get the son through the week, got some milk and some eggs and called it good.

4.  We worked on my daughter's Halloween costume this week, for obvious reasons since Halloween is next week and her Halloween party for school is this Friday (the kids are off the day before Halloween and Halloween of next week due to parent teacher conferences).

So, Saturday I affixed a kind of crooked pocket over the Pillsbury logo on the apron I decided to turn into an artist's apron for her, since the logo was kind of crooked on the apron and I had to kind of twist the pocket to cover the logo on one side more than the other...long story and not proper measuring on my part.  Bright side, the pocket came out pretty much the exact same color as the apron (made it from unbleached muslin), so you couldn't really see how crooked the pocket was.  Tonight after my husband went to work, and my son had crashed for the night super early, my daughter and I went into the garage with the acrylic paints I had in the house and a couple of big boxes broken down for a drop cloth and started dribbling paint on the apron.  Then a couple of good wads of paper towels to "blot" the paint (and also take up the excess and help the paint to dry faster) and voila!  An artists apron is born!

I thought it came out pretty good, actually.  We still have a few minor things to do to the costume and my daughter is ready to rock it at the Halloween celebrations at school on Friday :). 

5.  I did more rearranging of things this week (I'll take pictures of it later as I am still working on cleaning up the remainder of everything I've been working on around here), which cost me nothing but my time and hopefully will reorganize things a bit better.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to start on my closet in my bedroom as it's in a terrible state and I'm tired of it (the husband started cleaning it and never went very far other than to pull everything out of everywhere and leaving it in the middle of the floor so you can't move into the closet and the bedroom has stuff stacked all over it and now well...I need my closet back and I need my bedroom back or I'm going to get cranky...there...that was diplomatically put I hope).

6.  Going through some of my old dehydrated food storage I ran across a 72 hour kit thing that I had gotten for free from a company a long time ago for doing a giveaway of said kit on one of my old blogs.  I looked at the "use by" date and realized that it had passed by a few years, so I pulled out said kid, went through it and figured out everything that needed to be used up (which was everything as what didn't go past the "use by" date a couple of years ago went past it earlier this year).  So, we're going to be having some "camping meal lunchtime fun" this weekend.  My daughter will be far from thrilled because it doesn't involve hot dogs or pizza, my husband will get a kick out of it and I won't care so long as the stuff is edible (I'm so not picky anymore *laugh*).

7.  I pulled out more socks that needed to be darned when I sorted all of the back laundry last night (I always fold the laundry in my bedroom...this has become a logistical nightmare with the hours my husband works, so I'm finding I have to stay up LATE one night a week and just sort laundry and then put away laundry for the kids the next day...exciting life I lead ;).  I'll put the socks aside and darn them later when I'm waiting on my son at speech therapy and things.  It gives me something to do and serves a practical purpose.

8.  I FINALLY got the case in I had ordered for my new Kindle.  It had shipped from China (which I didn't realize THAT was going to happen until it did as the company is out of the Lower 48 that I bought from) and when it finally came in today it actually came with a screen protector, which was okay by me.  I used the screen protector and now we have a couple of spare ones from the kit I ordered earlier for my husband's and my kindles in case either of us need a replacement later on.

9.  I found a sweater when pulling out the heavy duty winter clothes that I knew I wasn't going to wear as it was cut too short in the waist and would bug me when I wore it (do sweaters keep getting shorter in the waist or is it just me?  I am always thrilled when I get a regular length sweater anymore), so I unraveled it and balled up the yarn to use on a different project later on as I liked the yarn color.

And I'm going to call it good there as I've got things to do before bedtime.  So, how did you do this week?