Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Whew!  What a week!

The kids had Thursday and Friday off due to parent teacher conferences (neither of the kids needed one of those, which was nice), so I was juggling kiddos.  Then the daughter started not feeling good Friday and has just been feeling icky and needing attention all weekend.  Thank goodness for popsicles as those have been a huge help with her sore throat.

Then the toilet in the children's bathroom started having problems and the float stop will freeze up or something and the toilet will start overfilling, so I have to mess with the shut off valve for the toilet on and off.  Luckily we have a rebuild kit for the toilet that my husband bought in case we needed it, but then we forgot to rebuild the toilet innards this weekend, so hopefully the husband is up to rebuilding that tomorrow.

We had sister missionaries over Friday night, so I spent a good portion of the week working my tail off TRYING to get the house mostly clean before the kids were off Thursday and Friday, and it turns out Monday (their first snow day this year due to the roads being icy).  I did okay.  Not as well as I would have liked, but I did the best I could with having to run and get the kids early the other two days of the week, once due to both kids not feeling good and then the other day the husband needed me to pick them up early so he could go into town early to help someone he knew with an electrical issue (which turned out to be Valentine's Day, unfortunately so he missed out on the "fancy" dinner I made...seen up top).

Oh and a side note on Jello in vintage recipes (since I made a Jello mold to go with dinner that day).  You know those Jello molds with CRAZY items in them, like celery and things?  I ran into an old cooking booklet from the rationing days of WWII in America and they were talking about not wasting food, any food at all.  They recommended if you had just a little bit of this and that left over from dinner to not throw it out, but to keep it in the fridge and that Jello would help a lot in using up leftovers.  They recommended people get creative with flavors of Jello to use up things like left over vegetables and things.  I think a lot of people ended up getting creative, and sometimes NOT in a good way, with the Jello and the left overs.  Just thought that was kind of a neat bit of knowledge to pass along.

The Jello mold I made was just orange Jello with some left over fruit cocktail and the left over bits of pineapple that was left from making the pineapple upside down cake in it.  Turned out great and the daughter went back for seconds!  Which, trust me, her going back for seconds on anything that isn't pizza or french fries is a huge deal!

The husband did come home armed with a rose and some chocolate covered strawberries Valentine's Day morning, which I was surprised and very thrilled he thought of me, especially taking the time to stop off somewhere on the way home from work just to get me something :).

So, yeah, sorry about the menu plan being MIA for this week.  I'm hoping to just post up the next week and a half of menu plans tomorrow.  Hopefully the kids will be healthy, the roads will be good and I can get some stuff done around the house.  I felt like last week all I did was run and pray the house would remain in one piece all week long.

Believe it or not, some money saving things did get done this week despite everything crazy going on, so let's get to that!

1.  Let's start with shopping.  Highlights for this week are seen above.

The breakdowns are...

Let's start at Carrs.  3 Things of Turkey Gravy, on sale buy two get one free.  Used free coupon from Monopoly game on one of them.  All totaled 1.18 for all three (unfortunately these were the ONLY powdered gravies Carrs had in stock, so I grabbed them for that price.  If I do not use them for anything, I'll save them to donate to the food bank come November to help them with Thanksgiving).  I also got a free 100 count bottle of Aspirin.  I wasn't going to turn down free pain killers, even though I'll only use Aspirin if I don't have Ibuprofen around.

I also stopped off at Fred Meyer this week and got some cool stuff while I was there.  Two Chobani Smooth Yogurt were free.  Fred Meyer had a coupon you could load for free Chobani yogurt and they actually gave you choices on what yogurt you wanted to get with the coupon.  My friend offered me her coupon as well (they have a dairy allergy in the family), so I went for the smooth yogurt as you got two yogurts versus one.   Fred Meyer also gave me a coupon for a free thing of Oreos as a "Best Customer" coupon, so I grabbed those while I was there.

I also went looking for some small cutting boards as I gave up on ordering some through Amazon as they kept putting off shipping the cutting boards I had ordered to the point I got fed up with it and decided I'd try to find some locally instead.  And I hit pay dirt!

They had kitchen gadgets buy one get one 1/2 off.  The cutting board and knife kit was hanging with the rest of the kitchen gadgets and I noticed they were 5.99 each, so I figured for a paring knife and a cutting board the price would be totally worth it.  When I checked out, however, I found that the kits rang up for 4.49 each instead of 5.99 each.  They also rang up as knives instead of a kitchen gadget kits, so the cashier had to do an override to get the coupon to work (which from what he said wasn't his first time he'd had to do that during the week on different kitchen gadget kits) and to make up for the long wait I had to wait (I was using the U-Scan) he took off 2.49.  So, all totaled I spent 6.49 for two cutting boards and two paring knives.  Not too shabby!

2.  So, theoretically, what do you do when you realize you desperately need a storage cabinet to store towels, wet wipes and other bathroom items, but you don't have an available closet and you also need room for a few books and don't know where to put them?  Well, in my case, you gut your china cabinet, put the vintage kitchen things in the actual kitchen (after rearranging everything in said kitchen it seemed) and then use the two shelves you emptied to make the storage space you need.  I thought it came out looking okay overall.  It doesn't look like your typical china cabinet anymore, that's for sure.

3.  I rearranged the small little basket looking trash can under my kitchen sink and put it downstairs in my den.  I then took the bigger lidded trash can and put it in the corner of the kitchen instead.  This will give me more room for cleaning supplies under my kitchen sink and also allow me more time in between having to dump the garbage in the big outside garbage cans.

4.  When I ran out of window cleaner, I switched to white vinegar.

5.  On Valentine's Day I decided I wanted to make a pineapple upside down cake as something special to go with dinner, but I didn't want to make a big 9x13 pan worth.  So, I went online and found a cake recipe that only called for 1/2 of a cake mix and then I used the other 1/2 of the cake mix to make the kids a cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles (the son has decided he LOVES sprinkles).  Everyone has really been enjoying their treats and I don't have to worry about the husband and I having to eat way too much pineapple upside down cake *laugh*.

6.  I used Jello to use up left over fruit in the fridge and leftover fruit from making the pineapple upside down cake (explained more up top).

7.  I went through piles of paperwork this week and started weeding out things we didn't need anymore.  It felt really good to reclaim the space and to get rid of paperwork that I would have to go through over and over again to find that "one important thing" I was looking for at the time.

8.  I mended a couple pieces of clothing this week.

9.  I spent a lot of time this week cleaning the house and I managed to get things done like dusting ceiling fans and other things I don't do on a day to day basis.  It has been great walking past places that I cleaned and are looking nice and spiffy now and I'm looking forward to getting more and more of the house looking like that.

10.  My daughter has a friend, it turns out, that has a birthday just a few days past her own and we were told by her friend's grandmother that she was looking forward to the daughter being there.  We had the daughter ask her friend what she'd like for her birthday and it turns out her friend likes crafty types of things.  So, I went into JoAnn Fabrics with the daughter armed with coupons to see what we could find.  With a 40% off one item coupon stacked with a 20% off your total purchase coupon I was able to get the kids little St. Patrick's Day decorations (my daughter has been wanting that certain type of decoration ever since she got braces and saw that her orthodontist had one...it's kind of like a bouquet style thing with tinsel and things sticking up from it instead of flowers) and the gift my daughter picked out and spent less than 15.00 for everything (which was less than the original price of the gift alone).

11.  I decided to use the leftover birthday money my mom sent to pick up some coffee from Amazon (since the cutting board idea from them fell through).  I found that they had New England Coffee Company coffees really cheap, but you were only allowed to buy one bag at that price at a time, so I went and ordered a bunch of different types and flavors.  I then added in some disposable, refillable yogurt tubes (so I can buy big containers of yogurt and make my own tubes for the daughter's lunch instead of buying the GoGurt and things for her...she insists on the tubes, so I'm getting around her protests ;) and some more Curel Itch Defense lotion for the son.  All totaled with coupons and things on the items I was able to get nearly 5 lbs of coffee, 150 tubes to fill with yogurt and the lotion for just over 25.00.  I did go over my birthday money by a bit, but eh...I was okay with that for everything I was able to buy :).

In other news, I love my new sneakers that I got with the rest of my birthday money my mom sent.  It's wonderful having sneakers that are in good shape again.

12.  The son's nylon hammock swing was falling apart in his room (we have one hanging from the ceiling for him so he can swing when he needs to) and it was falling apart everywhere as the fabric was just going hard core.  I called the sporting/camping goods store we bought the swing last time and found that they wanted 30.00 nearly for a new swing.  I went on Amazon and found a new swing that was actually bigger/longer (which Alvah needed the way he's grown) and WAY cheaper at about 10.00.  I put it up when it came in on Tuesday and the son has been in love with it ever since.  Definitely worth looking around for other swing options :).

13.  I loaded the McDonalds app onto my phone and found that they had a coupon for a 1.00 large french fry.  I was able to get the son a quick, and cheap, meal when he wasn't feeling good earlier in the week and I had to pick him up early.  It was definitely worth loading the app for that find alone.

And there you go folks.  Some of my frugal adventures for the week.  How did you do?