Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Well, okay, so it's Monday, but I'm calling it close enough for this week plus a few days.

We all ended up losing the battle against the cold that Alvah brought home with him this week, so I was down for most of last week (and am praying I'm finally getting over it) along with Alvah and then poor Armina got it over the weekend and the husband went down like the Titanic today.  So, it's not been a lot of fun this week with health.

The worst downside for Alvah on the cold front is that his eczema went nuts when he was sick and so he has nasty cracks on the bottom of one of his feet, cracks (but not as bad) on his other foot and hands and he's pretty much broken out all over.  Even his face hasn't been spared with this flare up :(.  He's been limping around on and off, missed school Friday to keep him off his one foot and I've been blowing through plastic wrap and Vaseline trying to keep his feet wrapped and moisturized to try and help the nasty cracks heal before he ends up with a skin infection again.

Between him being miserable with his skin and his cold, Armina's stomach flaring last week making her miserable and then her catching the cold over the weekend and everything...it's been rough for the kids the last few weeks, but we're getting through it.

We celebrated the son's birthday this last week.  The birthday was a simple affair for the most part (I was sick at the time), but he had a great time with birthday celebrations at school, we went out to dinner with the grandparents and he actually had a really good time on his birthday and following days.  We ended up, inadvertently, celebrating his birthday week versus his birthday only.  He got two movies in digital format for his birthday that he'd like, he got dinner out with the grandparents (and had a blast, which was nice to see), got cake for dessert the next day (and had a blast blowing out the candles over and over again, which I'll never get tired of seeing as it took him so long to figure out that skill :), and then as the topping on sundae I finally got a comforter made for him (seen up top in its done glory) as his final late birthday gift from me.

 After finally getting to work with high loft batting, I've decided that I never want to work with it again.  MAN it's a pain to work with compared to the lower loft batting.  I went through about ten bobbin fillings, I think, I totally blew through the rest of my white thread to quilt the batting down and I think I knocked the foot off of my sewing machine about ten times feeding the batting and material through the sewing machine. But, it is done.  Complete with about ten bazillion errors, but it's done and he'll know I made it for sure with all of the crooked quilting lines on it *laugh*.

And now onto the money saving things that happened this week so I can get onto working on the monthly goals for this month (I'm definitely behind due to being sick and everything).

1.  Shopping was pretty much non-existent this week due to it being our non-pay week and trying to conserve as much money as we could to help pay for things.  We had some unforeseen expenses.  For instance our dishwasher, after many years of sub-par service (things have just been slowly going on it over the past two or so years), finally died on us pretty much this week.  It no longer will get the dishes clean no matter what you do  (I just stopped using the top rack completely the last few loads I've done and have to wash the bottom on the high temp super long wash to get anything on the bottom close to clean) and the husband was pretty certain that the pump was going on it.  So, we went in with the Sears card on a a super Labor Day sale they were having and got a new dishwasher (the husband still needs to install it, so I don't have a picture yet...in the meantime I'm just using the "screeching and grinding like it's being tortured" dishwasher in the meantime).  We'll get 200.00 back in Shop Your Way rewards over the next six months as part of the sale (you get like 33.00 a month every month for six months), so the plan is to go in with the rewards every month and just get my husband a pair of jeans as Sears is the one store that sells the jeans he likes to wear or socks or whatever he might need (and we shall pray that Sears remains open for those six months and actually has some inventory to speak of). 

We got so much off of the dishwasher due to using the Sears card to pay for it (it was like 5% off), the dishwasher we got was 40% off as part of the sale, we got the 200.00 in rewards back, and we used up a bunch of Shop Your Way special deal thingies on it as well so we got it for a decent price when it was all said and done.  I'll pay off the dishwasher next month when PFD's come in and such (because the amount on our Sears card between the dishwasher and the bed is giving me hives of anxiety right now), but the sale was good enough to take advantage of this month and it is definitely a comfort to have the new dishwasher ready to go in on the fly if the other one just grinds to a halt (which I'm honestly waiting for that to happen the way it is working).  I did end up getting the dishwasher in black because it was the cheapest option that was in stock (I was NOT going to pay another nearly 200.00 for stainless steel), but I think it will look alright in the kitchen, and hey it will work, so it is completely worth it!

I'm just hoping that for the time being things are done breaking around here.  Let us pray.

Right, but back to shopping.  We just got essentials this week and ended up spending about 30.00 on groceries this week, part of that being some plastic wrap I had to get to help wrap the son's feet at night as I'm blowing through it at a rapid rate.

2.  I started to take an in depth inventory of what we had in the way of canned goods and such and started to make a list of things I needed to get to pad out the pantry. 

Total side tangent here, but I am working on a post about Alaska and our unique set of circumstances up here when it comes to food storage and such as I got some curious e-mails after the mouse invasion as people were asking about how Alaskans figured out how much food to store for winter with our lack of cheap fresh produce and stuff.  I'm going to work that into shopping goals and things for this month...I'm still working on how to do the post, but yeah...I'm working on it :).

Back to the post...while working on the list of things I needed to get, I started thinking about it and decided that I could help pad out my stores just by harvesting the few things I had around here that grew this year and that were free to me to harvest.  So, I went out and harvested a ton of rhubarb from my monster plant.  I'm not even at 50% taken off of the plant so far, but I'm running out of freezer space.  I went online and looked up tons of rhubarb recipes and have decided that we're going to learn to really like rhubarb this winter.  Once I explained my reasoning to the husband he totally understood and agreed to give it a shot (rhubarb isn't his favorite).  I'm looking forward to the challenge and think that I can use the rhubarb to help make food stretch this winter for sure.

I am also planning on harvesting rose hips this year again, but I'm just going to stew them to get the juice and then freeze it the juice quart bags as the rose hips are pretty ripe at this point and are I'm sure kind of mushy, so drying them without the middle seed would be really hard to do.  This way I can just throw a bag into a pot and heat it up for tea over the winter, make some syrup or candy with it, etc.  I'm sure I can figure out different ways to use it up.  I do NOT need rose hip jelly as I still have plenty left over from last year, which is good as I really like it :).

3.  I explored Amazon music this week while working around the house and was thrilled to find that one of my favorite singers for years, Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 (and later a solo career) had a new album out and that Matchbox 20 had two new albums out since the last time I really kept track of them.  I was able to download all of the albums for free to listen to them and I am SO glad I was able to do that for free.  I didn't like the new Rob Thomas album at all, the first Matchbox 20 album had like three new songs and tons of redos from their other albums (which the new songs weren't to my taste) and the other new album, North, was okay and I enjoy some of the songs on it, but I wouldn't have liked it enough to justify buying it.  So, by screening the albums for free, I saved myself a bunch of money I would have probably ended up spending at some point if I didn't have that option and ended up feeling ripped off.  So, yay for having the ability to listen to music for free with Prime on Amazon!

4.  I watched a lot of Bob Ross and Victorian Farm this week when I couldn't sleep because I wasn't feeling well.  It really did help me to relax and I think gave me a better quality of sleep when I was able to sleep.

5.  We finally got a Michaels in Wasilla this week, which is great as it's a lot closer than driving an hour to go to one in Anchorage!!!  Their grand opening was on Sunday.  I didn't go and I probably won't for a while, but I was thrilled as I'm looking forward to going in around Christmas to take advantage of some of their Christmas sales for the daughter especially as she's really into art and I'm thinking she might like some crafty things now a days too :).  I went and downloaded the app onto my phone so I will be up to date on coupons no matter when I go.

6.  I made the comforter for the son's birthday with materials I had on hand.  I ACTUALLY had planned on doing a completely different comforter with a construction themed sheet I had found, but the previous owners had stored the sheet and used it with folds around the edges that were there for so long that the sheet developed holes on the folds, so I would have lost a good three to four inches off the comforter having to avoid all of the holes.  I'm thinking that I might turn it into a center panel, much like his race car quilt, and give him a construction themed quilt as part of his Christmas gifts, but we'll see if I can run into some batting cheap and such.

7.  Our cat Prince has been making us proud by going out and killing mice left and right, so I'm hoping by doing that he might just scare off the mice from around the house.  I can dream anyway *laugh*. 

8.  I emptied out another video shelf (well nearly) by grabbing some empty containers out of the garage that were just sitting around waiting for me to store them in the shed or something (shows how bad I can be at procrastinating).  I then took my cookbook collection out of the china cabinet and put it in some of the empty shelf space (which I'm still working on arranging things in the china cabinet with the linens to work better now I have more space) and also emptied out the top shelf of the son's closet that housed a bunch of children's books and put those out in the living room too.  I do like having the books all in one place now and by emptying out the big top shelf in the son's room I'll hopefully also have room for some of his many comforters and quilts and I can get them out of my closet (he blows through so much bedding that we have quite a collection to make sure he's got something on his bed all the time).

9.  We hung up our Halloween decorations as soon as September rolled over.  My husband loves Halloween as much as the kids love Christmas (well...nearly...Alvah has actually been trying to take down the Halloween decorations so I can put up Christmas decorations...it's kind of cute that he's gotten into the Christmas holiday so much the last few years :), so we try to put up the Halloween decorations as soon as we can and keep them up for a while.  I still have a pile to hang up from the Halloween decorations Alvah made with his class last year, so I'm hoping to get those up this week, but it's fun hanging up the decorations the kids have made since preschool.  Completely free, ends up making the house look neat, and the  kids love it too :).

10.  I took out a chicken carcass, my carrots (which were rotting on the ends...I've never had that happen before...I've had them dry out or sprout roots, but not rot like that...it was upsetting), what sad little bit of celery I had left, an onion and some freezer dried chicken (not too terribly bad, though) and made a BIG pot of chicken soup.  I froze the soup in portions without any noodles in it and will add noodles as I pull the bags of soup from the freezer to stop the noodles from being mushy.  I actually ate quite a bit of the chicken broth and things this week when I was sick and I as definitely happy to have the soup available.

And there you go folks.  Some of the things I did this week.  How about you?  Your week go well?