Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

 I know that this is a post that encompasses two weeks, again, but I am hoping to get onto a more even blogging keel here, now that I'm not running around like a mad woman trying to get everything buttoned up before winter officially reared it's head around here.  For instance, last week, I ended up spending most of the week running things from the house into our storage van as the weather was saying we were going to be going from the lower 40s to the 20s by the end of the week.  And I am SO glad I worked on getting things organized like that as the temperature did, indeed, tank at the end of that week and it was a LOT nicer doing those errands in warmer weather than in colder weather.  

Then, this week, I spent getting the pantry organization buttoned up (which, I think I finally got done yesterday, yay!!!), doing general household stuff, trying to get pre-winter cleaning done that I didn't get to earlier in the year since the weather was being so crazy and just generally trying to get chores done that I hadn't had an opportunity to get done of late.  So, I got the bathrooms scrubbed down really well, got all the of throw rugs in said bathrooms washed and dried and put back where they belonged, got SOME curtains washed and put back up, got screens pulled from a bunch of the windows (and put into storage for the winter) so I could really close our crank-out windows and seal them up tight.  Also with the freeze and thaw to outside, since the windows with the screens are only single pane versus double pane on the rest of the windows, it is a good way to stop mold from taking hold in the window frames by removing the screens so I can scrub the frames of the windows well throughout the winter as they ice up and thaw.  I made a list of what few things we would need for Thanksgiving shopping so we could get it done ahead of time, got the mounds of clean clothes folded and put away...things like that.  I also sat down the last few days and made a list of other things I want to get done between this month and next month.  So, in short, I'm feeling decently accomplished.

The last few days winter has officially started hard with a pretty substantial snowfall for the first big snowfall of the year.  We got hit with nearly two feet of snow between yesterday and this morning, so my husband ended up running the snow blower for the first time this year today.  Shot of the snow on the trees up top for your enjoyment :).

Anyway, let's get to other money saving things that have happened the last two weeks, shall we?

1.  We ended up staying home for Halloween this year and didn't do much other than make and decorate cookies, carve the Jack O Lantern, make Halloween chocolates and then we sat and watched our favorite Halloween specials while we waited for the icing to dry on the cookies.  It was fun, if quiet.  

For the cookies, we used food coloring and ingredients we already had and for the Halloween chocolates we ended up using chocolate chips out of the pantry to make them and put them in the fridge to keep them set.  The daughter especially is having fun raiding a chocolate out of the fridge on and off :).

2.  I mended another Carhart jacket of my husband's that had gotten torn badly.  He then helped me to get the zipper on said jacket unjammed and it seems to be working fine now.  Hopefully the mend I did will last a while as the tear was in a bad spot and I worry about it lasting.  We'll see how it goes.

3.  I am very proud of this one.  I fixed my food dehydrator!  I had asked my husband to maybe take it apart as the motor housing unit had cracked apart in the earthquake and it would no longer power on.  I decided to take it apart myself and see if I could fix whatever was wrong as I didn't have the money to buy a new food dehydrator and I had gotten two bags of lemons for really cheap (I had asked for lemons...you know...individual lemons...from the Pick Up and Go folks, but supposedly they were out of stock on the individual lemons, so they gave me two bags of lemons instead?  I know...I'm confused too.  So, I got two bags of lemons for 1.50 after my personalized price on lemons had kicked in, which was a great price, but a LOT of lemons to go through).  

Anyway, I took the food dehydrator apart, fixed some alignment issues on the switch for the power, redid the cord attachment to the food dehydrator (a wire had popped off of it's housing), put everything back together and it actually worked!!!  I was able to dehydrate the lemons earlier in the week, which I have to say I don't think I've ever gotten that much of a thrill out of dehydrating something before *laugh*.  Now I just need to see if I can save my Food Saver so I can get a few oxy absorbers out of my big bag of them and still be able to vacuum seal the oxy absorbers again so they don't go bad on me.  I'm worried I'm going to be WAY over my head on that project, but I'm going to give it a shot if I think it is worth trying.

But, yeah, I got the lemons dehydrated too, which was a relief as I already had one bag's worth in the fridge as lemon honey pickles and REALLY didn't want to take up more fridge space with more of them.  

4.  We made some Thanksgiving decorations as part of homeschool using materials we already had around the house.  That was actually a lot of fun and I think both kids had a good time.

5.  We took advantage of a 5.00 Friday deal through Carrs last week to get some things we normally buy really cheap.  By asking my husband to stop off in Eagle River at their Carrs we were also able to find cranberries on sale for Thanksgiving, so I was really happy to get those as I didn't have any luck finding them nearby.  He even found some fresh herbs for Thanksgiving, which is REALLY hard to find this time of year up here.

6.  I mended a pair of shoes with Shoe Goo.

7.  I mended one of the comforters my son uses on a regular basis.

8.  I dug out my sewing table while cleaning out the den so I can make a few Christmas gifts (hopefully).

9.  I was offered an e-coupon for a free bag of shredded cheese from Carrs, which I took advantage of with our normal grocery shopping.  I used it in a few dishes over the last week and it's already gone (we used the remainder for tacos a few days ago), so I was really happy to get it as it came in really handy :).

And yeah, I'm going to call it good there as I still have a bunch of stuff to do before getting kids ready for bed.  I hope you all had a great and productive few weeks here.  Also, spoiler alert.  Stay tuned here as I've got a bunch of different posts planned the next bit, including some new recipes.