Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Hello everyone!

I hope and pray everyone had a great Christmas holiday.  Around here, it was kind of depressing.  My husband started getting sick right about the time I started feeling better from whatever virus I had.  Honestly, I think my husband had been fighting it off for a while, but finally succumbed last week, probably because he knew subconsciously that he was getting really close to his week long vacation (talk about a crappy vacation, though).  It was rough.  He started getting sick on the 19th, had to take the 20th off from work because he went down with the cold HARD.  By Thursday he ended up going to the doctor because he was concerned he had pneumonia.  His lungs were horribly enflamed, tested negative (for the second time that week) for Covid and was sent home with some hefty steroids for his lungs as he was still in the viral stage of the bug.  He's since had to get an antibiotic onboard with his treatment as the steroids helped, but were not making him well, and being as sick as he was he definitely ended up with a secondary infection.  I'm thinking he might be in for a second round of antibiotics before it is all said and done.  The son came down with the virus the day before Christmas, so between the husband and son...Christmas wasn't that great, in all honesty.  By the time my birthday rolled around the daughter had succumbed as well, so...it's been kind of depressing and worrisome as holidays go for me.  Bright side, the kids are doing alright and getting through this okay.  So, hopefully the family will be better soon.

I'm really looking forward to our immune systems getting back to a normal level.  It seems like everyone around us, including us, is getting sick near constantly as with all of the lockdowns and things everyone's immune systems got compromised because they weren't exposed to germs.  My husband takes precautions at the airport, but it seems like every week there is some new bug making the rounds  at his work and unfortunately some of them have made their way back home.  It is just going to be one of those winters, I think.  I'm making sure to pop my vitamins and copious amounts of Vitamin D (with the polar dark we get up here, we are all deficient in vitamin D and need to take it all year long).  So far, if this is a new virus my husband brought home, I've managed to hold off getting it *knock on wood*, but I'm suspecting my family finally caught the bug I had.  I tried my hardest to make sure they didn't get exposed by me, but when you live in the same house and don't really get to go anywhere...it makes it difficult.  But yeah, let's hear it for vitamins!

On top of the family getting sick, our weather has not been great.  I spent a good couple of hours one day last week shoveling two plus feet of snow off of my deck as we were getting nailed with freezing rain for a few days and I was worried if we were going to get the amount of ice they were predicting I didn't want the weight of the ice accumulating on top of the weight of the snow we'd gotten for fear my deck might collapse from the weight.  We did end up getting a pretty good amount of freezing rain, so I am really glad I decided to do the job.  Our immediate roads are still nasty slippery (some roads are better than others, of course) and today we are getting more snow and then the temperature is set to tank again where we'll be having highs in the single digits.  Not great weather.  Our temps were 12 degrees colder on average this month compared to last year, which my electric (electric supplemental heating system in the house) and the gas bill definitely reflected that.  And honestly I'm grateful that is all we have had to deal with so far, as I've watched what has been going on all over (so many prayers to spread around all over the world right now it seems) and just locally know that a LOT of people (like those in Fairbanks/North Pole/Delta Junction) are WAY worse off than we are.  My prayers are with them as well.

Since we were home all week as I tried to nurse the family back into something resembling good health (lots of soups!!!), I did get some things accomplished, so let's get into those!

1.  I started going into all the nooks and crannies of the house and finding all of my empty mason jars so I have them to use and all in one place so I can find them when I need them (in theory anyway *laugh*).

2.  I emptied out our food storage areas, took inventory of our long term food storage and got everything put away in different areas as my husband needed the corner I had chosen to store my long term food storage for another project.  

3.  The kids got a lot of clothes and bed sheets and things for Christmas this year and, for a change, I was able to get all of the new clothing washed and ready to go within a day of Christmas (I normally have a huge pile of clothes to work through, so this was a real accomplishment for me :).

4.  I tried to fix my Food Saver, but nothing I tried worked, unfortunately.  The pump just will not engage no matter what I try.  My husband has added it to his pile of things to tear apart and try to fix, but in the meantime my sister was nice enough to get me a new food sealer for Christmas, so I won't be without one.  I really want to start using the vacuum sealer more to preserve foods longer, so I was happy to receive it.

5.  I made vegetable beef and barley soup for dinner one night, so I went through all the vegetables in my fridge and freezer and pulled out anything that needed to be used up and made a HUGE pot of soup.  I still have a few containers left in the fridge that I'll put into individual portions and freeze today so we have some ready made soup in the freezer to reheat when we want.  I also refrigerated and then cut and froze individual pieces of mincemeat pie (leftover from Christmas dinner) and cut up and froze what was left of our Christmas Eve lasagna as well.  I'm feeling pretty good that I'll have a few things all set up and ready to go in the freezer for later use AND I didn't have to throw out any left overs.

6.  I needed a few items for the kitchen, so when I had to put medical bills on the credit cards, I took the credit card rewards and redeemed them for Amazon gift cards.  I then used the gift cards to buy the things I needed for no money out of pocket.  

7.  I sat down and made a list of all the rooms in my house and what I wanted to do to get them all cleaned up and spick and span.  My goal is to do a deep clean to help welcome in the new year.  Kind of like wiping the slate clean and just making you feel like you are going into the new year with a clean and fresh spirit.  It just seems like a good idea after the past few years to do anything I can to help bring some happy energy into the house :).

8.  I clipped the cat's claws and brushed their teeth.  With how the cost on everything is going up, I have come to realize that preventative care for everything, including the pets, is going to be even more important, so I am making a point on keeping on top of things in that area.

9.  We took down the Christmas decorations a few days after Christmas and I have to say that while we do love the decorations and lights and everything I do really appreciate the open feeling the room gets when the tree is put away.  It is definitely easier to vacuum once the tree is put away *laugh*.

10.  I had some fuel rewards that were about to expire on my shopping card, so I redeemed them for some baking supplies that were available for December to redeem your points for.  I got a free bag of chocolate chips, a free bag of coconut, a free bag of sugar and a free bag of flour (which I need to pick up next time I'm at the store as I ended up doing seat of my pants shopping last week when I needed to go and pick up prescriptions for my husband at the pharmacy and I completely forgot my shopping list).

11.  My daughter and I sat down, planned out and were able to have her make gifts for everyone this year.  She really worked hard and put a lot of thought and effort into the gifts she made and I have to say that I'm really proud of her as she really GOT the whole concept of giving gifts.  She might not have spent much money on making the gifts she gave, but she put tons of thought and effort into them and that is what it is really about :).  So, yeah, mom brag moment here *laugh*.

12.  Just as a side note, the photo up top is of what we have for daylight this time of year.  I took the photo at about two in the afternoon the day after the solstice.  We DO have light this time of year, just nothing more than a twilight type of light.  It's kind of like the dawn can't get past the starting line this time of the year, but the dawn and dusk light I have to say is pretty when it isn't overcast and such.  All of Alaska is happy that we are past the solstice and are gaining a few minutes of light every day now.  We kind of have a little cheer as soon as the solstice is over.  

So, there you go folks.  Some of the things that have been going on around here.  I am off to clean!  I hope you all have a GREAT New Years and I'll be back with most posts then :).