Frugal Accomplishments For the Last Two Weeks

Since I didn't get to do a "Frugal Friday" post the last few weeks, I decided that I would compile the list together and share some things that I've done the last couple of weeks to save money :).

1.  I took a loaf of bread that wasn't getting eaten fast enough, sliced it and let it stale up a little bit more and turned the entire thing into a bunch of French Toast.  My husband actually ate a ton of it for breakfasts last week and I ate the last two pieces for breakfast one morning.  I was impressed we were able to go through so much of it, as my original plan was to freeze it *laugh*.

2.  Speaking of freezing things, my husband was running low on breakfast bowls in the freezer.  I took a bag of off brand French fries we'd gotten last year when frozen French fries were in short supply.  This particular brand my son didn't like (it was right before we got all of the free French fries that lasted us nearly a year!  I've just started having to buy the son fries again the last few months and WOW have they gone up in price!!!) and decided I needed to do something with them.  So, I took them and just used the fries as hash browns in Lynn's Kitchen Adventures Breakfast Bowl Recipe.  It made a huge bowl of breakfast bowl mix that I was able to split into a bunch of bags and put into the freezer.  It passed the husband quality control test, so I'm calling it a win *laugh*.

3.  I got some pretty good deals for Easter this year.  I already had a spiral sliced ham I got cheap (like .99 lb cheap) after New Years, but I completely spaced when Easter was this year, so forgot to get eggs during our normal "big shopping trip" week (since my husband gets paid every two weeks, I do one big shopping trip per pay period and then the next week just aim to buy milk and whatever essentials we might run low on, to conserve money).  So, I actually checked the store ad for the week.  I then saw they had a 1.00/1 coupon for eggs and also had asparagus on sale for 1.49 lb (it had a limit on it, though) and pork roasts and chops were on sale for 1.49 lb as well.  I needed pork roasts as I was completely out in the freezer and I can always use another package of pork chops, so I put those in my pick up order.  I also got some blocks of cheese as they were on sale decently cheap with a coupon, got my eggs (yay!) and I got a thing of Ready Whip to eat with our strawberry short cake for Easter (it was on sale for 3.00 and was the only one they had in stock, but I still felt ripped off when we got it as shrinkflation has hit that stuff hard.  The bottle is SO much smaller now).  I ended up spending around 60.00 for everything, which I was okay with to stock up on pork.  

We had the asparagus with Easter dinner roasted with some bacon pieces I had left over from breakfast (it was so yummy!) and they were thin enough I didn't need to take a peeler to hard parts or anything.  It all got eaten in no time flat.

4.  In the same "shopping" vein, one of the "essentials" on my list was some more Tilamook cheddar block cheese as Alvah will only eat that type of cheese (and since it is one of the whole foods he'll eat, you better believe I keep it in the house).  I was going to buy it at Carrs, but the price on the cheese had gone up crazy, so I stopped off at Three Bears to pick up some blocks of cheese to grate myself.  I got Tilamook there, but while looking at the other cheeses, I was astounded to see a big blocks of Provolone in with the other block cheese.  What blew my mind was that for a nearly six pound loaf of cheese (they were like 5.83 lbs each), supposedly the price on them was only 9.57 each!  I was convinced it was a mistake on the shelf tag and it was the price per lb or I was reading the unit of measure to the price wrong.  I took one cautiously with me and had the cashier do a quick price scan on it before I bought it and was astounded to see that the entire loaf was, indeed, only 9.57!!!  That worked out to be about 1.64 per lb of cheese!  I only took one to save whatever I could for others.  I sliced some and grated some, put it into freezer bags and stuck it into the freezer for the most part.  I did keep some out for sandwiches, but the rest I froze and will use later for all kinds of things.  I am SO thrilled with that purchase/deal as it is hard to find good deals on cheese :).

5.  We dyed eggs with food coloring again this year.  They came out prettier than the picture shows.  This year we only died 8 eggs to save on egg costs, but it was still fun and everyone enjoyed themselves :).  I found that the McCormick food coloring this time around actually had egg dye amounts right on the box to make different colors, so I stuck with those for the most part (I'm not very observant so they could have been there for years and I might not have noticed, unfortunately).  I turned the eggs into egg salad and my husband and I really enjoyed it.

6.  I got some Spring cleaning done.  I got up on top of my cabinets with a putty knife and cleaners in hand and got all of the old grease removed and the cabinets cleaned all nice and tidy.  I took down my pudding molds and cleaned them really well and put them back up, etc.  While cleaning my hood and deep cleaning it, I managed to strip the paint off of the hood without even trying (my husband thinks that it is just so old that the grease from cooking day to day over the past 10+ years we've lived here has just worked its way into the paint and made it peel off)...I mean it just wiped off with the cleaner.  

My husband and I finally realized that the hood is definitely a vent-less style hood by searching the model number and I realized that the filter that was in it previously was the wrong type (it was a reusable filter, but not for that type of hood) and I'd been buying the wrong type of replacement filters all this time because I'd just been buying what the previous owners had in the hood, thinking it was the right type!  So, I ordered the proper type of filter, ordered a new shield for the light bulb in the hood (the old one was so old the plastic was brittle and breaking off pieces whenever you'd so much as touch it) and got everything but the horrible looking paint looking a lot better.  It works as well as a vent-less hood can work now, so I am calling it a win and hopefully we can get it repainted soon.

7.  I used up some onions that were starting to sprout and made Chicken Lyonnaise for dinner one night (great way to use up onions by the way!).

8.  I sat down and planned out the kid's curriculums for next school year and I went and planned out what I needed to buy for the son for next school year (the daughter's stuff can be ordered directly through the homeschool and they'll take it out of our allotment so I don't have to worry about paying everything out of pocket and getting reimbursed for it).  I then went and figured out what I would need to order for the son and how much it would cost me out of pocket, so I can hopefully start budgeting to pay for it all before July 1st rolls around (when you can start ordering for next school year).

And I'm going to call it good there as I have a ton of housework to get caught up on.  Enjoy!