Frugal Accomplishments the Last Three WeeksI

Wow, time slipped away from me this month.  It's been rough around here with trying to get my husband well (he's finally on the mend, thank goodness) and then after he started feeling better I finally came down with the cold that I'd managed to avoid for a good month.  I popped vitamins and worked really hard on getting well and thankfully this is the first time I've caught a cold in years where it did NOT go into a nasty cough for months that would finally land me at the doctor's, so yay for that!

I got a couple of e-mails the last couple of weeks and did not have time to reply to them, so wanted to apologize to those that were nice enough to write.  I'll try to reply to them as soon as I have time to breathe around here.  Between working on making up Alvah's learning plan for next school year (which, as any homeschooler will tell you, creating your own individual learning plan, or ILP for short, is a LOT of work), getting the daughter back and forth to work, driving practice with the daughter, getting the husband's car into the body shop to finally get repaired, Father's Day and other stuff...it's been crazy busy on top of people being sick.

But, yeah, let's fill you in on stuff that has been happening around here.

Summer, if you can call it that, is flying by.  Where a bunch of people in the Lower 48 are dealing with hot weather and drought (prayers are with you all), we are dealing with cold weather and rain.  Like constant rain and lows in the 40s at night.   The mosquitos love it.  Humans, not so much.  Everyone I talk to is so tired of bad weather as we've had it constantly the last three years it seems.  So far this Spring/Summer we've had four days of nice weather.  Four.  The last couple of them were last week and the trees finally leafed out completely so it looks like summer outside, which is nice.  Unfortunately, Summer Solstice is now passed, so we are looking forward to the dark coming back, but we still haven't really had much sunny summer yet (Glen Allen even had snow just a bit ago...I mean geez!).  Up North it seems like they are getting more sun in North Pole and Fairbanks (I watch Somer's in Alaska on YouTube), but around here in South Central/The Valley, the weather hasn't been grand and it is wearing on people's moods.

I have worked hard to keep things like the furnace turned off as much as I can around here, which has reduced our gas bills compared to last year at this time.  Which, honestly, with how energy costs have gone up everywhere, I feel pretty good about that :).

Anyway, onto money saving matters around here...

1.  I have been asked to share any tips I've been personally using to save money on groceries.  I'll share a post about that, hopefully in the next few days.  I'm not sure how helpful people will find it, but I'll share what is working for me and my family.

2.  For Father's Day, instead of going out to eat, we stayed home and I made one of my husband's favorite meals, tempura cod and French fries (my version of fish and chips).  I made a lemon pound cake from a mix I had in the pantry for dessert.  The only purchase I ended up making that day was I bought the HBO mini-series "Chernobyl" off of Amazon (which I budgeted for :) for us to watch as my husband and I have really been wanting to see it (we've only watched two parts so far, but it is really good).  

3.  My daughter lost a button on her favorite shirt.  She loved the buttons on the shirt as they are a very stylized silver colored button.  I was pretty sure we were not going to be able to replace the button with one out of the button jar, but my husband, daughter and I went through all the buttons in our big button jar to try and find a button that she liked, would fit in the button holes on the shirt (they are smaller than a normal button hole and the shade of pink of the shirt is hard to match thread-wise, so I didn't want to expand a button hole if I could avoid it) and would go with the other buttons on said shirt.  We finally found a pearl colored button that she liked, would fit the holes on the shirt and I figured if I rearranged the remaining buttons and put the pearl button on the top hole it would just add a bit of flair to the shirt.  The daughter was happy with the results and I was happy that she was happy :).

4.  I mended a shoddy seam on one of my husband's work shirt pockets.

5.  I darned one of my son's favorite socks that he likes to wear over the bad eczema on his foot at night (the sock takes a lot of abuse because he itches his foot through it and then it gets pretty saturated with moisturizing lotion).  He really likes the sock as it fits over his eczema just right so I was careful with the darning to make sure the sock would hold it's shape well.  So far, he's been okay with the repair, so I'm happy.

6.  I took remnants from the fridge that needed to be used up and made a breakfast casserole for breakfasts this week.  I'm still new to the world of breakfast casseroles, so I over browned the cheese so it's kind of interesting to chew the exterior of the casserole, but the flavor is good.

7.  A while ago I decided not to do a CSA this summer like I had in the last few years.  I'm really glad I made the choice I did when I look at the weather, as I doubt the CSA members are going to be getting much produce this summer and goodness knows how delayed it would be in starting with the weather has gone.  And not doing it saved me money up front, so there was that savings too.

8.  I had bought a few new comforters, all the same size (Queen) to replace some that were falling apart (Alvah is hard on bedding as I end up having to wash comforters and things a LOT with him)  from Amazon and then I ordered comforter covers/duvet covers for each bedroom.  The comforters themselves were cheap (20.00 a pop), but were put together really cheap as well so I've had to re-sew a few of them on the edges as the seams are not great.  Sadly, I had bought that particular brand/type as I've had one comforter in that brand on my bed for a long time and it's held up nicely for a cheap comforter...but they have definitely gone down hill in quality (items at the used stores having gotten so expensive, it really isn't worth my time to look there for things like comforters, unfortunately).  Times like this I'm really glad to have basic sewing skills and a good store of thread.  I figure I'll have to repair a few more, I'm sure, but at least the comforter covers will help cover up any repair work I've had to do and my seams should last a lot longer than the shoddy ones they came with :).

9.  My son really scratched up one of his favorite Charlie and Lola discs.  I tried to repair it, but failed.  I was able to find a decent priced replacement on E-bay (the discs are getting harder and harder to come by and Amazon wanted a fortune for a used copy) and ordered it, but in the meantime I searched around and found that Roku has Charlie and Lola available to watch for free.  So, he was able to watch his favorite episodes of the show on his TV while waiting for his replacement disc to come in the mail.

10.  I gave my husband and son haircuts.

11.  My daughter's desk drawer broke and we realized that it had a very specific runner part for the drawer that was made of plastic.  I went searching around and actually found a bulk package of the part on Amazon for not much money at all on sale with a coupon.  I ordered them and the part worked perfectly.  My husband is also glad we have back up pieces for the drawer as we're not overly fond of plastic parts for longevity, so if it breaks again, at least we have back up repair parts.

12.  A while ago I had bought replacement Rubbermaid containers for lunches to replace ones I had bought a looonnnnnggg time ago.  We were down to not a lot of containers left as we had thrown them out over time as they got melted and things, so I ordered a big kit off of Amazon that was like 1/2 the asking price from the warehouse as the original packaging had gotten damaged (supposedly...I didn't find any damage to anything when it came in, so I was happy).  We started using the new containers and they were NOT holding up well, at all.  Combine that with me reading about micro-plastics and how they stick around in the human body and things and I just decided I didn't need my husband nuking his lunch in the plastic containers.  

I decided to purchase some glass lunch containers for him.  After much searching (I will readily admit I spend hours looking for a good bargain to save money...I'm cheap what can I say), I found these (note:  affiliate link) and ordered them. With the 10.00 off coupon (still active as of the posting of this post it looks like), the containers were only 19.99, they nest inside each other via shape (you get three sets of three; rectangles, squares and circular containers) for actually pretty convenient storage, the lids (so far) don't leak and they are working really well and my husband seems to really like them.  The only drawback I am finding to glass containers is that I have to put like a paper towel or something over the food if I am worried about it spitting over the microwave as I haven't found any glass containers where the lids are microwavable yet.  I am not worried about melting them in the dish washer as I don't use the drying function on my dishwasher, so I'm not sure how dishwasher safe they are (just a warning there).  Will I replace all of my plastic containers with glass?  Probably not.  But for my husband's lunches, this is working out well.

13.  I am always thinking of different ways to get nutrition into Alvah without him turning on food and things.  I finally, after much debate, broke down and bought a 9x13 cast iron baking dish (tip to local peeps:  If you want one, get it through Amazon.  It is at least 10.00 cheaper than trying to buy one locally...I looked).  The downside is trying to figure out how to store the sucker as it is heavy and bulky.  At the moment it is parked solidly on my stovetop pretty much 24/7 as I really don't have room to store it somewhere else.  

BUT, the upside to this thing is amazing!  I am using this to bake my son's French fries in, am using it to bake home made breadsticks in (I bake breadsticks in a sheet and then cut it into strips to make them like Pizza Hut breadsticks...it was the best way to trick the son into eating home made breadsticks :), and using it for the intent I bought if or (to leach iron into his food).  BUT, I've found so many more awesome uses for it in the kitchen.  For one, I FINALLY have a roasting pan that can go from oven to stovetop and I was only out 30.00 versus the tons of money those things cost in stainless steel.  I have used it for a griddle pan for smaller things that I didn't want to pull out my big cast iron griddle for.  I'm even considering putting one of my bigger cast iron pieces on top of said pan in my oven and trying to make sourdough baguettes in the pan to get the oven rise/steam baking that only cast iron can give you.  I never thought one pan would be so darned useful, but I am so glad I purchased it!  I bought this one (once again, affiliate link there).  I love Lodge cast iron.  The only piece I've ever been kind of disappointed in is I bought the 10" two handled skillet with a Christmas gift card last year and it feels like it is cheaper quality than any piece of Lodge cookware I've ever bought before.  The handles, especially, are really thin compared to like my 12" pan.  

So, yeah, I'm going to call it good there for now.  I know there is more to this list, but I have a ton to do and can't find where I put my list (I'm sure it is somewhere safe...anyone else do that???).  So, before we go let's get to a garden update!

First the flowers have been very happy with the amount of rain we've been getting and when we don't get rain, I've been taking the opportunity to fertilize everything.  Petunias are heavy feeders, so every time I fertilize the plant, it goes nuts and produces more flowers.  We've really been enjoying the basket of pretty we have out on the deck :).  Also, enjoy the photo bombing cat.  We were both in a hurry to get inside as it started to pour as I was trying to take pictures.

Next up, the tomato plants haven't done much with how cold it has been, unfortunately.  The few sunny days we've had the tomato plants loved and put on some small teeny tiny tomatoes, but that's as far as they've gotten.  Sad, but with tomato plants up here it is always a gamble with the weather.  So far, this year, I'm losing.

The parsley planter is going well, which is great as I am nearly out of parsley and really want to dehydrate and put up a bunch this year :).

The second herb bed isn't doing great.  The basil I was able to get one harvest off of for dinner one night, but it hasn't grown much, as in any that I have seen, since then, with the cold and rain.  The rosemary has grown a teeny bit, but not much and even the parsley plant in that bed isn't doing much.  

The chard is growing and isn't minding the cold.  It hasn't grown as much as I'd like as I'd love to start harvesting the outer leaves at some point, but we are getting there.  

I am THRILLED that this week I'll be able to start harvesting lettuce, though as the planter has finally filled out to the point I think I can finally get a full salad out of the lettuce.  I've been waiting excitedly for this time as lettuce at the store is expensive, so I'm going to enjoy eating our lettuce as long as I can.  I mean look at how yummy this lettuce looks....

Yum!!!

The empty planters where the cabbages had been, I did, indeed plant seeds in.  The seeds never germinated, probably due to the cold, and then the planters the ants found and decided to nest in (a new one on me for a container garden...I haven't had that problem since I left Pennsylvania years ago).  We are definitely having ant problems this year as the diatomaceous earth I normally spread around the house just gets washed away with how much rain we're getting.  We are looking into other means to eradicate them as carpenter ants are a real fear for us as we have a wooden foundation house, so yeah...a bit concerning on the ant front.

And there you go guys and gals.  A quick update on our lives around here.  I hope your summer is going okay (sorry to those effected by the smoke in Canada...we've been smoked out from wildfires a few times and it is horrible, so I really feel for you all) and you are able to have some fun and get things done as well.