Frugal Accomplishments for the Last Week

I keep thinking I’ll have time to think and get more blogging done, but then Alvah doesn’t sleep, I sleep as late as he does and the next thing I know I’m running around like a maniac all day and falling into bed exhausted at 2:00 am because rinse, lather and repeat. It has been even more crazy busy around my house than normal the last bit, so it’s been hard to find time to do much outside of household stuff.  So, anyway, let’s break down some of what has been going on around here!  

Probably should start with the pumpkin above.  I'm actually making a point to buy more pumpkins this year than in previous years because I have found that I LOVE pumpkin butter!  I really want to make a decent amount this year, so I am buying up pumpkins to do just that.  I have found that if I get one pumpkin per pay period, it doesn't lead to spending a ton on them.  This week we even got subbed out a Cinderella pumpkin for another type of pumpkin I had ordered (at no extra cost, which was nice), which is a really pretty decoration in our den now (I've seen YouTuber's use the Cinderalla pumpkin for eating pumpkins, so I'm hoping it will make good pumpkin butter!).

1. We started speech therapy a few weeks ago! Alvah is doing well and I’m thrilled to have speech therapists who know how to run LAMP, so he’s got a much better chance of getting ahead using it now. We are doing a combo of home visits and office visits to see which one he does the best with. He finally seems to be settling into the groove the last couple of sessions and he did really well on his session earlier this week. So, here’s hoping he gets forward progress accomplished.

I already feel better about speech with the LAMP emphasis, but also because I decided we weren’t doing feeding therapy this time around, so he’s not immediately hating his speech therapist. I figure at 6’2”, he can quit growing anytime now and I’ll be okay with it, so I’m not worried about him growing at this point, so he can continue to eat his ridiculously self-restricted diet and I’ll be okay with it until he wants to maybe expand it on his own.

2. I got the work samples done for both kids and into the home school earlier this week. Their contact teacher was happy with them. I apologized for starting late, but told her about my health problems back in August and she told me not to feel bad as like 90% of the families she overseas are behind due to health or other issues. I feel kind of bad that I feel good that I’m not alone in my inability to get the kids started early this year. Misery loves company, I guess *laugh*.

3. I took the kids in and got their flu vaccinations done for the year. Only my husband and I to go. Hopefully, even if I can’t find time to get one, my husband can get his done. With him working at the airport and around a bunch of different people and the public, I like for him to be as protected as possible, so he doesn’t (hopefully) bring home a nasty strain of the bug and then with the kids vaccinated, I at least feel like we got a few lines of defense in place against the flu. Alvah gets the flu horribly bad, so anything we can do to protect him at all, I do. 

 4. I actually took advantage of Prime Days last week to get Alvah a new pair of sneakers in the next size up (his toes are at the end of his current ones) and a pair of jeans for my husband as they were on sale for decent prices and were cheaper than I’ve found in about a year. Hopefully everything comes in the mail okay and everything fits *fingers crossed*. I used saved up credit card rewards from the ridiculous amounts of medical bills I had to put onto them to help pay for those items and some Christmas gifts for the kids. 

 5. Dividends came in and I used them to pay down credit cards with said medical bills on them. We did put a bit of money aside to finish Christmas shopping for the kids (which was good as I had not gotten anything accomplished in that area, yet) and to take a road trip down to Seward and see the Sea Life Center (my husband desperately needed to get away, so I’m very glad we did it for the sake of his stress levels) and the kids had an absolute blast. 

 It was only a one day trip, but we packed a lot into it and it was a good time. I made and packed all of our food and snacks, which definitely saved us a bunch of money (and I’m doubly glad I did it when we got there and we realized that most of the town was closed for winter already, so restaurants would have been hard to come by) and planned everything carefully so I knew exactly how much everything would cost. I’ll share a few pictures that I took while we were there in another post (it was downpouring when we were there, so I got a few when the rain would pause or when we were inside the sea life center and that was about it), but yeah, it was fun. 

 I was even able to save up my gas rewards from grocery shopping all month in September so we were able to get 1.00 per gallon of gas. All totaled we spent like 56.00 on gas to go down there and I came back with ½ of a tank of gas. My truck got WAY better gas mileage than I thought it would, as I’m always driving it around town and not doing highway driving. For a nearly 20 year old vehicle, it did great (which was such a relief to me as I was nervous about anything happening to it as I need it for driving to speech therapy now on top of driving Armina to and from work). 

 6. My husband hung up some outside lights he’d collected or been given over the years that he’d been meaning to hang up forever. The new lights have light sensors on them, which will save money in the winter as they’ll shut off when there is enough light to trigger the sensors. I would always forget, in the past, to turn off the back yard lights when it would get light out, so I’m super happy he put those up…they’ll do a MUCH better job than I would, that is for sure. 

 7. There was a delay when my husband went to pick up our grocery order early last month, so Carrs sent us a digital coupon for 10.00 off our next order. I combined that with a 20.00 off when you spend 100.00 or more coupon from their weekly deals (like that is hard to hit anymore with inflation) to get 30.00 off of my order. There was also an online order promotion going on last week on the app as well, so by stacking everything together, I was able to save 100.00 off of my order. I had to pick up groceries on Monday versus Friday, but it was worth maybe having to pick up a bit of supplemental produce or something next week to save that much money on groceries. 

 8. I have been working on doing yearly chores done around the house. This week I went and cleaned out my furnace with my vacuum cleaner and changed the filter on the furnace. I also cleaned out the cold air duct screen that I use to stop debris from falling into the cold air return on the furnace (it is just a big duct in front of my deck door in my kitchen that has a cover with decently large openings on it, so the screen makes a world of difference). Next week I’m going to clean my grill for preparation to store over the winter and to conglomerate and inventory the food storage/pantry. Feel good that I’m getting stuff done, anyway. 

9.  Made nectarines into peach-blackberry pie filling (I mixed the nectarines into a can of blackberry pie filling when I got it ready for the freezer) to make into cobbler. a while ago and put it into the freezer  When I cooked the peaches/nectarines, I made them with brown sugar, some cinnamon and some rum extract to make them fancy.  It was really good and we enjoyed eating it for dessert.

10.  Turned half a loaf of sourdough bread that was going stale into bread cubes, which I dried in the oven, and then put through my food processor to make bread crumbs.  By saving up my odds and ends of bread, I haven't had to buy bread crumbs for a long time now.

11.  Made a sourdough baguette to eat sandwiches on.  I used my cast iron 9x13 pan to make them and then sprayed them with water before putting them into the pre-heated pan.  They turned out well and I'm looking forward to experimenting more with doing things like that later on.

12.  Watched some of my favorite channels on YouTube when Alvah wasn't sleeping at night.

13.  I made sourdough bagels for the first time ever and put the majority of them in the freezer for quick breakfasts (or bagel sandwiches) later.

14.  We were out of English muffins and I thought for a moment of buying some because I was tired and really didn't want to make them.  Until I saw the price of English muffins at the store.  Yeah, I made English muffins.  Bright side, the sourdough English muffin recipe from King Arthur Flour makes like two dozen English Muffins, so we'll be set for quite a while (once again, the majority of them ended up in the freezer).

15.  I scheduled our bi-yearly septic clean out for the end of October (the nearest date they had).  I have budgeted and put aside money for it, so hopefully it won't be more than what I put aside for it *fingers crossed*.

16.  I took inventory of medicines and toiletries to see if there were any holes to fill.  I found a few, which I'm slowly filling so that we will hopefully have six months to a year's worth of that item.

And yeah, that's about it on the frugal accomplishments front.  I'm feeling pretty good about it, overall.  I hope your frugal endeavors are going well and you are all doing okay.  Take care!