Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Monday was actually a really productive day for my husband.  He had the day off with it being Memorial Day and Alvah had a good day that day mood-wise, so he spent most of his day out in the garage working on getting it cleaned up (and thus getting projects worked on that had been mounting up on him to get that stuff out of the garage).  So, I have a few of his projects to add to this Frugal Friday :).

Oh and some people e-mailed me and asked me to share pictures of our fixed roof (didn't share last time...oops), so here you go (the new shingles will fade out pretty quickly with how much direct sun our roof gets, so don't let that throw you).

So, let's get to what we did this week!

1.  I received a few freebies the last shopping trip (not the one we picked up today) and have been drinking the coffee creamer that we received.  Slowly.  I'm not really sure what it is with coffee creamers.  They always taste watered down when I add them to my coffee and I'm not a big fan.  It's like they want you to add a ton of creamer to get the effect you are after.  I've gotten to the point over the years where a few teaspoons of sugar in my coffee with some milk or cream tastes WAY better to me than a flavored creamer does.  But, the creamer is free, so I'm trying to go through it, even if it it's not my favorite.

The energy drink we decided to grab on a whim.  I get free energy drink offers quite a bit, but tend to ignore them, but since we were picking up groceries anyway, I decided to get this one.  

Spoiler:  It was DISGUSTING!  My daughter and I both tried a sip of it and just could not do it.  It ended up down the drain.  I can't even say that the drink tasted "healthy" and that is what was throwing the flavor off.  The artificial sugar gave it an awful aftertaste and the drink contained neither strawberry, nor watermelon flavor, that I could detect.  I keep running it over in my mind on what it actually tasted like, but I just can't come up with anything.  Considering the amount of time I've been on this spinning globe...that's saying something.  It did taste 100% bad, though, so there is that (sorry if you like it...I did not, obviously).

2.  I was able to bake bread this week, which was nice and while I was at it, I baked a few pans of rolls so the son would have something that was easy to chew, but as nourishing as I could get it.  We are down to one bag of 6 rolls from the freezer that are defrosting on the counter right now, so I'd say we did alright with that.

3.  I have been wanting a Belgian waffle maker forever and my daughter requested I order myself one for a late Mother's Day gift (I spent Mother's Day in a complete anxious mess since the son was going in for surgery the next day) and she'd pay me back.  I'm really happy as I've been wanting one forever, but honestly was too cheap to invest in another waffle maker *laugh*.  I found one on Amazon with ceramic plates instead of non-stick ones (I know, there is controversy about this out there, but this was my personal choice in the matter) and ordered it.  I got this one (affiliate link!).  I hope it works well as I'm overly excited about it *laugh*.  I used a giftcard I'd been saving to help take 10.00 off of the waffle maker to make it cheaper (couldn't help myself).

4.  In my husband's adventures, while cleaning the garage he found an outside light he's been meaning ot hang for years on the side of the house and he finally decided it was the day to do it.  It came out looking really nice and will be so nice this winter as that side of the house gets REALLY dark during the winter and is kind of worrisome not being able to see things like moose that might be lurking around.

5.  We had one kitchen chair, one of our old ones we inherited from my husband's grandfather, that was coming apart at the legs a bit and we had another chair we'd bought used that the back broke off and was loose pretty much everywhere, so he took some straps, lots of wood glue and a bunch of patience and fixed the chairs up.  The one we bought used, I'm kind of wondering how long it will live as it was pretty thrashed when we bought it, but I was glad to get the kitchen chair fixed up since it has sentimental value attached to it.

6.  I mended a few pairs of jeans for my husband.  I was hoping to get a bunch of mending done Monday night, but the son has taken to hating me working on the sewing machine, so it's definitely slowing me down.  I have an OVERFLOWING pile of mending to do, so I'm hoping he'll let me get some more done tonight...we'll see how it goes.

7.  My daughter was having issues with her phone becoming possessed and just playing weird, random podcasts or music she wasn't even listening to.  I looked up solutions online on how to fix the problems and fixed it last night.  The joys of technology are about 2/3 problems to the 1/3 advantages *laugh*.

8.  I found that our local Franz outlet had hotdog buns on sale for Memorial Day when I stopped in to see if I could pick up some chips to go with our burgers we were having that night (we ended up having popcorn with the burgers instead as they didn't have any, but it worked out) and they were 1.50 cheaper than buying them from the grocery store.  So, I picked up enough to get us through the next shopping trip without me having to pick them up at the store (hot dog and hamburger buns are some of my son's preferred foods, so we buy him a few per week for more calories).  I put them in the freezer and voila!  About 6.00 saved off of our grocery trip this week.

9.  We've been taking advantage of the nice weather to get out and about, mainly practicing driving (we are SO far behind on getting my daughter her driver's license as Alvah has made it really, REALLY, hard the last few years to get driving in for her, but I'm determined to do it this summer).  Sure, gas isn't cheap, but I still feel good about getting her out driving myself instead of having to shell out money for driving lessons (which, honestly, the more time went on, I've been seriously thinking was the only way I was going to get the poor kid her license).  

10.  My husband fixed the loveseat.  Again.  Alvah loves the loveseat and is really hard on it and this time one of the legs snapped off.  My husband redid how the legs were mounted and was able to reattach the legs so they will be harder to break (hopefully).  He used scrap wood to make it all happen.  I have found a completely memory foam loveseat on Amazon that will replace this loveseat when it dies, but the longer we can keep the old one going, the further down the road I have to pay for a new one, so always a good thing.

And there you go folks.  Some of the ways we saved money this week.  Did you do anything to save money this week?  Feel free to share in the comments :).

Enjoy!