Life Update and Some Frugal Stuff Thrown In

 

Hello again fellow frugal warriors!

Sorry for the lack of communicado.  I have just been crazy busy the last few months and haven’t had much free time.  It has been crazy busy around here, don't know about you all.  Let’s get into some of what has been going on around the old homestead.

The biggest thing that happened was actually exciting.  My half sister and her adopted mom came up and stayed for a week last month.  She is the first family member from my side to visit me so it was great seeing her again!  Especially since the last time I saw her in person was right after my dad passed away over a decade ago.

We were able to save some money while they were visiting, for them and us, by having them over for dinner at our house every night.  It also allowed me to feed them healthy meals, which my sister is supposed to be doing as much as possible (she is battling major metabolic problems and other stuff).  I tried to use foods that I had around the house to also make the meals as frugal as possible.  I actually did really well, only having to spend about 30.00 on some extra chicken and some bell pepper for meals.  Having a well stocked pantry with staples you use all the time definitely pays off at times like this.

We crammed a lot into one week and showed them very cool, but inexpensive things that were local to us.  We went to the Wasilla transportation museum, the Reindeer Farm in Palmer (and we walked across Palmer and got to show them some fun things before that) and we went up to Independence Mine and toured it before driving over Hatcher’s Pass and working our way back home.  

Amanda and Cyndi did some fun stuff on their own in Anchorage and Whittier a few days, but we always ate dinner (or supper depending on where you are) at my house so we got daily visits in.

Amanda had a blast (Armina did too, especially at the reindeer farm above...tearing her away from the baby reindeer was almost comical *laugh*) and didn’t want to leave, so I feel good that we did our job as hosts well.  It was a lot of fun having family visit.

In other, more mundane, events, I did not get the deck 100% done this summer, unfortunately.  Close, but no cigar.  I only got a bit more to do, but the ever present rain started up and just hasn’t quit, so I am thinking that project is over for the year.  I feel good about what is done, though, and know the stuff I didn’t finish will make it till Spring without issue if I can’t get enough good weather to button it up in the next few weeks.

I have kept careful tabs on our finances of late.  My husband’s Union shafted him and others in their new contract and my husband has taken a significant pay cut (like 800.00 a month type of pay cut).  Luckily, when he got the pay raise a while back (to make pay more competitive with the private sector as the state couldn’t fill positions) we continued to live like we had before and just tried to keep up with inflation and scrape together a teeny, tiny emergency savings.  We are able to still make our bills (not looking forward to winter, at ALL because our electric company hiked base rates by 11% starting in July…no matter how you cut it that is going to hurt), but haven’t been able to save anything since the pay cut kicked in.  Two steps forward, three steps back.  

Honestly, I am just grateful that we are able to make our bills as I know there are SO many people out there that just plain can’t right now.  I have been there too many times in my life and I feel so horrible others are going through it.

I was going to start blogging regularly again starting at the beginning of the month, but I still had a ton to do.  We had appointments with Alvah’s OT from our contact school, Armina started working as an assistant swim instructor at the pool, I had to figure out how to input a phonics screen into Alvah’s LAMP program for his speech therapy (I did it, though, just took a bunch of extra steps as my program didn’t work the way the tutorials online did), got the curriculum for both kids in the mail and we officially started homeschool the last few weeks.  I still have TEFRA renewal stuff to do for Alvah, but I feel like I've been making forward progress.  I FINALLY feel like we are getting back into a regular schedule, so hopefully I can get to blogging regularly.  Here’s hoping anyway.

One area I have been working really hard on organizing and stocking well are my pantry and freezers and I'm feeling pretty good about what I've done, although it is still a work in progress.  I am going to do a pantry tour as soon as I’m done so stay tuned for that.

I have also worked hard on just decluttering and organizing throughout the house to make things work better, especially the kitchen.  I’ll try to do a kitchen tour if I can find a nice gap where I can keep it clean and tidy for five minutes without having to cook or bake something lol.

A few things we have accomplished around the house as well on the frugal front:

1.  My husband fixed the support spring system in our love seat(put in a wooden subframe made up from wood recovered when I took apart the old couch and loveseat…recycling at its finest) and fixed the legs while he was at it (again with recovered wood).  Alvah has been really hard on the loveseat over the years, so it was nice to be able to get rid of the stack-o-books-leg and you can sit on the loveseat without sinking into it weird and quickly realizing something was not right with it.  I still get a kick out of sitting beside Alvah and the cushion is nice and stiff and right where it needs to be.

2.  I mended a few pairs of jeans, a few armpit seams in some of my son’s shirts, fixed a few missing buttons on some shirts and adjusted a pillowcase that we got for free down to a standard pillowcase from a king sized.

3.  We celebrated my son’s birthday at home and I made him his favorite breadsticks for dinner.  He had a good time and blew out his candles a bunch (he learned to love that a few years back).

4.  I pulled the screens from the windows, took them outside and removed the copious amounts of pollen and dust from them before putting them back in the windows.  Next steps are to try and figure out how to put new weather stripping tape on said windows for winter prep (I have the weather stripping tape,  but really want to avoid removing the crank out windows to apply it because that would require scaffolding on the back of the house, sooooo I've got to figure out options here).  I also cleaned up the cold air duct for the furnace as well because it needed to be done.  I need to vacuum out the heating duct in the kitchen/dining area, vacuum out the furnace and place a new furnace filter in it and we should be pretty on top of things for this winter when it comes to the forced air heat.

I am going to call it good here as I have to get to making pizza for dinner in a few minutes, but I thought I'd pop in and say "hi" and let everyone know that I am, indeed, still alive...I was just really busy all summer long, unfortunately. The summer I had planned with relaxing periods in between the work just did not work out for the most part.  I had fun while my sister was here, but I have to say that it was tiring as they came with a list of things they wanted to do in the week they were here and we ended up cramming as much as we could from that list into the week they were here.  Doing that while also just trying to do the busy day to day things I have to around here...it was tiring, but worth it.  Just not very relaxing *laugh*.

And there you go folks.  A bit of a glimpse into the last two months for us.   How have you all been?  Well I hope?  

Riding the Waves of the Changing World: A Blog Format Change

Man, the title of this post sounds like the blog is going to be completely different and sounds rather doom and gloom *laugh*.  Sorry about that.  I've been sitting here for like fifteen minutes, trying to figure out how to title the post, so I finally just threw something up.  It's better than the original blog post title I had typed which was, "Duhhhhhh...." to try and break the writer's block *laugh*.

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot the last few months.  A dangerous past time I know (Beauty and the Beast reference by the way).  And I've been praying a lot, which is always a good idea when you aren't sure how to move forward.  But, yeah, to put it simply something about the blog was bothering me and I had to work it out.

See, the Frugal Friday recaps are great and all, but of late they have been hard to put together and honestly they kind of felt wrong, like I should be focusing on something else.  Enter prayers to help me figure out what I was supposed to do.  Sharing frugal recipes and things seemed like it felt right compared to what I was writing, and after a lot of soul searching, I finally have decided to switch gears on the blog for a while.  I am going to keep sharing tips on how I live frugally and hopefully share them so others might be inspired or those tips themselves might help people, but when it comes to ways I've saved money...honestly I think most people, including me, are going more into frugal survival mode and being able to afford to eat and make bills instead of worrying about if you have saved money that week and honestly?  In the current economic environment, no we are not saving money as hard as I try.  At the moment I'm just trying to not slide backwards and I know a lot of other people are in the same boat.  I've gotten some really panicky e-mails from people, especially those who are just starting out in their own households and things asking me to share real life advice on what to store for food storage on a budget and how to live cheaply because from reading the blog people can quickly go back and realize that we've been penniless and lived off of our food storage and the kindness of others before.  And that is one thing I absolutely can do to hopefully help others.  And I'm hopeful that you all can help in the comments as well and chime in with experiences and other tips.  I've been really blown away by the cool comments on the recipes I've been sharing and everyone's different takes and tips on those recipes.  I've written down more than a few things to try in the future :).

Now I want to address some things I've gotten over e-mail and messages to clear a few things up on what our environment is like where I live in Alaska as a lot of people seemed to be curious about if we could grow a big garden up here, was keeping chickens and a homestead farm viable and other things.

We have a unique set of circumstances in Alaska that others don't have to deal with down south.  For one, I see all over YouTube people telling others to grow their own food and do it now.  Well, if you live up here you are dealing with snow on the ground still (at least in South Central and further North), so trying to put anything in the ground at the moment is ridiculous.  I normally plant at the beginning of June for the most part as the danger of snow is hopefully past by that point.  We have an exceptionally short growing season up here (about 88 days) and we have the problem of permafrost needing to break up before planting can take place, so a lot of things can only be grown in green houses OR things need to be started in green houses to have a shot of reaching maturity up here. We do have some crops that do well up here.  Potatoes, cabbage, carrots...cold weather crops do pretty well here.  We even have a local sweet onion that is grown at some Valley farms that are sweet like Vidalia onions because the soil lacks sulfur just like the soils in Vidalia.  Kind of neat, really.

 There is also the gamble of putting in a garden without a 12' electric fence guarding it as the moose are a problem (as I well know *grumble*).  

So taking all of that into account here is my personal situation right now.  I do not have a greenhouse and I don't see one going in anytime soon (unfortunately as I'd love to have one) nor do I have the money to put up a fence around a big garden, or pay the spike in the electric bill as a result of said fence.  Like many we are living paycheck to paycheck.  So, I'm just hoping I can afford seedlings this year.  With inflation going crazy that's a big question mark right now as I'm getting hives seeing some of the seedling prices coming out of the Lower 48 and I'm doubling that price in my mind for Alaska and getting a wee bit faint at the prospect.  If I can afford seedlings or get my own to grow enough (the son and the cats like to kill plants, but I am going to try),  I can do another container garden on my deck (it is on the second floor where moose and slugs don't go) and between it and the CSA box through our local farm I can hopefully put up as much food as possible for later use.  Past that I'm throwing potatoes into the ground in my yard and hopefully will have a potato crop come fall (moose won't eat potato plants as they are poisonous, so it seemed like a good plan).  Even buying seeds is getting harder this year.  Burpee came out with a notice saying they will not ship up here anymore due to rising shipping costs, so we are already down one seed company.  Stinks, but it is what it is.  Luckily I have some seeds that I bought a few years back that are still viable so hopefully I can get some seedlings going on my own in case I can't afford local ones.

I looked into possibly getting backyard chickens again, but the cost of chicken feed has gone berserk everywhere, bedding has gone up....everything has gone up and when you include shipping costs going up, you see that translate hard up here in the costs of goods.  Up here keeping poultry isn't cheap on a normal day (pre pandemic you could get a dozen local eggs for about 5.00 and that was the cheap end of things with the farmers not making a lot of profit), but now a days it is  definitely NOT cost effective for me to get a few hens again, so I gave up on that idea.  I am going to buy eggs as long as I can afford it and they are available, but otherwise I'm just going to cope.  Buying from local egg producers is an option, but due to rising costs a dozen local eggs is currently running about 9.00 and rising, which is out of my cost range.  Unfortunately, a bunch of local farmers I've seen on Facebook and things are actually starting to get rid of their livestock and things as they can't afford to feed them, which is heartbreaking to see as there is no more dedicated group to pushing and supporting local agriculture than our local farmers.  They have been working for years and years pushing Alaska Grown as a real viable concept and supporting each other in the hopes that we could really get farming to really kick off up here again.  Where farmers and ranchers are suffering in the Lower 48, it compounds up here as everything is just that much more expensive. 

So, yeah, back to more close to home matters, what can you expect from the blog?  I'll be sharing things I'm canning or things I'm doing just like normal, but I am just going to shift gears a bit on how I share things instead of putting them in a frugal recap post.  I'm attempting to get more organized moving forward.  I'll be sharing things as I learn new skills.  I'm currently working on expanding my sewing abilities more so I can cope with things better in the future.  Total aside here but if anyone can recommend some good books on learning to quilt and making your own clothing, I'd appreciate it as I'm not finding much in what I'm looking for.  In general, I'm hoping I can go into a bit more detail on things and how and why I found this or that useful to hopefully help more people in a practical sense.  I know it is clear as mud, right?  Well, just stick with me here.  Hopefully I'll work the kinks out and get down to brass tacks soon :).  I've already got a few posts coming up, hopefully by the end of the week, so stay tuned for that.  

In the meantime I hope everyone is well and that you are riding things out well so far.  Hang in there!