Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

This was a week of high highs and a pretty hard disappointment.

I'll get to the highs in a moment, but today was a pretty crushing blow to the good mood I was in.  I went and checked the mail to get a package pick up slip I knew would be there to go and get the peanut free spread variety pack that was sighted to be in today.  And in with that mail was a bill.  A bill from my husband's doctor's office.

Sure, I knew a bill was coming because I figured out the whole deductible thing was off from what I thought it was, but I was expecting  a bill for about 100.00, which sucked, I figured, but doable.  But nope.  It was worse then I figured because the doctor's office charged my husband the not right amount for his Urgent Care visit when he went and that ended up being 150.00 more than they charged us at the time.  I called them today (luckily someone was in, which is rare on a weekend) and asked them to adjust down the return visit that same week since he was definitely an established patient and, I argued logically enough, that it would be classified as a follow up visit, not to mention it was kind of weird that an Urgent Care visit would cost as much as a regular doctor's visit.  They refused and basically informed me that if I didn't pay the bill by the end of the month the computer would send me automatically to collections (which I've dealt with that fiasco before).  The two office visits, mind you, ran us up nearly a grand.  For TWO TRIPS to the doctor's.  With no additional testing.  That's insane!  I informed them of as much and told them that they had managed to cost themselves out of our business as we were not going to pay nearly 400.00 to see a doctor, let alone a nurse practitioner at their office.  They seemed unimpressed with losing our business, which was fine, and she said they'd be happy to transfer our records to a new doctor when we found one.

I will call them Monday, pay the bill (the person who takes the actual payments isn't in till then), which will hurt as I was hoping to use part of the 261.00 hit they nailed us with to pay to get some home maintenance done, and I'll go searching for another doctor's office.  We found the union my husband joined when he got his job has a health clinic they run in Anchorage that is MUCH MUCH cheaper to go to, so that is going to be probably where we go from now on, but I am hoping to find a back up plan (in case of really bad weather or someone being too out of it to drive for a hour to see a doctor) closer to home that won't require me to take out a loan from the bank to pay for (kidding...but not by much).

But yeah, we get money in with dividends and just as soon start to bleed it out.  Frustrating to say the least.  I do at least feel grateful that we had the money to bleed as the idea of coughing up 261.00 a couple of weeks ago...I don't know how we would have done it in one chunk.

Right, okay, so now that I did the downturn in my week (I still feel a need for chocolate after dealing with that), let's get to the upbeats as there were some this week :).

1.  Dividends came in like I said above, so one of the first things I did was pay off the chunk of dental bills that were due by next month.  It felt good getting those crossed off our debt list, although it was sad watching the checking account go up and then back down again in the same day.

2.  My husband and I went Wednesday to get our flu shots this week as the kids got theirs done on Tuesday and while there I got all of my boosters updated (we have a mumps outbreak in Anchorage right now and I wanted to help shore up herd immunity as much as I could for the sake of pregnant women, immune compromised and other "at risk" people).  I hadn't had boosters done since college for the MMR and the last DTAP I had was...well a long time ago when I was pregnant with my first (I got attacked and bit by a dog, on Halloween, in a grocery store parking lot...it was not a fun night).


The store normally gives you a 10% off coupon for the next shopping trip of your choice when you get a flu shot, but it turns out that they also gave one out for each booster you got, so between my husband and I getting boosters and flu shots...I was a happy camper!  Especially when the insurance covered the vaccinations 100% which was no out of pocket expense for me (honestly, I was expecting some) and the pharmacy doing them also saved me an over priced doctor's visit to get the vaccinations done too. 

I had gone to Carrs on Tuesday as well to get one thing.  Butter.  They had butter on a three day sale for 2.50 per lb (along with other things, but the butter was all I cared about), which is about as low as butter gets around here.  Also if you bought things on those days you also got a 10.00 off a 50.00 purchase coupon that printed off when you checked out.  I got my butter and the 10.00 off coupon that day.  This also comes into play *laugh*.

So, Thursday I went to Carrs armed with my coupons and the weekly ad, which had some awesome sales in it (like Honeycrisp apples for 1.88 lb this week!!!) and went to see what I could find.

And I hit pay dirt.  In a big, BIG way!

Welcome to Pork-a-Palooza at the Make Do Homemaker!

I made a bee line for the reduced meat before going to look for the apples that were on sale and found a TON of pork chops marked down 50% off...they worked out to be between 4 and 6 dollars per value pack of pork chops.  I grabbed all they had, which was probably about 7 or more packages.  I got a picnic ham that was marked 30% off and worked out to be about 12.00 for it.  I got fish (not on sale but because I just wanted to get some) and EVEN a really fancy beef roast (standing rib roast type of fancy) as they are on sale for 5.77 lb this week and I had a personalized deal of 5.00 off a 30.00 purchase in the meat department (personalized E-Coupon thingie).  I got breakfast sausages.  I got name brand shampoo instead of super cheap shampoo for the daughter (to help cut down on super frizzy hair...poor thing takes after me on fine hair, but she has a lot thicker hair than me, so she can get some serious mats going if not careful) and the husband (sales combined with E-Coupons and things to make them cheap enough for my "cheapskate gene" to not throw them aside *laugh*).  I got a bunch of Honeycrisp apples.  I got black olives (on sale with a coupon of course).  All said and done I had a HUGE heaping cart of groceries when I went up to the registers to check out.

I also planned how to check out, so I broke down what I was doing with the cashier before we started.  I put meat up first because the 10.00 off of 50.00 coupon I had said it couldn't be combined with other offers, so I was worried that the computer wouldn't let me stack the 10% off your purchase coupons with it.  I had it worked out in my head to go over 50.00 with the meat, but I forgot the 5.00 off of 30.00 E-Coupon that would come off and I also didn't realize that the pork chops that were marked 50% off were now also on sale.  So I kept having to hand the cashier meat packages until the total was at 52.00 and then I got it down to 42.00 with the coupon and paid.  At this point, funny enough, the morning cashiers (whom I know pretty well by now) were all impressed and standing there to see how it all went down after that.

I then got everything else rung up and they hit total and we waited, no joke, about five minutes for all the E-Coupons that I had stacked and other deals to process through the system.  And then I handed them my paper coupons and the 10% off coupon (the 10% off had to be taken off last, which was sad, but I could see why they did it that way).  My total started up around 400.00.  By the time the discounts and coupons were taken off, all totaled WITH MEAT and all, I spent 140.00 on groceries.  AND I walked away with .80 off per gallon fuel rewards because of bonus coupons I had on Just 4 U combined with a fuel reward thing they had going on at the store this week and things.  Life was good that day!

I had 200.00 set aside to stock up on meat and produce out of dividends.  Let's just say...it was a good day :).  A pic of my new small block freezer, currently home to the meat from that trip (I'm still working on getting the big freezer defrosted...I was hoping to do it to today, but life intervened again) is seen up top there.

The funniest part was after SHOVING everything into my trunk (and it wasn't easy, happily) and standing back, all I could think of was, "How in the Heck did I used to spend 150.00 a week on groceries?  Where did it go?  I mean LOOK at this!"  I'm still trying to work that one out, although I think it's going to be one of those, "What is the sound of one hand clapping" types of deals *laugh*.

I ran back to the store yesterday to get a few minor things that I hadn't picked up Thursday (and to pick up a script that had to be ordered and took a bit to come in for the son).  They had strawberries on sale for 2.50 per container, which is cheap for up here and they actually looked pretty good, so I got a container for my daughter for snacks.  It turned out to be "snack" as she gorged herself on strawberries this afternoon, but ah well...at least they didn't go to waste.

2.  I have been planning on how to make a fall themed quilt for a while.  I can actually SHOW you what I want to recreate here.  See, my daughter has had the book, "Froggy Goes to School" since she was really little and reading it to her a lot, I immediately fell in love with the quilt Froggy has on his bed when he wakes up from his nightmare.  Here's a shot of it...

I just thought that was the prettiest quilt and would be pretty easy to recreate (Note:  I admit readily that I'm weird and draw inspiration from odd places ;).  IF I could find the right fabrics to make it so it looked good.  I was missing a good brown fabric and black fabric (see the pillow I had to fill in the eyes with fabric marker as a demonstration of how I don't have black fabric  around here *laugh*).  I've been continually looking at the used stores for a black sheet, hoping I could find something that would work and this week I found a flat black sheet for 1.50!  I was so happy to mark that off of my list.  I have a tan sheet and a dark blue sheet I can use for a backer.  Now I just need to find some light yellow fabric for the yellow blocks and I think I can find some decent fabrics for the leaves (I mean they might have patterns on the fabric, but it will look just fine I think) and I MIGHT need to find some dark grey or other contrasting fabric to rotate with the black.  But, yay for progress to getting this quilt started officially :).

3.  By watching Amazon carefully every day on my Subscribe and Save items, I was able to cancel some of my items and reorder them at lower prices, saving me a total of 12.40 on all the items I had on order so far.  Prices fluctuate a lot on Amazon and with Subscribe and Save you can "lock in" a low price if you order an item at that, so it's worth watching and then cancelling and reordering at the lower price before the price jumps back up a LOT of the time. 

4.  I contacted my son's care coordinator this week and made sure that everything was running along for the yearly renewal for his insurance.  Since this is a long process, I always make sure that we're on the same track to get the renewal trucking along to avoid problems.  Definitely saves money to keep that stuff straightened out and on time.

5.  My daughter has gone back and forth for, oh, about a year *laugh* about what she wants to be for Halloween this year.  She first wanted to be a swan (which that one was baffling me trying to figure that one out), then a couple of other things, and finally settled on an artist this week.

THAT I could do!

I already have the paint brushes and I knew I could easily make a palette out of cardboard, so that got us down to a beret and an apron of some type.

I started thinking and dug one of my everyday aprons out of the closet.  It's stained, it's old, and oh yeah...it was also completely free when I got it ages ago *laugh*.  I had appliqued a quickie frog image over the top of the original logo.  The frog had come off of a favorite t-shirt that had died of mine YEARS ago (I like frogs :), but I knew that the image would never work for an artist apron for a costume and well...weapon images in school...even those in the hands of a frog...would probably NOT be appreciated.

So, I did some quick surgery today.  Off with the frog...

And back to the old logo underneath...

I'm going to take some unbleached muslin that I have in my stores and maybe some Craft Bond (if I have enough left) and just adhere the plain colors over the logo.  Then I'll dig out my paint and take my daughter and the apron and the paint outside on a drop cloth and let her splatter the apron with paint all over and voila!  Artist apron!

Tuck the paint brushes in one of the pockets (not my good ones mind you...I know I have some cheaper ones around here) and a cardboard palette in another and complete it with a beret we found at the used store today for 1.49 (I was actually kind of bummed that we found one so cheap as I had found some patterns on how to make one on Pinterest and figured I could make her one pretty easy) and voila!  Artist!  Hopefully it turns out well!  Stay tuned for progress reports.

6.  I fixed a loose sole on my shoe with Shoe Goo.

7.  I wanted to restock some soups to eat when well...I felt like soup or wasn't feeling well...and I wasn't impressed with what I saw at the stores for options.  So, I went and looked up some recipes online to make different types of soup and will start work on making those hopefully this coming week (AFTER I defrost the big freezer *laugh*).

8.  I worked on a reorganizing plan for the pantry this week to try and figure out if there was a way to put everything into the pantry that needed to go there and still be able to find everything.  I MIGHT have a plan and am hoping to give it a trial run this week.

9.  A blog reader earlier gave me the advice to maybe up Alvah's water intake to see if it would help his skin.  I knew that lack of water was definitely a problem in his diet (since he won't touch the stuff) but between his comment and some follow up suggestions via e-mail and blog I got an idea.  As part of shopping this week I actually BOUGHT seltzer water and today I started adding a TEENY TINY splash of water to the bottom of the son's soda glass before filling it with soda.  This way the fizz doesn't go out of the soda like regular water and if it works and I can get him up to even 40% seltzer to 60% cola...that can't do anything but help him with hydrating his skin.  So far, so good!  He actually drank the water/soda mixture (trust me baby steps are the ONLY way to work with this kid or he turns on your efforts and they're all for naught).  So, thank you for the advice and suggestions.  Including the Vitamin E suggestion for helping his skin.  I'm going to go to our local bulk store (which Three Bears also sells things singularly) and see what price they charge for vitamin E and I'll add it to the other oils I'm hoping to get him to take and slather on his skin.  So, once again, thank you, everyone!  I appreciate the advice and the input.  It helps me think and improve and HOPEFULLY something works!!!

And yeah...I'm really wearing down energy-wise and still have a few things to do before bed, so I'm calling it good for this week's recap.  How about you?  How did you do?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

When it came to the menu plan the last couple of weeks...it went kind of out the window.  With the son's skin being so bad, erratic schedules and things, yes we definitely ate, but for the life of me I can't say it was very exciting.

I got basically none of the baking done that I had planned on when I posted up the last menu plan, so some of that is going onto this week's "menu goals" as I am liking to call them.  I did finally manage to get sugar cookies done the last couple of days and the kids decorated them last night (the son with help from me, but he sure seemed to enjoy himself).  A result of their efforts are seen up top.  I did end up going to the store and trying to find Halloween themed sprinkles to put on the cookies, but couldn't find any.  I did find candy eyeballs that were safe to get with the son's peanut allergy and I had a coupon my mom had given me for 2.00/1.  Still cost me over 2.00 for the package of them, but they did, indeed, make the cookies come out nice and Halloween-like (between that and mixing colors with the food coloring to create some Halloween type of colors...although the purple was the daughter's idea it did make good monsters *laugh*).  Times like this I am happy I took so many art classes to know how to mix colors as the instructions on the box with the food coloring made me flinch.  I mean 20 DROPS of ONE type of food coloring to make a certain color?  Your cookies would taste like food coloring! 

At any rate, I am working hard on making Halloween treats slowly but surely this month (more on that in the Monthly Goals post I'm working on), so at least I can scratch sugar cookies off of my list :).

When it comes to food this week I need to go to the store tomorrow and buy some meat when dividends come in.  All I have for meat, literally, in the freezer right now is chicken and beef roasts and a Thanksgiving turkey.  That's it.  I need to get bacon, maybe some sausages for breakfast dinners...pork in general really and hopefully some fish.  I'll have to see what I can find.  My shopping list of things I need keeps expanding...it's kind of depressing.  I am now completely out of powdered sugar after making icing for the cookies yesterday (thank goodness my sister-in-law had given me some in with the food she gave us or I would have been packing the kids into the car to go and try to find some at 8 o'clock, which would NOT have made my son happy), I went to get baked beans to cook for dinner tonight only to find I was completely out of those as well, black olives are gone (which made taco night last week a bit of a wet blanket)...just ugh.  I am VERY grateful for what we have in the house, don't get me wrong.  It's just one of those things that happen when you live on what you have for so long....still depressing I have to restock them though *laugh*.

So, yeah, here's how the menu plan is shaping up right now.  I am going to bank on the idea that I'm not going to find much in the way of meat at the store (prepare for the worst and hope for the best) and so am going on what I have in the freezers.  So let's get to it, shall we?

Wednesday:  BBQ beef ribs, rolls, chili spiced beans (since we were out of baked beans)

Thursday:  Balsamic Thyme Chicken (crock pot), pasta with carrot pesto, fruit cocktail

Friday:  Beef and Veggies (potatoes, carrots, turnips) in gravy, biscuits

Saturday:  Chicken fried steak (thin slice pieces off of a beef roast for this and Sunday's dinner), mashed potatoes, turnip greens (from freezer).

Sunday:  French dip sandwiches (use other half of thin sliced beef roast for meat), pears (from pantry)

Monday:  Chicken noodle soup with home made noodles

Tuesday:  Chicken enchiladas, Spanish rice, corn

Desserts:  Oatmeal raisin cookies (from freezer), "Spooky" sugar cookies, soft and chewy snickerdoodles (to make), Rhubarb Dream Bars

Snacks:  Cookies and milk (see above for cookie choices), apples, Ants on a Log (celery with Wowbutter and raisins on it), cheese and crackers

Shopping Goals: October 2017

When it came to shopping goals last month I actually managed to get an okay amount of them, but I did come out short on things like bread flour and all purpose flour just because money got tight and I do have some of both already in storage so it's not like I was going to run out last month on either one of them.  I also failed to get turnips as the U-Pick farm I was hoping to go to ended up not planting them, or the crop failed this year as they never posted up that they were ready.  I was really disappointed that I couldn't get turnips cheap, but such is life.  I am figuring on getting some rutabagas at the store and just putting them into the fridge for using as needed (my mom, who grew up on a farm, educated me that rutabagas actually keep better than turnips do), but I'm just going to have to figure on getting turnips or rutabagas throughout the winter at the store, which is sad, but ah well.

I did, indeed, end up getting five boxes of angel hair pasta at the store instead of going for 20 boxes through Amazon, as after digging around and organizing the pasta better in the pantry I found that I did have more than I thought I did and also it was only 1.00 a box at the store, which was cheaper than Amazon was charging.  So, that was a nice (and much cheaper) find.

This month, when it comes to eating, I am working on figuring out a new system for planning menus (I'm hoping to work it out and finally get it written down definitively this week).  My "plan" (if anything I do can be called that *laugh*) is to plan out basic meals that will probably be made once a week (for instance we've been having a breakfast dinner once a week lately) and then figuring out things that I would like to make for dessert and then planning how much of basic staples, like milk and eggs, I would need to buy to make it through the month on that plan.  Then I can better plan on how much milk to buy in a week, how many eggs to buy for a month...things like that.  I can only really do this with staples as with my son...his appetite is all over the place, so it's kind of hard to figure out how much of his "basics" I would need to make it through an entire month.

When it comes to shopping this month, dividends will be in this week for the family (Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend).  Most of said dividends are already spent (or grabbed by our, insert nasty names here, legislature) as I'm going to pay off the chunk of my husband's dental bills that are due by November (only one more big chunk to pay off after this, thank goodness!).  I usually spend some of the dividends to buy masses of food, which I AM buying some, but not as much as I used to by far.  The majority of this food is being bought from Amazon this year.  I'm trying to be careful with what I order, but am going to buy a few new things to try on my son that are peanut free (which anything peanut free, or heck anything "allergy free" period, is always expensive and, unfortunately, a lot of it has to be bought online).  I am hopeful.  I've failed many times over the years, but if ONE thing sticks and he picks up a new food?  All failures are worth it.

Other things I'm ordering from Amazon are things that are just SO much cheaper to order from them than I can get at the store.  Lately the son has decided he is in the mood for Goldfish crackers.  I've tried about four different recipes that are supposed to taste like Goldfish and he won't even touch them, so I've been forced to buy them (which honestly, if it comes down to Goldfish and Cheetos, guess which one I would prefer him to eat?).  The big carton of Goldfish (which I have to buy as he goes directly to eating his body weight in whatever he decides he wants to eat) is up to right around 10.00 at the store, which makes you want to pass out when you put that into your cart and realize that 1/4 of your weekly grocery budget is now shot.  So, yeah, the bulk flat of Goldfish on Amazon it is!

Also on Amazon I am going to buy 3 oils that another mom suggested for helping eczema that I ran into as her son had awful eczema, like Alvah almost, from a young age and she found that the three oils helped her son's skin a lot (she's got a science background and studied oil compounds and things...the conversation went a BIT over my head, but I got the gist of it...I think *laugh*).  She gives her son some in a smoothie as well so he gets them internally and externally, but since Alvah won't really eat smoothies or anything, I'm just ordering the gel caps of the oils and will break them into a home made skin cream and then maybe squeeze some onto his tongue or something later on if he takes to the oils.  I pulled out my herbology text books to better study the oils and found that two of them are considered to be "women" oils (too much of them can actually mess with the "woman" hormones produced in the body, too, which led me to once again researching safe levels of oils for internal consumption per 50 lb increments.  Amazing what kinds of things you research as a parent), which is probably why I never really studied them to possibly help the son's skin, but they do contain a lot of good things for the skin as well, so after really reading into them, I'm going to give them a shot (they ain't cheap, but nothing with the son ever is).

So, here's the list of things I'm buying this month, I hope.

Amazon.com (the following links contain associate links...sorry folks.  Yup I'm a sell out.  I admit it.  But hey, at least I'm legitimately buying this stuff and consider it a good enough deal to purchase it...that has to count for something right?)

• Milano's Parmesan Cheese Tub (80 oz)  This will be enough Parmesan Cheese to last us a year, I hope, and at 24.06 for 5 lbs of Parmesan cheese I couldn't pass it up.  We eat Parmesan Cheese a LOT and it is one of the few "real food" items my son will eat on pasta, so I found this to be the most economical way of getting it (as the Kraft stuff is up to astronomical levels at the stores and the son won't do the store generic types).   And double bonus is that it comes in ONE container, which will lead me to not having to throw out a small Kraft container all the time, so yay for that!
• Kraft Easy Mac Cups (10 Pack)  Another "boy food" that I very rarely buy anymore.  This will be used to split up other foods for school lunches.  I got the 10 pack for 5.24 after Subscribe and Save discount and the coupon had been applied.
• Evening Primrose Oil
• Borage Oil Capsules 
• Black Currant Seed Oil 
• Don't Go Nuts Nut-Free Organic Roasted Soybean Spread, Variety Pack   Once again a "try it on the son and see if he goes for it" type of experiment.  I've found that soybean spreads like Wowbutter really do taste the most like peanut butter (and every other nut butter alternative I've tried on him, such as almond butter, have failed miserably), so I figure I'll try him on these different ones.  If he goes for it, it'll be another source of protein for him.  And YES I know, trust me I've read it all (I used to run an allergy food blog ages ago), about soy and the dangers of eating too much of it and such and yes I still think it's worth trying with him as right now the most protein he eats at one time is when he occasionally will eat Bumblebee Tuna Salad.
• Don't Go Nuts Nut-Free Organic Snack Bars, Gorilla Power, Chocolate Chip Granola (12 count)  The son has eaten some raw oats a couple of times as a sensory seeking thing, so I'm hoping, maybe, between the chocolate chips and the oats that he might go for these.  Note:  I did get mine cheaper as they were offering a 20% additional discount on their bars earlier in the week, so I got these for 11.62...they are more expensive now.  Fingers crossed that he likes them! 
• Curel Itch Defense Lotion (the school requested their own container of lotion, so I gave them what I had of mine.  I only gave them about 1/3 of my Puriya Mother of All Creams, so at least I still have that until it comes in to help stretch out the Puriya :).
• Annie's Mac and Cheese, Pack of 12  (okay, this was just cheap and will last us forever around here.  I got the 12 pack of Shells and White Cheddar for 7.10 after coupon and Subscribe and Save discount.  That's cheap for any macaroni and cheese anymore, but for actual REAL cheese macaroni and cheese that's unheard of cheap!  I'm not a huge fan of Mac and Cheese but my daughter loves it).
• Zegerid OTC Capsules, 42 Ct (this my husband just needs as he's getting low and through Amazon, after the 15% Subscribe and Save discount for ordering 5 or more items is taken off, it is like 5.00 cheaper than buying it at the store!  Totally worth it!) 
• Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers, Cheddar, 30 Ounce (Pack of 6)  See above for explanation on that one.

How much is this going to cost?  Well, it isn't going to be cheap.  I have a gift card to pay for part of the order, which will help to offset the costs a bit and really, compared to how nuts I used to go when dividends came in, I thought I did pretty well this time around.


Bulk Store:

• Bread Flour (25 lbs...maybe 50...depending on price)
• All Purpose Flour (25 lbs)

Fred Meyer:

• Trash Bags (cheapest place to get them right now that I can find)

 And there you go folks.  My "master list" for shopping this October.  How about you?  Getting anything this month?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

It's been a busy and kind of challenging week. 

Alvah's eczema is flared something awful right now and it's been hard to keep him from scratching himself raw everywhere he can reach.  His hands and feet are particularly bad right now.  This year has been an awful year for allergies.  My husband's asthma, something that normally doesn't bug him unless he's got a bad cold, has been driving him a bit bonkers, the daughter has little patches of eczema and she hasn't had that going on in a LONG time and she's got the hay fever thing going on.  Right now poor Alvah is a mass of Band-Aids on his hands and feet to just lock in as much moisture into his skin as possible and give him a bit of relief.

On top of that there was the Prozac.  It just seems like the longer he was on the full dose of Prozac the worse things were getting.  His sleep patterns the last week went downhill hard, he started hitting himself and others more (although legitimately it seemed when he was actually truly frustrated), his moods were more maniac and then Thursday things just went to a head with him.  I picked him up crying from school at the end of the day.  Not mad crying, but just, "I'm miserable, mom" type of crying.  He cried from the time I picked him up until he crawled into bed with my husband around dinnertime.  Luckily, he picked a good night to need his dad because my husband had to go in for a hearing test for work Friday morning so he went in on a later shift than he's been working while doing programming training.  Alvah crashed at six PM, a definite oddity for him, and he slept until I woke him up at 7am Friday morning.  Luckily between the sleep and me knocking him back down to a half tab of Prozac, he seemed to be feeling a lot better and had a decent day at school.

Earlier in the week I was just feeling really tired and not good feeling and couldn't figure out what was going on, worried I was getting sick again.  A person who worked at the front office of the kids' school then mentioned to me that she had felt like that and had started taking Vitamin D and was feeling a lot better.  I decided I REALLY needed to try it at that point as my blood test last year showed I was too low on Vitamin D but my doctor had never told me how much to take to make it better and with the lack of sunlight this summer...yeah I figured I needed it.  I actually ended up talking to a friend of mine who used to sell Vitamins and she gave me some recommends on minimum amounts of Vitamin D I should start out on and I went to the store and picked some up to try it out.  And BOY do I notice a difference!  Definitely happy I decided to try it :).

But yeah, between that and just being busy with appointments and things this week, it's been a full week.

So, let's get to the money saving aspects of said week, shall we?

1.  I finally had time today to move the freezer my sister-in-law gave us into the kitchen today and gave it a hard core cleaning.  It had spent time in, I think, their shop and over time the freezer had gotten splattered with paint and just had some general wear and tear marks on it.  Since it was going to be going inside, I scrubbed it over about fifteen times to get all the marks I could off of it and made it look as spiffy as I could.  I think it came out pretty good overall (seen up top).

2.  I realized, about halfway through the week, that I still had the 3/4 of a pint of cherry pie filling in the fridge that I had left from canning cherry pie filling...I'd meant to throw it into the freezer, but just plain kept forgetting.  I figured I'd make pie out of it using some pie crust mix that my sister-in-law had given me, but there really wasn't enough pie filling to make a really big pie.  So instead of pulling out another can of pie filling or something, I made a half recipe for pie crust from the box and just folded the extra pie crust over the pie filling (basically I made a regular bottom crust for the pie and took the extra that hangs over the sides and made a top out of it by folding it over the filling), basically making a half sized fruit pie.  And you know what?  It worked out great!  We like fruit pies around here and all, but we never really finish one before we get tired of it.  With the half sized pie we all got to get a few decent sized pie pieces and we didn't get tired of eating pie before it was gone.  I'm definitely going to do this again in the future.

3.  I got a check for a survey project I worked on dealing with eczema and used it to take advantage of a sale that Carrs was running last week.  They had my daughter's favorite flavored water on sale for 1.25 per six pack, so I went and got twelve.  This will hopefully be enough flavored water to last us through January for school, which will make her happy for sure. 

4.  I managed to buy myself a new Kindle on Amazon this week, which is good because the old one I traded with my daughter keeps freezing up anytime I try to go to sites that I NEED to access (bill paying, etc) and I'd have to borrow an I-Pad off of the son to get things done.  I found that they had a "slightly used" Kindle on their warehouse deals for 22.00 after a 25% discount was taken off, so I ordered it as it was still guaranteed to work well.  I ordered the previous generation Kindle because it would match my husband's Kindle.  I figured this way we could split the cost of "extras" without breaking the bank.  I ordered a pack of screen protectors (my husband's Kindle has needed one since we bought it for him) and we were both able to put screen protectors on our Kindles for the price of getting one package of them. 

I ordered a cheap case for my "new to me" Kindle (my husband found another case by converting our old user manual case from a previous vehicle to a Kindle carrier), but until it comes in I borrowed the case from our really old Kindle to use.  The new Kindle kind of floats in it, but it works (you need a case for things around here with the son).

I did notice when I fired it up after charging it that the Kindle is also "without special offers" on it, so I actually got an even more expensive Kindle than I even figured I was getting.  So far it's working well and is pulling up what I need it to pull up, so I am happy with it.  I was even able to buy it with a gift card, so yay for that!

5.  I found a bunch of white chocolate chips that I had bought to try on Alvah a couple of years ago (I try a couple of new foods a couple of times a year with him to see if we can get him to try new flavors of things or just new things period) and he didn't go for them so they got stuck in the back of the cabinet and sat there.  I then looked around and saw the evaporated milk I'm working on going through and a can of pumpkin that was past its used by date by just enough that I wanted to use it up and a bag of mini marshmallows that I just couldn't drink in cocoa enough to use them up.  And an idea was born!

I've never made fudge from scratch before, so I figured I'd try my hand at making pumpkin fudge.  I found this recipe and figured I'd give it a shot, using mini-marshmallows to replace the marshmallow creme.  It worked!  I was so proud that I managed to actually make fudge :).  It tastes good, but is rich, so I cut it into small cubes, wrapped them in plastic wrap individually and put them into a freezer bag.  I put it all into the freezer and will pull out cubes for treats in the coming months, especially come Halloween.  One Halloween treat down for this year and it used up a bunch of stuff that needed to be used up.  Score!

6.  I had a whisk just finally rust out on me this week...it was so rusty that I just didn't trust it not getting rust into whatever I was going to be stirring with it.  I then had my silicone pastry brush lose it's head as I went to use it on the cherry pie (I used a paper towel instead...it worked...kinda) and I've been having issues with my spatulas (I guess the proper term is "turner" as a friend corrected me recently *laugh*) that keeps shedding melted plastic every time I use it.  I finally gave in and actively searched for replacements at the used store this week.  And surprisingly I found some.  The whisk is a ball type of whisk, versus a wire woven whisk like I'm used to, but I am going to bend the tongs and make a whisk shape that I'm more used to (more bunched up versus less paddle like).  The spatula is nearly brand new and the silicone brush is actually WAY better quality than the one I had...the one I had came free with something or other that I bought (a spoon I think) and I have to say for a freebie it's lasted for quite a while, so I can't really complain.

All were at the thrift store for .50 a piece.  I even found a motorized meat slicer for 5.00!  I was definitely happy with the price and now I can slice up roast beef for sandwiches and get "deli thin" cuts.

7.  Overall, grocery shopping went well this week.  The highlights were milk being on sale for 2.99 per gallon this week (the ad runs from Wednesday till Tuesday next week for local folks) and they had ground beef and beef roasts for 2.88 lb!  This is unheard of cheap for beef, so I ran to the store and got three beef roasts and four pounds of hamburger (all they had on the hamburger front).  I also had a personalized price of 2.99 lb on corned beef brisket.  Since my husband had some holiday pay on this paycheck, I used part of it to get a corned beef to make for my husband tomorrow.  He will gladly take the potatoes, corned beef and cabbage to work for lunches for a few days straight without complaints, so I figured it was worth the cost to get it.

I was even able to take advantage of a buy one get one free sale on vitamins to get vitamin D caplets, so I got double for the price.  I price compared the vitamins and strength and got the strength I needed at the same pill count as a lesser strength bottle that I would have had to take two tablets to get the proper strength I needed and managed to get them for a few dollars more.  Which worked out to be about 1/2 the price I would have ended up paying had I bought the lesser strength tablets (since they were 1/2 the strength, but the same pill count).  I was happy with that and it made the pain of shelling out money for vitamins a bit easier to take.

I was so busy I just plain haven't made a menu plan yet for this week.  I am hoping to sit down tomorrow or Monday (next week has a bunch of appointments to get through as well, again, so I am trying to find time when I can) and get the menu worked out for the next couple of weeks.  I've been really sitting down and working out a "minimum amount to get" for a month menu plan.  Ideally I'd like to get it dialed in where I could go and get the bare essentials for menus for the month all at once and then supplement with minor things throughout the month as needed, so I can keep grocery shopping down some.  I'm getting SLOWLY closer to figuring out "the system", but am still working on the fine details.

8.  One more thrift store find I got this week was a new comforter for my son's bed.  I have been trying to "save" his favorite comforters around here, but darned if I have been successful with a lot of them as the fabric just starts to go and then the batting just dies a hard death and starts to just ball into a big ball inside the comforter.  I'm working on making a new comforter out of the remains of the old (so so slowly), but it was getting kind of scarce when it came to comforters in decent shape around here.  I figured I'd try to find some for Alvah for Christmas, but when I saw one for 5.00 at the used store in brand new shape, I threw that idea out the window.  I am hoping to get a few more as Christmas approaches, but for now I ended up washing the comforter and throwing it onto his bed when he was feeling so awful on Thursday.  It's nice being able to pull a comforter out of the dryer without it being tied into a spiraled up ball of mess between the fabric and the batting and it being dry instead of about 90% wet due to the knot ball. 

9.  I mended a torn seam in the armpit of one of my shirts this week. 

I also, through lots of work with dish soap and a sponge underneath to get a nasty stain out of one of my husband's shirts (a trick a dry cleaner friend taught me once.  Take a sponge and place it under the stain you want to remove.  Squirt dish soap onto stain and rub into stain well and then start dipping a toothbrush into water and scrubbing it over the soap saturated fabric.  Keep doing that, adding more soap as needed and moving the sponge to get clean sponge under the stain, until the stain is gone.  It works as the stain goes through the fabric into the sponge underneath.  I've gotten motor oil out of his shirts and things this way over the years.  Sometimes it takes a lot of time and patience though).

And I'm going to call it good there as it's getting late and I still have laundry to get done and my bed yet to make before I can turn in for the evening.  So, how did you do this week?  Frugal ways go well or not so well?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Well, as weeks go, I wish it could have gone more frugally.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad I was able to just switch over to my winter tires on my car as getting the tires switched over was definitely cheaper than having to buy a brand new tire to get my car back on the road, but the money we spent getting the tires changed over really stretched the budget thread bare so this week was tight and next week is going to be just as tight (or tighter).  To make things worse we ended up having to eat out night before last.

We went to pick up the kids from school, luckily I'm always obsessed about getting somewhere 20 minutes early, and found that there was a car accident right in front of the new drug treatment center next door.  Traffic was a mess and there was no way we were going to be able to get through the accident to get the kids.  So we ended up taking the long way around to get to the school from the opposite side, which put us 20 minutes out of our way.  Once we picked up the kids we found that we couldn't get home because traffic was jammed in either direction way past our house, so we ended up driving around town for a while until the accident had been cleaned up enough so that traffic was moving decently again.  As a result we ended up having to get sandwiches at Subway (I used what was left of the gift card my mother-in-law had given us for our anniversary to help pay for it and my husband and I split a sandwich) so that the daughter could get fed (she was really hungry by the time we got dinner...the poor kid is growing and waiting to eat...I could tell she was feeling it) and the husband could get fed so he could get ready for work when we finally got home (thank goodness I always put food in the car for Alvah to snack on when I leave to pick the kids up from school as he tends to need a snack as soon as he gets into the car, so he had food available too).  Between having to get gas (due to me being low on gas and then driving around all over the place to get home) and the sandwiches...well there went the majority of the disposable income that was left for the week.

Which leads into the list for the week, so let's get to that, shall we?

1.  Grocery shopping was careful this week, really careful, due to the tightness of the budget.  My budget for the week total was 25.00.  Luckily the son hasn't been blowing through a gallon of milk a day on the new medications, so I was able to spend the 25.00 on the few loss leader items I wanted to get at Carrs this week.  I spent a total of 22.00 on groceries this week, seen up top.  I've got nearly enough to get a gallon of milk with the money left, and I figure going over by about .70 won't be that big of a deal.

The highlights of the trip were definitely the free Go-Gurt (free with an E-coupon from the Just 4 U site) and the 1.29 bags of cheese (limit of 2 with a coupon this week).  I also picked up a dozen eggs (1.29 with coupon), some apples (1.29 lb personalized price) and some grapes (1.49 lb on sale).  The grapes and the apples were bought for the daughter's snacks and to go in her lunches.  The cream cheese (.99 personalized price) was bought on the request of my husband who wanted it to eat on muffins and on the croissants we have in the fridge (ham and cheese croissants were bumped from the menu plan because my daughter requested ham sandwiches for school lunches instead and that definitely won).

2.  After hiding the paper towels I've noticed that the family is using the unpaper towels I made a lot more.  Success!  Ha!

3.  My daughter really wanted to buy some "Ever After High" books on Amazon when she realized they had tons of them and she was going to use the money in her piggy bank to get some.  I told her we could do that, but since she wants to buy her brother a Christmas gift this year (I'm actually going to try and convince her to make one for him as I think she'll have a lot more fun, for one, and I think it'll mean a lot more to her to give him a home made gift, for two) maybe it would be a good idea to explore other options, first.  I told her to check with the school library first and see what they had to offer in the way of some books and she's found two novels so far that she has been having a blast reading.   I'm thrilled she's finally discovered novels that she doesn't mind reading as I was worried she'd be reading picture books forever *laugh*. 

4.   One night this week my husband went to work to find that a group had a huge party earlier and there was a ton of food left over, so not only did he get to eat dinner for free but he also grabbed a few cold cuts and some sliced cheese, put it in a ziploc bag and brought it home.   We both ate sandwiches for lunch the next day out of the cold cuts, which was a nice change of pace.

5.  I baked bread today (cinnamon swirl and regular white) and didn't really want to use some nice new freezer bags to store the loaves in, so I searched around in the "reserve bag" area of my kitchen cabinets and dug out a couple of old bread bags and used those instead.  The loaves JUST fit in the bags, so yay for a happy circumstance!

6.  I went through the pantry and figured out the few home canned goods that I canned that we didn't really care for.  For instance, I used a new BBQ sauce recipe last year and the sauce just isn't good when reheated at all...it separates, goes really grainy and somewhat flavorless...it was sad and I just kept staring at the last two jars of it like some divine light would point me to a way to use it that didn't make dinner taste yucky.  I figured out what to keep and use up and what to just dump and recycle the jars (the last two jars of BBQ sauce got dumped, unfortunately).  I'm happy because I THINK I might have enough jars now to jar up the sauerkraut when it's done and also get the peach jelly made from the peach juice in the freezer.  Here's hoping :).

7.  I reattached a button, darned a few socks, and fixed a loose seam on the son's backpack this week.

8.  We were going to go to the "Special Edition" of the Fall Festival at the U-Pick farm again this year and were really looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, we just plain got rained out yesterday as it didn't stop pouring until the event was nearly over.  But, the bright side was that we saved the gas of driving out there and back.  Not half as much fun as going, but well...saved gas.

9.  My husband needed a haircut badly and I was going to give him what little cash I had saved to go and get one, but instead he texted my sister-in-law who lives nearby who is also a trained barber and asked her if she'd give him a haircut.  She was going to do it for free and my husband was going to pay her the money he would have given a barber in town to give a haircut.  I found a good middle ground and gave the husband a pint of home made raspberry jam to give them instead (I remembered from helping my sister-in-law make jam last year that her kids LOVED home made jam, so I figured it was the least I could do).  The husband got the best haircut he's had in a couple of years (or more) and we felt at least better about him getting the haircut that we were able to give a little something in return for the haircut :).

So, there you have it, some of the frugal adventures that happened around here this week.  How about you?  How did you do?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

 Well, this last week's menu was different, but not bad or anything.  I ended up making taco soup one night (my husband keeps referring to it as chili because I made it super thick *laugh*), we had a beef roast with root veggies one night (seen up top there) and I ended up pulling out the free bagels I'd gotten from the Carrs Monopoly game over the summer and we used up those as bread (turns out my daughter loved them, which helped) with dinners.  I made burgers Monday night, we had meatloaf Tuesday (using leftover burgers crumbled up with what was left of the ground beef from the burgers as well, two eggs and lots of bread crumbs) and last night we had BBQ chicken (in the crock pot) with baked potatoes.  So tonight's dinner is going to consist of leftovers since we have leftover meatloaf and taco soup/chili to use up and then onto another week of dinners to plan.  This next week is going to be super tight money-wise, so planning is definitely going to help.

Update on my car.  I ended up getting the tires changed over day before yesterday, so at least I'm prepared for winter now (made money even tighter though as I had to use the consistency of one tank fill up for my husband to pay for the tire change over).  They didn't fix my old summer tire.  Basically, it's so worn down that it wouldn't be legal to stick on my car next year anyway, so they didn't see the point in repairing it.  Kind of depressing, but considering I was running our old winter tires from YEARS ago (I think they are six years old now) as my summer tires...well eventually I was going to have to worry about replacing them.  And hey, now all of my tire sensors work!  Woohoo for that as I was worried that one of the tire sensors (that they swore was broken on the last tire change over) was indeed broken and would have to be replaced.  Turns out that whoever had reset the tire sensors had done it just completely wrong, so that's why the one tire sensor wasn't working.  Always fun.  But at least it's fixed :).

So, yeah, let's get to this week's menu!

Wednesday:  BBQ chicken, baked potatoes, green beans

Thursday:  Leftovers (choice of taco soup/chili or meatloaf, mashed potatoes and salad)

Friday:  Ham and cheese croissants (was given some croissants so I want to use them up, ham from freezer)

Saturday:  Waffles, eggs, sausages and peaches (from pantry)

Sunday:  Roast chicken, roasted root veggies (carrots and potatoes)

Monday:  Home made pizza

Tuesday:  Chicken noodle soup (use chicken carcass and left over roasted veggies as stock base) with home made noodles

Breakfasts:  Toast (cinnamon sugar, butter or butter and jam/jelly on top, depending on preference), eggs, french toast (Saturday), cinnamon rolls (Sunday)

Snacks:  Cheese sticks, apples, crackers, Soft and Chewy Snickerdoodles

Desserts:  Apple crisp or cake (use canned apples from pantry...undecided on which one I'm making yet), sugar cookies (make for treat for husband...daughter wants to make them Halloween themed, so that might be fun), ice cream (home made in freezer), rhubarb dream bars

And there you are folks.  Our menu plan for the week.  How about you?  Making anything new this week?

Monthly Goals Update and This Week's Goals

Right.  Menu plan.  Ummmm...we're eating!  Does that count?  The highlights of this week's menu are probably me throwing together some taco soup last night on the fly because I noticed that I had some black olives (our last in the house in fact...need to add a couple of cans of black olives to the shopping list) in the fridge that needed to be used up and some jars of taco sauce and salsa in the pantry that I wanted to use up and voila!  Taco soup was born.  It turned out pretty good and anything we don't eat in the next couple of days I'll freeze to eat later on when I need soup (read: when I have a terrible cold and I only want to eat soup).

So, yeah, I'll just post up the menu plan for the coming week here in the next couple of days and just say that I punted on dinner this last week.  Saturday I didn't even need to cook!  My daughter went to her friend's birthday party (and he knew what the sheep pillow was and did indeed like it!  Woohoo!) and came home with an extra pizza left over from the party so we had free pizza for dinner.

Which worked out perfectly, because I spent all weekend working my tail off canning (more on that in a minute) .  This week is already derailed and it's only Monday. Went out to take the kids to school this morning to have warning lights come on in my car telling me I had a super low tire.  Got the kids to school and managed to kick my poor husband out of bed (who subsequently could not get back to sleep most of the day) to show me how to fire up the air compressor so I could go and run my son to speech therapy and run some errands.  I thought the tire might just be low and would be okay, but as soon as I got home and let the car sit in the garage for a few hours (my husband filled it in the late morning) and the thing was down five pounds.  I saw how low it was getting going to pick up the kids and ended up picking them up from school 15 minutes early because I was worried the leak was getting worse on the tire.  My husband filled the tire before he went to work and will fill it again in the morning to keep it from settling too badly (we hope) and then tomorrow's schedule is my husband getting some sleep (I hope) while I run into town and wait while my winter tires get put on my car (thank goodness my tire waited to do this until after the 15th so I had that option) and hopefully they repair my leaky summer tire.  While there I'm hoping to get them to redo my tire sensors as they managed to reverse my front tire sensors on the last tire change over...AGAIN (third tire change over is the charm as they say).  More money I didn't want to spend right now!  Life sure is fun! 

So, yeah, onto what I managed to get done this last week.

Well, sewing goals didn't happen much.  I did work on the embroidered pillow case kit as I waited for my car to get it's oil changed and I worked a bit on my new pot holder for the kitchen while I was there too.  And I did manage to sew a few more pieces of velcro onto my second set of unpaper towels.  But, getting side tracked making a birthday gift kind of put a monkey wrench in the works for sewing goals, but hey at least I got that done and figured out!

I did, however, manage to kick some behind on canning goals this weekend!

1.  So first up is Saturday.  While my husband took my daughter to the birthday party, I got busy canning while they were gone (and surprisingly the son was in a good mood while they were gone as well!).  I first canned raspberry jam from the raspberries I had left in the freezer after making jelly earlier (seen up top).  I managed to can nine pints from the raspberries I had, which I was impressed and very happy with :). 

Side note:   I am REALLY glad I got the bulk pectin instead of buying boxes or something!  That stuff works TONS better than the pectin I normally use (which usually ends up being Sure Gel or Ball brands).  I have no idea why it's different, but it sure worked great in all of these recipes!

2.  Next up, I canned rose hip jelly Saturday afternoon.  I used a recipe that the Cooperative Extension Service had published and I ended up doubling it as I had more rose hips than I thought (woot!).  Instead of the consistency of two boxes of pectin, however, I added three. This really is the best way, I've found, to get a consistent set on jelly.  Otherwise, if your water content on something is too high in your fruit the jelly just doesn't set and you end up with syrup.  And I still have rose hip syrup.  I didn't need any more.   Twenty four hours later and the jelly had a decent soft set on it by the way it was sitting in the jars, so I know it'll set completely within a week (rose hip jelly can take that long to set completely).  I got eight and a half pints from the rose hips I foraged in the yard.  Not too shabby!  And while you can't see it in the pictures because I canned it in pints (makes the mixture denser in the jar or something) because I used so many really ripe rose hips the jelly came out a really pretty dark pink color.  Pretty cool.

3.   Yesterday I was pretty tired, but I did manage to grab the blueberries from the freezer to can and the cherries I wanted to turn into cherry pie filling from the freezer as well.  I read the recipe and realized that the cherries had to thaw for twenty four hours in the fridge first, so I threw those into a bowl and got to canning the blueberries.  I talked to my husband and discussed how best to can the blueberries (jam, pie filling, syrup, etc) and we finally both decided that neither one of us really liked blueberry jam (it's okay, just not a favorite of either one of us), pie filling could be made out of regular canned blueberries if we wanted to put some pie filling on top of something and syrup could be made from the liquid in just regular canned blueberries in syrup, so that's what I ended up making.  Just plain straight canned blueberries (in the recipe from Ball you macerate the blueberries in sugar and they make their own liquid to can in, so I can't really say that they are canned in their own juices or canned in heavy syrup or something...they are just canned blueberries to me *laugh*).  I ended up with twelve half pints of regular canned blueberries and then with the syrup that was left over I added some lemon juice to the pan and made a quick jar of blueberry syrup.  I'll thicken it when we use it on pancakes or something, but it tasted nice and blueberry-ish when I put it in the jar :).

4.  And then today in between car worries, wondering where our package drop off box went at our mail boxes (seriously, it's just gone!  I'm hoping they are upgrading to a bigger box system or something instead of the bad thought that someone decided to unbolt and steal it or something...people do WEIRD things when they steal up here) and then having to run to the post office because of that to pick up some packages and things, I managed to somehow can cherry pie filling!  The recipe was supposed to make about four quarts, I got three and about 3/4 of a pint jar full, which I'm going to cool, put into a freezer bag and freeze.  Then I'll just add it to a pie or topping on something later on.

I'm getting down to a point with the canning where I have sauerkraut to worry about jarring up here in about three weeks and I am hoping to have enough jars to get that done, but the peach jelly...well for now the peach juice is going to stay in the freezer until I can either afford more jars or empty some because I am pretty much out of anything that would work as a jelly jar.  Once I sure I have enough quart jars to can up apple pie filling (once I empty the fermenting jars in the pantry out, in other words) I'll buy some apples and make apple pie filling for the coming year and yeah...after that I'm pretty much done for a while! 

Oddly enough I didn't can half as much this year as last year, but at the same time I'm so much busier schedule wise this year that the canning I got done this year has been a LOT harder to get done.  Weird how life is like that.

And now onto this week's goals!  Now that the garden is pretty much done for the year (I am hoping to figure out a ground cover and start some seeds, but am not sure I'm going to make it the way things are shaping up) due to Bob and Ted, and now that canning is on hold until the sauerkraut is done doing it's voodoo, I have nothing stopping me (other than cars continuing to have problems *sigh*) to work on sewing projects and getting some cleaning and organizing done.  Yay!

Weekly Goals:

• Prepare potato basket project and figure out liner
• Cut out two pairs of sleep pants for son
• Make two skirts for daughter
• Work a bit on fall themed quilt
• Continue to work on embroidery
• Start work on reorganizing pantry and closets
• Fix hole in daughter's pants
•  Make out menu plan for week (there it's written down!  Now I have to do it!)
• Recover house from canning weekend (the son had pretty much free reign as I was working this weekend...it shows...poor house).
• Clean fans
• Continue to work on new pot holder for kitchen
• Get tires changed over on car.  Get leaky tire fixed (hopefully).

And yeah, I'll call that good for goals for this week.  I'm sure I'll get sidelined the way things have been going, but well...hopefully I can get some of it done!

So, how about you?  Up to anything this week?