Super Savings Sunday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

I thought about putting up a Frugal Friday post last week, but finally decided against it for two reasons.  One:  I just didn't have that much to report, honestly, as with the kids home during Spring Break all I ended up doing was running around trying to keep the damage contained, especially on the son's end of the spectrum (cornstarch disaster in the kitchen, Parmesan cheese disaster the same night...times that times all of Spring Break and you'll see why I was just chasing after him all week long) and then this last week I made up for it by running around like an absolute mad woman trying to get some of the masses of things caught up or done that needed it.

As a side tangent, enjoy the pictures of Prince.  I've found that he has become quite good at a new sport.  I'm sure a lot of you saw "planking" when it was a fad, well, Prince has started "Pillowing".  Up top shows one of his usual sleeping positions, where he finds a nice cloth object, rearranges it so it's a nice pillow and he falls asleep.  

Now this is the opposite end of the spectrum, where he finds any object that is elevated off the floor that he can fit his head on and uses it as a pillow.  I find it hysterical myself, but I'm easily amused ;).

Right, so let's get to the craziness that has been going on around here...

1.  Now that my oven is fixed, I have a bunch of things I had been ready to bake that ended up in a holding pattern until I could finally bake again, so during Spring Break I made a HUGE batch of blueberry muffins using the fresh blueberries I'd bought earlier and thrown into the freezer.  

I used this recipe from Taste of Home and I have to say that when they say the batter will be thick?  They are NOT kidding!  It was like scraping bread dough into the muffins cups almost.  I had to have my husband help me fold the blueberries into the dough it was so thick.  I was scared that the muffins would be too dense and not cook right, but while they did take the maximum amount of time the recipe called for, the muffins came out really tasty!  I definitely bookmarked the recipe for use later on.  I even found that my blueberry hating daughter liked the muffins, which shocked and thrilled me.

I froze half of the muffins for later use and my husband has been taking them, two at a time, into work with his lunch, so I'm probably going to have to keep my eyes open for more sales on blueberries :).

In other news, I'm completely in love with my USA pans that I bought.  I love having truly non-stick pans :).

2.  I got a knock at my door a few weeks ago and opened it to find another FEMA inspector.  I was kind of worried that we'd done something wrong until he explained that he was just doing quality control on the first inspector we'd had and it was quite normal.  I remembered the first inspector saying something to the same effect, so I, once again, walked the new inspector through all of the damage to the house.  Surprisingly, this new inspector took a lot more photos and was willing to go to different areas than the first.  I noticed he took a lot more in depth photos of the furnace and how it tied into the chimney and even had me walk him out onto our back deck and shoot the damage to the chimney up close.  

I got a call last Sunday from FEMA and found out that we actually qualified for more money and it was being processed.  My husband and I were thrilled and were hoping for even another hundred bucks as every penny helps right now.  I went online the next day to find that FEMA had given us another 900.00!  Between this money and the money FEMA gave us before my husband is going to demo the chimney himself and then see if a contractor friend of his that gave us a good quote on the work on the house will come in and help him put in the new chimney and build a fake wood facade around it.  

When we signed up for FEMA originally we were also required by the State of Alaska to sign up with the Small Business Association for a low cost loan for necessary repairs to the property.  What is nice about the SBA is that being linked to FEMA they also have access to the FEMA reports on the property and the inspection that the state did on the property as well and one morning a SBA loan officer walked me through all of the damages to the property including personal property loss and things.  The day after FEMA called and told me we were eligible for more funds, the SBA called and the loan officer I talked to told me that we were approved for a twenty something thousand dollar loan at 2% interest for a 30 year term period of repayment.  So, our payment every month on the money we are going to get is 88.00.  I think the weight of the world fell off my husband's and my shoulders at that point.  Yes, this will result in another payment we have to make every month and money is tight as is, BUT it will be a fixed interest rate loan and more importantly will give us access to enough funds to fix the house right.  We can get the gutters replaced, rebuild our retaining wall in the driveway, tear down the outbuildings (and figure out what to do about shed space afterwards), get a new door for the garage, get a new oven and things if needed (the oven still acts funny from time to time, but I'm giving it a while and seeing where the cards fall on that) and we'll have funds to do it.  You would not believe how much of a relief that is.

3.  A friend of mine gave me some old twin bedding and things.  It is definitely a blessing considering bedding is always at a premium around here and the other things were a blessing as well :).

4.  I have been working on my organization around here now that Spring is coming.  I think I have every cookbook I own out on my living room coffee table and went through and bookmarked all the recipes (breakfast, lunch and dinner) that I would like to try and then I'm hoping to design a nice looking blank menu that I can fill in with one daily menu at a time.  This way I can put up the menu on the fridge for what we'll be eating that day (thus no surprises for the family) and I'll have a instruction sheet (basically) on what to make.  By putting the menus on separate sheets of paper I can then put them into a binder if I find that we liked something or other for future use.  Will it work?  Who knows.  Many a system has failed for me over the years.  But, it is certainly worth a shot.

5.  I finally have come to the conclusion, after MANY years of looking at used furniture, that the only way I'm going to have to figure out linen cabinet space on my own.  I thought about it a lot and have come to the conclusion that I really do need cabinets with doors (the larder beetle infestation last year really hammered that note home) and I am going to have to buy in as anything at the used stores that will work for my purposes is as expensive (or in some cases more expensive) than just buying new and knowing it'll fit into the hole I need it to fit into.

After searching on Amazon a LOT over the last bit (none of the stores had anything that would suit my purposes, unfortunately), I found this cabinet (no associate link or anything, I'm just sharing), that I am hoping to save up to buy.  I don't know when I'll be able to get one with how the budget is and all of the repairs we have to do, but I think it'll look nice, give me some storage space AND most importantly, give me my china cabinet back to use for the purpose for which it was intended.  Speaking of that, I think what I'm going to do for now is to just put towels and bedding in Rubbermaid totes and put them stacked up in the hallway and go back to using my china cabinet for dishes and things.  Mainly because as a linen cabinet it just doesn't work so well (I'm constantly having to shove my arm around things and into tight spaces to get into the middle section where there isn't a door to get out sheets and things and with the glass shelves I worry about dislodging them and causing a huge collapse/mess).  

I would put it on my Amazon Prime card, but Amazon decided that my auto-renewal on my Amazon Prime should go onto my card and so I have more on the card than I was planning on (honestly I spaced that it was renewing this month with everything else that has been going on), so I am going to have my hands full the next few months paying that off.

6.  I did purchase one thing on Amazon this month.  A new comforter.  They had one on the daily deals and it was down to 24.95.  Since the ones I've found at the used stores immediately start to fall apart as soon as I get them and wash them (and I'll pay at least 1/2 of the price of the new one I just bought to get them in the first place), I am in desperate need of some queen sized comforters that aren't just dying on me.  So, I did put that on my Amazon card this month.  It is white, which is not ideal with how quickly Alvah can stain something, but I am hoping to have time in the next few months to make some duvet covers for it and thus save it from his wrath.  

7.  My vacuum cleaner was making a high pitched whistling sound, which was NOT a good sign.  I went online and troubleshot the problem and found that it was probably the fan needing to be replaced.  I immediately ordered a new fan assembly (yay for Kirby parts being available through Amazon as our local Kirby store shut down and I'd have to drive into Anchorage and pay out the nose to get the part I needed) from Amazon for 11.00 and some change and got it in last week.  My timing, it turns out, could not have been better as I made the mistake of sucking up a pretzel, heard a horrible noise come from the vacuum and immediately smelt something burning.  Since I had just cleaned everything I could reach, I knew it was the fan, so I pulled out my parts yesterday, pulled up a tutorial on YouTube (which I am so happy so many self help tutorials are available to help walk you through these things anymore :) and got to work.  Two hours later with some new injuries to my hands from jamming things under finger nails that I couldn't see and things (and thanking God my husband had sealing compound in the garage for me to use to help reseal the fan assembly to the vacuum cleaner) and the vacuum cleaner is running as good as new.  I'm proud of myself, I'll admit it, as mechanically inclined and me are usually not in the same sentence.

8.  Speaking of things breaking our living room TV just out and out died last week.  Thank GOD it was after Spring Break as not having a TV with the son home for the week would have been awful.  My husband is thinking the power supply on the TV went and is going to see what he can do to repair it, but in the meantime he dug out an old TV we had that doesn't work great, but it DOES work, and set it up in the living room.  It'll hopefully live until the husband can fix the other one (it's iffy the way it has been acting as it keeps crashing and things), but at least it's a temporary solution until we can figure out what we need to do next.

9.  I got my laundry room deep cleaned this week.  Since the earthquake things have been so insanely hectic that I hadn't had a chance to really go over the room and disinfect the floor and things so I did that this week.  I want to get the entryway part of the pantry completely cleaned out and mop the floors and deep clean everything to get whatever jelly and things didn't get cleaned up on the initial cleaning job so that bugs aren't going to be a problem now that break up seems to be coming fast, so hopefully I can get to that this week.

10.  Grocery shopping was over budget this week.  It couldn't be avoided, really.  I needed flour as I was nearly out, I had some really good sale prices on meat (and found a bunch of meat 30% off on top of the discounts I had) and I had to replenish the son's food stores as he BLEW through food and things last week.  So, I'm hoping to cut the grocery budget this week (it's pay week so we'll see how that goes as it's usually my "stock up" weeks when we get paid) and recoup the budget a bit.

11.  We found out that Payless Shoes is going out of business everywhere.  Since this was the one store where I could go locally and get decent priced shoes for the kids, we ran up there this week (Alvah's winter boots were also way too small for him, which thank Goodness his teacher caught that as I spaced it with how insane winter was this year), used the shoe sized measuring tool to measure out the kid's feet to see what they would be in adult sizes (especially Alvah as he's really tall for his age) for reference later and we got the son some winter boots, some new gym shoes (which his old ones were also too small for him now) and got the daughter sneakers in the next size up and some dark dress shoes.  We spent more than I would have liked, but we got good value for our money for sure and at least I'm a BIT better prepared for the store closing down now.  I'm still going to miss being able to get the kids shoes for under 50.00 a pop, though.

12.  I had a lot of clothes die on me of late.  T-shirts and pajamas, sweatshirts, you name it, just started to disintegrate on me to epic degrees.  Now mind you most of those things I have been wearing since high school or college, so I really couldn't complain about them finally giving up the ghost, but it was still depressing.  I found that my favorite used store had a certain tag of clothes 50% off this week, so I went in and got a bunch of shirts and a couple of nightgowns and a new robe for myself.  Spent more, once again, than I would have liked, but I comforted myself that I walked out with two bags of clothes for the same price that two shirts would have cost me new at another store.

And there you have it folks.  The last couple of weeks in a nutshell around here.  How about you?  How did you do?

Shopping Goals: March, 2019

Frugal Friday is postponed till Monday as I don't have too much to report at this point so am hoping to get more done today and tomorrow to pad out the like four item list I have at the moment.  

Okay, so the month is over 1/2 over and I'm just getting to posting the shopping goals, but better late than never.

It honestly took me a while to figure out the shopping goals for this month, mainly due to money and trying to make money stretch, but at the same time making sure I could stock up on things we would definitely use or needed.  It's kind of a "don't bite off your nose to spite your face" type of situation as it does mean less money in the bank to stock up on things, but if you don't take advantage of sales on things you know you'll use or need you will end up out more money in the long run.  So, it was a matter of sitting there with a calculator, a lot of thinking and working on the budget a lot this month to figure out how to get a few things while trying to save every penny I could to put toward earthquake repairs we need to make.

I did want to post up a quick update to how the food storage situation is going.  I have managed to weasel money out of the shopping budget the last bit to get at least one number ten can of food storage each month.  In January I got the can of chicken gravy and the can of basically redi-whip for the 25.00 per month I allotted myself.  Last month I didn't spend the full 25.00, but did manage to get a #10 can of pilot bread (basically hard tack, a really dense cracker type of bread that Alaskans generally love for it's long shelf life...the canned pilot bread is more cracker like from the reviews I read, but it was still worth it in my mind to get it for a kind of bread to add to storage that the bugs and mice couldn't get into).  I then took 50.00 out of our tax return (really the ONLY money I used for household stuff...the rest went toward bills) and got some cans of food storage that were going cheap on Amazon.  I got a #10 can of beef Stroganoff (made with freeze dried beef no less), a #10 can of Mountain House Chicken and Rice and a #10 can of honey powder.  I was hoping to get another can or two of food storage this month, but the money just isn't in the budget, but I'm not too upset as I got three cans of extra food storage last month.  Basically, I'm getting a stock pile up.  Slowly, very slowly, but surely.

For those curious, here are the links to the food storage I got the last little bit (the chicken and rice isn't as cheap as I got it, as I got it for 12.99, but it's still decently cheap).  The following contains affiliate links by the way.  This means if you order through the following links I'll get a small commission from Amazon for shooting the sale their way.  Just full disclosure here even if you don't order the item you click on with the following links, say you look at it and go "meh" and move on and order other things through Amazon, so long as you order while in the window the associate link opens I'll get a small commission on other items you order (hope that makes sense), so if you don't want to support the site, but still want to shop on Amazon, be sure to close out the window from the associate links, open a brand new window and start your shopping over again.  It costs you no extra money for ordering through these links and if you do order through the links, I really do appreciate your support.  Thanks!

• Mountain House Rice and Chicken
• Augason Farms Honey Powder
• Augason Farms Beef Stroganoff
• Mountain House Pilot Crackers

Right, so let's get down to the things I want and or need to buy this month.  Here's hoping I can get it all done :).

General Stores:

• Cooking Oil (I have a few more jugs left, but I like to have extra in the house as I do go through it when I bake pretty fast)
• Fruit (fruit is finally coming into season and we are all loving it when I can get it decently cheap, so I'm hoping to continue to find money to buy extra produce when I go shopping...we need the added nutrition)
• Corned Beef (I actually got two of these this week as they were on sale for 2.99 lb with an in-ad coupon at Carrs and then I had a coupon loaded to make them even cheaper.  I'm hoping to get a couple more before the sales go off for the year as I do like having them in the freezer for later points in the year)
• Cabbage (got that this week to go with the corned beef)
• Red Potatoes (got those this week too as cabbage and potatoes were on sale for .78 lb)
• Shampoo
• All Purpose Flour (I am hoping to get a bulk bag at Three Bears later on, but for now I'll probably just get about 10 lbs of flour at the regular store to see me through)

Amazon.com (the following contains affiliate links):

• Blank Accounting Ledger (I got one of these in this month for general household use, but want to order a few more to keep track of the different disaster relief things we have going on so I'll basically have different accounts for each item we need to get done).
• phone filters  We had a phone filter fail in the phone downstairs and then we want to put in a phone line into the den to hook up another corded phone, so I ordered a two pack of phone filters when I went to replace the one.
• Kirby Fan Assembly My vacuum started making a high pitched whistling sound a while back.  I replaced the gasket thinking that might be it, but it's still there.  I troubleshooted it on the internet and people suggested checking the fan assembly and my fan is giving "worn" a good name.  Our local Kirby store in the Valley shut down (I think...at least their storefront is gone and their phone number is disconnected, so I'm going with shut down at this point), so instead of going into Anchorage and paying goodness knows how much for the parts, we ordered them online instead. 

Appliance Repair Store:

• Temperature gauge for oven.  We already got this done and I am happy to say I now have an oven that works!  A 50.00 part was a lot cheaper than a new oven for sure.  Hopefully that's the end of the oven issues for a while :).

And there you go folks.  My shopping goals for this month.  How about you?  Need to get anything this month?

Money Saving Monday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Okay, so I didn't make Frugal Friday again.  In this case, though, I definitely had a couple of good reasons.  One was kids being home sick, again, my daughter with an allergic reaction to something that made her eye swell up on her and just this virus that won't let go making the poor son (not to mention my husband and myself) miserable.  Next up was FEMA stuff.  My husband and I managed to, thank goodness, make it to the FEMA location closest to us on Thursday when the kids were in school (like the only day last week where both of the kids were well enough to go to school) and we spent all morning pretty much applying for FEMA assistance and getting a low interest loan through the Small Business Association into the works (they work hand in hand with FEMA to make very low interest loans available to people in a disaster so you can fix things and such without having to deal with credit card interest rates and things).  Thursday afternoon (I kid you not) I was out picking up the kids from school and my husband got a phone call from the FEMA inspector saying he would be here on Saturday to inspect the house.

Friday rolls around and the SBA gave me a call first thing and walked through the damage over the phone with me so they could get the application progressed for the loan and then I spent the rest of Friday working to get the house in order for the inspector to come on Saturday so he'd have clear view of things that he needed to look at.  Saturday morning we got the FEMA inspection done and my husband went to the doctor as his asthma has been flared terribly by this cold virus and he was having some major problems breathing (he ended up with a new inhaler, prednisone and a cough suppressant out of the deal) .  Yesterday we spent trouble shooting the oven to try and see what was wrong with it (my husband narrowed it down to it's either the temperature sensor, which we're going to replace first, or something major, so we'll see how that goes) and this morning I got online to find we'd been approved by FEMA already for about 3000.00.  Not as much as we were hoping for as that's going to make replacing the chimney tight to fit into that budget (hopefully it will somehow be possible at any rate), but at the same time we're grateful we got anything at this point.  Something is certainly better than nothing and every penny we receive is one less penny we have to spend out of pocket to get back on our feet.  So, at this point, at least all inspectors have seen the chimney that will need to see it and we can finally start moving forward to replace and/or fix things and get the house back up and running normally again.

So, yeah that brings you up to date on general life stuff that has been going on since my last post, so let's get to getting caught up on the frugal front for the last two weeks or so.

1.  The son got to go on his yearly ski trip again this year.  The ski trip is through Challenge Alaska that is run by volunteers to help the kids ski and things.  Alvah was coming down with my nasty cold virus that day (we didn't really know it at the time) so he was grumpy on and off, but the husband said he had some fun at least.

When they brought up the upcoming ski trip the son's teacher asked parents to maybe donate some food for the trip as the teachers who were in on the ski trip thought it would be nice to feed the volunteers at the ski lodge.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do on that one as we didn't really have a lot of ready made food in the house and I was still feeling pretty cruddy and didn't want to bake something special.  But an opportunity presented itself to make my life easier.

I was visiting the Carrs/Safeway Just4U site randomly one day to see what new coupons might be available and found one for a free thing of sesame rice crackers.  I had to pick up prescriptions for the son the Friday before the trip (while running a bunch of other errands), so while I was waiting I ran and picked up the free crackers and sent those with the husband and son on the trip.

Earlier that same Friday my husband and I did some errand running.  I stopped off at the Franz outlet to see if I could get some cheap hamburger or hot dog buns for the son to eat and I found a huge bag of hamburger buns for 1.66, so I picked those up.  Those lasted the son quite a while, so I was happy with that purchase for sure.

I got a bunch of freebies the last couple of weeks for things that I needed or could use and I was ever so grateful for it.

First up I was super happy to find that Carrs had a bunch of different gas reward bonus coupons last week for grocery shopping.  They had a 2x gas rewards coupon you could load onto your card and then they offered me 4 gas rewards if I spent more than 100.00 in a shopping trip (which was inevitable when I do two weeks of shopping at one time) and then I had 2x gas rewards for a bunch of different purchases from a bunch of different departments.

By stacking the coupons carefully I was able to use some rewards for two free boxes of pasta, redeemed one reward for a free thing of ice cream and I STILL had 10 gas rewards by the end of it to get 1.00 off per gallon of gas.   I was a happy camper for sure.  While checking out a lady offered me a printed off coupon from the register for a free thing of orange juice as she wasn't going to use it and I got that as well.

My friend Facebooked me and told me she was sending me some coupons and I was thrilled with what she sent me.  She sent me a coupon for three free things of wet cat food and a coupon for a free bag of dry cat food and she gave me a coupon for a free 24 pack of bottled water.  I needed ALL of that, so I was very, very grateful to get those.

I ended up back at the store later to get more milk, so while there I redeemed the print coupons I had from the Monopoly game for free products.  I got two free bagels, a free box of water crackers, a free Refreshe Ice beverage and a free block of cream cheese (cream cheese not shown as I forgot to include it in the photo).  I have found that this Monopoly game the printed free coupons are just not very abundant, but I'm grateful for what I've gotten between the online code redemption and the printed free coupons.  I went and redeemed all of the codes I had today (which was a huge pile of codes to input) and am just saving all of the points I get to see if I can get up enough for some grocery gift cards before the sweepstakes ends.

Also last week I ended up picking up meat as Carrs gave me some awesome personalized prices on it.  I got some bottom round beef roasts for 3.88 lb (I know I'll have to cook those to death to make them tender, but still totally worth it at that price), hamburger for 2.87 lb (which the two huge value packs I bought aren't shown as I didn't have room on the counter at the time to include them) and pork loin chops for 1.47 lb.  The pork chops were an especially cheap find as I found a value pack on reduced for 50% off on top of that price so I got a huge package of pork chops for little over 2.00.

I also picked up a bunch of fresh produce cheap as well.  I had a cheap personalized price on bananas, so I got some of those (seen in the pick above there), had a cheap personalized price on grapes and blueberries (which I got some of each) and I went shopping on 5.00 Friday so I was able to get a cantaloupe for 2.50 as they were on sale for 2 for 5.00 as part of the sale.  It was a good week for grocery shopping for sure :).

Right and I think that pretty much gets us up to date on the grocery shopping front, so let's move onto other things.

2.  When I was cleaning for the FEMA inspector, I looked at the couch in the den and realized that the slip covers I'd made for the couch cushions were breaking down and looking pretty awful.  I didn't really expect the slip covers to last, honestly, as the material I had used was pretty thin stuff, but I tried to think of a quick fix to make the couch look better.  I then had a thought and went and grabbed a twin sized fitted sheet I had in my fabric stores (I had liked the sheet color as a potential fabric to use in a quilt) and just tucked in the couch cushions like you would a twin sized mattress.  It worked really well, actually, and made the couch look ten times better than it did.

I started thinking about it and I might look at the used stores for different colors of fitted sheet to change out on the couch for new decor options and things.  Since I can get a fitted sheet for like 2.00 it's a pretty inexpensive way to do things.  I don't know how well this would work on a piece of furniture that you might use a lot as I'd think the sheet might shift around too much, but for a couch we don't really use very much I think it'll work just fine.

3.  Our cat scratching posts were looking terrible as the cats had managed to unravel the jute rope that was wound around the pillars from scratching it so much.  I looked at the scratching posts and realized that they had just hot glued the rope to the posts and then looking at the way the rope was wound and where it had broken, I didn't even bother to reglue the rope.  Instead I took the rope, wound it both ways around the posts and then tied it tightly into place instead.  It worked really well and the posts look SO much better for the 20 minutes or so of effort :).

4.  I emptied the material out of my sewing cabinet and stored it in a few Rubbermaid totes I had around the house and in a few other areas.  I then took one of the shelves that had come with the cabinet and put it back in and then reorganized everything and put office supplies in the cabinet.  I am hoping to drill a hole in the cabinet so I can fit a power strip in it and then I can put the tablets in there to recharge at night and maybe even store my laptop in there.  I'd love for things to be nice and tidy and put up at night, but we'll see how it goes.  Overall, I was happy with how the reorganizing went there.

5.  Speaking of which by putting the office supplies in the cabinet I was able to make the space around my desk look a LOT less cluttered and nasty.  I took the printer and put it on the bottom shelf of the shelves I had by the desk and then put some unbleached muslin on top of the shelf as kind of a tablecloth.  I probably should have tried for a bit better look to the cover, but I was happy with it as I'm hoping it'll act as a dust cover for the printer, which will help me to keep the printer clean and in good shape.  The bottom shelf allows enough space that I'll be able to run it on the bottom shelf as well, which will be nice having it out of sight when not in use.  \

While neatening and cleaning the last couple of weeks (I'm getting started on massive amounts of Spring cleaning) I went through my desk and got rid of a TON of old bills and things that, as anyone knows, can just start to pile up on you, and organized things a lot better.  Like I have artwork the kids did going back to preschool and I wanted to keep it, but wasn't really keen on keeping it all in my desk (as there is a lot of it), so I ended up storing a bunch of it in the plastic drawers you see in the sewing cabinet.  That way it's protected AND I get some of my desk drawers back.  Win, win.

6.  I cleaned out the bottom shelves of my china cabinet and got rid of everything that broke in the quake.  I then started cleaning and decluttering the top cabinet.  It's still a work in progress, but I'm happy with it so far.

7.  I redeemed rewards on my Amazon store card to get some money off of my bill (which I then paid off the remainder of the balance afterwards).

8.  I watched a free webinar on eczema that I'd been trying to find time to watch for a while.

I'm sure there is more, but I lost my list I'd been keeping track of things on, so I'm going to call it good there.  Despite being sick still I've definitely been busy around here and it feels good to get stuff done.  I hope you all are getting things accomplished as well :).

Monthly Goals: March, 2019

First, the usual Frugal recap post is just going to get delayed until Friday so I can just try and get back onto an even keel and get back to a more normal blogging schedule.  I hope.

The last couple of weeks have been a mix with a lot of bad mixed into it.  The good was getting the tax return in and it was in the bank for nearly a day.  We got a couple of bills paid off that we'd accumulated in the earthquake (paid off the husband's credit card and the Sears card) and I was hoping to either cash out the husband's teeth with the other part, or at least make a good payment onto the amount and the back up plan was to keep the money in savings in case we needed it for car repairs or something. 

And then the bad stuff hit.

My dad would say it comes in threes, but it seems the last bit we break that record. 

First, I called our electric company to try and figure out a new budget billing amount because running the electric heat had thrown our normal electric budget into a tizzy.  They did the calculations on their end and recommended that I turn off budget billing for a year and redo it after getting the chimney fixed as our budget billing amount per month right NOW is over 600.00 a month if they recalculated it.  If I turn off budget billing my bill is averaging at least 600.00 a month as well.  They had no ideas on how to do payments to make the billing more reasonable, so I ended up using a good chunk of our tax return to pay off the now deferred amount on the account which at least buys me time till the end of the this month to try and figure out what to do.  It's a miracle I have a stomach lining left.

I was hoping that maybe the disaster assistance would come through and we could quickly get a new chimney put in, but I found out this week that FEMA finally got their collective tails in gear and came up here at the beginning of last month and are now in the Valley having people sign up for FEMA assistance for the earthquake.  By FEMA coming up here it screws everything up on my end because FEMA trumps state assistance, so I have to now go and apply with FEMA, wait for FEMA assistance to come through (which can take a LONG time from what I understand) and anything they don't cover the state will pick up as a kind of disaster safety net.  So, basically we're going to have to go down and do everything again to apply with FEMA and start the disaster assistance process all over again. 

Basically, I can't wait for FEMA to come through, or whatever assistance there will be, to get the chimney fixed or I'll go bankrupt trying to pay the electric bill and keep the trains running on time.  I have enough in savings to last us hopefully till Spring (IF we get an early Spring and it's a mild weathered one *fingers crossed*), but still...something needs to happen here.  So, we're going to have to try and get the chimney replaced quickly and as cheaply as we can.  The husband and the entire family caught my awful cold virus and so my husband has been down nearly a week and a half feeling awful with this thing, the son was home sick from school all last week and was home again sick today and now the daughter is coming down with it, and so far, as a result, nothing has gotten done toward that goal.    Somehow I have to get to the FEMA sign up place with the husband before filing ends on April 1st, not to mention I need him to help me figure out how to get a new chimney put in, so I KIND of need us all to remain in healthy and fit condition for a little while.  So I'm praying that we'll all recover miraculously here very soon. 

All the while I'm also in a battle with our local hospital over my urgent care visit back in October as after insurance paid them they owe me 100.00 back and I've been on the phone constantly since January trying to get SOMEONE to issue me the check I'm owed.  They screwed up booking the insurance payment into the system when it came in back at the beginning of January and posted me as paying in full in January (when I paid the full amount back in October) and they just have my 100.00 credit just sitting in the account with no note on getting the money back to me.  The last gal I actually talked to before today actually treated me like I was trying to rip the hospital off and acted like I wasn't entitled to anything back at all, which I ended up talking in very angry tones by the end of the conversation.  Since then I have talked to voice mails and no one calls me back, so today I called and asked to talk to the head supervisor.  I ended up talking to the supervisor of billing for the entire hospital, which doesn't actually handle the urgent care billing (I know, it's screwy), but she e-mailed the two supervisors in charge of the urgent care billing, told them what was going on with me and requested they issue me a refund or an inquiry could be filed.  I was very thankful she'd done that for me as I'm just so frustrated and just want the money I'm owed.  We could certainly use the money.

I've had other side stuff going on around here with getting paperwork filled out for different things and stuff as well, which I'll go into more on other posts I'm sure, but yeah...it's been busy. 

And then last night my oven stopped working even close to right.  All I did was change the temp on the oven to a higher degree to finish off some steaks in the oven and the oven just stopped calling for heat.  So, I have steaks that are nearly raw in the middle (I should have tried to finish them off on the stove top, but was so upset at the oven my mind quit working I was so upset) in the fridge where they'll be turned into thin sliced beef and cooked in some au jus on the stove top so we can have French dip sandwiches tonight.  Today, after giving the oven plenty of time to (hopefully) reset, I set the oven to preheat to 350 degrees and put an oven thermometer in to monitor how well it did.  And the oven quit at about 225 degrees...on preheat.  Not a good sign.  The husband is going to look up the manual on the oven and try to figure out what could be wrong with it, but goodness knows how much this is going to cost to repair or even replace.  At least I got the dishwasher paid off *deep sigh*.  One step forward and a marathon run backwards, it seems, is the story of my life.  Ugh.  Sorry.  That sounds way too self pitying.  How about "Trials through adversity seems to be the story of my life."  It sounds a bit better I suppose, so let's go with that.

Anyway, that's been my life the last two weeks on the "argh" end of things and it also helped to explain a lot of my goals for this month (not a subtle transition, but I have a headache today, so please bear with me here), so let's get to all of that, shall we?

Goals for March, 2019

1.  Sign up for FEMA disaster assistance. 

2.  Call husband's general contractor friends and get quotes on what replacing the chimney would cost (never hurts to get numbers from a bunch of people). 

3.  Fix cat scratching posts (they are looking bad and coming unwound, so I'm going to see what I can do to repair them). 

4.  Clean den. 

5.  Gut sewing cabinet and weed out what can be put into storage for the time being.  Put shelves into top of sewing cabinet and redo entirely to hold office materials (we desperately need a place to put everything that can be closed up). 

6.  Clean out the bottom cabinets on the china cabinet.  Get rid of broken items and broken glass from earthquake (one of the last things I need to really deep clean).  Put in new metal shelf brackets for glass shelves in china cabinet so they are more secure and reorganize the china cabinet so it looks nicer. 

7.  Fix or replace oven. 

8.  Hopefully get chimney replaced and if not have a good plan to get it done ASAP, if not sooner. 

9.  Start getting some Spring cleaning done. 

10.  Get well and stay well!!!! 

11.  Get refund check issued from hospital one way or the other.

And there you go folks.  My goals for this month.  There's a lot to do, not a lot of energy to get it done with and limited time to get it done in.

How about you?  Got anything you have to get done this month?

Money Saving Monday (times 2): Money Saving Weekly Recap

I am slowly coming up with a slogan for every day of the week for the stand in Frugal Friday post days, which shows how sick I've been and how sad it is that I need to do that at all.  So, welcome to "Money Saving Monday" for the last two weeks.

By the way, Happy President's Day to everyone in the US :).  I had hoped to celebrate today by making a cool Martha Washington recipe I found on "18th Century Cooking" on YouTube (Orange Fool for those curious), but I'm still out of it, so we're having bratwurst, sauerkraut, baked potatoes and salad.  I was going to make German cucumber salad to go with dinner, but my cucumber went disgusting mushy in record time, even by Alaska standards, so we'll have salad with tomato (a luxury I indulged myself in at the store was buying one Roma tomato as they are currently like 2.99 lb) and carrot in it instead.  Note to self:  Buy another cucumber and try again.  But, yeah, that's my frugal fail for the last little bit as cucumbers aren't cheap either *sigh*.

Anyway, back to the last two weeks and what I've been up to.  Being sick, mostly.  It really stinks.  I woke up feeling GOOD Valentine's Day and was good all day long and it was wonderful and the husband and I spent a really nice day together along with getting shopping done and paying bills since it was also pay day.  I hadn't felt good in months, so I was thrilled that maybe, just maybe I was on the mend.  And then Friday rolls around and I woke up with a sore throat, a congested head and a nasty cold.  So, this weekend where I had planned on getting the house detail cleaned, I spent most of it on the love seat in the living room feeling icky and trying to rest and drink plenty of fluids to get over the cold as soon as I could.  I'm feeling more human today, so I'm praying *knock on every wood substance* that I'm hopefully going to kick this thing decently quick.

Believe it or not, though, despite catching every bug like it's the greatest sale in the world, we did manage to get stuff accomplished around here, so let's get to that!

1.  My husband kept asking me what I wanted for Valentine's Day and I kept telling him not to worry about it as we've spent so much money the last couple of months due to the earthquake that I was actually burned out on spending money.  The last thing I wanted him to do was go and spend 25.00 on a bouquet of roses or something.

While we were out shopping, though, my husband told me he'd be right back and he needed to go and get something.  I didn't think anything of it and kept shopping, although he was gone for a little while, and when he finally rejoined me and told me he couldn't find what he was looking for I just thought, "Ah well" and got the rest of the shopping done.  Well, when we went out to the car with the groceries I was surprised and touched to find that he'd gotten me a single rose for Valentine's Day.  He'd actually gone up to the floral department counter and gotten one special for me so he didn't have to pay a huge price for a larger bouquet that was already prepared.  He even got me a yellow rose, which was my dad's favorite flower.  Somehow that made it even more special to me :).

2.  Used store shopping went really well the last couple of weeks.  First up there was the daughter's upcoming birthday and when we were at the used store I looked around to see if I could find anything she might be interested in.  My favorite local thrift store has smaller sized kid toys separated into these clam shell type things (usually old berry containers people have donated) and you can buy a grab bag of smaller toys for like 1.50 to 5.00 depending on value and demand.  I looked through the clam shells and was shocked to see one jam packed full of stuff my daughter would absolutely love to get for 2.50, so I quickly snatched it up.  While going through the stuffed animals I also found a brand new stuffed horse for 1.00 and one of the Palace Pet critters with the tags still on it, so I grabbed that as well.  I felt great about what was in the clam shell when I finally got to go through it (seen above there with the horse I bought in the background).

Then we were at Value Village later that same week and I found the perfect gift to give my daughter from her brother.  The daughter is obsessed with unicorns and things at the moment and I found a nice little unicorn curio box for 1.50.  She might be able to fit a few necklaces in it or small little collectibles but that's about it as it's not that big, but I know she won't care once she sees the unicorn *laugh*.  Since a bunch of her little knick knack type of things got broken in the quake, I was really happy to find this for her.

So, for less than 10.00 birthday gifts for the daughter are done.  I was hoping to feel better so I could make her something, or at least finish the pillow case I had hoped to give her for Christmas, but that just isn't in the cards at this point, so at least she won't be disappointed in her birthday gifts.

3.  We stopped in at another local used store to find a big cart full of frames on sale for .10 each.  You know, this in itself shows how much my outlook has changed over the years.  There was a time when I would have bought a ton of frames at that price, but instead I bought one to replace a frame that got partially broken in the quake and called it good.  I still need to mount some hardware on the back so I can hang it on the wall, but for .10, I'd say I'm ahead of the game when it comes to expense *laugh*.

4.  Carrs/Safeway has started up their Monopoly game again this year and per usual my son's normal "diet" consists of bonus ticket items, so I end up with a stack of Monopoly coupons when I check out.  I haven't really won much in the way of instant win items, but I started collecting the "second chance" tickets with a unique code on them that you could enter online and see if you won anything else on the ticket.  When I logged onto the site and entered codes I found that basically you have a chance of winning a certain amount of tokens with each code and then you can spend those tokens on different items, entries in different sweepstakes and you can even save the points/tokens up and redeem them for shopping gift cards.  I was thrilled when I realized how this system worked this year and started inputting all of my codes as I'd get the tickets because I also found out that you can redeem 30 tokens/points for a free gas reward that they'll load onto your card for you (you can only do this a maximum of five times over the life of the Monopoly game, though, so keep that in mind if you go to do this :).

I looked through the products that you could redeem your points for and 20 points would net you like a free small can of tomato sauce, a free powdered gravy mix and other things that I'd won in the Monopoly game in the past, which I was kind of "meh" about.  Anything that was actually really worth getting was about 60 points (free french bread and such), so I then focused my attention on the free gas reward for 30 points and went onto the Just4U site to see what I could net with one gas reward (Safeway/Carrs has started a new thing where you can redeem your gas rewards for free products and things in case you aren't near where there is a fueling station or if you don't want to use it for gas/fuel) and I found that this month (the rewards you can redeem change every month) they had a free dozen eggs for one fuel reward.  So, I redeemed my points for the fuel reward, went onto Just4U and got my free dozen eggs loaded onto my card.  So, I picked those up when I went shopping last week.  I did this with the express purpose to use the eggs to make Eggs Benedict (which the eggs were nice and fresh and it worked fabulously) and things and I was really happy how it all worked out :).  I'm hoping to redeem gas rewards over the course of the contest and just use them for free groceries instead of just getting off an additional .10 per gallon of gas, but we'll see how it goes as I want to see what will go on "super sale" with the rewards for groceries program.

5.  Speaking of Eggs Benedict, I used the free eggs, some English muffins I found in the depths of the freezer, some little bits of ham I found that needed to be used up and a powdered mix for Hollandaise that I was gifted to make Eggs Benedict for dinner one night.  Was it as good as legit, from scratch, Eggs Benedict?  No.  Did it work?  You bet.  For a meal that cost next to nothing to make I was happy with how it turned out.

6.  I stopped in at a new store that has opened up in the area called "Ten Below".  Think of it as kind of the Alaska equivalent of say Dollar General, but all the products start out at 1.50 and go up from there.  I wasn't over the moon excited by what I found in the store, but I did find they had foaming carpet cleaner for 1.50 per container, so I got four in the hopes of cleaning my stairs and maybe being able to get a bit more of the teriyaki sauce that stained the hallway carpet out.  I also found they had a thing of hair elastics, a decent amount, for 1.50.  Since the daughter keeps stealing my hair elastics I got the elastics and stuffed them in with her birthday gifts in the hopes that she will stop stealing what I have left.

7.  There has been an uptick in crime in our area (well along with the rest of the Valley really) due to bad law and things (don't get me started, trust me) and I didn't like the idea of people being able to see into our den when the light is on because all we have up is cheapy bamboo blinds that came with the house when we bought it and I found when you got the least bit close to the house you could see right into the den when the inside light was on.  I had gotten some curtains at the used store with built in room darkening panels in them a while ago, so I did a quicky job of putting one up over our front window in our den.  We don't have a traditional curtain rods on the windows in the den due to how the blinds are made, so I actually ended up tucking the curtain around the old blinds to hold it up for the time being until I can come up with something better to hang the curtain.  I have to say the curtain isn't what I would call my normal tastes (I bought the curtains because the curtains cost WAY less than buying room darkening panels on their own), but it fits the window just fine, goes with the coloring of the room (oddly enough) and it has the side benefit of helping to block breezes that are coming in through the window as the windows definitely leak more since the earthquake.  So, for the moment I'm happy with it.

8.  I watched a bunch of videos for free on the internet as I was lying down feeling icky. 

9.  I managed to reorganize the kitchen and got all of the dishes that were up above the cabinets down low in one of my bottom corner cabinets instead so that if we get a bad aftershock or something I won't have to worry about losing what casserole dishes and things I have left after the quake.  This also took weight off the top of the cabinets and will hopefully help to keep the tops of the cabinets from bowing in and such as I found out how thin the tops of the cabinets were when I started checking them thoroughly after the earthquake.

I'm going to call it good there.  I am sure there is more that I did the last couple of weeks, but my brain is blanking and I'm going into nasty coughing fits and desperately need a cough drop (and the cough drops are downstairs), so I'm going to button it up here.

How about you?  Been up to much around your place?

Shopping Goals: February, 2019

Well, I'm officially still putting "2018" instead of "2019" on things.  I had to fix the subject of this post *thumbs up* doing great!  I'll have to add "stop putting wrong year on things" as part of my monthly goals for this month *laugh*.

I wish I felt better, but at least I'm up to about 70% I'd say.  Everyone in the household still feels like they got hit by a truck and are feeling icky on and off.  The daughter is currently lying down in bed with a headache and stomachache and I know it's due to this virus just NOT letting go.  It's miserable.  But we are getting over it.  Slowly, but surely.  Emphasis seems to be on "slowly".

I know this post is taking up the spot of where the "Frugal Friday" post should be, but I'm still working on it, so you get a substitution post instead.

Shopping goals for this month have definitely gone diverse on me.  I had hoped to be able to keep it simple with just some basic groceries and a "get daughter gift for birthday" in there as her birthday is this month, but, once again, things happened and so it's gone pear shaped on me. 

First there was the cake pans.  The cake pans that I bought new less than two years ago and SHOULD still be nearly brand new.  The cake pans I've babied and made sure to always hand wash, not use anything the least bit sharp on and everything else they tell you to do that will make your pans last and last.  I made cake in them and the cake stuck, even after greasing the pans.  This irritated me as they are SUPPOSED to be non-stick.  Then, after I washed them and dried them I was putting them away when I noticed rust already developing on the pans and that the non-stick finish was so thin in places that it was nearly non-existent.  The same thing happened when I went to use my muffin pans.

This whole scenario just irritates me to no end.  It's almost like it doesn't matter how much you spend on baking pans anymore (and believe me I've spent a decent amount on some of them cumulatively over the years), you end up with pans that are just crappy quality and die on you if you bake the least bit in no time flat.  So, after looking at my past records and realizing how much I've spent on baking pans the last five years, trying to find ones that would last more than three uses before starting to die, I took the plunge and put some USA pans on my Amazon store card.  I figure I'll pay it off and then order a few more to replace the warping, rusting, sticking piece of crud pans I have and just start getting some nice quality baking pans a few at a time until I don't have to worry about buying more for quite a while.  Take that sub-par quality items!  So I have two round cake pans and a muffin pan coming in early next week.  That was part of the "diverse" turn the shopping list ended up taking.

Next up was cat food.  I needed to buy some cans to supplement out the cat's wet cat food until next payday, but also wanted to buy something that Belkar, otherwise known as the "I hate food cat" would actually eat before she blows away in the next wind, and I found that tuna fish was on sale this week for .59 a can with a digital coupon.  Belkar loves tuna fish and the tuna fish was actually cheaper than buying a few cans of cat food, so the cats get a treat of tuna for a few days before we get paid next.  They seem very happy with this situation *laugh*.

Anyway, now that you've listened to my shopping list tangent, let's get to the list!


Regular Stores:

• Cream cheese
• Sour Cream
• Buttermilk
• Breakfast Sausage
• Bacon
• Pillsbury Chocolate Frosting (for son's cupcakes for daughter's birthday)
• Tuna fish for cats (done)

Amazon.com (contains affiliate links):

• USA Pan Bakeware 9 inch non-stick cake pans, set of 2
• USA Pan Bakeware 12 Well Muffin and Cupcake Pan 
• Vigorous Mountains Dried Shiitake Mushrooms, 1 oz (mushroom jar got destroyed in the quake, so I need to replace them)

Target/Used Stores:

• Birthday Gifts for Daughter (I actually found a really cute gift at one of the used stores today that I know she'll love, so I'm a bit ahead on that anyway :)

And there you go, folks.  My kind of odd shopping goals for the month.  How about you?  Need to get anything this month?

Totally Saving Tuesday: Money Saving Weekly Recap (Times 2)

First I want to apologize to those who may have e-mailed me some concerned e-mails over the last couple of weeks and I might not have answered.  I've been pretty out of it the last couple of weeks and just haven't been up to much.

Basically we all got miserably sick around here with two different viruses.  First one my son brought home a cold and made everyone sick and then as soon as we started getting over that one my daughter brought home another virus that has cold symptoms and disperses it with stomach upset over the course of over a week.  Between the two viruses the kids have been sick, one or the other, at least a couple of days a week from school and I never have gotten a chance to get well and feel better for more than a day before I got sick again.  Not fun at all.

This last virus my daughter brought home has been utterly nasty for me.  How sick have I been?  I have gotten not much sleep the last week, have not eaten much (I kind of force myself to eat, but all I really have craved is hot liquids to help reduce the swelling in my throat and occasionally tonsils) and all I had the energy to do was basically get the kids back and forth to school and therapy (when they were up to going), get necessary appointments done (more on that in a minute) and do the minimum of things otherwise because I'm just so worn out feeling.  I've drank a lot of coffee and finally found the time to binge watch the entire series of Downton Abbey (yes, all six seasons of it) as I wasn't up to doing much else.

In between everyone being sick I found that Alvah had a loose tooth and was grinding his teeth to get rid of it.  He HATES having loose teeth and will work harder than any kid you've ever seen to get a loose tooth out of his mouth pronto.  Looking at his front teeth, though, I realized he'd actually chipped some of his front teeth, or so it looked (he hates anyone messing with his mouth, so it's kind of hard to tell) being so determined to get the offending tooth out.  So, an emergency visit to the dentist was in order and while he didn't find any cracks or severe chips in the teeth I was worried about (which was good) the dentist, while examining his mouth, found that at some point Alvah had pulled another loose tooth that I was unaware of completely out of his mouth and it had not come out whole.  So, it turns out, that Alvah has one sharp spike of a baby tooth sticking out of his top gum and he's got another small piece of tooth stuck in the gum as well.  So my husband and I found another reason completely to be worried.

We're going to give it a month as the tooth doesn't seem to bug Alvah as it is at the moment, to see if the adult tooth coming in will help to push the other fragments out (a slim chance from what the dentist said, but a chance) or if Alvah might get a want to pull the other fragments out himself.  Otherwise when we go back if the tooth fragments are looking like they aren't moving we'll have to face the real need to knock him out and remove the fragments while he's under.  We've only ever had to do dental work on him one other time where we had to knock him out when he was younger to cap one of his teeth and I have to say the prospect of knocking him out his no less terrifying now as it was then.  I had a bad reaction coming out of anesthesia when I was in high school getting my wisdom teeth out where I started going into shock and my older sister is allergic to at least some forms of anesthesia, so to say I get TERRIFIED at the prospect of them putting Alvah under is a huge understatement.  I'm doing a lot of praying that we'll not have to worry about knocking him out yet.  Maybe at some point when he's older, but not any time soon.  I don't know if those prayers will be answered, but I can pray anyway.

Between that and a book report my daughter had to get done before midnight on Saturday (you had to turn it in online) and we were working on said book report at nine on Saturday night because she put it off till the last minute and I am definitely ready for a week where I'm feeling good and not having a ton of stuff to do.  My husband and I are completely exhausted and we still have tons of stuff to do between us that we're working on slowly but surely to recover from the earthquake and things.

So, yeah, be prepared as the frugal list for the last two weeks is going to be relatively short as I have been busy with sicknesses around here and stuff, but haven't really gotten a lot done around the house and things as much as I would have liked to have.

So, let's get to what I could find time, energy and gumption to get done around here.

1.  When my son was in therapy last week my husband and I hopped over to a few local used stores to look around.  I was hopeful I could find a few things on my earthquake list that I hoped to maybe find at the used store and get off cheaper than buying off of say Amazon or somewhere.  And I did REALLY well!

First off, I was finally able to find a few milkshake glasses.  A lot of huge root beer mugs we used for making milkshakes had gotten broken in the quake and I'd been looking for replacements and I was fortunate enough to actually find REAL milkshake glasses!  I was able to find two at one used store and two at another.  They don't match, but I am not picky especially since they were only about 1.00 per glass versus 20.00 for four new :).  And my daughter loves them a lot more than the big mugs because they are "fancy and easier to lift" than the big stein type mugs we had previously.

I was also able to FINALLY after many, many years of looking managed to find a good pizza pan!!!  I am so very thrilled with it.  I've only been able to find the glorified cookie sheet pizza pans over the years and I didn't like them as well as the pan pizza style pizza pan, so to get one of those for 1.50 was a huge find for sure.  And I found a nice sized Tupperware cake keeper that is JUST the right size for a double layer round cake, which I have also been looking for forever as I only have bigger cake keepers.  I'm going to donate a bigger Rubbermaid cake keeper I'd found in the past now that I have the Tupperware one and I'm really looking forward to using it a lot in the future.

I also found a book I've looked for a great many years and had wanted to get for a great many years since I'd first read it back in college.  "The Story of Art" was my favorite all time textbook in college and I had wanted to keep it so very badly when my Art Appreciation class was over (I adored that class and if I had taken it my Freshman year versus my Senior year I would have ended up being an art history major instead of a Marketing major I can tell you that), but I ended up selling it back because I was desperately trying to save up money and the book sold back for the same amount I'd bought it for, which wasn't cheap.  And I've searched for any and all copies and editions of the book I could get a hold of ever since.  This was the first copy I've ever run across in all of the years I've looked and for 3.00 it was totally worth the price I paid for it :).  To anyone who has an interest in history and how art was shaped by it, this is definitely is a book you want to get for your shelves, but be prepared in that even past editions of the book (of which there are many) are not cheap.

I was even able to get myself a potato ricer for 4.00.  I am always striving to get smoother home made mashed potatoes and I can not WAIT to try this out to help with the job!  I've wanted one of these for a long time, but could never justify the expense of buying a new one, so I was happy to find an in brand new shape one for so cheap!

And speaking of potatoes (great lead in, Erika.  Thank you, Erika)...

2.  I have finally succeeded in getting my daughter to like home made oven fries, she doesn't mind baked potatoes now and while she misses the processed blandness of store bought instant mashed potatoes (sorry my husband's words, not mine), she's learning to like home made mashed potatoes.  So, it was definitely a good time to start keeping a decent amount of fresh potatoes around.  I sat the bags outside my pantry door and tried to think of somewhere and somehow to store potatoes.  I was going to keep them in the pantry, but it's not ideal and I didn't want to attract mice and I didn't want to give up a kitchen drawer to store them in and things.  So, I finally came up with a plan.

I took a basket that I bought used for 3.00 at a yard sale years ago and had been using as a toy basket in the den ever since, emptied the toy basket into my son's closets (as the toys were 99.9% his) and then took the now empty basket to store the potatoes in.  Next I tried to think of a cloth that would breathe well, but would at least block a decent amount of light and I ended up settling on a big thing of bulk cross stitch fabric I had in my stores.  I just laid that inside the basket to line it, piled the 20 pounds of potatoes I had into the basket and then folded the cloth over the top of them to help block out more light.  I then laid a piece of prettier fabric that I had that was of decent weight and placed it over the top of the basket for additional light blocking.  So far this basket has been working fabulously well to store the potatoes.  I took the vase I had on the landing of my stairs and put it down in the den and then placed the basket in the corner where the vase was.  The landing gets pretty darned cold because of the front door area and then the unheated pantry being underneath it, so after a lot of thought it was the best spot I could think of for storing the potatoes.  It's not the prettiest decor item in the world, but I have to say it ranks up there as one of the most practical and I love being able to access my potatoes so easily where they are.

3.  As you can see from the photo above as well I took some towels, rolled them up, and stuck them under doors and one some window wells to help block unwanted, very cold breezes that we've had.  I'm hoping it'll at least help our electric bill, even in some small way, to help the electric heat work a little more effectively.

4.  I applied for PFD's and after stalking the site, finally got our confirmation of eligibility status.  This is always a nerve wracking process for me every year as I've known multiple people that the state had lost their applications and they'd missed out completely on the PFD.  So, I was happy to have that chore done for the year.

5.  I filed our taxes as soon as we got the necessary paperwork in the mail.  We'll be getting money back, which is always a good feeling.  Per usual, the money is pretty much spent already.  My husband's last three teeth (some front teeth) that aren't capped are finally starting to deteriorate and getting concerning.  The dentist is giving us a really good price on capping the last three teeth as we've been such good customers in the past and the return should make it so we can cash those teeth out and we'll hopefully have enough left to pay the difference in the electric bill come the end of the budget billing cycle.  I looked into energy assistance thanks to the input from a friend, but we made just a bit too much per month to qualify, so hopefully just saving the cash necessary will be a good plan b.

6.  I added water to what was left of the dish soap in the bottle and was able to stretch it out for quite a while doing that.

7.  Despite the sickness and things, I was able to somehow find the energy to cook and we didn't end up having to eat out constantly the last couple of weeks. 

8.  My small block freezer is now full of meat.  My husband and I went shopping and I have to say I didn't really want to go as I was so out of it, but despite not feeling good I went and checked the meat mark downs and my jaw dropped when I discovered value packs of chicken drumsticks on manager markdown for .99 lb and a bunch of them were 50% off!  This equated to huge packages of chicken drumsticks for about 2.00 per package!  I bought four even though I had a decent amount of chicken in the freezer already.  I could not pass up chicken at that price!

I was also able to pick up ham for .89 lb on manager special so we have another whole ham in the freezer for use later in the year :).  We're a bit thin on beef in the freezer as it's so darned expensive, but I at least feel good that we have chicken and pork in the freezer to eat if nothing else.

And I'm going to leave it there.  It's ten o'clock and I desperately want to collapse for the evening.  I hope everyone is well out there and don't worry.  I'm finally starting to feel better *knock on every wood substance that exists* and am hoping to finally start getting back to normal life and a more normal blogging schedule as well.  Here's hoping and praying we can finally start to feel better and stay healthy for a while this time!