This week was a pretty successful week in the way of frugality. Very busy, lots accomplished. Not many fumbles to speak of. I’m so thankful for all of the other bloggers out there who post about how they live simply and frugally. Without their wisdom, I don’t think I would be able to do the things that I do for my family today to get us by when times are tight (and they usually are). I simply could not have come up with some of this stuff on my own! So, if you’re a fellow blogger and you blog about anything to do with living more simply ….
Successes
- I purchased fabric for a quilt for a Christmas gift for my daughter at 50% off.
- I made homemade coffee creamer a couple of times.
- A local thrift store was having a 50% off sale for Veteran’s Day, so we picked up 2 pair of jeans for one of my sons.
- We picked up another truckload of free mulch from the town. I mulched my strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries with it. We’ll be going back at least 2-3 more times. (I’m just now realizing that mulching with wood chips in the garden is apparently a very controversial subject among gardeners. If you have experience with it, good or bad, I’d love to hear!)
- I stopped at a farmer’s market and picked up 3 acorn squash and 2 large heads of broccoli for $1 each. That market will be closing down the week of Thanksgiving-ish, so I plan to go back for some other types of winter squash that I didn’t have room to grow in my own garden.
- I processed 3 of my pie pumpkins and made pumpkin walnut muffins and pumpkin apple butter. The seeds are being roasted for a snack as I type this post.
- I made several loaves of bread…can’t remember how many.
- I got a great deal on toilet paper at CVS and a free roll of paper towel. I also used an extra 25% off coupon that CVS sent me for a humidifier for my daughter’s bedroom.
- My husband and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary by going out to dinner using a gift card from my mother meaning that the dinner cost us nothing out of our own pocket other than the tip for the waitress. We went to a very nice restaurant that serves fresh, local food. Even their cheeses are from local cheese makers!!! It was delicious.
- After dinner, we did a little Christmas shopping for the kiddos and found a 25% off sale on the gifts that we bought.
- We decided that we need to replace our pellet stove this year after having a few issues with it and deciding that we needed something that could pump out more heat. We have a larger 1800’s farm house, so we decided to go with a Harman stove as our replacement since they’re known for being workhorses. Harman had a $100 off coupon on their website that we were able to use. We’ll save even more by having my husband pick it up and install it himself. (Here’s a post where I describe how we installed our second hand pellet stove last year…it’s very easy!) My husband will use the old stove to heat up the garage when he’s working out there in the winter. This was something we had to save up for a while for, but it’ll be so worth it!
- I made yogurt in my crockpot with powdered milk. I didn’t have enough fresh milk, and the kids have been begging for yogurt…so I gave it a shot. It’s still chilling in the fridge, so I can’t say yet how it turned out. (Some day in the future I hope to have goats or maybe even a cow for our dairy. That’s my ideal. For now…we make do, and we’re grateful, and we bloom where we were planted. )
- I used an old window that I found in our barn and some cinder blocks (also found in the barn) to create a cold frame over the beets. Next year I hope to create a hoop house or row covers of some sort to extend our growing season.
Fumbles:
- I had to rewash a couple of loads of laundry this week after forgetting about them or getting distracted and they got musty.
- Starbucks may or may not have happened on our anniversary date night. I don’t count that as a true fumble, though. It’s a rare treat. It was delicious.
Goals:
- I still haven’t gotten around to freezing the kale from my garden. I’m not too worried about it. Last year it survived just fine until we had several inches of snow on the ground…then it got a little iffy texture, wise. I hope to get to it sometime this week.
- I should process the rest of my pie pumpkins. They’re still outside at the moment and I saw that one of them is getting mushy. At the very least I need to find an appropriate storage space for them inside somewhere.
- I’m hoping to find some great deals on turkey to stock in our freezer.
- Continue working on the homemade Christmas gifts as we have the money and find deals for supplies.
What were your frugal successes this week? I’m also curious…what is considered a good deal on turkey for your area?
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Hi Ashley. Just found you from The HomeAcre Hop. We are a Catholic family and we have always been frugal. Love what you are doing with your young family. If you garden and write about it for very long you will learn there is controversy around everything. I have a masters degree in horticulture and I have gardened a very long time. If you can get free hardwood mulch use it. While it is not my favorite, it is fine. Any mulch is good as long as it lays on top of the ground. It could cause an issue called nitrification if you till it in, but as long as it is above ground it will not pull nitrogen out of the soil. The only problem I have had with it is it sometimes brings in some bad weeds like Nut Sedge.
One more frugal tip. After a year of laying on top of the ground, mulch turns into compost! When it no longer resembles wood you can rake it onto your beds as a great way to add organic material and nutrients to your growing beds.
Here is a post I did a while back about money saving ways to have a great garden. Notice in the mulch section I talk about hardwood mulch
https://masterofhort.com/2011/08/eight-ways-to-stretch-your-garden-dollars/
Hi Jay! Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your article. I appreciate your take on the wood mulch. We’re going to continue to use it until if/when it doesn’t seem to be a good fit or causes some issues. I’m hoping it will at least help with the weeds. The weeds get away from me every year…family life just gets so busy, there’s no time for weeding. I’ll take any help I can get.
Stopping by from the Homeacre Hop! This week I am working on listing my son’s Skylanders on eBay;0) Hopefully they sell! My hubby makes homemade creamer, and we have frozen pumpkin from our pie pumpkins (although we didn’t have many). There are so many things to do to save … if only we had the time!
Hi Jayleen…good luck on selling on eBay. Hope they sell for ya! What’s your homemade creamer recipe? I can’t say I’ve found one that I’m in love with yet. They always leave me longing for the store bought kind.
I wanted to do the pie pumpkins and get some pureed pumpkin in the freezer but with moving on the horizon, I am going to move that goal to next year but I didn’t even think about using the old windows in the garden. We were thinking about selling them on Craiglist to see if we could make a little money so maybe there are some gardeners looking for some old windows to do just that