Frugal Fridays – Grow. Pray. Build. --- Bloom Where You're Planted.

Frugal Fridays #6

on December 5, 2014

I'm a little late getting this posted today- I've got 4 sick kiddos at the moment, so it's going to be short and sweet. Side note: There was a point in my day a couple of days ago where I felt like I wasn't doing enough. I felt like I should be doing *more.* I'd just finished reading a blog post from a fellow mom blogger whom I admire, and sometimes I have a tendency to let my imagination run a little wild. I imagined for a moment that her house was perfectly clean, that she (unlike me) was NOT still in her pajamas at 2pm, that her husband got to come home to a wife who was put together and maybe even had her hair and make-up done, and that she smiled joyously while driving her kids around to activities rather than sometimes being totally exhausted and overwhelmed by it like me. The crazy thing is that I had dinner cooking, bread rising, yogurt culturing, and the 6th load of laundry for the day going at this moment ... not to mention the school lessons and parenting I'd done that day, and I was STILL knocking myself down. How nuts is that? I really had to stop for a moment and redirect my heart. Sometimes I think we mothers are our own biggest drag. If you ever have moments like that, or if you're having one today, I wanted to share a scripture verse that I turn my mind to during those times. Successes: I made 2 loaves of bread. 1 batch each of crockpot yogurt and pumpkin maple walnut granola. We finally made it out to the Amish bulk foods store that is about 40 minutes from our house. We don't have food co-ops, LDS canneries, or much else for purchasing in bulk. We do have Sam's, but unfortunately there are just some things that Sam's doesn't carry....like rolled oats (which we eat a TON of)! There are places online that we could purchase from, but shipping anywhere east of the Mississippi puts the cost through the roof, so that's not really much of an option. I found 50 lbs bags of rolled oats at the Amish store for $28. They … [Read more...]

Frugal Fridays #5

on November 28, 2014

I hope you're all enjoying Thanksgiving this week! We have so much to be thankful for this year. Most of all, I'm thankful for God's love and mercy in our family...and for our actual family itself, including this little one growing in my belly. We are so excited to meet him! I'm also incredibly thankful to the men and women who serve in our country's Armed Forces, protecting us, and sacrificing Thanksgiving dinner with their own families so that we can be safe at home. I know many of you are probably out taking advantage of Black Friday deals at the moment. I may take a trip out to Joann's to pick up some more fabric for the quilts I'm making for my kiddos for Christmas. I normally hibernate on Black Friday, but this year there really are some things that I could use a good deal on ... mostly fabric and thread for Christmas projects. Successes: I made a gallon of yogurt in the crockpot. I made a batch of granola in the crockpot. We used our museum membership to attend a free event at our local 18th Century Living History museum. The theme of the event was "Preparing for the Holidays in the 18th Century." We saw hog butchering, tallow candle making, lard rendering, soap making, baking, and much more. We purchase a museum membership each year and it pays for itself usually within 2-3 visits. We were given a case of family pack Kraft macaroni and cheese. ::Gasp:: I know, right? ;) Don't worry. This isn't a typical item on our menu. My father works for a freight company and when a box gets dented or a label gets torn, they can't deliver it and it gets thrown away. Sometimes he's able to give it to us instead. I'll treat the kids to a couple of lunches (and they'll think I'm the coolest mom ever...for a day). The rest will go into our storage for an emergency or for donation. In an emergency, such as temporary income loss, sometimes it's more important to just *have food* than to have everything organic and perfectly wholesome. For this reason, … [Read more...]

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Frugal Fridays #4

on November 21, 2014

Successes: Both our coffee maker and toaster oven died recently and we decided not to replace them. (Don't worry. I have a french press coffee maker, as well as one of these things). I also have our camping percolator. Lots of coffee back-up. ;) I realized that I can toast things faster and in larger quantities under the broiler, and I prefer the counter space anyway. My grocery budget ran low about the same time we ran out of paper napkins, so I cut cloth napkins out of an old sheet (pictured above). I've been meaning to make a switch over to cloth napkins for a while anyway, but didn't have the opportunity to purchase fabric or pre-made cloth napkins. Being in a situation where I needed to make do with what I had led me to my linen closet. I have a box of misfit sheets that was given to me a couple of years ago....perfect solution and didn't cost a dime! I just cut them into 9inx9in squares, sewed right sides together, flipped right side out, and then top stitched. I was able to find turkey on sale for .48 cents per pound with no minimum purchase. I bought two for the freezer and hope to go back to buy a couple more depending on the budget situation. Our furnace has been off the last 3 days even though the temps have been in the 20's. Our new pellet stove keeps us gloriously warm with the pellets we purchased on sale over the summer. We were given 2 gallons of milk. Our church Thanksgiving feast was earlier this week and they had an excess of milk. They offered them to all of the families with young children rather than letting it spoil. I processed 4 more of my pie pumpkins. There are still 4 or 5 more that I need to get to. We were given some baby items by a family friend. We'll go through and see what we already have and donate duplicates to the crisis pregnancy center. I noticed some of our produce was going bad faster than expected, so I moved around the monthly meal plan to accommodate using them up before it was too late. We … [Read more...]

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Frugal Fridays #3

on November 14, 2014

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 … [Read more...]

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Frugal Fridays #1

on October 31, 2014

I've debated on doing this post for a while. I don't want to come off as preachy, or "look at me and all the fabulously frugal things I've done this week." I certainly don't want to make any of you women out there reading this feel like you should be doing more, or that you should be doing better. I hate blog posts like that. And I've ready plenty of them. Gross. That's NOT what I want to do. But at the same time, I find a lot of motivation and encouragement from other bloggers' posts. Not just the how-to posts. I like to see what bloggers are actually doing in their day to day grind. They give me ideas for how I can adjust things in my own daily grind to meet our goals, or make things run a little smoother in our day. I love reading the "Frugal Accomplishments" posts over at the Prudent Homemaker Blog. Even though I do a lot of things differently than Brandy, or because of location, I simply don't have access to the same deals that she might (we don't have case lot sales here), I've gotten so many ideas from reading her posts. If nothing else, it does so much good for me to see another mama of a large-ish family doing her best on a modest budget. So, I'll post on Fridays some of the things that I've done to save money that week. I think I'll also post some [frugal fails] of the week as well. Because I have plenty of them, and I think transparency is a good thing. The blogosphere has a way of hiding our flaws, and only showing our successes. I'm not an expert. I'm not a purist. I'm learning daily. I stumble just as often as I learn, though. That goes for all things...economics included. Accomplishments: - I used a left over chicken carcass from dinner to make stock. I added in some veggie scraps that I keep in a baggie in the freezer. It'll be used in tonight's chicken and rice soup. - I made 2 loaves of whole wheat sandwich bread (recipe to come soon...it's so good!). - I cooked up 4 lbs of dry beans and froze them for … [Read more...]

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